One scorching afternoon, I was still asleep in the house when my mother’s voice echoed from the riverbank: “Phuc, wake up! Binh is here looking for you!”
My name is Phuc, Le Hoang Vinh Phuc, and I’m over 18 years old now. Every time I think about my name, I feel something is wrong. I asked around the whole village, but I couldn’t find any child with a name as beautiful as mine. The boys have Van, the girls have Thi, because this village is dirt poor, and there’s not much education to give children beautiful names. If a beautiful name could buy a bowl of rice to cook porridge for the day, everyone would surely reconsider.
But my mother managed to do it, even though our house was dilapidated. My family was poor, and that forced me to understand things. I didn’t go to school; I followed my mother to the fields when I was three or four years old. My mother planted rice, and I sat on the dike. My mother would go crabbing, and I would sit by the boat playing in the water.
My mother often told stories about when I was born, completely white from head to toe like a ball of dough. With my blue eyes, a result of a disease like hers, everyone who saw me would sigh in admiration because I was so adorable. Wherever we took me, people thought I was from a wealthy family, but no one knew our family was so poor we didn’t even have morning glory to eat.
Then, after more than a decade working in the fields, I looked no different from how dark-skinned I was in my mother’s womb. But I had to accept it because my mother also had to take care of my older sister. She’s four years older than me and very intelligent, so even though it was hard work, I felt happy.
My sister is about to graduate this year, and I expect that in a year or two she’ll be able to take care of herself, and maybe even send money home to help the family.
Strangely, my mother knows how to read. She said that my sister Hanh taught her how to read after she came home from school. Then she bought a notebook and taught me how to read. Thanks to that, I could read Hanh’s books fluently, even though I hadn’t received a single formal education.
After several calls from my mother, I finally poked my head out of the house. I yawned repeatedly as I walked, my eyelids glued shut, my feet moving instinctively. As usual, my forehead hit the horizontal bar above the doorway, making a painful “thump.”
It wasn’t because I was too tall, but because the doorway was too low.
My mother, as always, felt sorry for me and scolded me: “You don’t look where you’re going!”
Only Binh was standing outside with a bucket in his hand, looking at me and laughing heartily. He was the closest friend I had in the whole neighborhood. Perhaps it was because we were both poor, but he was luckier because he still had both parents. I called his parents Uncle and Aunt Six, but I rarely saw them throughout the year because they worked far away. My three- or four-year-old son, Binh, also went to the fields with me. His sister was at school, and since there was no one else at home, he left him with my mother.
I rubbed the bump on my forehead and asked him, “It’s scorching hot at noon, where are you going, Dad?”
Binh replied, “To the fields to check on the fish traps with me. If there are any fish, we’ll bring them back right away, otherwise those kids of Uncle Six Mu will destroy them like devils!”
Fish traps are a fishing tool in my area. People cut bamboo and split it into small strips, then weave them together with tendons. They place them in the river or in the fields, adding some bait to lure the fish in.
My mother and I have made a living from this trap-making trade for several decades. During the dry season, people start making fish traps and selling them to those who need them. My mother and I take advantage of the time to cut bamboo and split strips to weave traps. Because of our skillful hands, we get paid more. The money we save has to cover my sister’s tuition and living expenses in the city, so we don’t dare spend too much.
During the rainy season, Binh and I would make our own fish traps to catch fish. We’d do anything for hire – mowing grass, clearing gardens, draining ditches, planting rice – and so on. Luckily, nature was kind; everyone praised our work. So, year-round, we never had a moment of idleness.
I grabbed my faded straw hat hanging on the wall, slipped on my thin, old long-sleeved shirt, and walked behind Binh. Behind our house stretched vast rice paddies, completely submerged in water this season.
We walked barefoot along the dike, huddled in the shade of the trees lining the small river. On one side was the rice paddies, on the other the river. Binh walked ahead, scouting for places to set his traps, while I followed behind, waving a plastic bucket in the wind. I suddenly realized Binh was now one and a half times my size. And rightly so; he was often home alone, doing everything himself, big or small. If he weren’t so big, he probably wouldn’t know who to ask for help.
I remember last week his older sister came back from Saigon to visit. She got married there when Binh was 16. Afraid that he’d be all alone here if she left, her husband’s family couldn’t bear to separate them. But Binh absolutely refused to go with her. His sister couldn’t do anything more, so she went with her husband and sent him back here with her extra money.
A few days before she left, his sister An came to my house and entrusted my mother with a few words: “Auntie, can you ask Binh to come to the city with me? I don’t want him to suffer working as a laborer with me all the time. But he won’t listen to me, Auntie.”
Binh and I aren’t related by blood, but he listens to my mother the most. It’s not that my mother didn’t advise him, it’s just that he would listen and then shake his head. My mother understood but didn’t say anything. I said more.
As for An, my mother replied, “Just go back there. At this age, you can’t force her to do something she doesn’t like. Let her stay here and I’ll look after her. I’ll call you if anything happens.”
And so, my mother took Bình under her wing. Every day, if she didn’t see him come to see me, my mother would send me to his house. His house and mine were only one house apart, but there was a small empty plot of land between them, which looked strangely desolate. My mother was afraid he might catch a cold in the middle of the night without anyone knowing, so she kept telling him to move in with her, since my sister had already moved to Saigon, but he refused.
A cool breeze blew in the midday sun, waking me from my thoughts. Bình had stopped at a clump of reeds by the river, and Nhí and Lùi were waiting there. Actually, Nhi was a year older than me, and Lui was two years older, but we’d been friends since we were kids, so we always addressed each other informally.
They checked the reeds a bit to see if there were any snakes or anything, then parted the reeds to get ready to step in. The three of us who specialized in setting traps would huddle together, and when we pulled them up, the one with fish would laugh at the one who hadn’t caught anything. Binh and Lui jumped into the water first, while Nhi sat down on the embankment, dipping one foot into the river first, not rushing like usual. Suddenly, he pulled a phone out of his pocket and handed it to me, saying, “Hold this for me!”
Seeing the phone’s glossy screen, I was immediately captivated and exclaimed excitedly, “Hey, that’s a beautiful phone! Where did you get the money to buy it?”
Nhi fumbled around in the grass, his eyes searching for a place to put the trap, and replied, “I didn’t have the money to buy it. My uncle in Saigon gave it to me.”
I kept fiddling with the phone in my hand, pressing the power button every now and then to light it up and gaze at it to my heart’s content. I’d never even held a touchscreen phone before, from childhood to adulthood. My family only had my mother’s old Nokia 1280 so my older sister could contact us. Several times when we went to buy phone top-up cards for my mother at the phone shop, I could only look longingly at the phone models displayed in glass cases.
Finally, Binh found the fish trap by the riverbank. He said, “I caught two perch and some snails! Give me the bucket so I can put them in.”
I handed him the bucket, my eyes still glued to the phone screen. Binh took the bucket and asked, “What’s in there that you’re staring at all the time?”
He emptied the fish into his bucket and said, “He’s probably watching porn on Nhi’s phone, isn’t he?”
Nhi said, “My phone is password protected, how would he know to open it?”
I asked with a scrutinizing look, “So there really are porn movies in there?”
He stepped back and said, “He’s been coming to my house every night to watch porn and masturbate. Damn, he ejaculates all over my bed.”
Nhi laughed loudly, “But you have to admit, that movie was good, right? Damn, that girl has such a juicy pussy, it made me so horny I accidentally ejaculated all over the place.”
I felt dizzy hearing this and asked again, “Huh? Masturbate? What did you ejaculate?”
Binh looked around and exclaimed, “Oh my god, guys. Talking about sex so loudly, if someone in a boat happens to hear, they’ll be kneeling and begging for forgiveness.”
My eighteen-year-old son’s mind is always thinking about this. The first time I knew about porn was when I went with them to some arcades in the market a few days ago. That day the place was packed, only the machine in the corner was unoccupied because it was too hot. So one guy sat at the machine, and the other three stood behind him. They were illiterate, so they asked me to type in some adult films for them.
The first moment they saw people having sex, all four of their penises became rock hard. Nhi, sitting at the machine with headphones on, couldn’t help but reach down and rub his penis in his pants. The worst off was Lui; that day, he was unlucky enough not to wear underwear, his penis sticking out sharply, the glans clearly visible through his pants.
But they hadn’t told me what “stimulation” meant, or what “ejaculation” was.
The three of them took all the fish, put the trap back in its place, and climbed ashore. Binh said, “There are only a few tiny fish, not enough for dinner.”
I looked at the crotches of the other two guys and laughed, replying, “There are two snakehead fish over there, why don’t you catch them too?”
Those two guys have been rambling on about sex films, getting all worked up about their genitals, completely ignoring me and Binh over here.
After finishing the roofing work here, we moved on to another spot. Binh and I were worried about not having anything to eat for dinner, while those two guys were discussing one film after another. The more they talked, the more engrossed they became, never getting bored.
Lùi said as we walked: “Hey, how about we install some new films? We’ve watched the same few over and over again, they’re good, but it gets boring.”
Nhí nodded: “Yeah, we’ll go tonight. We’ll choose some films over there! Hey, are we going to delete the old ones? What a waste! I haven’t had enough of those juicy, plump girls yet.”
We stopped under the mango tree in the middle of the field, which was also where we’d set up the last of the roofing. This tree has been standing here since I was a child following my mother to the fields. Its canopy is lush and overgrown, its branches and leaves thick and strong. Just climb a little higher, and people not standing at the base of the tree won’t be able to see you up there.
Nhi’s phone doesn’t have much memory either. He kept complaining about not having enough movies to watch.
Hearing this, Lùi said, “Well, you should watch until the afternoon. Watch until you’re satisfied, then delete it. Damn, there are even more curvaceous girls online, you’ll get incredibly horny. The other day I watched that girl named ‘Big Pussy Princess,’ damn, she rubbed her clitoris so hard the screen was soaked. Her pussy was so tight and red, it must have been incredibly pleasurable to put a dick in there.”
Nhí finished his fishing trip, climbed ashore, patted Lùi on the shoulder, and laughed gleefully, “That girl you watched at the arcade the other day, right? Yeah, damn, she was really slutty, man. Just thinking about it makes me horny!”
After saying that, Nhí put down the fish bucket under the tree and scurried up a high mango branch. Lùi knew what he was up to, so he also jumped up. Bình and I also joined in the fun, climbing up to join them.
The two of us chose a slightly curved branch and sat down comfortably. Binh and I were sitting on a higher branch, so we could see the whole screen from behind them. Nhi wiped his hands dry on his shirt and pulled his phone out of his breast pocket. Lui couldn’t help but squeeze his dick a few times.
Then they started a porn movie, but it was nothing like the one I’d seen with them at the arcade. That movie had a man and a woman, the guy vigorously thrusting his dick into the girl’s pussy. This time it was different; on the screen they were watching, there was only the girl pressing her pussy against the screen, her two fingers repeatedly fingering her vagina while moaning lewdly.
Binh and I exchanged glances and then looked away, while the two guys below kept rubbing their hard dicks under their thin pants. Nhi kept saying, “Damn, it’s so good. Still as horny as ever.”
Lui gasped, “I want to shove my dick into her pussy so badly. Damn, I’m so horny!” The movie ended, but that wasn’t enough, so Nhi switched to the next one. In the third one, a girl knelt, her plump, bun-like butt facing the screen. Her fresh, hairless, wet vagina dripped with fluid. She moaned in some language other than Vietnamese, so I couldn’t understand, but the two guys below were practically screaming with pleasure.
Nhi exclaimed, “Damn, I have to masturbate! I can’t stand it!”
Then, without paying attention to anything else, he pulled up his sweatpants to his crotch, revealing his thick, dark pubic hair. His penis, over an inch and a half long, had been erect for a while now. His skin was dark, but the head was bright red and dripping with fluid. He grabbed the veiny shaft and began stroking it from top to bottom, then from bottom to top, occasionally squeezing it tightly and letting out a gasp.
Lùi, sitting next to him, was no different, his penis and testicles hanging loosely outside. The thing is, his dick is whiter, the head isn’t as red as Nhi’s, and it’s not as veiny, but the shaft is rounder, about two centimeters longer, and the pubic hair looks much neater.
The four of us had nothing to be shy about with each other. We’d waded through rivers, dived in ditches, guarded rice fields, and slept in gardens—we were all inseparable. I don’t know how many times the four of us peed together by the riverbank. We’d see each other’s dicks—small, white, dark—every day. When they first grew pubic hair, they’d show it off to me and Binh.
The only thing was, the three movies playing on my phone screen didn’t react at all, but as soon as I saw the two of them masturbating below, my dick got hard in my pants, erect and dripping with lubricant, just like when I masturbate every morning. I watched them masturbate and wanted to join in. I don’t know about Binh; his eyes were calm as if he didn’t see anything.
Another movie ended, and the two guys below instinctively looked up at me and Binh. Nhi said, “Aren’t you two horny?”
I glanced back at Binh and my crotch, laughing, “Are you blind? Can’t you see their dicks are rock hard! Damn, if you don’t get horny watching pussy, you’re gay!”
Nhi opened another movie and said, “Pull out your dicks and masturbate, what’s there to be shy about? If you don’t know how, I’ll show you, you’ll be shaking with pleasure later!”
The two of us focused on watching, but it seemed our horniness was rising. We didn’t sit anymore but stood up on a branch, leaning against the tree trunk, pulling our sweatpants down to our knees and concentrating on masturbating.
They spat on their hands and smeared their saliva all over their dicks. The shafts of their dicks were smooth, and the sound of them masturbating came out with each up-and-down movement of their hands.
They were already close, but now that they stood up, their dicks were even closer to my view. The sounds of them thrusting their penises incessantly filled my ears, mesmerizing me with the scene before me. My penis in my pants was so hard it felt like it was about to explode. So much precum flowed out that it soaked through my outer pants.
Nhi gasped, “It feels so good, baby… Damn, I’m going to cum in your pussy! Spread your legs… spread your legs… A… A… A…”
When Nhi yelled “Spread your legs!”, the girl on the screen actually spread her legs. At that moment, Nhi ejaculated a stream of cloudy white urine. I saw it was thick and had a slightly pungent, fishy smell. The stream wasn’t continuous, but came out in short bursts, and Nhi moaned “A… A…” with each ejaculation. His whole body trembled, so much so that the branches beneath his feet swayed, causing the leaves at the ends of the branches to rustle and whisper. A gentle breeze blew.
Binh then spoke up, asking, “Is that what you get after a while of masturbating?”
Nhi just panted, not answering, and handed the phone to Lui. Lui answered for him, “It’s not urine, guys. It’s male semen! They call it sperm online. If you shoot this into a girl’s vagina, she’ll get pregnant.”
Lui then switched to a movie he liked, biting his lip and inhaling deeply, his hand stroking his penis faster and faster. After another half minute, he leaned back against the tree trunk, arching his lower body forward. Lui’s eyes were tightly closed, and he growled a few times, “Ugh… Ugh… Ugh…”. With each growl, Lui’s penis spurted out a stream of semen intermittently. He spurted more than ten times before stopping.
The semen shot out like a water gun, sticking to the leaves, branches, and dripping into the canal where we had set up our nets.
After ejaculating, Lùi was trembling and panting like Nhí. I asked, “Are you very tired?”
Nhí grinned brightly, “I’m tired, but it felt great. You two better not masturbate. Once you start, you’ll get addicted and won’t be able to take your hands off my dick.”
Afterward, the whole group climbed down, picked up the bucket of fish, and headed home. The other two were rambling on about which movie to download at the arcade that afternoon.
By now, I knew what masturbating and ejaculating were. There was only one thing I didn’t know…
Were I and them really “the same”?