Capricorn
I think this may be the first thread I’ve started in GS since my Intro a couple months ago. This is going to be like no other thread I’ve ever seen here, so hold onto your hats! For many it will be tl;dr (too long; didn’t read). I’m writing it all out first in MS Word and then will be posting sections of it one at a time.
Several things have prompted this thread.
First I’ve mentioned in this and other forums that I didn’t even know there *were* other “gay” people until I was 16 years old -- and that happened due to a magazine article. << That magazine article and the affect it had on me is mostly what this thread is about.
Seeing some teenagers here in the forum I’ve found myself trying to remember what it was like to be 16 years old. It’s not easy because on one hand although I am *sort of* the same person I was then, I’m also *not* the same person at all. So it’s like trying to remember another life, one lived a long time ago on another planet, far, far away.
This thread is going to be about how I found out I was “gay” which includes the first time I’d ever heard that word used to reference homosexuality. If nothing else it will show how much things have (and have not) changed in the last 50 years.
Even at age 16, it wasn’t like I didn’t know I was a queer homo cock-sucking faggot. I’d begun having erotic adventures with boys near my age even before I went to school at age 6. I grew up on a farm in the US Midwest and I had few near neighbors. But, strangely enough, several of the other boys within walking or easy bike riding distance enjoyed playing sexually with other boys. This was far from hard-core butt fucking but it was exciting and stimulating. It also didn’t happen very often (certainly not as often as I would have liked!) but it did happen.
But most importantly, what you have to understand is that there was no “social context” for these experiences. No one I knew had ever heard of “gay” people -- or if they did, they never talked about it. I was made to understand (through threats and the ways boys talk to one another) that this was something shameful that had to be kept secret. It was a little crazy making because on one hand it happened but on the other hand it was made clear this was *not OK.* It might be fun but it was also illegal, immoral, perverted and could get us into a LOT of trouble if adults found out.
To be honest in my early years I didn’t really think about it all that much. When I did mostly what I thought was something like, “What’s the big deal, anyway?” Why should anyone care that some boys like to get together and make each other feel good? But at that age I was a long way from understanding much of anything about the world around me, let alone the complexities of sexual taboos.
By the time I was a teenager, though, all this became a lot more oppressive in my mind. At age 13 I was often very depressed because it was very clear that my feelings were different from other boys, even boys I’d played around with. Some of that might still go on but the other boys did it because they couldn’t be with girls. It was a substitute and that’s all.
It wasn’t like that for me. I found boys and their bodies fascinating, attractive, a turn on and I fantasized about them when I beat off. A guilty pleasure. I never fantasized about girls at all. I had already “fallen in love” with (crushing hard on) another boy when I was in the fifth grade (age 10/11). This was part of my depression. I couldn’t show how I felt, couldn’t act on it. Worse, it was becoming clear to me this was going to get more difficult as I got older. At some point, I would *have* to start dating girls. Not doing so would look “suspicious.”
By age 15 I was very screwed up in the head in a lot of ways. I was terrified that my past (not to mention my current thoughts and fantasies) would get exposed. In the rural community I was apart of, kids and adults gossiped about one another all the time. I knew I was a queer cock sucking faggot (those were the words I heard) and a pervert. I’m not exactly sure when I first figured out what “homosexual” meant but it was around this time. I looked it up in an unabridged dictionary at school and was shocked to learn that it was considered a “pathology” -- a mental disorder! Learning this left me feeling even more isolated, closed off, scared, insecure and damn near suicidal. The future looked bleak.
However, something happened that changed at least some of this.
My parent’s began living part of the year in Florida and enrolled me in an experimental public high school. I may write more about that later. But the reason I bring it up now is because this yanked me out of the isolated rural world I’d grown up in. All of a sudden I was going to this HUGE high school -- with literally hundreds of other kids. All the kids in my rural school had known one another all their lives (about 30 of us all in the same class since first grade). But now I was in a school where no one knew me. It was scary but at the same time it was liberating. No one knew my secret!
Although I’d had some erotic experiences with other boys, in a lot of ways I was very naïve. “Ignorant” is the right word. I just didn’t *know* very much. How could I? No one ever talked about any of this. Obviously I knew that queer cock-sucking perverts existed, as I was one of them -- but beyond that, nothing. It wasn’t on the news or in movies or TV shows. Occasionally there would be some reference to “homosexuals” on TV but it was so obscure and hush-hush I didn’t really ‘get’ it. So, except when guys were kidding around and insulting one another, calling each other “queer” and “cock-sucker” and stuff like that, I really didn’t think about it all that much. I knew I had to keep it hidden but that was about it.
In those days the way we found out stuff was through TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and books. Although you could go to the library and search for topics or look at an encyclopedia, everything else was a one-way, top down, information stream -- from an author or government agency or corporation to the public.
It was June 1964. President Kennedy had been assassinated less than a year before. The Vietnam War was heating up. The Civil Rights Movement had been making headlines for years and the first major piece of legislation was about to be signed by President Johnson. “Beatle Mania” was a social phenomenon, the Beatles having just come to America singing “I Want To Hold Your Hand” a few months earlier. This was the beginning of the “British (rock n roll) Invasion” and the culmination of all things Mod. I liked the Beatles and was already beginning to wear my hair a bit shaggy (as opposed to a crew cut) but mostly I was listening to The Beach Boys (after all, I lived in Florida) who had just released, “I Get Around,” a month earlier. All the kids I knew were wearing striped collarless “surfer shirts” and patterned shorts:
[img] http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xjdEti8bw1Y/UG...rknit.jpeg[/img]
“The Free Speech Movement that would make The University of California at Berkeley (down the street from where I live now) a household name, had not yet garnered national attention. In fact, the whole “upheaval” that would become what people call “The Sixties” was just getting started. Within two years I’d be right in the middle of it as a freshman at college.
So, there I was, age 16, sitting in my parents living room, flipping through the pages of a LIFE magazine, when I came upon THIS:
[img] http://www.dallasvoice.com/wp-content/up...0/LIFE.jpg[/img]
HOMOSEXUALITY IN AMERICA
“A secret world grows open and bolder. Society is forced to look at it--and try to understand it.” Photo Caption: “A San Francisco bar run for and by homosexuals is crowded with patrons who wear leather jackets, make a show of masculinity and scorn effeminate members of their world. Mural shows men in leather.”
:eek: :eek: :eek:
To be continued…
Several things have prompted this thread.
First I’ve mentioned in this and other forums that I didn’t even know there *were* other “gay” people until I was 16 years old -- and that happened due to a magazine article. << That magazine article and the affect it had on me is mostly what this thread is about.
Seeing some teenagers here in the forum I’ve found myself trying to remember what it was like to be 16 years old. It’s not easy because on one hand although I am *sort of* the same person I was then, I’m also *not* the same person at all. So it’s like trying to remember another life, one lived a long time ago on another planet, far, far away.
This thread is going to be about how I found out I was “gay” which includes the first time I’d ever heard that word used to reference homosexuality. If nothing else it will show how much things have (and have not) changed in the last 50 years.
Even at age 16, it wasn’t like I didn’t know I was a queer homo cock-sucking faggot. I’d begun having erotic adventures with boys near my age even before I went to school at age 6. I grew up on a farm in the US Midwest and I had few near neighbors. But, strangely enough, several of the other boys within walking or easy bike riding distance enjoyed playing sexually with other boys. This was far from hard-core butt fucking but it was exciting and stimulating. It also didn’t happen very often (certainly not as often as I would have liked!) but it did happen.
But most importantly, what you have to understand is that there was no “social context” for these experiences. No one I knew had ever heard of “gay” people -- or if they did, they never talked about it. I was made to understand (through threats and the ways boys talk to one another) that this was something shameful that had to be kept secret. It was a little crazy making because on one hand it happened but on the other hand it was made clear this was *not OK.* It might be fun but it was also illegal, immoral, perverted and could get us into a LOT of trouble if adults found out.
To be honest in my early years I didn’t really think about it all that much. When I did mostly what I thought was something like, “What’s the big deal, anyway?” Why should anyone care that some boys like to get together and make each other feel good? But at that age I was a long way from understanding much of anything about the world around me, let alone the complexities of sexual taboos.
By the time I was a teenager, though, all this became a lot more oppressive in my mind. At age 13 I was often very depressed because it was very clear that my feelings were different from other boys, even boys I’d played around with. Some of that might still go on but the other boys did it because they couldn’t be with girls. It was a substitute and that’s all.
It wasn’t like that for me. I found boys and their bodies fascinating, attractive, a turn on and I fantasized about them when I beat off. A guilty pleasure. I never fantasized about girls at all. I had already “fallen in love” with (crushing hard on) another boy when I was in the fifth grade (age 10/11). This was part of my depression. I couldn’t show how I felt, couldn’t act on it. Worse, it was becoming clear to me this was going to get more difficult as I got older. At some point, I would *have* to start dating girls. Not doing so would look “suspicious.”
By age 15 I was very screwed up in the head in a lot of ways. I was terrified that my past (not to mention my current thoughts and fantasies) would get exposed. In the rural community I was apart of, kids and adults gossiped about one another all the time. I knew I was a queer cock sucking faggot (those were the words I heard) and a pervert. I’m not exactly sure when I first figured out what “homosexual” meant but it was around this time. I looked it up in an unabridged dictionary at school and was shocked to learn that it was considered a “pathology” -- a mental disorder! Learning this left me feeling even more isolated, closed off, scared, insecure and damn near suicidal. The future looked bleak.
However, something happened that changed at least some of this.
My parent’s began living part of the year in Florida and enrolled me in an experimental public high school. I may write more about that later. But the reason I bring it up now is because this yanked me out of the isolated rural world I’d grown up in. All of a sudden I was going to this HUGE high school -- with literally hundreds of other kids. All the kids in my rural school had known one another all their lives (about 30 of us all in the same class since first grade). But now I was in a school where no one knew me. It was scary but at the same time it was liberating. No one knew my secret!
Although I’d had some erotic experiences with other boys, in a lot of ways I was very naïve. “Ignorant” is the right word. I just didn’t *know* very much. How could I? No one ever talked about any of this. Obviously I knew that queer cock-sucking perverts existed, as I was one of them -- but beyond that, nothing. It wasn’t on the news or in movies or TV shows. Occasionally there would be some reference to “homosexuals” on TV but it was so obscure and hush-hush I didn’t really ‘get’ it. So, except when guys were kidding around and insulting one another, calling each other “queer” and “cock-sucker” and stuff like that, I really didn’t think about it all that much. I knew I had to keep it hidden but that was about it.
In those days the way we found out stuff was through TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and books. Although you could go to the library and search for topics or look at an encyclopedia, everything else was a one-way, top down, information stream -- from an author or government agency or corporation to the public.
It was June 1964. President Kennedy had been assassinated less than a year before. The Vietnam War was heating up. The Civil Rights Movement had been making headlines for years and the first major piece of legislation was about to be signed by President Johnson. “Beatle Mania” was a social phenomenon, the Beatles having just come to America singing “I Want To Hold Your Hand” a few months earlier. This was the beginning of the “British (rock n roll) Invasion” and the culmination of all things Mod. I liked the Beatles and was already beginning to wear my hair a bit shaggy (as opposed to a crew cut) but mostly I was listening to The Beach Boys (after all, I lived in Florida) who had just released, “I Get Around,” a month earlier. All the kids I knew were wearing striped collarless “surfer shirts” and patterned shorts:
[img] http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xjdEti8bw1Y/UG...rknit.jpeg[/img]
“The Free Speech Movement that would make The University of California at Berkeley (down the street from where I live now) a household name, had not yet garnered national attention. In fact, the whole “upheaval” that would become what people call “The Sixties” was just getting started. Within two years I’d be right in the middle of it as a freshman at college.
So, there I was, age 16, sitting in my parents living room, flipping through the pages of a LIFE magazine, when I came upon THIS:
[img] http://www.dallasvoice.com/wp-content/up...0/LIFE.jpg[/img]
HOMOSEXUALITY IN AMERICA
“A secret world grows open and bolder. Society is forced to look at it--and try to understand it.” Photo Caption: “A San Francisco bar run for and by homosexuals is crowded with patrons who wear leather jackets, make a show of masculinity and scorn effeminate members of their world. Mural shows men in leather.”
:eek: :eek: :eek:
To be continued…
.
![[-]](https://gayspeak.com/images/duende_v3_local/collapse.png)
