Synopsis
Set in Brown's hometown of Châteauguay, Quebec in Canada in 1975 when Brown was 15, the story opens in church, with Brown's angel-demon (Brown's id) cajoling him into buying a Playboy magazine he had seen for sale. He works up the courage to do it at a convenience store at a considerable distance from his house, hoping that at that distance he won't be caught.
After bringing the magazine home and masturbating over it, he disposes of it by hiding it under a plank of wood in the woods near his house. His building obsession battles his guilt, though, and eventually goes back for it, a binge and purge situation which repeats itself several times throughout the story, even into adulthood, when he alternately hunts down back issues of Playboy and disposes them over the guilt he feels or his fear of being found out by a girlfriend.
His obsession so overcomes him that, even when his mother passes away while he is at camp, his first thought at returning home is to retrieve the Playboy he has hidden in the woods. As an adult, he hunts down back issues, and becomes something of a connoisseur of Playmates, memorizing dates and names. His obsession interferes with his relations with women, however—he admits that, while seeing one girlfriend, he could only maintain an erection for her by fantasizing about his favourite Playmates, and that he preferred masturbation to having sex with her.
The story finishes with himself drawing the story we are reading. Though he knows his friends will be reading about it shortly, he still feels embarrassment, and is unable to talk about it with them face-to-face.
Read more about this topic: The Playboy