Growing Up Denying I Was Gay 7
Chapter 7: After School with Alex
Author's notes: The chapters of this book were originally written and published as individual short stories, and they are all true stories from my life. Presenting them here, I have attempted to put them into some sensible chronological order, based on the age I was that the encounters with the other person began. I recall that my first writing of these events required me to remember many things that were painful and that I had tried to forget. While this chapter and the ones before it were lighthearted and innocent, as I got older I began to feel more and more guilty and conflicted with myself and my "twisted" desires. I hope you enjoy these memories of my childhood. You may contact me at bradhealey@rocketmail.com.
*****
There is no question that I was sexually precocious, always on the lookout for a social adventure, mostly involving other boys. Sure, I had a number of sexual encounters with girls during adolescence, but I remember almost nothing about them in any detail, and wouldn't bother to write them out this carefully if I did. I don't even remember the name of the first girl I kissed, though I do remember how relieved I was when it finally happened. I messed around with girls because I knew I was SUPPOSED to. I messed around with other boys because I was driven internally that way and simply couldn't help myself. High School was the time when I first began to realize that I had to somehow change my attraction from boys to girls, or I was going to end up a failure.
The prospects of entering high school were tremendously exciting for me. The chance to meet all sorts of new kids who had come from other nearby feeder schools was welcome stimulation for my socially adventurous personality. In my freshman foreign language class I found that meeting all the new boys and having a good time with them became a far more important goal to me than actually learning to speak French. One of these new guys was a very tall, giant of a boy named Alex. Alex had a long Russian last name, one with lots of consonants strung together so that during roll call, without fail, teachers always paused and stumbled over it as they tried to pronounce it. As is the case with so many of us with ethnic backgrounds in America, the fact that Alex's family were foreign born was completely accepted by the other kids. It was very common growing up to have friends with parents who still spoke English with an accent from their foreign places of birth, and everyone accepted Alex as being just as American as the rest of us.
Alex had layered shaggy, straight dark blond hair, parted in the middle and sparkling blue eyes that were lighter towards the outside with starbursts of darker blue toward the center. His complexion was rather fair and he had perfectly straight white teeth, which he showed when he laughed -- and that was pretty frequently. I found I liked sitting near Alex near the back of the room because he never failed to make me laugh with immature and irreverent comments made under his breath at the expense of teacher and other classmates. The most striking thing about Alex was his physical size, though. At well over six feet tall with broad shoulders and huge feet and hands, Alex was a marvel to me. Remember, at fourteen most of us boys were just starting to grow taller, and those who weren't were starting to get worried that they might be little boys forever while they watched their classmates around them morph into men. I was on the slightly late-bloomer end of the scale, having just started to get taller that past summer. I might have shaved my upper lip once by then, but if I did it was more out of desire than necessity. I was a rather undeveloped five foot four, lacking muscle tone and could have easily passed for twelve if I wanted to. I had a little hair under my arms -- if you got really close and looked very carefully you could see it, it was there-- honest. And I had grown some downy fuzz on my shins for the first time, though it was usually covered by the long white, striped tube socks that nearly all boys wore in the mid 1970's.
Looking at myself naked in the mirror after a shower, I proudly noted that I had cultivated a noticeable small patch of dark hair above my penis, and my testicles had begun to hang lower. My penis grew stiff and erect at the slightest provocation, regardless of the time or place. The powerful urge to masturbate had grown exponentially stronger in the past months, and I found I needed relief through orgasm several times a day, including sometimes in the morning before school. I saw this is a positive sign of my emerging virility, and I excitedly imagined I'd be a man soon.
A man almost like Alex was already. Looking back, my fascination with him was that he was awkwardly stuck somewhere in between child and adult. Like a clumsy colt, he didn't seem comfortable in his huge body, needing to duck his head at the very last second under doorways and in staircases; uncomfortably folding himself into the student desks we used with the writing surface bolted to the chair arm. All knees, elbows; giant hands and feet, he looked all the more uncomfortable because he was left handed and these desks were designed for those of us who were right handed, so that as he worked his left elbow stuck out at an odd angle like a giant bird wing. Alex had no visible hair on his massively fair smooth arms, and a pencil was all but lost in his huge grip as he scratched on his paper, the red tip of his tongue working in and out of his mouth in his concentration.
While I was attracted to many boys, mostly those who were smaller and slim like me, I was more than captivated by Alex's stature. I wasn't sexually drawn to him and didn't fantasize about him at all like I did with so many others, but seeing him lumbering awkwardly down the hall sometimes banging into lockers as he maneuvered poorly, standing more than a head and a half taller than the next tallest ninth-grade boy was really a fascinating sight to me. Sometimes he'd walk behind me and place his massive hands on my smaller shoulders and playfully steer me as I walked in the hallway. I didn't resist, but I could feel his shear strength and massive weight in his light touch. I suspect if I had resisted he probably would not have even noticed at all. Again looking back, there were certainly other boys in the high school as big as Alex, but they were all older. The fact that we were the same age and there was such an incredible size difference between us was the most amazing to me.
One day Alex casually suggested "Hey, want to come to my house after school?" I was sort of surprised, because while we were social acquaintances he wasn't interested in the sports I played, or in hobbies that I was fond of.
"What would we do?" I asked hesitantly.
"I dunno. Just hang out and mess around I guess" he replied.
I thought about his proposal. I suppose if we hung out and didn't have much in common it would only be a couple of hours and I could live with that.
"I'll have to ask my mother," I replied. "I'll need her to pick me up afterwards"
We picked a date early in the next week, and I learned that he lived nearby and walked to and from school. "You won't forget to ask?" he asked me several times that day and the next, which struck me as funny, almost like he was afraid I was planning to back out or change my mind.
"Geez, Give me a break. I won't forget", I promised.
It was late fall, and I remember wearing my lightweight red Phillies jacket as we met after school by the statue of the Bobcat, our school mascot. Alex carried his books under his arm and his gym bag in the other hand. We walked along the tree-lined streets, kicking the orange and yellow leaves on the sidewalk as we passed along, engaged in conversation. This was the first time I had talked to Alex alone and outside of the classroom. In class, our activities were structured, there were mostly only time for one liners slipped in under our voices between the teacher's words. But now we had time to talk, and I didn't have much to say.
Alex started quizzing me on what girls I thought were cute. This was normal enough, except that I didn't give girls more than a passing thought (at least not just yet, I imagined. That would come in time, I secretly hoped.) So, I couldn't really hold up my end of the conversation. If pressed, the girls I liked were the ones who most looked like boys, those with short bobbed hair, almost flat-chested, athletic built and without makeup; those who had bruises showing on their non-nyloned legs, proud purple and blue badges earned on the girls' hockey or lacrosse fields. My slight attraction towards these types girls was confusing to me.... And it was shameful to admit to the other boys that I liked this look.
"Ewwwwww!" they would shriek when I admitted my preference. "HER???? She looks like a BOY! Maybe she IS a boy!" Blushing red and staring at the ground, I would be so ashamed that I'd defer weakly, as the others tossed names back and forth of those girls with tight sweaters stretched over bulging bosoms, Capri pants hugging curvaceous hips, red lipsticked and with coiffed hair. My cheeks would burn as I waited for the conversation to run out of gas and change direction, as I knew it soon would. Having it called out that the girls I preferred looked more like BOYS hit far too close to home for me.
Not wanting to subject myself to humiliation, I lied and told Alex that I had a girlfriend in another town who went to another school. When he pried for details, I told him we had met at the seashore in the summer. He seemed satisfied, and then he told me that sometimes in the summer, a girl who was his ten nine or ten-year-old neighbor would sometimes swim naked in her backyard pool, and once actually knocked on his back door while totally in the buff. Alex said that he found watching her exciting and that sometimes he'd have a boner. In fact, he admitted that just thinking about this was giving him a boner right now.
I was struck speechless. If my admission that field hockey girls were the ones attractive to me was shameful to admit to the other boys, Alex's admission that a naked ten-year-old girl gave him a boner was off the shame-scale. Those same teasing boys might have even been rendered temporarily mute by his comment before they would have attacked for the kill. Now, I wasn't about to make fun of Alex, but new, unanswered questions raced through my mind.
Was he serious? Was he testing me to see how I would react? Is it possible that he really was turned on by this little girl, was ashamed of it and was confessing this secretly to me? Or was he so out of touch with the society of culture of teenage boys that he actually thought it was OK to admit such a shocking thing? None of these prospects were especially good ones, to my thinking.
"I am having a hard time walking with a boner", he said. "Maybe we should talk about something else." I glanced over and saw that he indeed have a large tent-like protrusion pushing out the front of his corduroys as we walked. Now, I considered myself a helpless slave to my unpredictable and frequent embarrassing erections. But even I didn't have them while I was walking along in full stride. This to me was somewhat incredible. We changed the topic to something more mundane, and eventually we arrived at Alex's back door.
We stopped as he fumbled in his pocket for his keys. "Why does your Mom keep the door locked?" I asked.
"Because she's not home. She works."
I was shocked. "Does your dad work too?", I asked, unbelieving that we were going alone into an empty house.
"Sure said Alex. He's at work too. And my brother is at college."
My senses escalated to a yellow-alert status. I knew that there was no way that my mother would allow me to have friends over from school when no one was home. So, either Alex's parents were more liberal, or more likely he hadn't asked at all and I was there without their permission!
"Do you want a Coke?" Alex asked, opening the back door making a beeline for the refrigerator while taking a Hershey Bar from a bowl on the countertop.
My alert level elevated another full notch. In my house, drinking soda pop or eating candy on weekdays was strictly forbidden. Even thinking about it was a sin. Alex pulled two cans of Cola out of the fridge and tossed one to me as he opened his. I felt guilty as I held the cold, wet can in my hand.
Alex led the way to the living room, and flopped down in one chair while he motioned me to sit in another across the room. I did, head buzzing with excitement as I sat down and opened my can of Coke too. I don't remember what we talked about, just that I was excited and nervous and on alert, being in such unfamiliar surroundings. Alex talked about things and I barely heard him, answering with brief "yes" and "I dunno's"
Then these words cut through the air and shocked me boldly awake.
"Do you want to go upstairs and jerk off?"
With a sudden head-rush I sat in stunned silence, my heart suddenly hammering in my eardrums, forgetting to breathe. Now, I thought I was aggressive... but this took the cake. Alex certainly wasn't shy or into wasting time!
"Sure" I heard my voice squeak. "I'd like to."
"Let's go upstairs then," Alex ordered, walking past me towards the green-carpeted staircase. I numbly followed. I had never done anything like this. I was always the leader, and others followed me. I wondered if the boys I had seduced felt like I did at that moment--afraid but excited and anticipating at the same time.
Alex had to duck his head as we went up the stairs. I held the railings on both sides as I climbed behind him. It suddenly occurred to me that Alex had planned this afternoon's activities out in advance; just as I would have done with a boy I was attracted to. It never occurred to me before then that Alex was attracted to me... I was so used to myself being attracted to straight and unobtainable athletic boys. Getting them to be sexual with me involved dozens of steps of meticulous planning and a high degree of death-defying risk. At any point even the most careful plan could crash and burn, destroying one's life forever. Having other boys talk about you behind your back, saying that you were gay was the most brutal kind of death... it was one that would last every day for the rest of high school for sure. When I made a pass at another boy it was done after slow, careful consideration and with torturous slowness, step by cautious step. I always mapped an escape route... so that if he rebuffed my early motions I could still make it seem like a simple misunderstanding, and escape while saving face. Alex, on the other hand, had laid the cards right on the table. I wondered if I had been too easy a target to pick out.
My emotions were conflicted. I was excited, a little frightened and amazed at the same time. Alex had set out to seduce me. He had chosen ME, and I imagined that he must have felt many of the same emotions that I often felt before such an adventure... I wonder when he first got the idea that I might be a willing partner: fantasizing at night in bed, planning how he'd get me to be alone with him, then how he'd ask me to do it. I had never suspected, but as I trailed him up the stairs it was clear he was going to get his wish... he'd masturbate with me. I wondered if he fantasized about other boys too... or better yet if he'd admit to doing the same thing with other classmates I knew.
We entered his bedroom and we sat on the edge of his mattress. We both inherently knew the drill, I guess. Unbutton, unzip, and push them down. I was a little uncomfortable, as this wasn't my style; I preferred a slower seduction with suggestive sexual conversation, maybe with some adult magazines strewn about to set the mood. But, this wasn't my dance... Alex was leading and I had decided to follow.
Sitting on the edge of the bed I fumbled with my buttons and pushed my pants down allowing my thin, stiff penis to pop out of my trousers and newly freed, spring nakedly out in front of me. I watched Alex do the same--but as he pushed down his boxers I felt an unbelievable mental electric shock that is difficult to explain. It's the same shock you feel when you see something that you don't expect, like in a horror movie when the beautiful girl opens her birthday present and finds a human head inside the box, or when you watch a car crash happen in screaming slow motion right in front of you. In this case, my shock came from seeing the biggest hard dick I had ever seen in my life, looming erect, bobbing menacingly over Alex's abdomen. I gaped at this monster penis, as thick around (I imagined) as my wrist and swollen so tight and full it looked ready to burst. Alex's testicles seemed the size of ripe plums as they hung down between his slightly spread legs, and his entire area was covered by bushels of light brown hair that trailed from his pubic area up towards his belly button, stopping just short of that mark. He had pulled his shirt up showing that his stomach and massive chest were still surprisingly hairless, pink and smooth. Amazingly, he was half boy, half man.
I was speechless as I gazed at this sight, as I had never imagined another boy my age could be equipped in such a way. I concluded that Alex was larger than my FATHER for certain, my only other point of reference, as I often sneaked peeks at him dressing when I was a little boy.
Looking up at Alex's face, I could see he was totally fixated on my equipment, staring lustfully at my erect nakedness, propped up on his elbows as he stared at my shamefully tiny toy cock.
"Let's do each other", Alex suggested and reached out for my penis. I didn't restrain him, but again I was surprised by his aggressiveness as he fondled me all over with his huge paw. In turn, I meekly reached out towards his awesome monster, wrapping my whole hand around it and finding it hot, throbbing and hard as a bat. His glans was swollen and red and seemed the size of an apple to me, and while the tender skin of it gave slightly sponge-like under my touch, it sprung back as soon as I moved my finger away and seemed ready to burst like a dangerously overfilled balloon. Pushing it out and away from his body it seemed more to me like I was handling a baby's arm, and I imagined what it would be like to masturbate such an enormous tool-- a lot more work than it was for me to jerk on my little one, I imagined.
By now Alex was feeling my privates all over, and had run his hands down to cup my balls. He rolled them around in his hands slightly roughly, and I noticed that they looked like little marbles in his grasp. Alex was breathing heavily with lust, and it was hard for me to remember I was with someone my very own age.
"Do you masturbate a lot?" I asked Alex as he examined my penis, spreading his fingers over it from tip to base.
"Yes," said Alex. "Every day for sure. And I like it best when my big brother comes into my bedroom with his already sticking out of his unzipped pants because I know he is ready for us to do it together." I was shocked by this piece of news, offered up so willingly by my friend.
"You do it with your BROTHER?" I asked with audible surprise.
"Yes. We do each other. It is awesome"
"WHAT do you do together?" I wondered aloud.
"Everything..." he grinned, "EVERYTHING".
At that stage of my life I had only been masturbating a little over a year, and I recall that my technique was not very highly developed yet. Then, I would rub my cock with my open palm, back and forth rapidly, never touching the back of it while I rubbed. Alex used a full-fist grip on his monster, and I noted as he stroked that there would have been room for his hand on there and room for one of my hands as well. Looking at his face I watched him lustfully stare at my masturbation technique, eyes glued to my progress. His giant hand bobbed up and down while mine rubbed quickly back and forth as we lay hip to hip on his bedspread, and I knew that as a polite guest I should offer to come first.
Soon I felt the familiar pressure building in my loins. "Ohh! Oooh!" I cried out. "Here it comes!" Rubbing faster with my left hand I pulled up my shirt with my right just in the nick of time as three or four small, thin jets of whitish liquid squirted out of my cock and landed only a few inches up my belly, below my navel.
I lay back and watched Alex, staring at my small emission and he quickened his frenzied jerking, brutally yanking his giant war club by its root. Suddenly he groaned and I was amazed to see sudden thick globs of lumpy cum leaping out of his cannon, shooting all over his chest and covering his hands in thick ribbons and ropes. It made sense, I guess, that such a large hose made so much spray, but one again it exceeded my imagination. Alex lay back too, breathing heavily as heavy gobs of his semen glistened all over his torso, and dripped lewdly from the doorknob-like head of his cock.
"Tissues" I asked quietly and hopefully, after just a short, respectful moment of silence.
"Huh?" he grunted thickly.
"Do you have any tissues? You know..."
"Not any in my bedroom," said Alex.
This didn't make any sense to me. If he and his big brother were regularly masturbating together, it didn't seem reasonable that Alex wouldn't have a big box of Kleenex right by his bed. Hell, I went through so many of them by myself that I was sure my mother would have noticed a long time ago. I was still wondering about this when Alex leaned over and with a glint in his eyes, smiled and said "My brother and I take care of things ourselves..." and opening his mouth he sucked my wet cock inside, then proceeded one by one to lap up each of the jets of semen that streaked and dotted my smooth abdomen. The look on his face was animal lust, and I could see his jaws moving as he rolled my jizz around on his tongue to taste it better before he swallowed it down. I was dumbstruck. I watched him suck my deflating cock into his mouth again, and after he slurped it around into his mouth I saw it emerge damp but nearly clean.
Now, I had tasted some jizz before, having enjoyed Jake's on an occasion or two, but my stomach flopped at the thought of tasking Alex's cum. I looked at the sticky, gluey gobs of it that were splattered everywhere on his ample belly, and the thick string of it that connected his cockhead with a blobby pool of it that lay beneath it on his furry abdomen, and for an instant I thought I might vomit.
"Um... do you have a Kleenex?" I asked hopefully, self conscious at how high my voice squeaked, making no motion at all to return to him the clean-up favor that he had bestowed on me.
"Oh sure, yeah" said Alex, struggling to his feet, pants still bunched down around his knees. "Follow me"
Together we waddled to the hall bathroom, Alex in front and me behind, our wet penises jutting out before us. Taking a handful from the box on top of the toilet, we cleaned up hurriedly and without a word between us. No matter how hard I tried to block it out, I vividly envisioned Alex and his brother lapping up and gulping down each other's semen on that bed, night after night, doing the job so thoroughly that a tissue was never even used, calculating how many gallons each must have swallowed by now. And just now standing there in the hall bathroom so exposed with my pants around my ankles I felt so vulnerable, ashamed and suddenly rather sick to my stomach.
I don't remember much about what happened after that. It was slightly uncomfortable as we hadn't much to talk about, and Alex didn't seem as friendly as before. We bounced a basketball on his driveway and waited for my Mom to come pick me up. When she did, she asked me if I had a good time, and I told her that I did, "sort of..." but that I probably wouldn't be coming back anytime soon.
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Looking back on this experience and thinking about the emotions I had experienced, I had several insights. First, it felt somehow secretly good to know that Alex lusted after me. I was perversely honored that he had chosen me to seduce. Secondly, I couldn't help but notice that Alex was colder to me in the weeks afterwards than before. I identified with this behavior more as time went on, as I too would feel shame and anger after I allowed myself "again" to be drawn by my lust and to have acted out uncontrollably having sex with another boy. I suspected I shared Alex's pain, as like me, he likely desperately yearned to be straight and normal--but that inside, we were both defective and twisted, preferring the warm forbidden flesh of other boys to having normal, acceptable yearnings for beautiful girls.
I also compared my seduction by Alex to my ongoing illicit sexual relationship with my younger, smaller friend Jake. I wondered if Jake felt at all about my aggression like I did about Alex's... slightly afraid and excited, willing, but not really liking the experience in the end. I consoled myself with the feeling that Jake and I seemed to often end up in situations where we were alone together, after the others had gone home, and that in any one of these situations he could have chosen to leave sooner, ahead of the others. Instead, it seemed he often purposely lingered behind as the others went home, never resisting as I approached him when we were finally alone, putting my arms around him in an illicit embrace then undressing him and making love to him in my bedroom, in the laundry room or in the soft grass behind the shed in the back yard.
Finally, there was the size of Alex's penis. In retrospect, it was probably no bigger than that of any other fully-grown man's of six-foot-three would have been. Alex was just a mile or two ahead of me in the biological physical development lottery, and at barely fourteen, I had nothing to compare him to except for other boys my age or slightly younger that I had experimented with, all of whom were equipped more or less like me.
*******
Attending my 25th High School reunion a couple of years ago, I learned Alex had died in an accident only a year before. A pretty girl whom I had dated in high school and who was also Alex's friend broke the news to me. "By the way," she said. "He finally came out that he was gay. He was much happier after that".
I smiled sardonically to myself. The fact that Alex was gay was no certainly no secret to me, though we never discussed it. I was glad he had come to terms with his orientation before he had died, and wondered what my former girlfriend would have thought if she found out that I had finally accepted that I was gay too? I resisted the urge to spill the beans out of respect for my wife and family--yes, I am married still today and happily so. I just wish I had been able to sort out all of these confusing feelings back then, when it counted for so much.