The first time I ever had an orgasm while I was awake was at the hands of my High School tennis coach. I remember him sitting next to me on his couch at his house, asking if I wanted to see a trick (oh the ironic choice of words) he could show me. He put his hands down my shorts, and started squeezing my dick. I started to get hard and remember liking the feeling. When I finally came I remember thinking “this is what happens at night when I have those dreams!” Except I was awake.
Mr. F then asked to take pictures of me naked. I told him “No” because I was afraid the kids at school would see them and they had only just welcomed me back into the “fold” after years of bullying, taunting me…”Watch out FAGGOT…” “Don’t change in front of that Queerbate, he’ll try to rape you,” “Is that BenGay you’re wearing? Yeah?? How long?”
He said he wouldn’t show my face and said other guys had done it, “sitting right where you are, wanna see?” he said while holding a thick Photo Album. “No” I said, but he said he’d do the trick in my pants again if I did. I really wanted to be able to feel that again, to do it by myself like I had heard about, like in the books I would sneak from the shelves at B. Dalton at the Mall. I remember “All American Boys” by Frank Mosca…quickly taking it down from the shelf, hiding the cover with a magazine and reading as much as I could, as fast as I could. I knew that’s what I wanted to do with another boy, even as I knew I had to hide that book. Hide myself. Hide it away.
“Ok, but no face, I mean it!” “Promise” he replied and using a Classic Kodak Instamatic, he snapped away. Pants pulled down, stomach with jizz, shirt pulled up, hand on crotch.
Flash, chachunnnnnnng zzzzzzz. Flash, chachunnnnnnng zzzzzzz. Flash chachunnnnnnng zzzzzzz.
I never told anyone about that. I wondered who else was in that album, wishing I had looked. I went home and jerked off every day from then on. And when I went back to B. Dalton’s I knew what the “IT” was the All American Boys were doing. And I wanted to do it too.
And so today, some 30 years later, why am I still surprised that I am just incapable of maintaining a healthy, real, partnership with another man, a love free of expectations,, based on cooperation and trust when all my earliest examples are rooted in hide away fiction, and films that tell my story or the story I wish was mine and lyrics of songs by bands I wanted to be in and of singers who understood me, but never actually knewknew me.. “really, really, they do! Just me!” Queer Pop Stars like Rufus Wainwright, and Elton John and Chris Garneau and the sirens like Streisand and Nicks and Madonna.
My well was poisoned before the rising bucket ever reached the top on that dirty couch. All I have ever wanted was to be someone’s All American Boy. Fresh, clean, just like the rainwater. Drink me.