Growing Up Denying I was Gay
By Brad Healey bradhelaey@rocketmail.com
Chapter 5
My Twelve-Year Old Crush on a Bigger Boy
Author's note: Continuing my true story of growing up, while knowing deep in my heart I was gay but refusing to admit it to myself, and fighting it all the way. My first crushes were on older boys, first when I was a youngster eyeing neighborhood teenagers, then in Cub Scouts on the older, high-school age Boy Scouts who used to join us on camping trips. I longed for these boys to notice me, but to them I was just a little kid, and their attention to me was fleeting. In this story I recall my first attraction to an older boy that included getting to know him and lasted over a span of months. This short tale is about this, one of my last innocent and non-guilty childhood crushes.
In the last chapter I told you how my friend
Jake and I had been accepted into a symphony orchestra for high school
musicians, even though we were just Junior High School kids. At first I was
very afraid at the prospect of being around so many older kids, fearing I'd be
lonely and ignored at best, teased and humiliated at worst. These fears proved
to be totally groundless, as the older kids were generally very nice.
I was seated near the rear of my instrumental section, owing to how young and
inexperienced I was, and was delighted to find that my stand partner was a
17-year-old blonde teenager named Charlie. He didn't look at all the way I
would have expected a string musician to look, as my stereotypical view was
that boys who would be good musicians were nerdy and very un-cool. But Charlie
was so handsome, he looked to me like a younger Dennis Wilson from the Beach
Boys, with feathered back sandy blond hair, straight white teeth and pale blue
eyes. He wore colorful but well-worn T-shirts and dusty white tennis shoes, he
was freckled, tanned and friendly with soft blond hair growing on his forearms
that looked so nice that I longed to touch it. As far as his musical abilities
went, he wasn't a great musician, but that didn't matter at all to me. What
mattered most is that he talked to me and treated me like I was a teenager like
him, not like I was some little kid. Playing the music there was OK, but I soon
realized I lived for the breaks in the action where he might turn and smile and
say a few words to me.
I was captivated: enraptured by this older boy, and couldn't wait for Tuesday
nights to roll around. One warm night he came in late just as I was afraid I'd
be sitting all alone, and sat down next to me. "Sorry I was late little
dude," as he called me, which made me just melt inside. "I lost track
of the time!" He was wearing cutoff shorts that night, and I couldn't keep
my eyes away from his legs, seeing them for the first time bare, and I saw they
were covered with the most beautiful tangled carpet of the softest looking
blonde hair. I felt shocked that staring at his legs was giving me a boner, and
I had no explanation for the urges I felt that I wanted to feel his body hair softly
touching against my face and my naked chest. I couldn't stop looking.
By the Spring I was newly thirteen, just barely starting puberty, and to me,
this older boy was my ideal. I imagined little childish innocent romantic
scenarios; that he and I might hold each other's hands in the dark or that he'd
ask me to visit his house or come swimming with him. I imagined I might work up
the courage to ask him to play racquetball with me, and that afterwards we
might change together and even shower next to each other. I wondered if he
masturbated like I did, or if he was too grown up for that now! (I had no
concept of what a seventeen year old's sex drive was like, and I then thought
maybe that jerking off was something only younger kids like me had to do!) My
childish romantic fantasies dared extend even further... I visualized that he
might privately and tenderly hold me on his lap and caress me. I imagined how
willing I would be if he tried to undress me, and that if he did, I wouldn't be
afraid even a little. I fantasized that we would let me see him undressed too
and we'd feel each other nakedly and maybe we could even taste each others'
secret places with our mouths, and what a willing learner I would be and that
he might even be my secret boyfriend for the whole summer. Taking things
absurdly further, I pondered the steps I would have to take to keep our
relationship secret from my parents, who would surely wonder why I was spending
so much time with a teenaged boy nearly five years older than me. I'd work that
out, I convinced myself through my haze, if only he'd give me some sign that he
was interested in me in that way...
"Hey Brad!" said Charlie as the conductor called a break in a
Saturday afternoon rehearsal. "Wanna see my new car? I drove it here
tonight!"
Did I want to see his car? Was the Pope Catholic? Of course I did! "Cool,
Charlie!! Show me!" I happily replied, and followed as he led me down the
hallway of the school building we used for practices and out the door into the
parking lot. "There she is!" he pointed proudly across the lot. She
was a light blue VW Beetle, with worn mag wheels and a little brown rust
showing around the edges of all the fenders.
"Ohmygod! Charlie, It's so cool!" I said with awe. "Can we sit
in it?"
"Sure!" he offered, jingling his keys as I sprinted towards the
little car. I climbed into the passenger seat and he climbed in behind the
wheel, and he immediately turned the radio on. I was in heaven! My boyfriend
would have his own car too—something I hadn't even dared add to my daydreams.
Sitting alone beside him I just slipped into a happy trance. I attached great
significance to this event; that he wanted ME alone to see his car and let me
actually sit in it! I was speechless with wonder as I poked the buttons, opened
the glovebox and reclined the seat. I fantasized that this might be the place
that we would first fool around alone together. Maybe he'd take me for a ride
and pull off on some quiet lane while we shut off the motor and would listen to
the radio just like now and then he would put his arms around me just like I
wanted him to and...
"We better go back inside little guy," Charlie interrupted my
fantasy. "The break is probably over and you know how mad the director
gets if you walk in late!" I certainly did know. But in an odd way I
wanted this to happen! I wanted the director to call to the attention of
everyone in the orchestra that Charlie and I were coming in late together;
showing that we had been off alone, maybe hinting to the others that we had a
relationship, this handsome bigger boy and me.
When practice ended and we put our things away, I made sure that he knew I was
leaving. "Bye little Brad dude!" he said with a big smile, looking
down at me right in my green eyes with his big, clear blue ones, and my stomach
did a little flip. He was so cool, and I longed to tell him that if he wanted
me that all he had to do was give the sign and I would gladly be his,
unconditionally.
For a few memorable months, I thought of him a lot, especially in bed as I
prepared to sleep, I remember suddenly not being able to wait for bedtime,
because as soon as the lights were out and I was alone with my thoughts in the
dark, I would pretend he was there with me. Drowsily letting my fingers wander
down between my legs, playing with my sensitive little penis till it tingled
and stood erect, then unsnapping my pajama bottom and opening them up I'd
stroke myself softly but rhythmically, imagining how gentle Charlie would be
with me and what a willing student I'd be for him, letting him try anything he
desired with my newly developing body. Oddly, I never imagined kissing with
him. It never occurred to me, as the mere concept of boys kissing boys was
totally taboo in my mind, but I know now that if the situation had presented
itself and he had wanted to kiss me, I would have willingly participated if he
led the way. I'd rub my stiff dick and nuzzle and lick the sparse fuzz my own
armpit saying his name quietly to myself.
Thinking intensely of him, I imagined I could
hear his voice, feel his strong hands touching me and holding me, and I even
imagined I could smell him from the memory of being so close to him those
evenings in the auditorium. I climaxed every night in my hand while I tugged myself
gently, and often still wet and sticky, drifted off to sleep just imaging him
close to me. When I'd awake in the
morning I was still unbuttoned, exposed, and damp, and smiling I'd remember
why. I was not ashamed at all.
The concert came up just a week later, and that Sunday afternoon I dressed in
my black suit and bowtie for the performance. I kept a careful watch for him to
arrive, and beamed as Charlie entered the practice room where we all warmed up
beforehand. He was in a suit, too, but wore it in a rumpled, casual sort of way
he still looked like the beach boy he was to me. "Brad, meet my girlfriend
Lisa," he said, motioning to a petite, blond haired girl who stood next to
him.
I was crushed. Charlie, my future and forever boyfriend had a girlfriend?? The
boy I admired and looked up to, and the one who I thought about every night in
my bed as I climaxed, the one whom I imagined would teach me how to make love to
another boy for the first time, had a girlfriend named Lisa???
Lisa was cute and she smiled shyly and said hi in a very sweet, polite way, but
I immediately blindly hated her with a vengeance. How could she? How could HE?
I guess it never crossed my mind that Charlie wouldn't be available to me.
Consider my frame of reference– In my age group of 12-13 year olds, nobody had
girlfriends yet, so I generally considered every boy to be potentially
available... it just never occurred to me that this Adonis who was so friendly
and accessible might already be (appallingly) involved with a member of the
opposite sex. While he had never meant it, I had chosen to interpret his
friendliness to me as a come on, and I recall this was one of the first times I
ever faced the fact that I might be truly different; horribly, defectively and
different from other boys in a twisted, unfathomably sick way.
Charlie graduated high school, and the orchestra, that spring and I never saw
him again, and after a experiencing a brief sadness at his loss, I moved on to
other crushes on other boys. But I still recall my childlike, innocent
infatuation with Charlie, and I am certain that then he never had even the
tiniest, slightest hint of a clue how I felt about him.