Walt Whitman’s was our go-to place in junior high. Not the poet’s house; that was down the road. We never went there. We went to the mall named after the poet. Shopping for clothes at Macy’s or A&S, lava lamps and black light posters at Spencer’s, mostly just playing Space Invaders at the arcade or walking around and hanging out by the fountains with friends; this was what we did after school. Our mothers would drop us off, and we’d cruise the long indoor esplanade, seeing who else might turn up, talk about which girls we liked, then get shy around them when they joined us. I even got my first job at Walt Whitman’s, scooping out Baskin Robbins’ 31 flavors.

The mall also had B. Dalton’s, the only bookstore I’d ever been in, and though it was only the size of our living room, it had everything. Cold War spy novels for dad for Christmas, calendars and cards, tables of romance novels, and a literature section with Salinger and Orwell and John Knowles that wrapped around the whole store. One day, my friends George and Anthony and I discovered the self-help section. Amidst the titles we didn’t understand—about menopause, bi-polarity, What Color is Your Parachute—one book stood out, like a billboard: The Joy of Sex. Un-believe-able. Illustrations of couples getting it on in every position possible. Playing at Horses. The Viennese Oyster. It didn’t take long for our titillated laughter and too-loud exclamations to get us kicked out by the middle-aged sales clerk.

From Catechism class, which I trudged to through the woods after school, I knew sex was not supposed to be a joy, more of a duty once you were married. Despite this, I went back to B. Dalton’s on my own, several times, trying to build up the nerve to check out the book I couldn’t help but notice was shelved a few books down from The Joy, its counterpart, it seemed. But as I approached, it suddenly seemed too bright in the uncrowded store, like there was a spotlight on the self-help section, installed perhaps by God himself, keeping me in the more wholesome aisles. I could only imagine what secrets The Joy of Gay Sex contained. What graphic answers to my clandestine desires the Gay Joy could reveal.