i wrote this up while feeling verrry ingrid
I didn't know I was "gay" until my second quarter (it was winter) in high school when this bumbling old priest who had been assigned to teach us Sex Ed--oddly placed in the curriculum between Buddhism and Nihilism--confronted chapter 7 of our Sex Ed handbook, Becoming a Man(ironically echoing the title of the modern, gay novelist, Paul Montte) entitled "Gay-OK?" So that was what I was --"Gay"; now I had a word that could describe and categorize those feelings I had had for the past few years. I had known I was different in some respect from the rest of my classmates as we entered puberty, but I had never realized that this difference was a point of contention; never thought the fact that I preferred gossiping with the girls in my class to flirting, ineptly at best, with them, or the fact that I only noticed their low-cut jeans for the effect it had on their outfit not for the peek it afforded of their underwear, was something that needed to be discussed, debated and defended. Not until there was a category was the battle begun in earnest. That still bothers me to this day as I sit here: there was no difference before the label; who I was was more important that what I was, or, more accurately, what I would be called, since I never, really, changed. I was, from the sixth grade to today, the same in my feelings--preferring, choosing, wanting, even longing for, men. From the adorable blond, blue skater in my sixth grade PE class who first sent sexual signals through me; the EMOesque innocent who would be my first love and haunt my others; the under-valued, highly closested, preppy from whom I would learn almost as much as I taught; the Jersey boy who stabbed me in the back from3,000 miles away and the myriad of tricks, casual acquaintances, dance partners, fuck buddies and friends that fall in between, it has always, as long as I can remember, been about men.
My first real boyfriend and my first real sexual experience, happily, coincided; a fact in and of itself which sets my story, so it seems, in the realm of fantasy in the all too real, desperate, search we find ourselves undertaking for that illusive key to our being: sex. I liked the guy I was to lose it to and he liked me: as much as two eighth grade boys can fancy themselves in like. But I know it was more than a fancy since we were together for a year and half, until his family moved to California; I know not where. Every now and then I fancy they moved to San Francisco and I will see him on the street. I imagine what he would look like now. I wonder if he would remember me. I probably would not know him if I saw him, but it is nice to believe I would. It is nice to think that the boy I gave my virginity to treasured it as much as I did him. An especially welcome thought as the faceless followers dance across my body in an endless carnival of ecstasy and meaningless boredom. I clearly remember the night it happened. My parents had gone out of town and decided I was old enough to stay by myself. They, of course, were exaggerating this trust in me since they had been leaving me alone for years, but I was not one to complain about their romanticizing their parental wisdom. I had found it was best to keep quite and stay down, maybe that's why when I told them I was gay they seemed so shocked, so startled, so aghast that the quite son they had thought they were raising had a life of his own, a life hidden behind a tapestry of compliance woven with such craft that it hid life right under their noses. It was June, mid-June in Philadelphia, hot, sticky and bright. The sky was apocalypticly clear--punishingly blue and empty. Night would creep across the sky, deepening the blue but doing nothing to veil the heat. Despite the heat I made mini beef Wellington because I had been dying to try it since I saw the recipe and had been taken in both by the name and the aura of high class that surrounded the dish. I rung Jake at the end of the block and told him my parents were out of town for the weekend (not new or news to him) and that I, being the ever genteel homemaker, was making dinner. It would be beef, could he bring something that went well with it? I asked in the highly affected upper social register accent that you imagine a Jane Austen character--but never the heroine--having. I hung up and he arrived all smiles and charm. His mousey brown hair curling in tight little ringlets and his pale blue eyes absorbing the harshness of the sky, tempering it into cool, pale wisps of the Bay (an analogy I can only make thinking about him now as I sit on my deck looking out). What goes well with beef Wellington, why, bad gin, of course; gin which we promptly decided we could not drink no matter how fashionable my mother made the Martini look-- and she had one often enough that you would think it was the latest Gucci clutch. No matter, we had our Wellingtons fresh from the oven and decided, again, that this was the most inedible thing. Pate is, alas, lost on youth. After scrapping off the pate and eating the meat, mushrooms and dough we had quite the dinner in the living room. Moving away the TV trays, we made room for slow dancing. How adult we were. How grown up and settled. Slow dancing. In the living room. Of all the things for him to suggest. But, it was lovely. We were too young to see through the action to the vanity. Too naive to see the cyncism conjured by the dance. Too involved with each other to notice just how much we were pretending. It was real. It was unforced. It was unfeigned.
I went out to smoke while he offered to clear away the plates before he joined me outside. Sneaking up from behind me, deftly sliding his arms around me, he pulled me close and, took the cigarette out of my mouth! He hated that I smoked. I promised I would quit, just for him; I promised just for him. I did, too, just for him, although by then it did very little good. He held me--a weakness I carry over to this day; hold me and I am yours--and we watched the stars vainly try to push out into the darkness as the city blazed like a second dawn keeping them at bay. As the sun sank we went inside to watch T.V and make out on the couch, to bump and grind and slurp and lick in the clumsy way that only pre-teen boys can. Then he stopped. He lay on top of me between my legs looking at me as if I were the most beautiful painting, delicate and intricate, forever fascinating and truly treasured. He leaned in to whisper, with a little mischief in his voice, " Thanks for dinner," before getting up and heading upstairs. "What the fuck?" was all my mind could manage. Did I miss something? Clearly. Time passed. He did not come back down after a minute or two and I lost it. I was so confused, made more so by my horniness, that I sprung off the couch and began taking the steps two at a time upstairs. Livid, murmuring to myself, I was going to have his balls for whatever he was up to. Who just stops mid-frottage to extend a courteous thank-you ? I was at the top of the steps having, no doubt, pissed our neighbors off, turning the corner towards my room, when I could no longer be mad; it vaporized when I was confronted with the multitude of stars he had forced out of hiding. At least, that was the first thing I could think of when I saw my room. He had placed tea lights all over my room; against the deep blue paint and drawn curtains, they twinkled in defiance of the urban glare outside. There he was waiting for me, not propped up on one elbow on the bed like in some B-porno movie, but just sitting there, innocently naked, at my desk looking, quizzically, to see me. It was the most beautiful of gestures I had ever experienced in my life and continues to be so. What could I do but cross the threshold, lean down and return his kiss; having no words to express how, how-- don't know why words fail, even in retrospect; I cannot tell you why it was so stirring. Why the simple act of ensnaring those distant stars touched me to the quick I do not know. I can still feel it, but the meaning is gone. And if it was a few enchanted moments, they quickly fled since, characteristically, it was more beautiful than practical. The shut windows, drawn curtains, tea lights and crushing humidity all combined to make the room so oppressively hot that just sitting on his lap and making out caused us both to sweat and stick together--not as romantic as he had hoped, I am sure, but, touching nevertheless and profoundly so. We got up, blew out the lights, opened the window but left the curtains tastefully closed. Not that it helped much; there was no breeze, no relief. All the same, I didn't want to be apart from him, didn't want not to feel him against me. It was not just the physical feel that drove me, I knew that even then. Even then I knew I wanted more from him then the pleasure he gave my body. It was more. He was more. After that long kiss I near lost my breath. Sitting making out only re-inscribed on my flesh what my heart knew and I wanted to give him all the pleasure I could, so I lead him on, and his heart was going like mad, yes, and it was awkward, painful, painfully-awkward . Yes, nothing like the movies. No seamless transition from chair to bed, nor effortless getting of the condom on. I thought for sure it would be a simple matter to get him inside of me. I had it in my head that it was like coaxing your eyes to dilate in the dark: it took a little time but not long enough to make you forget you could see. How I was wrong! I can smile about my naiveté now but in the moment it was all pain and painful longing mixed with a twinge of fear that I would not be able to do it and he would leave me, he would not want to go out with someone who couldn't do that all the way, even though I was the one who broached the subject, I was the one who brought it up, I was the one who wanted to taste that fruit. And I was the one who paid for it in blood. Not much, but it was there. The painful reprimand for pushing too quickly. He saw it, he stopped, he beamed down at me and, again, kissed me to fill the silence words would have fallen deafly upon. That night we did have sex. It was awkward and then just as odd. We were virgins, newly minted in our bodies with little control and no guidance. The pieces fit together in the end in that same characteristically good humored clumsiness which categorized our being together. It was not the best sex I have ever had, and, unfortunately for some of my other partners in later years, it would not be the worst. But it was his holding me tight, after it all, that gets me.
My first real boyfriend and my first real sexual experience, happily, coincided; a fact in and of itself which sets my story, so it seems, in the realm of fantasy in the all too real, desperate, search we find ourselves undertaking for that illusive key to our being: sex. I liked the guy I was to lose it to and he liked me: as much as two eighth grade boys can fancy themselves in like. But I know it was more than a fancy since we were together for a year and half, until his family moved to California; I know not where. Every now and then I fancy they moved to San Francisco and I will see him on the street. I imagine what he would look like now. I wonder if he would remember me. I probably would not know him if I saw him, but it is nice to believe I would. It is nice to think that the boy I gave my virginity to treasured it as much as I did him. An especially welcome thought as the faceless followers dance across my body in an endless carnival of ecstasy and meaningless boredom. I clearly remember the night it happened. My parents had gone out of town and decided I was old enough to stay by myself. They, of course, were exaggerating this trust in me since they had been leaving me alone for years, but I was not one to complain about their romanticizing their parental wisdom. I had found it was best to keep quite and stay down, maybe that's why when I told them I was gay they seemed so shocked, so startled, so aghast that the quite son they had thought they were raising had a life of his own, a life hidden behind a tapestry of compliance woven with such craft that it hid life right under their noses. It was June, mid-June in Philadelphia, hot, sticky and bright. The sky was apocalypticly clear--punishingly blue and empty. Night would creep across the sky, deepening the blue but doing nothing to veil the heat. Despite the heat I made mini beef Wellington because I had been dying to try it since I saw the recipe and had been taken in both by the name and the aura of high class that surrounded the dish. I rung Jake at the end of the block and told him my parents were out of town for the weekend (not new or news to him) and that I, being the ever genteel homemaker, was making dinner. It would be beef, could he bring something that went well with it? I asked in the highly affected upper social register accent that you imagine a Jane Austen character--but never the heroine--having. I hung up and he arrived all smiles and charm. His mousey brown hair curling in tight little ringlets and his pale blue eyes absorbing the harshness of the sky, tempering it into cool, pale wisps of the Bay (an analogy I can only make thinking about him now as I sit on my deck looking out). What goes well with beef Wellington, why, bad gin, of course; gin which we promptly decided we could not drink no matter how fashionable my mother made the Martini look-- and she had one often enough that you would think it was the latest Gucci clutch. No matter, we had our Wellingtons fresh from the oven and decided, again, that this was the most inedible thing. Pate is, alas, lost on youth. After scrapping off the pate and eating the meat, mushrooms and dough we had quite the dinner in the living room. Moving away the TV trays, we made room for slow dancing. How adult we were. How grown up and settled. Slow dancing. In the living room. Of all the things for him to suggest. But, it was lovely. We were too young to see through the action to the vanity. Too naive to see the cyncism conjured by the dance. Too involved with each other to notice just how much we were pretending. It was real. It was unforced. It was unfeigned.
I went out to smoke while he offered to clear away the plates before he joined me outside. Sneaking up from behind me, deftly sliding his arms around me, he pulled me close and, took the cigarette out of my mouth! He hated that I smoked. I promised I would quit, just for him; I promised just for him. I did, too, just for him, although by then it did very little good. He held me--a weakness I carry over to this day; hold me and I am yours--and we watched the stars vainly try to push out into the darkness as the city blazed like a second dawn keeping them at bay. As the sun sank we went inside to watch T.V and make out on the couch, to bump and grind and slurp and lick in the clumsy way that only pre-teen boys can. Then he stopped. He lay on top of me between my legs looking at me as if I were the most beautiful painting, delicate and intricate, forever fascinating and truly treasured. He leaned in to whisper, with a little mischief in his voice, " Thanks for dinner," before getting up and heading upstairs. "What the fuck?" was all my mind could manage. Did I miss something? Clearly. Time passed. He did not come back down after a minute or two and I lost it. I was so confused, made more so by my horniness, that I sprung off the couch and began taking the steps two at a time upstairs. Livid, murmuring to myself, I was going to have his balls for whatever he was up to. Who just stops mid-frottage to extend a courteous thank-you ? I was at the top of the steps having, no doubt, pissed our neighbors off, turning the corner towards my room, when I could no longer be mad; it vaporized when I was confronted with the multitude of stars he had forced out of hiding. At least, that was the first thing I could think of when I saw my room. He had placed tea lights all over my room; against the deep blue paint and drawn curtains, they twinkled in defiance of the urban glare outside. There he was waiting for me, not propped up on one elbow on the bed like in some B-porno movie, but just sitting there, innocently naked, at my desk looking, quizzically, to see me. It was the most beautiful of gestures I had ever experienced in my life and continues to be so. What could I do but cross the threshold, lean down and return his kiss; having no words to express how, how-- don't know why words fail, even in retrospect; I cannot tell you why it was so stirring. Why the simple act of ensnaring those distant stars touched me to the quick I do not know. I can still feel it, but the meaning is gone. And if it was a few enchanted moments, they quickly fled since, characteristically, it was more beautiful than practical. The shut windows, drawn curtains, tea lights and crushing humidity all combined to make the room so oppressively hot that just sitting on his lap and making out caused us both to sweat and stick together--not as romantic as he had hoped, I am sure, but, touching nevertheless and profoundly so. We got up, blew out the lights, opened the window but left the curtains tastefully closed. Not that it helped much; there was no breeze, no relief. All the same, I didn't want to be apart from him, didn't want not to feel him against me. It was not just the physical feel that drove me, I knew that even then. Even then I knew I wanted more from him then the pleasure he gave my body. It was more. He was more. After that long kiss I near lost my breath. Sitting making out only re-inscribed on my flesh what my heart knew and I wanted to give him all the pleasure I could, so I lead him on, and his heart was going like mad, yes, and it was awkward, painful, painfully-awkward . Yes, nothing like the movies. No seamless transition from chair to bed, nor effortless getting of the condom on. I thought for sure it would be a simple matter to get him inside of me. I had it in my head that it was like coaxing your eyes to dilate in the dark: it took a little time but not long enough to make you forget you could see. How I was wrong! I can smile about my naiveté now but in the moment it was all pain and painful longing mixed with a twinge of fear that I would not be able to do it and he would leave me, he would not want to go out with someone who couldn't do that all the way, even though I was the one who broached the subject, I was the one who brought it up, I was the one who wanted to taste that fruit. And I was the one who paid for it in blood. Not much, but it was there. The painful reprimand for pushing too quickly. He saw it, he stopped, he beamed down at me and, again, kissed me to fill the silence words would have fallen deafly upon. That night we did have sex. It was awkward and then just as odd. We were virgins, newly minted in our bodies with little control and no guidance. The pieces fit together in the end in that same characteristically good humored clumsiness which categorized our being together. It was not the best sex I have ever had, and, unfortunately for some of my other partners in later years, it would not be the worst. But it was his holding me tight, after it all, that gets me.