As a man, as some of you might know, your dick and your brain only seem to work together when The Dick wants it. But, if The Dick wants to just get hard for no fucking reason whatsoever, well… goddamnit, The Dick’s gonna do what it’s gonna do and your brain’s gonna have to try and run a slideshow of naked grandmothers in your head and hope for the best. Usually, The Dick just goes back to hangin’ out flaccid long before The Brain can do anything worthwhile about it.

Here are a few stories where The Dick and The Brain weren’t hangin’ out on the same “hey, stay flaccid!” page of the etiquette book. Normally, I wouldn’t use the word “boner” – preferring sexier/vulgar alternatives like erection, throbbing dick, or even tumescent cock ¹ – but because the word “boner” originally meant “a stupid or clumsy mistake“, I’m going for the double-entendre with these 3 short stories of awkward boners.

Story 1

It was the summer before 9th grade. I was staying at my friend’s place. I loved crashing out there cause he had this huge house, and a giant pool that looked more like a lake than a pool. That’s to say, it didn’t have boring white walls like most pools, it was dark granite². He also apparently didn’t have parents. Or, they were just never home. I sometimes spent several nights in a row there, but I never did meet his parents. His mom dropped him off at my house a few times, but she had tinted windows, so… again, I never saw her.

Another thing about this kid – his name was Jeff – was that he had this unbelievably hot older sister. I think she was just north of 18 at the time. Long black hair, nice rack, and a metalhead – but not a tomboy. The first time I met her, she’d been dumped by her boyfriend and was getting ready to go out with her friends to tear up the night and get over him. Her soundtrack while getting ready was Pantera’s This Love on an endless loop. I tried to talk to her and share my love of Pantera, but she clearly wasn’t interested. She was cordial about it, and “yeah… Pantera’s fucking awesome”, but there was no going further with that conversation.

An ongoing joke that I ran afoul of was “hey Jeff… how’s your sister?”. He got that question about a hundred times a day, from all manner of dudes (myself included) who thought they had a chance in hell. He wasn’t a popular kid, but no one fucked with him because everyone wanted to fuck his sister.

One morning, I woke up on his downstairs couch and I could hear his sister talking at a low volume with a friend of hers in the kitchen. They were kinda laughing, and semi-whispering, then cackling loudly, and saying “shh.. shh.. you’re being too loud!”. I thought this odd, considering Jeff was upstairs and there weren’t any parents around. I did that thing where, because they were out of my line of sight (and vice-versa), I just kept my eyes slightly open to look around, and listen. That’s when I realized : I didn’t have a blanket on me anymore. I’d kicked it off in the middle of the night. I was just sitting there in my boxers. With morning wood.

I heard one of them say to the other “remember guys that age? jesus, they were such horn-balls!”, and the other one laughed and agreed. It’s funny how often young people think they’ve got life figured out. If future-me could appear before past-them, I’d say “ladies… please. we’re horn-balls at every fucking age, we just get better at pretending not to be”.

I decided to turn over and just kinda “hide it”, but my god is it uncomfortable to try and lie down on top of your own erection. I waited until I heard them go upstairs, and finally got up from the couch to put on my pants. I didn’t realize Jeff’s sister was still in the kitchen. She just looked at me and put her hand over her mouth, trying to force herself not to bust up laughing, then turning around to do it anyway. I played dumb as best I could and went to the bathroom to pour cold water on myself.

Story 2

It was Sophomore year in high school. Probably my favorite year, cause Nad and I had a cool little crew of Freshman kids that looked up to us. The music that year was fucking phenomenal, I started driving (my mom’s car), and I had a number of “firsts” with a girlfriend³. There’s plenty of other stories about that year that I’ll be telling – this is just the shortest one.

I was in my English class, taking some kind of pop-quiz, and for no reason whatsoever The Dick decided to just wake up and stretch out. I know women have endless stories about sitting in class when their period hit, but I never once noticed it happen. Maybe they just felt like someone could tell, and I’m sure it’s jarring, but nothing’s quite as suddenly paranoia-inducing quite like a surprise mid-afternoon erection. It’s a difficult thing to hide⁴. I tried to just focus on the test, and ignore it, hoping it would go away before the end of class.

I was not so lucky.

The bell rang and I desperately wanted to keep working on that test. Even though I’d finished it well before the bell rang, I sat there acting like I was working really hard. The teacher announced “okay! everyone turn in your quiz!”. I was fucked. My only saving grace was that, with everyone focused on finishing up and walking to the front, no one could see when I stood up and quickly did the under-the-belt trick. I’ll explain : the easiest way to hide an erection is to lift it up, and then put your waistband/belt over it, and then throw your shirt in front. Then, when it goes limp, it’ll slip right back down again.

This trick would’ve worked flawlessly had I not walked out into the hallway only to be greeted by a female friend who was running around lifting the shirts of people she knew and tickling them. I didn’t know that’s what she was doing, and it happened so fast I couldn’t prepare. She just ran past, stopped, lifted my shirt, saw that I was visibly sportin’ wood, and said “Oooohhhhh…. shit.”, put my shirt back down, embarrassed, and ran off.

That’s not the kind of thing you can ask about later, but I’ll always wonder what went through her head, and if it stopped her from ever doing “surprise tickle attacks” on dudes ever again.

Story 3

I was in my 20s. Living here in California, with my roommate Cheyenne⁵. I was on a weird sleeping schedule, and ended up waking up at like 6am one morning. When I wake up, I usually get myself a tall glass of water to start the day. Because it was so early, I didn’t figure anyone was awake. I just walked out of my room, boxer-briefs and an erection in tow, and went downstairs to get water.

While I’m filling my glass with the water dispenser outside the fridge, I’m kinda scratching/half-rubbing myself. It was a good dick day. You might have good hair days, but I have good dick days. This was one of ’em. I was like “yeahh… you GO, dick!”. I heard a shuffling and I looked over to my left just as Cheyenne was walking into the kitchen. I immediately panicked.

Even though my glass was full, I came up with a last-minute scheme. I quickly pushed my glass under the ice dispenser and quickly pulled it away, then acted like I was trying to catch the errant ice cube, and slamming myself (intentionally) right in the nuts.

With this clever (read : stupid) scheme pulled off, I walked out of the kitchen clutching my crotch as if I’d hit myself in the balls. Cheyenne would later tell people, many times over, about “the one time he tried to catch an ice cube that wasn’t there only to hit himself in the balls”.

Mission accomplished.

1. I save that one for the fancy, smart ladies who appreciate words like “tumescent” ↩

2. confession : I know fuck-all about construction or geology, so if there’s no such thing as a granite-lined pool, then substitute whatever’s realistically probable that I mistook for granite ↩

3. here’s one story, and here’s another ↩

4. no, I’m not bragging, all but a micropenis would be visibly erect beneath pants – especially as I always wore slacks or cargos and I despise jeans even to this day ↩

5. mentioned many times before ↩