6.06.2006

On an outing

When I was an adolescent, I left clues to my burgeoning sexual identity everywhere. Issues of Genre in my stack of magazines that included GQ and Details (gay stacked on gay, with gay in the middle). My copy of William Burroughs' The Wild Boys next to my bed had its spine broken from holding it open to the most lascivious of passages while masturbating. Like any other teenage boy, I thought about sex a lot. Unlike most other teenage boys, my thoughts of sex were with other boys.
This was a time before "the internet." Prodigy and AOL were actually competing companies. I had a lightning fast 4800 baud modem. BBSs were fairly pervasive. I would log onto them for their bulletins, to download games, and most importantly to find porn. Any kind of porn would do, really. Most of the porn I found was straight, but on occasion, I would happen on a cache of gay porn. I coveted those pictures.
With a few of the gay pictures, and a majority of straight pictures, I hatched a plan. At a sleepover at my friend's house, I would show him the pictures and when a gay one popped up, I would write it off--"Oh gosh, I hadn't looked at them, I just downloaded the directory." My friend, let's call him Jeff, would react one way or another and that would let me know how to proceed. I was 15 and I was a predator.
I caught my prey. Jeff and I had sex on and off again through high school. There was never any kissing--truthfully, I don't know if I even associated kissing with sex (or maybe I just thought of myself as Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman). I thought it was purely mechanical, but I was grateful that I had someone with whom I could experiment.

I needed more information, though. While practicing with Jeff was fun, it seemed as though some integral pieces were missing. I returned to the BBS for more pornography. This time, I wanted stories. Surely, there is greater understanding in pornographic words than in a pornographic picture. Oh, who am I kidding? I had downloaded all the pictures I could find and all that was left was stories.

Because sitting at the computer desk and reading porn and having a wank is much more difficult than lying in bed and going to town (just ask my copy of The Wild Boys), I wisely printed out the first story I found. It was unbelievably hot. A pilot and his co-pilot get it on at an airport hotel. I no longer had to read Penthouse Forum and imagine two men. I now had my very own, bona fide gay porn story.

I folded it up and squeezed it into a narrow slot between my headboard and my bed. It stayed there safely for many weeks, its folds becoming more worn with each use. Upon returning from school one day, I went up to my room to discover my mother sitting on my bed. In her hand was the story. It burnt my eyes and made my stomach fall to the floor.

She wanted to know how I got it. She wanted to know what it meant. My face was on fire. I imagined the text--talk of penetration and sloppy holes and rigid members and man-cunts. A tryst between his pilot and his co-pilot.

I guess this is the part of the story where I explain that my father is an airline pilot and my brother is a co-pilot.

Yeah, so, all of those stigmas of perversion and deviation that we so desperately try to evade were automatically associated with my sexuality. I just wanted a dirty story to read and, as a result, I got branded
serial-rapist-pervert, or at least something similar in my mother's head.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

wish we could have known each other when i was in seattle

jeremy said...

aww anonymous, that's sweet! much nicer than my last anonymous poster.

tornwordo said...

Wow, heavy story.... I know that burning face thing, it's amazing how it was so shameful back then.

GayProf said...

Hmm -- This is a tough call for me. On one hand, I want to be jealous of you for being able to explore your groove with another guy in high school (unlike celibate highschool GayProf). On the other hand, I am not sure I would be willing to trade that for having my mother read more porn stash. Again, tough call, tough call.