Subject: coming out...  five years later (long)
From: tim@banquo.csp.ee.memphis.edu (Tim Wilson)
Date: 08 Jun 1995 03:10:00 GMT

I was born an expert cocksucker.

No, wait.  That line, or something very close to it -- "I have always
been an expert cocksucker."  "By the time I was fourteen, I knew that
I was an expert cocksucker." -- is supposed to being my autobiography,
and that's not what this piece is. 

I came out almost exactly five years ago.  "Came out" in the coming
out to family, friends, and co-workers and in the started-going-out-
to-bars senses.  My real, no shit, coming-out-to-myself coming out
took place in the summer of 1984, in the Club Baths of Hartford,
Connecticuit, when I was being fucked by this studly bronzed young man
with a big dick while a crowd of guys stood around and jacked off.
"Home", I thought.  

I didn't go back "home" for a while, though.  I was scared.  A few
weeks after that, I read an article in the Boston _Globe_ saying that
AIDS was definitely correlated with anal sex, so I had one of those
awful "I'm gonna die" experiences.  I didn't.

I spent the next five years in the same place I'd spent the previous
five or so.  The closet.  I'd been fairly sexually active, regardless
of where I'd lived, since sometime in 1978 when I lived in Nashville.
I remember picking up "hustlers" (runaways) and paying them $10 to
blow them.  I cruised the mall bathrooms.  I discovered peep shows,
and I spent a good amount of time in them.  

I didn't have any problem being sexually active, but I had a big
problem when it came to talking about it.  From even before 1978 (oh,
let's go back to, say, the tenth grade in 1971 and 1972), I'd
developed the split between what I did sexually and what I talked
about and with whom I talked about it.  I had a gay friend and
roommate during those high school years, Mark Dyer (from Louisville,
Kentucky (KY, appropriately enough) though I think he'd moved to LA,
and if anyone's ever known or knows him, I'd sure love to hear about
it).  

He wore tight white Levi's like they were a pair of capri pants.  I
can still see him in his dorm room, lipsyncing some Diana Ross song,
doing all the gestures, wiggling his butt seductively.  We went out to
a gay bar one time.  Some bar in Nashville was having the Miss Gay
Tennessee contest, and some cousin of his was in it, so there I was, a
pudgy sixteen year old (we drove up in my Gremlin.  I think we went to
see _Lady_Sings_the_Blues_ that night, too, as well as cruise
Centennial Park in Nashville.  I remember some guy playing with my
dick (I was too scared to get a boner), going on about what an awful
life it was and not to do it) there I was in a gay bar with lots of
drag queens, and all I really wanted to do was go back to my home town
and snuggle up next to my best friend and suck on his uncut dick.
Still, Mark was the only person from that time that I talked about
being gay about, though I doubt if I used the word.  (He once arranged
a four-way (with a kid we'd both done, another gay student, himself,
and me) in the school library)

I had my first tearoom experience while I was in high school, too.  I
was in Florida visiting with my parents, and I had to take my car (the
Gremlin with Levi's package -- I was born butch) to get it repaired,
so I walked around what was then downtown Orlando while I waited, and
I found the Sears bathroom.  I'd spent the eighth and ninth grades at
a prep school in central Florida, and a rumor was that our English
teacher, Uncle Willy (Mr. Wilcutt), had gotten caught sucking cock in
a Sears bathroom somehere (Coral Gables.  Yeah, I know it's not in
central Florida, but the kid spreading the rumor claimed he saw him
there).  

So I went to check it out, and there on the walls was the message to
"Be here at 1:00 o'clock for a blow job."  So, timidly and scared, I
was there at one.  I ended up sucking this guy off at the urinal.  He
said, "Go on, you want it", and I went down on him, even if he was
wearing what I thought was really weird underwear (skimpy briefs.  My
lover wears 'em, but I was a scared kid then).

I got caught fucking another boy in the ass while I was in high
school, and I got squealed on for trying to seduce another young man.
The Headmaster told me that I couldn't get a security clearance and, 
I'd never be able to hold a high paying job if I was out as a
homosexual.  But, he didn't throw me out of school, and he didn't
squeal to my parents (like he would've.  When I almost got thrown out
for smoking pot, he lied to my parents and told them it was for
drinking, because he didn't think my father would understand.  My
father would probably have related, what's with his alcohol abuse and
all the librium and valium he did, and I've never been able to think
that what the wormy headmaster did was right, because it denied my
father one little bit of myself.  My dad died the next year, so he
never knew from my own voice that I was a queer; I don't know if he
suspected anything.

I smoked a *lot* of pot back then.  It might've saved my life, but the
price I paid was dear.  I learned how not to feel.  I learned how not
to feel hated because I was a homosexual, because I learned not to
feel anything.  Uptight?  Smoke a joint, do a bong.  I put off dealing
with emotional reality for something close to fifteen years, because I
started smoking pot heavily the summer after I graduated from high
school (that was 1974 for those keeping score), and I kept it up well
into the 1980s.  I had a succession of crushes on straight friends,
one or two of which I had sex with more than once, but DON'T TALK
ABOUT IT.

There's also this whole shpiel about going to MIT, and flunking out
from MIT (actually, I negotiated a withdrawl before I flunked out).  I
bought some synthesizers after I dropped out, and I moved to where my
mom had moved to in Polk County, Florida.  Right before moving back, I
took a Christmas trip down there with a friend.  We were pot smoking
buddies.  I remember blowing him at his parents' house on Long Island
after several weeks of trying to get into his pants.  When we got back
to Boston, he apparently told his girlfriend, and I was persona non
gratta after that.

The first few months in Florida were sort of like what I imagine
recovering from a mental breakdown in like.  I didn't do much.  I
didn't smoke pot for a while (like a month or so).  I started
practicing the keyboards a lot.  Then, one day, there was a story in
the Tampa _Tribune_ that said there were hustlers working Kennedy
Boulevard.  I couldn't imagine.  There were boys you could pay to have
sex with!  

I was there within a week, getting a blowjob from Jesus (that's
Hay-soos, ya heathens) for $10.  I went back again, but the next guy
charged too much, had a little-bitty dick, and was "straight".  He
just wanted to lay back and let me suck him.  The things we don't
value at the times we experience them.

I moved back to Tennessee, where I discovered peep shows and more
street sex.  I once got a blow job from what had to have been a TS
hooker.  Her name was "Loletha".  "Oh, no, don't touch Loletha's
pussy, honey."  This was a blow job in the company pickup truck.  

I had a lot of fun in Nashville.  I played a lot, but almost always at
the peep show (occasionally I'd meet someone at the park).  I took
someone home once, right after I'd moved there, but I got completely
freaked out when I realized I'd have to talk to them.  I went through
a horrible crush on a straight roommate, too.  Through it all, one
thing was constant.  Staying stoned.  Did a shitload of LSD, too.

I took a vacation to Florida to see my folks (my mom had remarried),
and I remember being a total pig.  I picked up a runaway hitchhiker
someplace in Georgia.  We got drunk, and he fucked me, and I gave him
$20 dollars.  I sucked cock and got fucked in the peep shows in
Orlando and Daytona (there were some at both places, then), and I did
it in the bathroom on the boardwalk on Daytona Beach.  I finally
realized there that straight roommate wasn't even gonna get it on with
me, so when I got back I broke up the band that we were both in, and I
made my plans to try to go back to school.

So, in the fall of 1982 at the age of 25, I went back to MIT and
Boston.  I didn't have sex until Veteran's Day, almost three months
later.  I kept seeing the numbers 4-266 over urinals across campus,
and I knew what it meant, but it wasn't until that night that I
finally went to that room, that infamous room, and I found a home away
from home.

I had a lot of sex there over the next twelve years.  I think there
are probably people reading this that I had sex with in that (or some
other) MIT bathroom.  I'd roll a joint, go over to the Great Court
(yeah, I know, they decided that it should be called Killian Court,
but it'll always be the Great Court to me), sit on those slabs of
marble, get high, then go in and cruise.

I had a war with one MIT cop.  He'd always hassle me, and I'd always
pull my "I'm a student" crap.  He'd pull up the blinds and tie them up
high, and I'd climb up on the radiator and let them back down.

Sometime, I think it was 1987 or so, I discovered phone sex.  Not "I'm
a big fat persian with a broken leg and I'm sitting on the porch
alone" kind of phone sex, but the kind where you actually can meet
people.  At first I lurked (there was no FAQ to read as far as I
know), and I was flabbagasted to hear people give out their phone
numbers to a group of strangers.  And there was this "Wanna go
private?" business.  I finally hooked up with someone late one
Saturday night, and he came over, and I blew him even though he was
drunk and didn't get hard until right before he came and was pretty
much a shithead.  

For a while, most of the phone sex tricks were here now, gone as soon
as they came.  It didn't matter to me whether they were openly gay or
closeted, and at times I'd entertain conversation for a while, but I
wasn't interested in a relationship (I didn't think it was possible).
Sometimes I'd have two or three tricks in a day/night/whatever that
blur of a time frame was in which I'd sit on the phone and cruise
("I'm a bottom.  I like to suck dick and get fucked"), smoke some pot,
jack off.  And smoke cigarettes.  I smoked a lot of cigarettes.
(Sometimes I'd even watch Captain Kangaroo.)

I did start to refer to myself as gay because of phone sex.  "Are you
gay or bi?" was a frequent question, and I started saying that I was
gay, because I'd lost all interest or pretense of interest or whatever
it was that had once, when I was fifteen years old, to label myself as
bi.  

One rainy day, I met a guy on the tool line (1-550-TOOL.  I made them
a bunch of money), and I went over to his place in Sommerville, and he
fucked me silly.  Then he wanted to talk.  He wondered where I was in
coming out.  I told him about the bath house, about feeling at home
that one time.  He worked for _The_Guide_, and he gave me some free
issues, and he told me about what it was like to come out to parents
and the like.  I think that was one of the first times I started to
think about the issue in terms of "when" instead of "never".  

1989 was a watershed year.  I made a trip in September to California
to see a straight friend on whom I had a crush.  Let's just remind
ourselves why they're called "crushes".  After that, I quit smoking
pot for the first real time.  My experience has been that it takes six
or so months for the emotions to fully come back into play after years
of heavy pot smoking.  

The spring of 1990 was eventful.  I actually slept with someone.
(Actually, I'd slept with someone the previous summer, but it was
sufficiently weird as to defy belief.  I met a guy at (you guessed it)
a peep show, this one in Lowell, Massachusetts (Tower News, if
anyone's been there).  He wanted me to come back to my place, so he
followed me back to Cambridge.  Then he wanted me to tie him up, but I
didn't have any rope (I didn't even know that I had a kinky side,
then).  He ended up sleeping over, but I had to get rid of him the
next morning because I was going to the beach with friends.  I don't
think I thought about him for years.)  

So, I met a guy on the phone, and we made a date, and he came over.
He wanted me to tie him up, but I still didn't have any rope, so I
used shoe laces.  He slept like that.  *He* got the big crush, and I
was still not ready to relate (and I'm not sure I'd've wanted to
related to him, anyhow).  

Over the course of that spring, I worked my way up to coming out.  I
came out to a former office mate, once I realized that he was gay.  I
got involved, minimally, in DDAMIT:  Defeat Discrimination at MIT
(gays in ROTC, years before the gays in the military issue).  I let
this nice guy date me for a while.  

I met a man named Michael at the Blue Hills one day.  He was tall and
studly and muscular, and he had a huge dick and I liked sucking on it.
I gave him my number after we played, and I thought about him a lot.
And he called me one day.  And he came over and played.  And he said
he'd call me again.

But he didn't.  (He's one of the guys who, er, straightened me out
about "straight acting".  He gave me such a glare.  I'll never forget
it, that look of how *hurt* he was that I'd try to distance myself
from who I was and who he was by using such a term.  It still bugs me
that people just don't get the hurtful aspect of that term.)

I knew that he went to The Ramrod sometimes, so, the Thursday night
before Pride, in June of 1990, I went to The Ramrod.  And I was Home,
again.  I was as comfortable there, more comfortable there, as I was
at any peep show, as I was at any cruisy space.  I didn't have to
worry about getting arrested for being there, and I could drink.  Of
course, by that time there weren't any real backrooms (or there
weren't for a while), so *playing* at The Ramrod wasn't happening, but
at least one could meet people.  I remember talking to several guys
that night, and I remember seeing my first leather trick (we'd played
only a few weeks before:  He put the hood on my head and the cuffs on
my hands).

That Saturday, I made it to Pride.  I missed the parade, but I did get
to the Common.  I saw some people I knew, and I took the opportunity
to out myself to them.

A week or so later, a little undergraduate jerk in my lab was running
his mouth off about Barney Frank, and I was getting pissed.  The next
day, I came in and came out to my professor.  "I'm gonna kill TomJay
because of this stupid crap he's saying about Barney Frank.  It's
really irked me, because  I'm gay."  The prof said he and his
wife had figured as much.  I came out to the other grad students in
the lab and the obnoxious undergrad that same day.  

Within a week, I took a road trip to see my mom (step dad was on his
deathbed) and each of my brothers.  And I came out to all of them.

The change was heady.  For years, years, it'd been "If they only
knew".  It'd been thinking "How can you tell that joke" while trying
to act like it was funny.  It'd been "I'll tell if someone'll ask" but
then going out of my way to ensure that they'd never, ever ask.  In
the course of three weeks or so in June, that part of my life was gone
forever.  

Thankfully, the play didn't stop.  I think I was worried that all that
good sex would go away if I came out.  It didn't.  Instead, it was
augmented by friends and, er, family.  I also discovered that I very
much wanted to love a man and be loved by a man.  And not just for one
night (or ten minutes) at a time (as much fun as those ten minutes can
be).  Three relationships later, I'm still working on it, but I'm
optimistic.  

There's so much more that's happened since coming out.  A leather
contest (second runner up), working at "Innovations in Leather" (then
it was in Boston), soc.motss, the Boston motss crowd, a real fight
with the MIT cops about MIT's most famous cruisy bathroom (yelling at
cops who are acting like jerks in a situation where they can't bean
you is fun).  

I've struggled with the pot thing (been close to a year without this
time, and I've gotten my world structured so that I don't have to deal
with do-I?/don't-I? on a daily basis).  I'm still struggling with the
aftermath of having shut down emotionally for over fifteen years.
Sometimes, my emotionally responses are just inappropriate, usually in
magnitude.  I like feeling, even when that feeling is hurt.  I'd
rather hurt when it's the appropriate feeling than pretend that
nothing's the matter.

It's been five years, too, without a cigarette.  I quit a couple of
weeks after coming out.  I figured the time to quit was the time I
started going to smokey smelly bars.  Maybe I get my nicotine fixes
there (I don't always.  I still want the nasty things regularly,
particularly in stressful times).

I'm happy here in Memphis.  I've a wonderful lover who treats me well
and cares about me.  His coming out experiences compliment mine and
involve similar locales (a rest area is like a peep show), though he
got his shit together at a much younger age.

And, I'm still, and always have been, an expert cocksucker.  I always
hope to be one, even if it makes me an obnoxious old troll looked down
upon by snotty young men.  And like any aging motsser, I'm getting
larger ever day.  
 
I guess this was an autobiography.  Was it sufficiently stolid?