1: Introduction

 

I am the writer who posted the story Ben the Busboy on this forum last week. Allow me a brief introduction before I begin to share more of my stories with you.

I am nearly fifty now, and a professional businessman with a successful career. Besides this, I am a published author of non-fiction; married for 25 years and the father of two nearly grown young men. On the surface, everything about my life looks admirable, just as my mother dreamed for me when I was a little boy. But in fact, behind the guise of my ideal life, all has not been so perfect.

While this is a forum devoted mainly to erotic fiction, my stories are mostly true. Names, places and certain facts have been changed to keep them safe. The stories that will follow have appeared in other places but will likely be new to you here. If you have already read my entire thesis "Growing Up Denying I Was Gay," posted previously in the High School category, you can skip these chapters posted here as you might have read them already. (http://www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/highschool/growing-up-denying-i-was-gay/)

A quick catch up to get us started, then. I was an adorable little boy (I can certainly tell from photos) born at the very beginning of the 1960s. I grew up in suburban America, earning lots of friends, playing organized sports and getting exceptionally good grades in school. Everyone knew me as a good kid, and I was never in a single moment of trouble all through growing up. Neighborhood moms would gush to my parents how lucky they were to have me as their son, and they would urge their sons to play with me in hopes that some of my goodness would "rub off" on them.

If all of this sounds terribly immodest, let me spoil the illusion for you now: I was a freak. I knew for certain from the age of five and the first day of kindergarten that there was something terribly wrong with me; something that was unspeakable and that I could not hope to ever share with another human being. I was defective beyond imagination. I didn't have a proper word for it then; wouldn't learn the word for another seven years; and wouldn't apply it to myself for another twenty.

I was a homosexual.

Suburban America in the mid 1960s through the middle 1970s when I was growing up was a different world than today. Being gay was NOT OK; not anyplace. It was not accepted in school, in church, at my home (where my parents warned me about staying away from queers, people my mother described as being "sick in the head"), and especially among other children. My true indoctrination into the depth of societal loathing for boys like me came from my membership in the Boy Scouts, an organization that is touted as wholesome and pure, but for me was the personification of hell on Earth. Boy Scouts gave me my first social exposure to adolescent boys much older than me, who guessed my defect immediately when they noticed my unguarded longing looks towards other boys while dressing and swimming, and my freakish desire to cuddle next to much older boys I adored at the campfire in the dark. When this started, around the age of 11, I already "knew" that this secret of mine had to be kept hidden, but until that point I had no real idea how much I would be bullied and tormented if it got out. I fled Boy Scouts by the time I was 13, and vowed ever more resolutely to start over and devote my life to learning to keep my secret hidden forever.

If you have an interest in my same-age experimentation and adventures as an adolescent, that discussion can be found in the first dozen chapters of work that I have previously mentioned. But after receiving two dozen messages from new readers after posting Ben the Busboy here, I realized that the readership of this forum is different than the "High School" one, and that you reading here likely be interested in the later chapters of that story without having to go look for them.

From time to time after posting, I will receive reader feedback that says "I didn't like the way that story ended," and that usually makes me smile. In most cases, I would heartily agree; but because these tales describe true events there's not much I can do about those complaints. I wish all true stories could have happy endings, especially mine.

Thank you for reading, and please write if you'd like to share your comments. My address is Bradhealey@rocketmail.com.