Our sexual awakening during our school years was filled with restlessness and regret.

This is the 1145th work published by the person who has a story to tell.

Author: Zhang Ran

Images: Stills from the films “Dream of the Condor Heroes” and “Sex Is Zero”

I spent my childhood in a small rural town. The town wasn’t particularly poor economically, but it was backward in terms of culture and education, and had limited access to information.

Naturally, conservative thinking hinders the dissemination and education of sex education, but this does not mean that human desires have been eliminated. Adultery and other illicit affairs are commonplace, and have always been a topic of conversation among elders.

Sexual awareness and knowledge can only grow and sprout quietly for us teenagers whose sexual desires are just beginning to awaken, passed down by word of mouth among our peers and explored in private.

In 2008, I entered junior high school. The school conditions in this small town were limited. There was a small dormitory of about 20 square meters with 12 bunk beds, and each bed was shared by two students. Usually, one person would bring a mattress and the other would bring a blanket to cover themselves, so they would sleep at opposite ends of the room. Close friends might share a bed.

It was in that dormitory where 24 people lived together that I first heard a dirty joke, first experienced the psychological pleasure of physical contact with someone, and first witnessed sexual harassment. Of course, at that time, we didn’t understand the seriousness of the matter.

Looking back now, I still feel a bit scared. How did a group of thirsty high school students manage to avoid AIDS?

There was a guy in our dorm named Wan, whom we all called “Pervert Tiger.” He had a DVD player at home, so he often told us about the contents of pornographic DVDs, which really opened our eyes. He not only shared all sorts of dirty jokes in the dorm, but he even shamelessly talked about his parents’ sex life. He said he had accidentally seen his parents having sex in bed through a crack in the door. We blushed and didn’t dare to say a word, but our minds couldn’t help but wander.

I recall a vague memory. When I was in elementary school, I went to stay at my grandmother’s house with my parents. There weren’t enough beds, so I had to share a bed with my parents. I slept on the innermost side, my body turned towards the wall. Late at night, I was awakened by my parents’ movements.

I remember once, my childhood friends and I were playing in our neighbor’s yard. The adults were sitting together, chatting with their legs crossed. For some reason, one of my friends got into an argument with his father. His father, leaning against his motorcycle, kept berating him. Unable to contain himself, as if he had caught his father red-handed, he shouted, “Don’t think I don’t know! I heard you and Mom fighting in bed last night!” The adults burst into laughter, while we kids looked at each other, bewildered and confused.

This confusion lasted for a long time. It was never resolved through positive education from parents and teachers, but rather developed on its own through long periods of private observation, imitation, and exploration.

One of my roommates is surnamed Yang. Yang’s father works in Zhuhai, and the family is relatively well-off. After making some money in Zhuhai, his father went back to the countryside to build a house, bringing back two cell phones with him, one new and one old. Yang took the old phone from his father; there should still be some credit left on the SIM card.

Back then, we would turn off the lights and go to sleep around 9 PM after our evening self-study sessions. But it was after lights out that the dormitory would become a place of restlessness.

For a period of time, Yang frequently called 10086 (China’s customer service hotline) to make fun of the customer service representatives. When he encountered a female representative, he would make all sorts of flirtatious remarks, often using vulgar and mocking language. The more patient representatives would repeatedly ask him if he had any business to conduct, while the less patient ones would simply hang up.

When Yang made phone calls, his other roommates would quietly listen to his conversations with customer service. At first, most of them felt embarrassed to hear such conversations, but they got used to it, and this activity became our dorm’s “spiritual midnight snack” after lights out. Whenever we heard the female customer service representative being teased, we would always burst into laughter.

For us boys, Sehu and Yang were our earliest sex education teachers.

Back in junior high, the word “gay” didn’t exist in my mind. It wasn’t until high school that I gradually came to understand the meaning of “being gay”.

In fact, some same-sex behaviors are already quite common in junior high school dormitories. Two boys sleeping in the same bed often imitate sex scenes from movies and TV shows. But this cannot be called homosexuality, because they are not in a romantic relationship, nor has there been any physical intimacy in the strict sense. It is just a group of hormone-fueled teenagers, out of curiosity and desire for sex, making various attempts and experiencing the pleasure of friction.

This is probably the main reason why no students have fallen victim to AIDS.

After lights out at night, the dormitory would often be filled with low moans, frequently accompanied by giggles and laughter. For us back then, sex was more like a game, a performance of imitation; we were exploring a new world with great curiosity.

Of course, everyone kept their voices down, mainly because they were afraid of a surprise dormitory check by the teacher. In fact, we did run into the teacher once during lunch break, but the teacher pretended nothing had happened and walked away.

Chen and I shared a bunk, the upper bunk. We were quite close, so we often slept at one end of the bunk. Sehu slept in the bunk next to ours back then.

One night, I went to bed early, but I kept hearing laughter beside me, and the wooden bed seemed to be shaking slightly. When I woke up, I found Sehu on top of Chen, making fake groans and grinning. Perhaps because I had just woken up, I initially thought they had a fight. It wasn’t until later that I realized what had happened.

Then, I did something that I will feel ashamed for the rest of my life.

I pushed the pervert away and climbed on top of Chen, moving on top of him like he had. We didn’t actually have sex; we were just imitating the movements we’d learned from the movies. So that night, I didn’t feel much.

But the next day, I suddenly felt panicked and anxiously asked Chen, “Could you be pregnant last night?”

Chen was much calmer than me. He explained the so-called scientific principles to me in a serious manner: “Men can’t get pregnant, but they might if they get too fat.”

Although I was already a middle school student, my knowledge of basic physiological facts was ridiculously ignorant. I wasn’t sure if Chen’s answer was a joke or if he was just as ignorant as I was. But at that time, I believed him without question.

Even now, thinking about these things still makes me shudder, not just because of regret, but more so because of helplessness and pity.

Why do schools distribute textbooks for the “Mental Health and Physical Hygiene” course every year at the beginning of the school year, but never arrange for teachers to teach it? Are schools waiting for a group of teenagers with emerging gender awareness to read the book and learn on their own?

I desperately want to tell the school teachers that students who read this textbook in class will be considered hooligans by their classmates. These books serve no purpose other than being used to prop up desks and chairs.

Later, in my second and third years of junior high, like most other boys, I learned to masturbate. At that time, I was just figuring it out entirely by intuition, and it wasn’t until high school that I understood the true meaning of the word.

For a long time afterward, I was unable to shake off the pursuit and enjoyment of this pleasure. I increasingly looked forward to the night until I found release.

But what I experienced wasn’t just physical pleasure, but also a long-standing sense of repression and guilt. Countless times I asked myself, “Am I being perverted by doing this?”

Back then, I didn’t have a cell phone, and we didn’t have a computer at home, so I couldn’t rely on the internet to find answers to my questions like teenagers do today. My parents never gave me any relevant education either, even though they had noticed the changes in my body and perhaps vaguely knew about my private behavior, but they ultimately said nothing.

In the eyes of my classmates and teachers, I was a diligent student who never caused trouble. Even when the male classmates made lewd jokes or circulated videos, I was often excluded. My high school roommates frequently discussed sex-related topics, including gossip, teasing, and even fantasies and offenses about the girls in our class. They would discuss which female classmates were still virgins and which had become “black fungus” (a euphemism for prostitution). They would also find various resources and share them in the dormitory. In their eyes, I was always the one who should least and least should watch videos or masturbate.

During my three years of high school, I never watched porn directly. I only searched for explicit pictures and texts in bed countless times. A GIF or a passionate scene from a movie or TV show that I stumbled upon would excite me physically for a long time.

It was through these hidden fragments that I gradually built my understanding of sex.

A female classmate once asked me very directly, “Do you masturbate like other people?”

I was stunned and didn’t know how to answer. I wanted to tell her the truth, but by worldly standards, as a well-behaved student, I should be absolutely pure and without desires.

So I lied that day and said, “No, but I will have nocturnal emissions, just like when you girls have your periods.”

This sense of guilt haunted me as I entered university and reached its peak during my university years.

One day during my freshman year, someone from the dorm next door found some adult videos and copied them to my roommate’s computer. My roommate happened to be out, and his computer was on, sitting on the desk. At the time, I had no idea where to find such mysterious resources, and since no one was around, I couldn’t resist going over and randomly clicking on a video that had already been transferred.

To my utter surprise, my roommate suddenly turned back to the dorm right after I finished watching two videos, and I was caught red-handed. My self-esteem was shattered. I felt incredibly ashamed and guilty for sneaking a peek at someone else’s computer and watching such videos. I even felt like I had completely degenerated into a pervert.

Later, this roommate mentioned me to others several times, saying, “I never expected him to be such a dishonest person, so horny.” He also said, “He’s different from us. He’s the kind of person who looks honest but is actually the most dishonest. We’re different; we look bad but are actually very honest.”

The guilt made me unable to hold my head up in front of my teachers and classmates. I just wanted to disappear completely.

Sometimes I’m walking happily on campus, chicken cutlet in my right hand and lemonade in my left, but as soon as I think about what I did in the past and my roommates’ comments, all my good mood vanishes instantly, and even my favorite food becomes hard to swallow.

Every time I walk towards the dormitory building, my legs feel like lead, incredibly heavy. I am filled with resentment and fear towards the dormitory; I fear the gaze of others and feel uneasy because of my own indulgence. I resent my roommates, but I resent myself even more.

Every time I take a shower, I feel weak all over whenever I think of what my roommate said. I just want to collapse on the floor and let the showerhead wash me clean.

Even when I see news about sexual assault online, I start to imagine myself in that situation. I’m afraid of becoming one of the victims in the news, afraid of becoming a real criminal.

Later, with the rise of various self-media bloggers sharing popular science knowledge, as well as professional sex education institutions and medical media, I gradually realized through continuous research and learning that masturbation is neither sinful nor harmful; the key lies in moderation. The problem isn’t masturbation itself, but rather an undisciplined lifestyle. I also slowly learned more about male and female physiology, and realized how absurd many of the jokes boys made in middle school were.

After fully understanding this information, I began to work hard to adjust my lifestyle and mindset, and strengthen my self-discipline, which gradually helped me emerge from the shadows of the past few years.

As I write this, nearing the end of the article, I suddenly feel a deep sense of regret. These fundamental physiological facts weren’t taught to me by schools or families, the very institutions that should have provided my early education. Even more regrettable is that I only began to learn how to properly construct my understanding of sex when I was already in my twenties.

Now, I can finally view sex with a normal mindset. Sex itself is innocent, and as long as it stays within the boundaries of law, morality, and personal safety, it should be a beautiful and free thing.

I hope that when I have my own children, when they ask me questions about sex, I can give them scientific and appropriate responses, guiding them to understand their bodies and relationships correctly, instead of brushing them off with old-fashioned excuses like “you were picked up from a garbage dump,” or simply ignoring their doubts and feelings.

After all, our generation has already taken many detours.