Sexual activity came early to me; it was spring 1951 when some other children and I were playing on the grassy slope on the side of 190 Pawtuxet Avenue in Norwood. We started playing cat and dog, and I was a dog. To add a little character, I became a dog with a broken back leg. Then, for a more dramatic effect, I became a dog with two broken back legs. After dragging my body around on the grass for a while using only my front legs (arms), all of a sudden I experienced a very pleasant tingling sensation in my crotch. Despite being only five, I had discovered masturbation. From that day onward, just about every night in bed I played doggy-with-two-broken-back-legs. One night, however, I became so engrossed in the activity that I got tangled up in my sheets, created quite a ruckus, and my brother in the upper bunk called my parents.
Being that a former Surgeon General of the United States, Joycelyn Elders, was forced to resign in 1994 for simply mentioning masturbation in a public address about safer sex practices and AIDS prevention, just imagine how enlightened discussion of that topic was forty-four years earlier. Wake up America, the Victorian Era ended in 1901. All that I remember of my parents lecture was being told that the retarded man in the neighborhood—not my Uncle Bud, the other one—always did “that” when he was a little boy, and his “thing” grew all the way down to his knees.
Well now, had I known then what I came to know later, that erroneous revelation would have been far from a deterrent for me … I would have been playing doggy-with-two-broken-back-legs morning, noon, and night. Nevertheless, that, along with my parents’ other admonitions, did nothing to curb my bedtime activity, I just learned to be more covert and to stifle my exuberance, especially when my brother was topside.
As time went on my solo activities continued regularly, and I started developing crushes on cute boys in school. The first memorable was William P. In the third grade my mother told me that I could have a birthday party, it would be my eighth, and said I could invite any of my classmates that I wanted. There were two third grade classes at the school, and I invited all the usual suspects from my class, and then Billy P who was in the other class. My mother was very active in PTA and knew Billy’s mother, who called her and said that it was sweet of me to invite him, but that Billy didn’t know me. No, he didn’t, we had never even spoken. But I had had my eye on him for a couple months. He was a cutie pie; I was infatuated, and figured the party might be a way to make a connection. It wasn’t. He did attend, but we never became friends.
Meanwhile my father had given me a small area in a corner of the backyard to use as my own, and I started building a clubhouse of sorts with scrap materials, which I dubbed Fort Mess. When I found a big old picture frame with the glass intact, Fort Mess got an addition with a picture window. I don’t know about other boys with clubhouses, tree houses, and the like, but the purpose of mine was primarily to have a private place to get naked with boys. I had yet to make any connection between my own playing doggy-with-two-broken-legs and other boys, but by the age of eight being naked with other boys had become very enticing for me.
One day Paul S and I were playing in Fort Mess, and gradually our clothes came off. We were so involved in our activity that we had not heard my father approaching, until all of a sudden he was right outside, when we heard his in angry voice demanded to know, “What are you boys doing in there?” We were in a panic, and while we fumbled with our clothes my father bellowed, “I hear zippers!!!” Afterward Dad threatened to tear Fort Mess down, but he never did, and I don‘t remember any other repercussions in particular. Maybe he figured it was all his fault for having given me the dollhouse that Christmas of 1949. Just joking.
Despite that predicament, my solo activity continued unabated, and then at about age twelve I got a terrible shock. When my activity culminated in the anticipated pleasant tingling sensation, I found myself covered in a sticky white goo. I was terror-stricken. I made all sorts of deals with Dios. Promised never do that terrible thing again, just please cure me of this horrible malady. Well, of course, I couldn’t keep the promise, because the only way to see if I had been cured, was to have a go at it again and see what happened. This was my dilemma, which continued until we moved to Jerusalem for the summer.
At the beach a neighbor’s son, Dean A, was a year younger than me, but they lived in the city, not a suburb, so he was more knowledge about the facts of life. As part of my ongoing educating, one day he was telling me about boys jerking off (that sounded familiar), and how when they got old enough some white stuff would come out, and that was called sperm. Intrigued, I whipped it out and jerk, jerk, jerked … oh, you mean this? He was impressed, and I breathed a gigantic sigh of relief.
Billy M—who, in the second grade, was assigned the task of getting me to school on time—had become a friend. Naturally … like me, Billy was classified as a sissy. Puberty arrived for both of us at about the same time and, although I never had a crush on him, when we were playing in his room one day, his sister and parents not at home, he suggested that we play “brand name“ poker. Brand name poker, what‘s that? It took a bit of time to get through the innuendos, but he finally admitted that he meant “strip“ poker. Sure, why not? After that Billy and I spent a fair amount of time playing cards. What with him, Paul, and a couple of others, to a degree I managed to satisfy my never ending quest to be naked with boys throughout the school year … but it wasn’t until we got to the beach in June, that the real hot fun in the summertime began.
Without the sissy label from school, my status in Jerusalem was a little better, and periodically there were a few boys that I would hang out with … or that would hang out with me. Swimming, of course, presented the opportunity for “skinny-dipping” and I was always arranging such events either after dark on the beach, or on trips to the Salt Pond islands in my boat. One day I went to one of the islands with Bobby S. We beached the boat, stripped off our clothes, and frolicked in the water for a while. Then we went up the embankment to a duck blind, which afforded the privacy to luxuriate naked in the sun.
Gradually I got the conversation around to sex, and I told Bobby that if he would suck my penis (you know that’s not the word I used) I would blow him. He agreed. After he did his part for a few minutes it was my turn. Although I did blow him, I didn’t actually give him a “blow job” … I just blew on his penis and then went running down to the shore and took off in the boat, leaving him stranded on the island with no clothes. Only for a few minutes, I wasn’t a complete cad.
Another great venue for getting naked with boys was the cabanas on the state beach, after dark of course. I was forever arranging strip poker parties there, and the loser’s penalty would be a choice between doing something sexual, or running naked up to one of the cars in the parking lot, which at night was a notorious lovers’ lane. I never lost. One summer Bobby P and his family from Norwood rented a cottage for a couple of weeks, and for a few days his next-door neighbor, Rusty C, visited. Rusty was a year or two younger, and we always thought of him as Little Rusty, but once he lost his clothes our opinion changed. Despite being younger, he was much bigger and hairier than the rest of us … perhaps it’s because he was Italian. From then on I tried to finagle some one-on-one time with “little” Rusty, but it never happened.
For a while I was pals with three or four other boys at the beach, and as usual my focus was on places and excuses to get naked. This other kid, Alan S, wanted to hang out with us. He was always following us around and we were always trying to lose him, until one day I came up with a plan. If he passed the initiation he could be a part of our pack. While we watched covertly from the parking lot ticket kiosk (the one by the docks which was only used on the weekends), Alan had to go to the public restroom by the fire station and strip completely. Once naked, he had to leave his clothes there and then run to the state pier, 500 feet away, jump off the end of it, and swim back to the dock by the restroom and retrieve his clothes. Once he did that we were all so embarrassed we didn’t want to be seen with him, but I think I may have invented “streaking!”
Of all my summer infatuations, my association with towheaded Willy B was the most memorable. Consistent with my lifetime pattern, I did whatever it took to strike up a friendship, and he was my best friend for a couple of summers. As usual, I went out of my way to arrange naked opportunities with Willy, but he wasn’t always the most cooperative partner. Nonetheless, our last summer together we were both fourteen, and one day we had meandered to the west end of the beach, adjacent to the 90° curve on Succotash Road, and then into the thick stands of bulrushes that lined Potter’s Pond. Seemed the perfect private place to get naked, so we did. In all of my adolescent years turned on by boys’ naked bodies, I was—with the rare exception of some furtive touching—only a looker, and not interested in anything else. Until that day in the bulrushes with Willy, when I gave him a blow job. No doubt a turning point in my life.
From age twelve on, of course, John H was a regular part of my life—my first real friend—and occasionally we would fool around, although I don’t think that we were particularly turned-on by each other. One day we were in my room at 184 Pawtuxet Avenue, where we were playing around a little, when all of a sudden we heard my brother coming down the hall. John and I did our best to pull things together, but there was no question what had been going on. Later my brother tried to talk with me about it, he was probably sixteen at the time, for which I now give him a lot of credit. He told me that it was nothing to be ashamed of, that most boys did it at that age, but as caring and supportive as he tried to be, I was not able to do anything at the time except stay shut down.
The summer of 1962 I was working at Pawtuxet Paint & Hardware, and John was working as a gardener for the Green Estate. We both arranged the same day off, and took a trip to Cape Cod where we spent the day on a notorious nude beach at Highland Light near Truro, the last town before Provincetown. In the spirit of the scene we stripped completely as well. “Curiously” we were frequently approached by older men (at the time anyone over twenty), and they would linger and chat but nothing ever came of it. The next day, however, I was much too stricken with sunburn to go to work. While my mother was checking my burn she grabbed the waistband of my pajamas and said, “How far does this sunburn go?” as she gave a yank. I was busted and Mom was pissed.
That fall my parents bought a business in Connecticut, and with nothing better going for me in Rhode Island, I passed on the option of staying with Aunt Nan to finish school there, and made the move with my parents. At this point there is no need to say that I had more than my fair share of crushes at my new school, Newington High School, but nothing ever came of anything. And I was so busy with my new role as one of the most popular students in that school, that I didn’t really have time to pay attention or care.
Then that summer of 1963 at Trinity College in Hartford, I finagled a way to meet Barry R. This wasn’t just a crush, I fell madly in love. Not in the least daunted by the fact that, although Barry freely demonstrated that he loved me as well, it was only to the degree that he could do so without being ‘gay’ or even slightly inclined. Yet we spent every possible minute together and frequently slept and showered together. Once John M from Newington had a heart-to-heart talk with me about my ‘gay’ presumptions, and suggested that it might be a good idea to actually have sex with a man before I came to any final conclusions. At the time I thought that he was offering, but didn’t know where to go from there, even though he was such a nice guy and so cute. The following summer when visiting his girlfriend, Rita, in Maryland, we talked about that conversation with John. She said that he had thought that I had interpreted his counsel as an offer, but that finally cleared it up … it wasn’t.
That fall at Cheshire Academy, a private boy’s school, was almost too hot to handle, and I had so many crushes I couldn’t keep track. Especially with the large population of rich and handsome South American boys, a completely new entity in my hitherto sheltered Caucasian life. My head was a constant buzz. At Cheshire I was very out, open and obvious about being a “fag” … yet I still had no real experience sexually. No doubt that is what prompted me to seek some psychological counseling, to see where I stood regarding homosexuality. All I needed to hear was that I very well could be homosexual, and I took it from there. With a gusto!
When I decided to apply to Boston’s University’s theater program, I asked one of the teachers for help. He was French, had been a playwright and director in Paris, and agreed to assist me in preparing for my auditions, part of the entrance requirement. Each evening I would get a pass to go to his apartment to rehearse, and the third night he “coached” me with a little more than my audition material. It was my first sexual encounter with a man who was actually homosexual, although the sex was not at all mutual. Quite frankly, while fondling my body he gave me a blow job. It was my first real one, and I liked it. A lot! Subsequent coaching sessions always ended that way, and there was a weekend or two in New York City as well. Nonetheless, during our “association” the physical part was never romantic or mutual, and in the end I still had never kissed a man.
The summer of 1964, after graduating from Cheshire Academy, I went to Cape Cod to visit John H for a weekend. At the time he was working at The Blacksmith Shop, a lovely upscale restaurant in Truro, and he stayed with his Aunt who lived there. To Ruth I was a persona non grata, because in junior high she had discovered an obscenely suggestive coded note that I had written to her handsome son, Wright. She broke the code. Oops! Nonetheless, while on the Cape I stayed clandestinely in a small one room cabin deep in the Truro woods. It had no running water, only a hand pump, and no electricity. It was owned by John’s Aunt. She had bought the cabin years earlier as a love nest when she was having an illicit extramarital affair, so it’s not as though “Auntie Judgmental” was any kind of an angel.
That first night we went to Provincetown, but my only memory of the evening is meeting an older (i.e., over twenty) guy, a fellow that John knew from Providence named Sully. He went back to the cabin with me, and spent the night. It was my first experience having full-fledged and mutually participatory sex with a man who was actually homosexual, and we did just about everything that two ‘gay’ men might do with each other in bed, short of penetration. No doubt I used it as an opportunity to explore much of what I had only ever dreamt and fantasized about, and in the process discovered that I loved kissing, amongst other things. There is no question that it was the definitive life altering/confirming experience, and I was enthralled … that night anyhow. When I awoke the next morning I was utterly freaked out.
Fortunately, Sully left early. Then I scoured myself from head to toe in the icy cold well water, then scoured myself again and again. Trying to wash off the guilt of an evening’s delight. My plan was to get out of there as soon as possible, burn my bridges behind me, and never have anything to do with John or homosexuality again. I threw my stuff into my bag, and as I was pulling on my pants I heard John’s car. He came bounding into the cabin shrilling, “Come on, May, get your gay buns in gear, P-Town is waiting!” The rest, as they say, is history.
From that point on I got my “gay buns” to P-Town every chance I had, and managed to fill my weekdays back in Connecticut with my first real romance (i.e., one that had a sexual component). My relationship with Frank C was not particularly memorable, except that we used to “do it” at Union Laundry. On the second floor above the dry cleaning department, there was a large (about 6’ by 8’) thickly padded ironing table, that was used for hand pressing of lace tablecloths and the like … which proved to be a very comfortable place for pressing the flesh as well. Upon arrival in Boston that fall I was quickly engrossed in the city’s ‘gay’ scene, and it wasn’t long before I made a “Dear Frank” call to terminate that long-distance affair. He was forebodingly infuriated, and the following summer he would insinuate himself back into my life … with disastrous result.
Thus ends the childhood and adolescent sex exposé in the chronicle of this little boy whose father heard zippers!
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