Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2015 21:57:20 -0800
From: Mira Boar <mihraboar@gmail.com>
Subject: Fathers by Proxy

I was fucked for the first time by the husband of my babysitter, and later,
I became best friends with his son (who was my age) just so I could spend
more time with him.  We had been fooling around since I was in
kindergarten, and being too young to remember exactly, he must have taken a
while to work up to it.  It took me months to get used to it once he
started, but we had almost every day after school to try (at the time it
felt like forever), but once I did get used to the feeling, I craved it and
would create situations where we could spend time alone so he could fuck
me. We spent years sneaking around until I was 17 and he passed due to
complications with diabetes.

When I was 10, I had been living off and on with my grandparents for a
couple of years. During church one day, I whispered to my grandmother
asking what the word masturbation meant when it was being talked about as
part of the sermon. My grandmother told me my grandfather would talk to me
about it later at home. She arranged for him and me to be alone in the
house do he could talk about it, man to man. My grandfather started
explaining it, and I recognized it as something I had been doing for a long
time already, with my best friend's father and a couple of other men, some
of whom my best friend's dad took me to meet, and some I met independently
through church. My grandfather was gay, though I didn't really understand
that word either, even though I had a vague understanding he lived with a
man who died from cancer before he married my grandmother.  I was a kid
though, and I didn't put two and two together until my early teens.

While he was explaining, I thought I was being super sly trying to get him
to *show* me, pretending I didn't understand. I recall him being pretty
hesitant, pretty evasive really, now I look back on it, but he didn't stop
the conversation.  After talking to me for awhile, he told me if I quietly
got into bed with him that night (my grandparents slept in different
rooms), he would talk to me more about it because my grandmother was due
home soon.

That night I crawled into bed with my grandfather under the covers, and he
showed me what masturbation was. And I showed him a little bit about what I
knew. He wanted to know how I knew these things, but I wouldn't tell him
the truth. I just told him I learned from older boys in school, the
standard lie I had been drilled to give if anyone ever suspected anything.
He warned me about them, and said I was better off only doing this with
him. I promised him I would, though I was lying, since I was also still
spending time with my best friend's dad and the men he introduced me to. I
still regret not ever telling either of them the truth about each other. It
was so drilled into me to keep the secret, I always did.

Now, decades later, I still crave that feeling of being with them. I miss
being picked up and being set down in my best friend's dad's lap as he
pushed into me.  I miss feeling enveloped by his heat as he fully embraced
me, sliding me up and down on him.  He always used to hold me during and
after, and tell me what a good and strong boy I was and how much he loved
me.  As I got older, he'd still hold me during and after fucking me, always
reminding me I was his secret and his true love.

I sorely miss my grandfather, who passed in 2002. He loved me like a
father, and always believed in me. Our sex stopped when I moved away to
college, and he passed away before I graduated. Sex with him cemented our
relationship, it was special, and he doted on me even as he pushed me to be
more responsible, more accountable, and how to take care of myself in a
world that gave no favors. We were poor, and he said school was my ticket
out. He was right, and I'm who I am today because of him.  It still hurts
that he didn't see me graduate with a bachelors, and then a masters. He
would be so proud.

Though I'm married now in a same-sex relationship and am staunchly
middle-class, I still long for that kind of relationship I had. A mentor
who is like a father, but so much more. There are nights when I can only
think about how much I loved them both. Each in their own ways, and how
much I miss both of them. My husband knows, and he tries to understand. But
he just can't relate. And I feel very alone, knowing I'll never find
anything like that, or feel that kind of love ever again.