I first heard about sex when my older brother and I slept in a small tent in the back yard one summer night. Some of the older boys from the neighborhood came to visit us in the middle of the night. I listened with intense curiosity to the story of a girl from school who had let them fondle her while her mother was away at work. They all masturbated as they embellished the story with fantasies of oral sex and actual penetration. I cowered in the corner trying my best to remain invisible in my embarrassment. It was some weeks later when Sheryl invited me to meet her in the abandoned truck cab near the old factory. She told me to be there on Saturday afternoon at 1:00p.m. so we could play show and tell. I thought this was what I was supposed to do as a 14 year old boy, so I waited patiently in the truck cab for two hours before going home. I never mentioned it to anyone, certainly not to Sheryl! She never really talked to me again so I wondered if it was all a setup. I imagined that my brother and his friends had a good laugh together knowing that I had waited for her to come. But perhaps this was only my imagination and paranoia. I would also wonder for the rest of my life if I would have been a different person if Sheryl had showed up on that Saturday afternoon.

It was Ed who finally gave me my first sexual experience. It began as a wrestling match in the basement. I pinned him down on the couch and began by giving him raspberries on the neck. This was something parents do to young children to make them laugh. As I held him down beneath me I could feel the warmth of his body as I pressed my crotch against his. I was hard without really knowing I was hard or even what it meant. Suddenly we were both silent and I was lying limp on top of him. There was no longer any struggle as I felt him pushing his swollen penis against mine. In this moment I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted to put my mouth on every forbidden place I could find on his body. I wanted to claim my right as a human being to choose what I could do with my own life. Together Ed and I liberated ourselves from the world of little boys who laugh that silly little boy laughter. We were no longer laughing! We were sharing ourselves with each other in a sacred way that expressed our love and admiration for each other on a higher level. In this moment I was sure I could only do this with him. There was no one else in the world who was special enough. I was too young and naive to know that I had always been in love with him.

That first moment when we touched the ends of our tongues together I felt electrical current running through my entire body. We both held them together for quite a long time before I got the idea to suck his tongue into my mouth. We must have believed we two were inventing sex for the first time. It was a secret we would keep from the rest of the world. Now I was out of control. I wanted it all! I began the long exciting journey down the front of his body to his crotch. I wanted to do the most forbidden thing of all to show him that I loved him more than anything else in the world. I removed his jeans and buried my face in his white underwear. I could smell a scent that was sweeter than anything I had ever known before. It infected me like a fever breaking down every last inhibition I might have used to stop myself. I tore his underwear away with the hunger of a ravenous dog . I wanted him to impregnate me with his sperm, to make our love valid by giving myself to him. His warm nectar tasted as sweet and nutritious as mother’s milk. In that moment I was glad Sheryl had stood me up. I remembered that I had always loved boys and men. I realized everything else, every other thought was contrived to satisfy fear and the expectations of an intolerant world. God had made me a lover of men from the very beginning!