It turned out the guys weren’t given the same pep talk as the girls. A few days later, Tarek admitted that he enjoyed the kissing but not the “heavy petting,” the term we used in class. He obviously preferred Nintendo to human contact. After our first encounter I did everything I could to get him onto his top bunk and under my shirt. He’d curiously fiddle around for a bit, then sit up, climb down the bunk bed ladder, press the TV/Video button on his television, and take out his controller. I lay frustrated underneath his DuckTales bedsheets, watching his on-screen avatar jump over brick castles and sink down tunnels.

Accepting that preteen boys didn’t have as strong a sex drive as their female counterparts, I turned to the internet for fulfillment. AIM had just come out. My screen name was Juniper18, a combination of my favorite scent of Bath & Body Works lotion and my purported age. “What size are your tits?” BigCoq4U would ask.

My breasts were buddingly present but still quite nascent. Daily examinations in front of the bathroom mirror suggested glacial-speed growth. “36D,” I’d lie. Sometimes I’d give my number to whoever I was chatting with—I had received my own private phone line that year for Eid al-Fitr, so I didn’t need to worry about my parents listening in. I twirled the cord and spoke to whoever was on the other end as he touched himself. I liked the power of it, of exciting someone with my voice. I would sit on my windowsill with the phone pressed to my ear, my mother and father screaming at each other down the hall just as Andy or Joe or Matt would moan into the receiver, drowning out my parents. There was one male caller who happened to live just a few miles away, and of whom I became especially fond. He was different from the others. He seemed to genuinely care for me, and we discussed topics besides how big he was, like the weather, what I was majoring in, bands we liked. He broke the news to me that Jerry Garcia had died, and for that I will never forget him.