Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2000 12:22:57 EST
From: waterme671@aol.com
Subject: First homophile awareness, and what I did about it

My mother, my brother and I lived in western North Carolina after my parents
were divorced. It was 1954.My mother had rented what had once been servants'
quarters-- including a stable-- on what had once been an extensive estate,
but now included only the big house, the servant house and a very large
flower garden all set on about 5 acres.
The garden was somewhat gone to seed, since the Selfs, who lived in the big
house, did not keep it up. My mother worked on some of the perrennials, but
the garden was an acre in size, with meandering paths throughout, and to tend
it alone would have been a full time job.
My brother and I were always playing in it. Kids don't feel very safe in this
world any more. I recollect that total security and abandon to childhood
play, and I shed an inner tear for a world of permanently, utterly lost
innocence. Both inside myself, and without.
My brother and I were 5 and 3, I the older. One summer afternoon, we were
romping in the garden. We were wearing shorts, teeshirts and sneakers. At
some point, Paul pulled down his shorts to pee. He stood there with his pants
around his ankles. I was looking at him. I didn't have an erection. But I
knew that I wanted to put my mouth on his penis and drink his pee. Just knew
it. And so I got down on my knees in front of him and did it. I drank his pee
for three or four seconds until my mother, who was also there, gardening, saw
what was happening and-- I remember how gently she stopped what must have
been quite shocking to her-- told me to stop that, which I did.
This was the beginning of my fascination for the male penis, an object which
I have explored all my life. I have been married twice, and have a child that
I love as a father should, but from the age of five I was filled with the
desire to touch that place on other males. Looking back 46 years, to that
innocent, even non-sexual first act of oral sex, I can see the entire
adventure of having grown up gay and repressed in the 50s and 60s, bursting
"out" in the sexual Revolution of the 70s, the attempts I made to "fit in"--
by marriage, responsibility, heterosexual life-- in the 80s and 90s. All my
life, this gay thing, from an encounter in a summer garden..
I have seen very few "stories" here that were any more than just that.
Occasionally, though, I have found one with the ring of truth. I want those
writers to know, if they read their colleagues' submissions, that I am
grateful to see them. (No blame, of course to all the guys who just enjoy
writing porn! lol)