Stefan Merrill Block had a hard time learning about sex. For a long while, he thought that "beating off" was a brass-tacks description of a process, so he would literally slap his own organ until he grew bored. He attempted to have an online relationship with a peer--"Skittles4U"--but he overlooked certain bits of subtext. When the "peer" sent a photo--a self-portrait of a man in his thirties--things fizzled. In college, hoping to create a dramatic rupture within his family, Block willed himself to become gay. He encouraged his own body to ignore its "programming." No dice. Not one of these stories is earning media attention; "Homeschooled" is buzzy because of its descriptions of Block's mentally ill mother. Block's mother--depressed and isolated in Plano, TX--kept her child home from school for something like five years. There was nothing like a curriculum. Block's mother physically assaulted her child, required him to cra...