I sometimes like to plump up my dick in the shower, but I very rarely go as far drifting off into some fantasy long enough to squirt a load down the drain. I think I'm always too self-conscious about how much time I'm taking in there. And I think I know where this comes from...

I remember my 5.5-year-older big brother suddenly taking longer and longer showers when I was nine or so. I couldn't understand why he thought he was dirtier than he did before. It wasn't till years later that a light bulb went on.

Because we were taught to be water conscious, particularly HOT water conscious, Mom and Dad seemed uncharacteristically unconcerned about all that hot water running down the drain, and nothing short of uncaring if I whined through the house about having to pee real bad and that door still being locked tight.

A conservative family of five, my poor big brother –I can say that now– ALWAYS had to share a small bedroom with me, this little kid, and there was virtually zero place to be alone in our tight suburban house. We kids were raised to keep squeaky-clean vocabularies and thoughts. Darn was the strongest expletive tolerated, so even the vaguest hint of anything to do with sex or puberty or even talk of someone looking "attractive" simply never happened.

(This was worlds away from my friend Alan's family. His big brother actually demonstrated for him how to do it. I know this because Alan excitedly gave me the blow by blow details one day on the playground in sixth grade. We both tried real hard, waited and tried again –but that's a whole other story.)

I never, ever once saw my big brother with an erection –even a bulge his pants– in all the years we lived together and slept just four feet apart in twin beds.

I do remember opening my eyes some mornings –maybe we'd talk a bit– If he tucked his left arm under his head I could spot new hair coming in, then becoming a dark mass in his armpit and notice that under the covers he'd quietly fool with a probably huge, swollen peter... bigger than my little hairless thing. I thought he used some secret method I wished I could ask him about to make his piss-hardon go down so I wouldn't see a pole pushing out his white briefs when he swiftly got out of bed.
–It's curious that although all little boys get piss-hardons, my brother and I never even mentioned boners as a joke.

Despite his subtle undercover movements, I never thought my brother was masturbating. Most of those years I didn't even know what masturbating was. But if that's what he did all those mornings, he was the coolest and stealthiest teenager of all to pull it off right under a snoopy little brother's nose. I could never have managed to pull off an orgasm, imperceptible from four feet away, considering my teenage trajectory and volume, followed by an equally stealthy cleanup operation with some tucked-away mop.
Christ, even now I can't manage to pull off a little quickie at my computer without telltale squeaks of my chair and fapping of flesh betraying me all the way to the kitchen.

No, he couldn't have possibly jerked off right before my greedy eyes. My big brother stoically held onto every last drop of his copious adolescent sperm and over time squirted pints and pints of white goo without a trace down our family's shower drain and into our septic tank. Oh yes, I inspected that drain for evidence. I wanted to know things so badly!

We're two old men now, yet there's still no way either of us would ever bring up masturbation. But I did recently convey to him over a beer that although those years we slept in beds four feet apart are among the safest and warmest of my memories, he had my heartfelt sympathy for carrying the unspoken duty of protecting a little brother's innocence. I hope the subtext of my words got across to him.

I didn't hit puberty until sometime around the time he left home for good to attend UC Berkeley. I felt his loss sorely, but I gained a private bedroom in which to discover the greatest Top Secret alone by myself. My poor bro only had closely watched minutes in the shower and a dumb little brother jiggling the doorknob.