Grappling with homosexuality and my sense of self: a legacy of sexual assault and inappropriate male arousal

Spoiler Alert: if you want to skip straight to the kinky stuff, just scroll down to the story…the rest is context.

This promises to be the most challenging blog post I have yet written, let alone posted.  I’ve been thinking about it for months, and as with all such things, whatever form it was going to take bears little resemblance to what it is.

The evolution of the idea.  My first thought was to start sharing some of the erotica I have written (it might better be called smut).  Gay male smut.  But then I thought it needed to be put in context.  Excuses in a way.  I write lot’s of different kinds, lesbian, BDSM, infantilist, straight.  But most of it, more than half in volume, is about men, together.

The other part of putting it in context is why.  Why do I write it if I profess to be straight?  Why does gay porn get me horny like few other things?  Or at least, used to.  And of a particular type.  Not love, not tenderness.  No, first time.  Bordering on assault.  Definitely dominance and submission.  Why the doom loop of the same fantasy?  I know the answer.

I began to write erotica in my early twenties.  I discovered that writing my fantasies down was an extraordinary way to get off, and I would usually write until I came.  That might take 15 minutes, and it might take days.  I have shared that I didn’t ever play with myself—well I can count on the fingers of less than the hand I might have used—there were three times in my entire life that I took my shaft in hand and stroked myself to orgasm.  Those three occasions were all when I was travelling, had been triggered by something, and was so freakin’ horny that I couldn’t think straight, and knew that I needed to release.

But yes, I could write myself to orgasm.  The mind is a powerful thing.  Sitting on a dildo helps.  A lot.

Somewhere along the line, the idea of spending all this time having the most elaborate wanks struck me as a waste of time…a bit of a theme in my life.  Anything that isn’t “productive” has to go.  A bit ironic for a procrastinator, but hey, that’s just ADD.  I salvaged my self-play by turning it into a way to make money, and I began to publish my stories.

While some people who have known me intimately have suggested I was asexual or just with a very low sex drive, I don’t know anyone who has been as consistently horny.  It’s just that there was no connection with those people.  And no, straight up vanilla sex has never done it for me.  

I am kinky.  That is my sexuality.

There are many kinds of sexuality.  Gay, straight, bi.  That’s what we usually think of.  But kink is very much another strand.  But really, gay, straight, bi is more about our partner preference.  I think sexuality instead is an expression of how we wish to connect with people.  Or rather, what kind of connection with others turns us on.

I don’t feel that I am gay.  I am not attracted to men.  I don’t think an erect cock is beautiful, or at least it can be.  I could imagine sucking one.  The right one.  All the gay men I have ever known have said that “I was born this way.”  Kind of like how I know I was born trans.

In my own experience, though, sexuality is learned behaviour.  I have never felt that I was born kinky, for example.  That is my perverted reaction to life’s experiences and dynamics.  Sexuality is, for me, a language about connection to our shadow side.  I can’t speak to the gay man who says he was born that way, only that in my experience, further self-examination is required.

Biologically, we are generally wired to go for the opposite sex.  Something changes that wiring along the way.  It could be experiences.  Now we know that plastics in our environment and our diet can affect sexual orientation.  We also know that medication given to pregnant mothers in the 1950’s to 1970’s resulted in a spike in homosexual children.

Why do I say this, because I am afraid of being gay.  It isn’t something I want for myself.  The company of men is not something I want for myself.  The world of men is ugly to me.  Men are ugly to me.  Physically, emotionally, spiritually.  Sometimes I meet a man that I really like, not sexually, but as a human, but always wonder when the corrupted soul will reveal itself.  I have two, three, four really deep male friendships.  Every one of those men is different than any other men I know.  How?

They are sweet.  So sweet.  Truly caring and emotional people.  They all cry easily.  They are kind and considerate.  All of them have married and stayed true.  Marriage is never easy, but all have found the groove.  But most of all, they are all three emotionally vulnerable.  Deeply so.  Wearing their hearts on their shirtsleeves.  I guess it is just three men.  I admire them and love to be around them.  But would I ever want to have sex with one of them.  Oh Gxx, no!

So where does this come from?  

Inappropriate Expressions of Male Arousal

When I was 6 my grandfather took me to the men’s room to pee.  It was at a ball game.  We stood at the tall white porcelain urinals and then he turned to me and showed me his dick.  His cock.  He held it there, resting in his hand. He was perhaps twice my height.

“Have you ever seen such a big cock?” he asked.

“N-no,” I stammered looking up at him.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”  I didn’t answer.

“Do you think your cock will ever be big like that?”  I didn’t answer.  We went back to the game.

When I was 7 my mother sent me to a summer day camp.  I hated it.  I hated changing to swim, and being naked around older boys, especially how they behaved.  It was lawless and scary.  They were cruel to boys about their penises, their balls.  One day there was a field trip and I didn’t want to go.  Two boys in my age group, identical twins, didn’t want to go either.  So we went off down a lane and hid for a long while until the buses had gone.  At some point, one of them suggested to me that we all pull our pants down and play with each other.  This was something that didn’t feel right to me, so I didn’t.  “It’s fun to suck each other’s peenies,” one of them said.  And then they lay down together under a pine tree, 69, and did that.  I ran away, straight to the director’s office.  The secretary looked patient and worried and had me wait on a chair to speak to the director.  When I went into his office I noticed that he had spanking paddles on the wall.  Several of them.  When I told him that I had played “hooky”, I might have mentioned the boys.  “You’re going to get a spanking, a bare-assed paddling,” he said, “Grace,” he said over his intercom to the secretary, “can you call this boy’s mother for me,” hung up, and then said to me, “I’m going to get her permission to tan your hide.”  He had me wait outside his office.  I don’t know what was said.  But I waited in the anteroom with Grace for 90 minutes until my mother showed up.  She didn’t say a word.  Didn’t ask a question.  I never went back to the camp.

Riding the public bus as a pre-pubescent teenager in Thailand I was groped every time.  I could not be in a crowd and not feel a man’s hands on me.  Groping my dick, my ass.  It was not that they thought me a girl, because they could feel my dick and didn’t take their hands away.  I never said anything.  It was crowded, so crowded, I couldn’t imagine how they could do it.  I would like at their faces and try to figure out whose wands it was, but I never could.  They all seemed to be lost in their own thoughts.  And my Thai was not good enough.  Where I would I have even started.  A young leggy and tall super skinny thing surrounded by adults.  I had not yet hit puberty, so didn’t get aroused.  I was just confused.  It had happened hundreds of times.

When I was sixteen, a junior in H.S., I lost my virginity to a girl who was a senior.  She was gorgeous and knowledgeable, and who many years later tried to kill herself because her father had sexually assaulted her repeatedly as she grew up.  I was very fond of her.  I still am.  She married a sexual predator.  She now has a child with him, but also a restraining order so severe that he can never see his child again.  He is a guru in hippy circles. Preying on the vulnerable.  Still.

One day, this beautiful girl drove me to the highway so that I could hitchhike a ride to see a concert in another city.  I had a series of weird experiences, but one of them was a sexual assault.  I ran away, but not before feeling aroused, feeling seduced, being touched, and being really, really turned on.  Somehow, that experience became so deeply ingrained in my sense of sexual self, that I began to fantasise about what would have happened had I not run away.  Had I succumbed.  

This basic scenario, and several others just like it, became the core of my writing of gay male smut.  I also began to read this kind of smut, only read, never look at pictures, because I find men to be physically repulsive.  Most men. Writing these fantasies, I guess became a therapy of sorts.  There may be 50 or so stories that I have published under various pen names that all follow this basic theme.

Here is one of them.  If you like it, you can find many others which are similar, and some of my other writing, on Amazon or on other Smashwords (a mass distributor for indie writing).  To avoid violation of the terms of my agreement with those two outfits, I publish only an excerpt from one of the stories…After all, they are an important source of monthly income.  Especially now.  In the story I am 18, which is a legal requirement with erotica…but the truth was that I was barely 16.

Excerpts from a Story Entitled, “Hitching a Ride to Gay” by Will Richards.

I got dressed in the panties my girlfriend had given to me…why, I don’t know, other than that she had first met me dressed at a costume party as a girl.  I liked that she gave me the panties, but never let on that I wore them from time to time.

Anyway, I wore shorts and a t-shirt and had a little mini-bag.  I was going to a concert, not far away, and thought I would hitch a ride.

She drove me to the highway to get my first ride.

I got several bad rides: a fat blonde guy in a van who just wanted me to pay for his gas, a black electrician who drove nervously in his repair vehicle, a woman who looked as though she had had too much to drink, not just that day, but in life…and of course the cops driving by shouting on the loudspeaker that hitchhiking was against the law.  Each weirdo took me a few exits and then figured I wasn’t going to give whatever it was they wanted and they would then dump me out.

Finally, I get my first “normal” ride.  A middle-aged burly guy with a crew cut in a big green Packard, one of those 1970’s cars with lot’s of room and big comfy seats—a boat on wheels.  I hop into the front seat and slide my bag in next to me, using it as an arm rest.  I tell him thank god someone normal, and all about the weirdos I have had.

He starts telling me about another kind of weirdo, but introducing the subject as though it was the most normal thing in the world…”I’ll tell you about weirdo’s,” he said getting my attention, “have you ever seen in City X what I’ve seen?  Last week I was walking through town and a I saw a man with a dog collar and leash on being walked by a woman.  Can you believe that?”

I told him I had never seen anything like that before.  He told me that a young boy like me, standing out there in shorts and a t-shirt might look to some people like something else.  Like a girl.  At first, I thought you were a girl.  I laughed. “You’re not the first person to say that,” I said, which was true.

He asked if I had a girlfriend.  I said yes, sort of.  He wanted to know if we had ever had sex.  He drove slowly, hypnotically, and the rhythm of the road and his questions made me feel very far away from my body.

I told him that we had only had sex once, and he said, “you’re a bit young for that aren’t you?” 

“No, I’m 18,” I said, “I can do what I like.”

“Does she ever tie you up?”  And then not waiting for an answer, “do you do strange things together?”

“No.”

“Everyone is doing strange things together these days,” he said.  “You know I go into city X and I see women wearing leather or rubber, men with dog collars, does your girlfriend dress like that?”  

“No”

“She doesn’t make you wear a dog collar?” he asked as though it would be the most normal thing in the world.

“No.”

In between these unusual, sexual questions, he would take an exit from the highway, drive along the slip road, and then go back onto the highway.  It was strange, and although it seemed a little odd, I barely noticed it.  I barely noticed anything.  I thought his questions were a little strange, and his obsession with woman having men on leashes and so on, but I was open-minded.

“Your girlfriend has never made you wear a leash?”

“No.”

“Women are getting strange these days, making men do all kinds of things, aren’t they?”  

“I guess so,” I offered.

“They sure are.  I was in town the other day and I saw a woman who had a man on a leash.  She was walking him!  I couldn’t believe it.”

“Some guys must like it,” I said, “or they wouldn’t do it.”

“You’ve never done it, worn a dog collar or a leash?”

“No.”

“You haven’t wondered what it would be like if your girlfriend did that to you?”

“I haven’t thought about it.”

“Did she ever tie you up; I hear women like to do that nowadays.”

The air in the car was still, both windows were closed, and it was quiet except for our conversation.  The car moved slowly, and he still exited every other exit, just drifting along, talking about women doing various things to men.  He would look over at me occasionally.  He would also look out into the trees from time to time as though he were looking for something.  He would step on the brakes, slowing down, each time he saw a place he could pull off, but then ended up keeping on going each time.

Still, I found the ride very relaxing, and even though he was talking about sex, kinky sex, I didn’t mind.  The whole thing was so far from my own life, that it didn’t matter.  He talked about weird stuff, and kept coming back to the same thing: women dominating men, dog collars, leashes, men eating from dog bowls, men as slaves…”have you ever heard of that?” he asked.

“Yes, there are some strange things out there.”

“Yes,” he said, “slaves.  Isn’t that interesting.  They like to be told what to do, to be treated like slaves.  Some of them wear girl’s clothes, some men even like to wear panties, some wear panties instead of men’s underwear all the time.  You see them walking around and you would never know, but underneath they are wearing panties.  Have you ever heard of that?” he asked, and he was looking at me, and I looked at him.  And I guess my look said everything.

“I’ll bet you’ve worn panties before, haven’t you?” but the look on my face answered his question.

“I guess you know about boys that like to wear panties, don’t you?” he said.  I nodded yes.  “I thought so,” he said.  “I was wondering how long it would take you to admit what you really like.”

“It’s not like you think though,” I said.

“Oh?” he asked.  “Are you wearing panties now?”  I didn’t answer  “You are wearing panties now, aren’t you.  I think you’d like to show them to me.  Wouldn’t you?  You’d like me to see you in your panties, wouldn’t you?  Maybe you should be sitting here now in nothing but your panties.  I bet you’d like that wouldn’t you?”  I looked at him.  The idea really turned me on in a sick, kinky way.  Not that I wanted to do, or would even go through with it, but just the thought of it.  It got me hard.

“You know why I keep pulling off the road don’t you?” he asked.  

And suddenly, I did know, though I hadn’t really thought about it up until then.  But I also didn’t want to admit that I knew, so I didn’t even think about it, didn’t even want to think about it.

Everything was different.  I was aroused.  Everything was sexual, and I realised that he had been trying to turn me on this whole time, but suddenly I was aroused.  I didn’t know what to do, even if I should do anything.

“I think you like this dirty talk, don’t you?” he asked as he reached across and put his big, meaty hand on my now almost hard dick and giving it a big squeeze.  I opened my legs wider involuntarily and then leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes.  “Of course you do,” he said.  “Now put that case of yours in the back and slide over here,” he commanded, and I did just as he told me.  He touched my ass lightly as I turned around to do it, and that just turned the heat up on me.

This man, this big man, burly, in his late 40’s or early 50’s, was not good looking, but he was all man, and suddenly I felt very different.  His hand on my crotch and on my leg felt so different from the little, soft touch of my girlfriend and her tickling fingers.  This was tough, and rough, and so fucking manly.  I didn’t care that he was touching me.  His calloused hands on my thighs made me open my legs farther, and when he commanded me to undo my shorts so he could see this boy who had never worn a dog collar in panties, I did as I was told.

“That’s better, isn’t it?” he asked as he pushed my shorts down to my ankles.  “I think you’re going to like wearing a dog collar,” he said with a laugh.  My throat was feeling dry and thick.  I was outrageously hard, and his huge hand on my erection, touching me through the soft fabric of the panties I was wearing was too much, I was getting so aroused. He made me whimper.

He pulled off at a secluded spot…

P.S. I would love to hear what you think about any of this: is my theory correct?  Is this how we cope?  What has happened with other men who are abused sexually?  How do they cope with the guilt, the shame, the feeling of ‘am I responsible’?  Was I old enough to consent to what was happening to me?  I know the law says ‘no’, but how many of us actually believe?

Are you surprised that the one issue in charity work that I come back to again and again is child sex abuse?  How upsetting it is when people conflate infantilism with sex abuse?  How awful it is that trans people are now being labelled as “groomers”?  There is no greater crime for me in human society than a violation of consent, than the theft of innocence.  None.

I can tell myself that what happened to me wasn’t that bad.  That others have it worse.  But I also know that I have spent most of my life coping with it, feeling its fallout.  It’s a kind of toxicity that just gets in and doesn’t go away without a lot of work.