...Of course, once he introduced me to sex properly, in a way that was not dark and forced, I wanted more. Typical guy, gay or not, thinks about sex all the time. It isn’t anything immoral or dirty, it is just the reality of how we men are built. We are built to stud. We are built for sex in so many ways it is sometimes amazing to think we ever had time to do things like conquest, science, and literature. But we managed.
At this point, knowing what I had always felt, and now knowing what it all meant at a physical and emotional level, I knew I was gay. I mean, let’s get something straight, if I had had sex with William and enjoyed it but later realized that it just wasn’t for me and that it was women that I really wanted, I would not be gay. Gay sex itself is not what makes a man gay any more than lesbian sex makes a woman a lesbian. There is simply so much more to it, and even then there is just too much to feel and understand that the sex itself is not even secondary to the equation.
But, I was just a teenager, so to me the sex meant just that, and I was basically right. I was, and continue to, identify as a gay man. I fell in love with William, and I am certain he did with me too. At the very least, I can tell you that he loved me, even if he was not “in love” with me. But I prefer to think he was. But it would not last. William died just a few months later, in a horrible car accident. I did not know he’d died for another three weeks, and was never able to properly say good bye to him until I visited his grave in New Canaan, Connecticut.
I will not bore you with details of every man I ever had sex with, it would be repetitious, but I do want to mention one other man, his name was Tony, and I was then about 25 while he was about 23. We met while he was still about 18 or 19, and he was dating a man who also became a friend of mine, though most recently I would have to think of him more as an adversary than a friend. His constant insistence on pushing his Christianity on people simply bugs me too much for me to call him a friend.
But the two of them eventually broke up, and Tony eventually went his own way, going home to Guatemala and then returning to the US. We met up again and got on with our friendship, and he even lived with me for a short time as he found a place to live of his own. He was beautiful. His face was almost angelic, his hair was perfectly wavy, his body smooth and alluring in the most innocently sexual way you could imagine. By that I mean that he seemed incapable of not being sexy. He didn’t intentionally dress to make your mouth water, he was just naturally that way, and no matter what he wore you just wanted him. Of course, I thought it might just be me, after all, horny 25 year old and hot 23 year old usually equals sexual attraction, but it wasn’t. There were no people who ever saw him who did not comment on his beauty.
The first time we made love it was an astonishing experience. He was just as naturally sexual in the act as he was in appearance, and it felt great. We did it on and off for a while, and I fell for him. But I did not want to push him. When he told me he loved me but did not want to “marry me” yet, I was sad, but I understood it. We were both young, we were both looking for a way to make a life before settling into something as serious as a live-in relationship. That changed when a mutual friend contacted me from the West Coast and asked me to move out there.
Tony thought it was a good idea. That maybe if I moved out there and got settled in that he could join me in a few months and we could sort of start fresh. Start a life together. I thought it seemed odd, but I was ok with the idea.
I have to tell you at this point that there is something else about Tony that was very important. Tony was HIV positive. I knew it, had known it for some time, but he had always been one to take care of himself. Always took his meds, though the meds back then were not the kind of life prolonging meds we have today. We were always careful, and to this day I remain HIV negative.
One day, while in Portland, I got a call from my mother. She informed me that Tony had died at Stamford Hospital and she was sorry she had not found out sooner. His mother had come up from Guatemala and taken him home to be buried. Unlike with William, I would never get to visit his grave and say good bye, as lame as that sounds from someone who does not believe in an afterlife.
I broke.
I had had a previous issue, which I am not going to go into here, but I can tell you that it had changed me. But this broke me. I can’t really explain what I mean by that, I can only say that my ability to connect to other people was severely damaged by this. To this day I have a real problem making friends. I have a real problem relating to people, because once he died, I think part of me did too, and that part was the best part of me. I have never recovered. I have never gotten over his dying like that with me so far away.
But I have come to understand that I still have a lot left in me. And I have come to understand that I need to make the best of what I am today, but along the way I have been just a little crazy.
Next installment? Why I have given myself over to Aphrodite in ways I never should have...
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