Date: Sun, 5 Nov 2006 09:49:36 -0500
From: Swan
Subject: My First Look

When Faced with the Enemy

It was several days before I had to go back to Depauw--it was spring--and I
had a few months to complete my senior year.  In the morning, soon after
waking, I had driven to Chicago on my own to go to the Art Museum.  I
wanted to lose myself in something, desperate since I had just found that I
was 1-A, eligible for military service, to serve my country. I did not want
to be a warrior.

But my fraternity friends said, "We have to do it.  Come on, it is just
service. Be a man. We need to fight the communists."

I had to agree.  There were enemy out there.  There were forces that were
trying to destroy America.  I had seen Krucheuv pound the desk and scream,
"We will bury you."  I had seen the photographs of the missiles in Cuba.

I was a man, someone who could be drafted.  I knew that.  If I had to
fight, as I did on the football field, I would. But killing other men, even
those I did not know, seemed unimaginable.  On the nightly news, I could
see the soldiers sleeking in foliage, the swamps of Vietnam.

Although I wanted to believe otherwise and somehow, as I thought about
dense foliage, I thought about the boys my age, newly drafted as I might
be, hiding, shooting at Vietnamese, in war I had spent a year protesting,
in a war that they were fighting, in a war I should probably fight too. But
here I was, as many other young men, afraid of admitting I did not want to
fight, afraid what my parents would think, afraid what my fraternity
buddies would think--afraid I was a wimp.  I wanted to prove myself. I had
always been a competitor, a football player, a jock and been good at it. I
enjoyed winning, knocking someone down, prancing off the field.  But
killing?  I just could not see myself doing it.

I had been despondent for weeks and my mother said, "You love art, go to
the Art Museum, take a day off before you back to school."  I did love art.
I had just taken a course in the History of Art.  When I was young, I used
to draw all the time. I took the Volvo and headed down the Eisenhower
Expressway to the loop.  Alongside of the expressway, my favorite sign, the
Magic Kiss billboard with the huge lips, forty feet wide and ten feet tall
advertising the cleaners with the magic kiss.  That was a nice idea.  I was
a virgin still.  Those lips were a mammoth and haunting reminder of my own
inexperience.  I liked notion of lips that large on my lips; they seemed
much like sex appeared to me: something that would envelop me, suck me into
its belly like a whale, obliterate me.  Not that wasn't interested.  I
was. It just that I wasn't as attracted to girls as I knew I should be.
They appeared more as the enemy who I should conquer or want to conquer but
who I didn't care about---I was just as happy if they left me alone, much
as I felt about the Vietnamese. I had just decided to wait and put sex off
as I had wanted to put off military service.  I mean I could enjoy sex by
myself and, well, would figure it out later. For now I could look at Van
Gogh and those haystacks by Monet.

I parked on one of the side streets that snake around the park, walked in
the balmy late summer morning by rows of late blooming stash lilies, their
bright red and purple tassels waving against the red maples.  With no
particular destination--having promised I'd be home for dinner--I wandered
down Michigan Avenue, the traffic snarled with taxis and people on the
move, getting somewhere.

Although I wanted to believe otherwise and somehow thought I would escape
that fate of needing to get to work by 7:00, to make appointments, I knew
that I would eventually become one of the herd of employed, having the
parse out time in coffee spoons.  When I arrived at the enormous steps in
front of the Museum, I saw the two lions guarding the entrance on either
side of the porticos.  Instinctively I went to the one on the left side
because they seemed friendly, as some pet, and clamored on top of it,
sprawling out, my legs and arms hanging over it like a saddle.  It was a
lovely view---looking up Michigan toward the Hilton, where, in five
momentous months, Rick and Alex, marching to the Democratic Convention
Center would be cordoned off and shoved back until they crashed through the
picture windows into the lobby, one of them severely lacerated by the jaws
of glass that closed down on them. But for now it was filled with ladies in
decorative dresses and men in suits moving to and fro as if they were
programmed to move on the turn of pedestrian lights.  It seemed so
mechanistic.  The cool coarse press of cement became tiresome so I looked
at the door.  It was still too early.  Another hour to kill. I must have
looked like an idiot on these lions, although I secretly hoped someone
would photograph me and I would become famous, the young man on the lion,
the one who tamed the lion.

I crossed over Michigan and went toward what I remembered as a bohemian
area that I had gone with some artist friends.  We had gone in some book
stores to hunt for Beat Poets who were still considered radical--Ginsburg
and Ferginetti. My friends, both aspiring writers, shopped in avant-garde
shops, magic stores, magazine shops, used book stores, and, once, when we
were there, they took me into an adult book store where I stood aghast at
the display.  One picked up a magazine called HotNuts and shoved it at me.

He asked, "What do you think, pointing at the naked men with enormous
hard-ons and women spread out like it was Thanksgiving."

I was stunned and unable to utter much except one word "Interesting"
because I was both aroused and numb, peering at what, for years I tried to
deny was my own sexual appetite.  It was something that seemed to be as
awful as communists.  I fought with my desires in my own private battle,
deep in the loneliness of my room, fantasizing about men, denying men,
pretending what I thought was not real.  On some nights, I wanted to kill
myself, to kill those feelings.  When I saw soldiers aiming their rifles at
one of those sleek men and firing, I imagined that I too was firing,
killing that part of myself that I hated, hated deeply. Of course, I
continue to masturbate--everyone did, I suspected--but I never did touch
anyone, but the yearning had become like a fuel and this magazine, the
sight of real life satyrs was the spark that ignited my body.  I felt as if
I were combustible and, in a daze, my eyes fixed on the photograph, and my
legs wobbled and I became faint. One of them grabbed me, "You all right?"
I looked up, saw the light cracked and jagged across the building across
the street and headed out, breathing deeply as my friend held onto me,
repeating, "You sure you are all right?"  I tired to push him away, "Get
off me. Damn it, you asshole," filled with a rage I had never know before,
a rage that boiled over. But I was unstable and staggered as if I were
drunk. He held onto me.  I calmed down as we crossed the street into the
light. I nodded at him and mumbled something about not being all right,
being under pressure.  They took me down the street and we went into a
bookstore where I located the philosophy section and curled up with a book
by Ernst Becket on the symbolism of evil. No one talked about the incident
in the bookstore but it would not leave my mind.

They had laughed and escorted me out, had noticing how overwhelmed I was,
how something had piqued my rage, commenting lightly, as if I was sickened
by the photographs, "Well that is that last time Bruce will go in there."
But is wasn't true. It was as if I had become a turncoat.  I wanted to know
more about the enemy and wanted to cross the line, to find my way into
their camp, see how they lived, question what made them anti-American.  I
became obsessed, couldn't get the images out of my mind and wanted to go
back by myself to see what was there, to explore it alone.  And now I had a
few hours and I was there, the section of town we had been.

As I came to one side street, I looked down and saw a store with a light
flickering on and off "AdultBooks."  I smiled to think I would be 19 soon,
officially an adult.  I could vote.  I could live on my own if I choose.
For the most part, except on vacations when I came home in the summer to
work on the golf course, I pretty much did as I wanted. I turned the corner
and walked by the store.  I walked by it several more times, checking to
see no one, not this early, was in it.  I felt like a spy.  I was going to
go into enemy territory and explore, just see what it was like and report
back, as objective as an anthropologist, still loyal to my country.

It had a metal grid on the outside and from the angle of the door, which
was slightly ajar, I could see, as in drug stores, a few magazine racks.
Nothing special.  I turned around and came back, went in, surveyed the
store.  A man at the counter, someone in his thirties, thin, handsome, at
first frowned at me, as if I had disrupted his tranquility but, as he
looked me over, smiled at me, "Good morning," and I wasn't sure what to
do. But I did not want to let on, give him the impression that I resented
him. I smiled back.  We did not speak. I was an observer, merely there to
see what was in the store, checking out the adult world. It was as if he
knew what I wanted and respected my privacy.  He looked down at a book that
he was reading and I went to one of the shelves of magazines.

As I looked on the shelf I saw photographs of naked men, many of them with
erections, in various poses.  There were women too but, somehow, they
seemed offensive to me, imagining my mother.  But the men were something
else. Since I felt myself getting aroused I turned away from the counter so
the clerk would not see my arousal and headed for a shelf of magazines in
the rear, ones I could see with my back to him.

To my surprise, the magazines had men embracing other men, two holding each
other's arousal in their hands and smiling at me. I wanted to say something
to them. They looked like friends.  I realized that these were the ones I
wanted to see. I had read about men making love with other men, remembered
practically every line in one book my dad kept on his shelf about a older
man arranging to have a young man join his mistress and him in rollicking
sex that went for hours.  I had imagined what it might look like in the
flesh.  But here it was.  I picked up a magazine, leafed through the pages,
my eyes absorbing the men stripping one another, kissing, holding onto each
other, having the arousal in their mouths.

Before I knew it, I could feel my legs grow weak and the throbbing
intensify in my groin.  I was close to having an orgasm right there,
standing in the store.  I could not believe it but I felt the semen pulse
in the shaft and calling to me with a voice of its own, "Let me out." It is
as if the semen had taken over my body, as if it had possessed me, become
myself--urge, urge, urge, as (who was it?) Whitman said.

The urge assaulted me with my having no armor, no protection, standing
there in enemy lines without a jacket, just in a summer golf shirt and
pants. I took a breath. I moved from one foot to another.  I looked out the
window to men with three piece suits heading to the financial district and
other men, lost looking with bedraggled jackets and scruffy beards,
wandering the street, looking at the gutters as if there was no where to go
and they would never get to their destination because there was no
destination. I took several breaths, looked over my shoulder at the clerk,
who was really quite a nice looking man with short blond hair, who smiled
at me when I looked at him and nodded.

"Maybe I should go." I thought to myself, "Maybe I need more training, more
experience before I come here. This is getting to be too much."

"No," I heard another voice in me say, "You are an adult. You can serve in
the military. You can go into battle like other men. You can do this. You
can do what you want."

I took a deep breath and looked at the pictures.  They seemed to be calling
to me.  It was as if the whole room became erotic, vibrating with Eros.  I
could see covers of magazines with men whose large phallus stood up like
pride itself.  The windows began to throb.  The lights radiated lust.  I
shook several times.  The magazine began to pull me into the images as
though they were sirens and I had no rope to hold me back.  I would dive
into the page and nothing could hold me back.

My fingers with each turned page felt as if they were wired electrically.

I heard a voice standing beside me, "Can I help you, my friend."

 I turned to see the clerk, not a foot from me, looking down at my pants,
which, as I looked down, were mirroring those of the men on the page open
in my hands, tented outward, joining them.

He looked me in the eyes.  "It seems you have found what you want?" he
inquired, his hand by his face, bemused.

I panicked, not knowing what to say. "I guess so," I stammered and started
to put the magazine down.

He stepped back but at the same time reached over and touched my shoulder,
"No, don't worry, my friend.  You can take as much time as you," he lifted
his hand and put it on his hip," take as much time as you want. If you need
anything else, just let me know."

He looked directly at my pants and smiled.  I stood there unable to move.
He had seen me. Seen me aroused. No one had seen me like that before,
except maybe Dave when I was thirteen. I became afraid.

Thoughts raced up and down my brain. "I bet he thinks I am a homosexual.
How does he know?  Just because these pictures turn me on?"

  I wanted to flee but felt trapped. Another man, not much older than I,
came in and stood by me.  I dared not move so I just held the magazine and
looked vacantly at it, hoping my aroused state would subside.  I put the
magazine down and picked up another.  The other man who wore shorts and a
T-shirt looked at me several times and, getting no response, left. I must
have been there for an hour.  Some other men--mostly older, some in suits,
very elegant-- came in and out, some coming to the section where I was,
which, when they stood nearby, forced me to go to another section.

As I was heading for the door, the man at the counter, called out, "What is
your name? I think I know you from somewhere."

I was startled but saw how sympathetic he appeared to be. I stopped, my
hands stuffed in my pockets, my erection inserted in the palm of my
hand. "Bruce," I said.

"Well, Bruce, I didn't mean to embarrass you."


"Oh, it was nothing."  "No, it was not.  I should have left you alone.  I
know how it is."

He looked up at the ceiling and shook his head.

"What do you mean?" I inquired.

"The first time you see it, you know."

"Yea," I grinned. I liked that he understood. I think I knew what he meant,
seeing sex in a magazine, the way the page oozed sensuality into my hands.

We stood there for several minutes staring at one another.  Then he
gestured, "You are from the Western suburbs?"

I nodded.

He motioned to me, "I thought so. That is where I am from. Come with
me. You seem to be a nice fell'a..Let me show you something."

I stepped back but he came around the corner and introduced himself.

"Don't be shy. Really. I just like you. You seem a lot like me, if you know
what I mean. My name is Bob.  I don't live in town. I came from the suburbs
down here, you know, and, well, now I work here."

I shook his hand and told him, "I do too."

His hand was large and soft, very tender and gentle.  "Where?" he asked.

"The Elmhurst."

I was surprised. "I did too.  Did you go to Washington Elementary?"

He laughed, "Yes I did. Maybe that is why I remember you."

He slapped my shoulder, "Two suburban boys."

I lost my sense of apprehension as he took my elbow and pointed to a back
room.  I followed him into a room behind the counter.  He offered me a
soda, a coke, which tasted good. We chatted about Elmhurst, some people we
knew. There was a TV monitor with a VCR mounted on the wall.  He looked out
at the counter, looked at me, studied me really and gave me a very kind
grin.

 "Wait here, " he said and went out front again.  I could hear the door
close.  He came back in, "There that makes it easier to relax."  He patted
me on the shoulder.  "I want you to see something. I think it something you
will like and, if you don't, tell me and you can go. Okay?"  He turned on
the set and pushed in a video.  The screen showed two men talking to one
another in an apartment, both younger men, sitting across from one another.

I took a deep breath and began to feel dizzy, as I had done before. He
grabbed me by the arm, held me, "You okay?"  He turned off the set.

I put my arm on his shoulder and leaned against him, breathing slowly.
After a few minutes, he looked me in the eye and said, "I am sorry.  That
was too much for you."

"It is okay, " I said. "I just wasn't ready for it and needed a moment."  I
was feeling more comfortable and saw his face, troubled and intent.

"Make yourself comfortable," he instructed me, pointing to a chair.  I sat
down, taking my hand out of my pocket and placing both hands in my lap like
cover my erection.

We talked some more and he asked, "Do you want to leave."

I leaned forward, put my hands together and admitted, "No I want to see the
video, if you do not mind."  He grinned, waited a second and then turned to
start it up again.  .  Soon the one man rubbed the other man's cheek
tenderly.  They leaned toward one another kissing.  I looked at the clerk
and noticed that he was aroused.

"How do you like it," he asked.

I nodded, trying to keep my eyes on the small screen.  He stood by me and
rubbed my shoulders, and my head fell forward as his hands worked their way
down my back.  His hands were soft yet pliant.  I moaned and he did too.

"That feel good?"

"Yes."

I looked up and the one man was unbuttoning the other man's shirt.  The
light I had seen in Monet's paintings, the fleshy light, cascaded over me,
enveloped me.  I realized at that moment how intense the light was for
Monet.  It was sexual.  The light was as aroused as I was. I felt as if I
were going to explode, my erection by this time felt so engorged that it
felt as if my whole body had become an instrument of its desire.

The clerk pulled up a chair next to mine and said simply, "Here," and his
hand rested on my belly.  I groaned deeply. He left his hand there and my
erection as if seeking comfort rose to inches from his fingers which
slipped gently over its crown, softly caressing it.  I put my hand on his
thigh.  We watched the other man being slowly undressed and first the pants
slip down, then the white jockey shorts.  They were pressed against one
another, kissing tenderly.  The clerked put his hand to my chin and turned
my face to his. My lips touched his and his tongue came into my mouth. My
hips jerked up and now his entire hand was on my arousal.

He said, "Wait," as he kissed me again, softly, his mouth wet on my mouth.
His hands by now had unbuckled my pants and I heard the zipper being
released. I lifted my hips and I got to his knees and pulled my pants down,
gently taking my loafers off until I was naked from the waist down. He
stood up.  I could see his arousal on the left side of his pants and could
hear the men on the film moaning, their hips tenderly thrusting at one
another.  It was as if the scarecrows in Van Gogh sunset were sweeping up
to the sky and the sun, the intense seam of it, were blasting me in the
face. I could hear them caw, the fierce beating of their wings, the force
of gravity dropping out from under me. My hands as if on automatic pilot
went to his buckle, one with filigree on it, pulled the strap out of the
one side, slipped the loop back out of the metal pinion and unloosed it,
letting it dangle.  I put my thumb and forefinger on the snap, the back of
my hand on his warm belly, and undid it.  Pulling delicately the zipper
down felt inch by inch as if it would never happen.  But he jeans were
parted and the white jockey shorts exposed.  I slipped the jeans down as he
had, helping him take off the orange keds and then, looked at his jockey
shorts and distinctly, running the length of it until it was exposed on the
top, his erection.  I touched it and felt at the same time my erection
respond as if the two were wired.

He said, "Stop."

I looked up at him.  He put his hands on my shirt and lifted it.  The men
on the video were now turned around, each having the other's arousal in
their mouth and the noise of their mutual moaning had increased.  Their
eyes appeared lost, gazing as far away as mine felt.  By now my erection
had become so intense I could feel the pre-cum leaking down it, cooling it
yet only filling me with a vibration that seemed to be almost like that of
the chill that shuttered through your body on cold nights when you stepped
from the warmth of a room to the outdoors or, equally, when, at least, you
step back inside and your body aches with relief.  The camera closed in the
men whose faces were rapturous, their eyes closed, their mouths holding the
root and taking it in.  As my shirt came off, he slipped his off.  He was
skinny yet athletic, with a long waist and a small thin crop of hair that
came up his belly to his belly button and then, except for a small crop in
the middle of his chest, mostly a soft sheen of skin. His hand was resting
on my shoulder. His erection was directly in front of me. His thin legs
with light brown hair parted slightly.  I looked up at him. He looked down
at me.

I could see that he was admiring my erection which stood up and seemed to
admire us both.  "You are a football player," he asked, as he rubbed my
shoulders.

"I was," I admitted.

""You are strong, large shoulders, biceps, legs."

I looked down.  I was really average for a college player, only 190 lbs.  I
was a runner, a full back and part-time quarterback.

"What position do you play," he asked.

"Quarterback," I said.

I wanted to reach out and take him by the waist and pull him toward me, to
feel his body against mine.  I stood up.  He pushed me back, "Wait."

We were only five inches apart, his hand on my chest.  I could feel his
erection and mine touching, only them.  The sensation running from his into
mine, and mine into his, seemed as if someone had taken starter cords and
placed them on the right positive and negative poles, the electricity from
his engine and mine engine charging one another.  I put my hand on his
chest and we stood there, our erections gently touching, wagging in and out
of contact, breaking and connecting the charge. When he leaned to kiss me,
he only let his lips touch mine, no tongue, just the surfaces touching. I
could feel the urge as two magnets that are misaligned, the magnetic field
pressing, palpable yet invisible.  We stood there.  He pulled his lips back
inches from mine. We could hear the men now, one had mounted the other,
face to face and his erection going in and out and their passionately
kissing, the hips thrusting.

The clerk said, "Look at their cocks, how they want it."

I could see the one on his back, his cock--I never used that word--pulsing up
with each trust and as hard as the cock of the man inside him.

I felt myself getting dizzy and put one hand on his shoulder and then,
looking down, as if I were seeing something from a long way off, saw my
cock jerking up spasmodically, causing me to shiver and trust my hips.  He
grabbed me by the waist and slipped down on his knees, looking up at me.

"It's all right, it's all right," he said and with that opened his mouth
and with just a slightest touch of his lips on the tip of my cock out came
the semen--I could see it as my hips jerked back--forcefully leaping into his
throat, my hands on his shoulders, wave on wave, with his mouth first on
the tip, then, gradually as my hips jammed forward as if someone were
sending electric shocks into my body, along the shaft until I was inside
his mouth, pumping and no end of sensation, the thrust and the release, the
thrust and release, the semen like it were possessed, as if it were lashing
upstream to the source, coming and coming as if, at that moment, there were
no end of it.

I do not remember how long it was because I was looking down at myself and
stunned by what was happening.  When I subsided, he stood up and we
embraced, his lips, wet from my come, on mine and, as he trust his tongue
in mine, I tasted my own semen, thick and salty, which gave me another
erection and, this time, he rubbed my belly as he knelt and it all began
again, my cock jamming into him and the rising pitch, hearing the men on
the video, seeing them do the same, looking down at myself, holding
lovingly his head and the semen finally drawn down his throat as if he had
taken my inner self and absorbed it.  He stood and kissed me again, my hand
on his cock.  He sat me on the chair and I opened my mouth.  I was looking
up at him and he was very slow, just a slight trust and withdrawal, one
followed by a pause, as I caught my breath, then another; and soon I felt
his rhythm, one, pause, another, the thickness of his cock forcing my mouth
to widen, as it did, taking him in, feeling the knob at the tip of my
throat, causing at first a gag, then, as I became used to it, a tickling,
my hands reaching around his hips, holding his buttocks and he said,
"There, there, you have it," and I realized I did.  He kept going slowly
and I felt the cock engorge and his hips tighten and he smiled at me as I
felt the liquid pulse in my mouth and let him pull back and then another
pulse and then tightened my hold on his buttocks, my finger instinctively
going into his anus, feeling is fasten around it, and a spasmodic jerk, and
pause, then the cock reassert itself--his moaning, "Oh my god"--and the
liquid coming again and still once more, and his hips increasing their
thrust, my mouth filled by now, as more came, dipping now on the sides of
my mouth but I was enjoying the magnificence of it until he said, "Oh
there, there," and the last wave filled my mouth and he pulled his cock
back, the white semen oozing out the tip, dripping down and he knelt and
kissed me and, to my surprise, drank the cum from my mouth almost as if it
were communion, which, as I held his fast to me, it was, a communion of two
men who found, as men, they could be lovers, not just warriors, with as
much desire for one another as any woman have for a man.

I went to the museum later, looked at the paintings that I imagined as we
made love and thought there were definitely alternatives to war, there were
other kinds of service and I had found the one I would take.