My parents never gave me "the talk." In fact, I distinctly remember sitting at the kitchen table with my mother while she explained to me that I wouldn't be getting "the talk," ever, and that that was just the way it was. "You know how your father is," she said. I did know. "If you have any questions about that kind of stuff, you'll have to ask your brothers."

Hmm. If I have any questions about the most uncomfortable topic there is at my age, I should ask the two people who had been tormenting me pretty much constantly since I was born. That seems perfectly reasonable.

Luckily, however, I didn't have any questions at all, because I'd been educating myself on the topic for years. For some reason, in the upstairs bookcase, there was a college textbook about human sexuality. Off and on since about the age of nine, I'd been secretly studying up on the finer points of shaking the sheets.

My favorite section by far was a list of all the "official" terminology relating to body parts and various activities. Who knew these activities even existed?! I did, that's who. But even better ... underneath each official term was a sublist of slang terms. This was just awesome. How else was I supposed to learn that "breasts" could also be referred to as "snuggle pups"? Nothing else, not even Showtime, could grant me that kind of knowledge. This was a university education on the topic of eel-skinning.

I read that damn book over and over for probably about eight years. Most of it didn't make sense at the beginning and I hated all the boring parts about dating and intimacy. But I read them anyway, and eventually they took hold somewhat. And eventually, much much later, they came in handy.

In the meantime, I just read the book and avoided the alternatives.

"Hey, Buttplug," my brother said to me.

I smiled faintly, because I knew what that was. Literally. Then I ignored him and kept tapping away at my Commordore.