Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:14:17 -0800 (PST)
From: Brad Healey <bradhealey@rocketmail.com>
Subject: Growing Up Denying I Was Gay

*************************************************

Preface: To readers, what will follow over the next months is my story of
growing up gay while in blissfully insane denial of that fact. Some of
these chapters have been presented previously on other web forums, yet my
writing was often edited and omitted when it did not fit the strict rules
of the other site. Here are the original and uncut versions of these
stories.

"Brad Healey" is a necessary pen name; I am a published author of
non-fiction under my given name and wish to remain annonymous in these
rather personal stories.

*******************************

Introduction

Now 45, I was a small child when my tale began. I have often wondered,what
causes us to be excited by the things that turn us on? Is it something we
learn or something we are born with? In this chapter I'll explore some of
my very early recollections of sexual excitement, which when they happened
were both incredibly exciting and confusing all at the same time. When did
you first notice your arousal? I'm sure I am not alone!

Erick and I have a very interesting friendship. We used to work together;
in fact I was once his boss. He's about twelve years younger than me, and
our careers have taken quite different paths since we first met almost
fifteen years ago. Let me first say that I have never been sexual with him,
and don't intend to ever be. But our frank and honest discussions about sex
have made me think a lot; about some ideas I'll share with you.


**

That day fifteen years ago at my first day on a new job, I walked around
the office to meet all of the many people who now worked for me. I was
managing the technical support center for a large professional services
company, and I suddenly had more than sixty people in my charge, more than
two thirds of them young men under the age of twenty-five. While some were
married, most were not, and I found myself wearing hats other than that of
"Boss" with some from time to time, giving needed (and sometimes unwelcome)
guidance on topics like how to dress for work, how to plan a career, how to
save for retirement and even how to get out of trouble with credit card
bills they had rung up.

A few of my guys came to me with very personal problems as well. As you may
have concluded yourself from my writing, many consider me to be a very
sensitive, introspective and personally insightful guy. I place a lot of
value in feelings and emotions, and appreciate the fact that people who are
happy do better work and are more reliable. I pride myself on being
approachable and easy to talk to. And thus, people who needed someone safe
to talk to when they needed help sometimes sought me out to talk.

For example, I correctly guessed when one fellow had developed a drug
addiction that sorely needed treatment, understood another's problems with
recovering from alcoholism, and dealt with the sad case of a fellow who got
in serious trouble for storing pornography on his office computer. Several
guys had real social problems when traveling on business, often finding
trouble related to alcohol and females. One fellow had his personal website
linked to his on-line resume, a site that contained all sorts of
unprofessional information about his head-banging Goth-influenced personal
life. Another young guy kept falling asleep at his desk, and taking him
aside I correctly surmised that he was spending time till all hours of the
night in sex chat rooms. (Especially easy to guess when I had once done so
much of this myself).

But meeting Erick was especially intriguing to me. He was in his early
twenties but easily looked younger than eighteen. He was an unbelievably
innocent looking baby-faced boy of Swedish decent, to me strongly
resembling the kid on the label of the Dutch Boy paint can (but with a
shorter haircut). I'll admit I was somewhat attracted to him, though I
sensed immediately that he was 100% heterosexual by simply observing his
consistent behavior near women. There were few girls who passed him by that
he didn't stop his work to look after.

Socially, he and I were interested in many of the same hobbies. But since I
was his boss, I was careful not to spend too much time with him in the
office for fear of giving others the impression that I favored him. And,
while I may have harbored some mild but benign sexual fantasies about him,
I kept them well under control by any measure. On my own time I helped him
with his income taxes and in setting up a personal retirement account, and
talked with him about his career, as he was very smart and capable but
lacked a college degree to help him get ahead as fast as he might have with
one. Our conversations at work often spilled over into the evening, as we'd
go out for a beer or he'd call me at home to ask my advice on some personal
matter, and we'd talk long after the immediate problem had been solved.

My wife noticed my doting behavior, and was annoyed. "That child has a
father," she'd complain derisively referring to Erick. "He should be asking
HIM those questions, not you." She was probably right, but I had learned
from talking with Erick that his relationship with his father was strained
and cold. Erick obviously craved his dad's attention, and it was clear that
he had substituted me into that role, at least just a little. Sometimes I'd
get sort of sappy talking with Erick privately, calling him the sort of
affectionate pet nicknames that a dad might use when talking to his ten
year old son. But calling him "little dude" and "pup" and other
affectionately inappropriate monikers didn't seem to phase Erick one bit;
He never raised so much as raised an eyebrow when I referred to him in that
way.

We both loved cars and computers, and like me, Erick had an old hot rod
that he had lovingly restored to look like new, a hobby that fewer and
fewer young guys seemed to be into these days. We hung around sometimes on
weekends, going to car shows or swap meets and one Saturday afternoon I
found myself at his house... actually his parents' house where he still
lived, up in his bedroom, which was the same one he had occupied there
since he was a small boy. The walls were still adorned with rock group
posters and other clutter that abounded that reeked strongly of High
School. Erick was happy still being a boy... albeit a 24-year-old one. As I
sat in his well-worn swivel chair at his bedroom desk he proudly showed me
his computer that he had built himself with spare bits and pieces. Flying
through long directories of files on the screen he showed my how fast it
ran and how much storage it contained.

But when he left the room for a minute to answer his mother's call, I
returned to inspect one of those directories that had caught my eye. It was
full of digital images, I could tell from the file names. And the titles of
the images hinted that they were not from Sesame Street or the Disney
Channel. The titles were all related to bondage and S&M. I didn't open any,
but when he came back into the room, I didn't waste any time asking him.

"Tell me, are you into leather and bondage stuff, Erick?" I asked. "Please,
you can tell me, I don't mind." He and I had talked frankly about so many
subjects that this wasn't too much of a stretch from other topics we had
touched on. But still it shocked him.

Erick blushed bright red and began to stammer looking for words. He
realized that I had guessed what was undoubtedly his most shameful secret,
one he most certainly never had intended to share with people from his
public world, let alone sharing it with his BOSS. But he didn't deny
it. "Yes, I am", he admitted honestly.

The rest of the afternoon was an outpouring of honesty between us. I shared
with him my sexual orientation, and the fact that I had just recently come
to accept it myself as I am. He wasn't shocked or put off in the least, and
he told me about his fascination with S&M and how the thought of beautiful
women restrained by straps of leather was somehow, unexplainably an
unbelievable turn-on in his mind.

I asked him when he first knew that he was turned on by this subject
matter, images of restraint and punishment and even pain--it was all so
hard for me to understand. "Always," Erick answered quickly. When I pressed
him for specifics he told me the story of being a small child in elementary
school and having a powerful erection when he had played a neighborhood
game that had involved the loser being tied up with a rope and put under a
pile of raked leaves. He confessed that after experiencing these new
feelings that day, he had eagerly sought out others to play games like this
with, and as the initiator he would experience wonderful sexual excitement
when he--or others--were restrained with straps or ropes. Erick told me
that as an adult he preferred silk cords the most, as they didn't leave any
marks. As he grew, he graduated fantasizing over catalogs filled with
pictures of paraphernalia, which led to finding girls whom he could coax to
allow themselves to be tied up--or would tie him up, sometimes right there
in his own bedroom where we sat and talked that very day. Turning to look
at his bed, I imagined Erick's slim, five foot six, 140-pound body tied to
it by his hands and feet, naked and sexually aroused, and the scene that
appeared in my head was truly exciting to me. Looking at slight, small
blond blue eyed Erick sitting near me; it was difficult to reconcile the
image of this innocent-appearing little guy doing such taboo things and
himself being turned on by them.

I willingly in turn confessed to him my own unexplainable attraction to
other boys as a child, especially my childhood attraction to teenagers,
telling him that I realized even as a small boy that my excitement was
shamefully wrong and must not ever be shared openly with anyone else. He
and I traded life experience after experience with each other that
afternoon, quickly realizing that we were kindred spirits, separated
perhaps by several towns and a decade of time, but both knowing that from
an early age that we were different from other boys and were driven by
strong, forbidden and sometimes overpowering sexual desires. From an early
age, Erick masturbated frequently, and his accompanying fantasies were
monopolized by images of bound and restrained women, just as mine were with
visions of naked swimmers and wrestlers from the school teams.

I began to wonder like never before where these odd attractions that live
in our subconscious and drive our desires come from, and how much of what
we are aroused by is pre-programmed into the circuits of our brains before
birth. I don't claim to have the answers, but just as Erick remembered very
clearly his confusing, pre-adolescent childhood arousal by the game with
the rope and the leaves, I began to recall from my own childhood my own
confusing awakening experiences that at the time, I couldn't begin to
explain.

**

I distinctly remember the tall awkward teenaged boy next door named Paul
who played basketball in his driveway wearing his black high tops and
black-framed glasses. It was 1966 or so, and I was only about five, but I
wanted to know more about Paul. I wanted to watch him and sit near him and
have him talk to me. I hoped he would know my name. I would peek out my
bedroom window when I heard the basketball bouncing on his driveway, then
go out and sit on the wall and watch him from twenty feet away. I never
talked to him, except once when I meekly ran up to him and said "Hello
Paul" and then turned and ran away in shame. I was ashamed because of the
curious affection I felt for Paul, because I knew even as a tiny boy that I
wanted to be near Paul in a way that other people wouldn't understand. Even
then I knew that the warm tickly feeling I felt in the bottom of my stomach
when I saw Paul was somehow wrong and bad.

**

I couldn't have been older than six. I remember tuning in the old black and
white TV in the basement to watch Flipper. I watched Flipper not because I
liked dolphins, but because I liked Sandy, the fair and freckled teenaged
older brother who was tan and shirtless in every show. I watched in the
basement to be alone so no one would disturb me in my shameful solitude. As
I watched, the parts that featured Sandy captured my attention and I found
it felt soothing to put my hand into the front of my trousers play with my
little willy to make him stiff and hard while I watched. I felt so pleasant
inside, sitting all alone and tingling with contented warm happiness,
fondling myself gently as I watched Sandy swim and run, imagining how nice
it would be if he could come to play and just be alone with me at my house.

**

I was especially drawn to sit close to slim quiet fair boys in my first
grade class. I didn't know why, but I just felt really good inside when I
was near them. I recall one morning in First Grade when the class from
across the hall came to visit our classroom to read stories that they had
written. I sat in the front row, and a boy whom I saw on the playground and
wished I could know better was waiting his turn to read. As he knelt on the
floor at the front of the room, his back to me, with his book on the chalk
ledge of the blackboard, I caught glimpses of just the top inch of his
little round bottom and its cleft as he fidgeted around. I could not unglue
my eyes from this beautiful sight and I recall the feeling of electricity
that ran through me for the first time ever--that I had a sudden erection
that was unexplainable, curious and uncomfortable -- but wonderful. Nearly
forty years later and I still remember this moment; obviously a significant
event, though I had no real idea at the time why.

**

As I rode the school bus home one afternoon when in the third grade (which
would have made me eight years old), commotion erupted behind me in the
back of the bus. I was seated towards the bus's middle, and had to turn
around to see what was going on. Freddy, one of the big fifth grade boys,
had been dared by the others to expose his penis right there while riding
on the bus. Freddy was not a clever boy, and in fact he was one of the
biggest bullies in the school, always teasing my friend Scott and often
making him cry. Freddy indeed had promised to "whip it out" as he called
it, but said that if he did that when he did "no one else can look". The
other fifth grade boys scoffed at this notion, claiming that if no one
looked, no one would be able to verify that Freddy had done the deed. The
argument continued, punctuated by Freddy saying, "OK, here goes..." and
then the others would laugh. I couldn't see anything from where I sat, but
I remember what happened to my little body at that moment. Straining my
neck to see the back of the bus, I felt my groin tingle, and suddenly found
my tiny penis sticking straight up and stiff as a ten-penny nail. I had had
little boners before, frequently in fact, and they never concerned me, but
I didn't usually associate them with any specific cause. But this boner had
clearly been caused by what was happening in the back of the bus at that
moment with Freddy!

There had to be some sort of connection, but I couldn't fathom what it
was. The fact was that the stupid boy had allowed himself to be goaded into
a compromising position in a public situation, and unexplainably his
predicament had made my little penis stand at rigid attention. Why?

"Turn around, you stupid baby!" Freddy shouted angrily in my direction,
spying my little face straining to peer over the seats into the rear of the
bus. "There's nothing for you to see here, you little crybaby!" he shouted,
his own face flushed red with frustrated embarrassment. I quickly spun back
around in my seat, frightened, and a little confused by what had
happened... but I felt strangely warm and happy too. I was careful to avoid
Freddy for a while after that.

**

About the same time, maybe just a few months later in the early summer, I
was playing in the neighborhood park. It was the mid 1960's and kids my age
were allowed to play unsupervised in a manner that seems to have vanished
for young children today. Word spread over to the jungle gym where I hung
upside down by my knees that, nearby, at brook just past the trees into the
woods, Danny was going to show his penis to the other boys. Upon hearing
this news, I couldn't climb down from my rusty iron perch fast enough. I
accepted the fact that little boys like me did silly things like show their
penises to each other but Danny was probably 11, practically a man! I
wanted to see Danny show off his penis so badly that I ran as fast as I
could into the woods to see if the story might be true. Coming to the top
of the hill, I looked down and saw a small crowd of boys gathered around
facing Danny. I scampered down the hill towards them, but found that the
small stream that ran through at the bottom of the clearing blocked my
way. They were all standing on the other side of the water; I didn't know
how to get across, and I dashed frantically back and forth with Danny's
back facing me, searching in desperately silent frustration for a way to
cross the stream without falling into the water. I heard Danny say, "Here
it is, take a look and see. It's really just a little nose cone" and the
other boys stared and laughed. I couldn't see a thing, and I was so
frustrated that I was such a baby who couldn't cross the stream when these
other boys had surely figured out how to do it. "Please! I want to see
too!" I cried out in frustration, but the mostly older boys just laughed
and walked away.

**

I recall a fifth grade science lesson on the human body where we were told
to put our hand on our neighbor's chest to feel his heart beating. I
thought I was going to faint as Ronnie, a slim athletic blond boy I
worshipped more than any other turned to me with his shoulders pushed back
and I realized he expected me to touch his chest. The blood rose fast in my
neck and my cheeks and ears burned. I gently put my hand on Ronnie's bony
chest and felt how warm he was and felt him breathing and his heart
beating. I suddenly could not catch my breath.

"Do you feel it?" he said.

I certainly did feel it. I felt something that he couldn't have imagined I
was feeling and I would have died right there if he knew. But at the same
time I was flying in heaven, I was also deeply, profoundly sad. I was sad
because I strongly suspected that Ronnie didn't feel the same way about
this science experiment as I did. To him, it was following the teacher's
instructions. To me it was magic.

"Ohmygod is your heart beating fast" Ronnie chirped as he in turn put his
hand on my chest. I was so embarrassed; the room was spinning and black and
I felt my heart would pound right through my shirt as I felt his warm hand
on my chest. I didn't want him to take his hand away. This was all so
happily wonderful and glorious and beautiful yet so sad and bad and
terribly wrong all at once.

**

At eleven I joined the Boy Scouts. Relatively unsupervised, the boys in our
troop acted like a pack of wild animals, preying on the weaknesses of the
younger scouts, myself included. Worse for me, being a Boy Scout was an
experience that I had been looking forward to so much. I looked forward to
camping in a tent with older boys, sitting around a fire in the dark;
special time alone with other boys where I imagined we would tell each
other our secrets. I longed to find someone else like me who was older and
who would know that everything was going to be all right. I would furtively
gaze into the eyes of the older, taller boys, some as old as eighteen. I
wanted to be like them. I wanted to be with them. I wanted to BE them.

My first camping trip started wonderfully. I met an eighteen year old Eagle
Scout named Jim who was everything I dreamed of. He sat with me and taught
me the safe way to use a pocketknife, we sat close to each other at the
fire, and he messed up my hair and called me "tiger". My first thought on
waking the next morning was to go find Jim and be with him again. I was so
happy there were not words to describe how I felt inside. I knew that Jim
accepted me, and I knew I loved him and wanted to spend the rest of my life
with him.

Unfortunately, the other boys noticed my loving gazes and the way I leaned
my head on Jim's shoulder and closed my eyes at the campfire. They called
me a queer, a homo and other things I didn't understand. They asked me if I
would give them blow jobs (whatever that was) and they physically pushed
me. I realized with a sudden shock of horror that I had finally betrayed
myself; I thought that I would die.... This toxic thing that somehow felt
so perfectly wonderful when it was on the inside of me had finally leaked
to the outside and was burning its way to destroying my life just as I
feared would happen. For the next year every weekly Scout meeting was a
nightmare... boys whispering in my ear asking me to suck their dicks and
calling me a homo.

**

At a later scout camping trip a game of strip poker broke out, and I
watched. As one of my "favorites" lost, and would have been forced to
remove his undershorts, the other boys started to back off.

"Just down to my skivvies, please!" he pleaded.

"No!" I spoke up suddenly. "You have to take it all off. That's the rules."

Everyone turned and looked at me. The younger boy beaten, they had been
prepared to mercifully stop the game there.... Why was this casual observer
suddenly so adamant that the losing boy get naked? My cheeks burned again
as my little cock stood stiff in my shorts; I had betrayed myself once
more. I soon quit Scouts for good... I could not handle the emotions (of
what I later would identify as sexual tension) I felt whenever I was that
physically close to a group of roughhousing boys.

***

Beginning Junior High, things stared to rush very quickly into awful,
terrible focus. Things that would have never caused a second thought to
"normal" boys or their parents to me were anxiety filled situations. Gym
class was the most brutal example. Let me paint the picture this way:
Imagine that you, as a straight boy, were just starting to feel your sexual
desires rising as the hormones started to course through your
veins. Imagine that your little crushes on girls were becoming the powerful
pre-teenage pulls of lust, felt for the first time. You might have just
learned to masturbate--and your frequent private moments of climax were
always accompanied by provocative and sensual mental images of the young
girls you adored. Now imagine that your public school system puts you into
a shower room with all these girls of your fantasy--and you all strip naked
together standing inches from each other, close enough to see everything
you ever imagined. Today's activity is wrestling... Brad, you wrestle with
Kim and then Christine. Then you must strip and shower together after you
have been rolling on the ground nose to nose, close enough to taste each
others' breath and have another's sweat ground into your skin. Everyone has
to shower- that's the rule.

If this really happened as I describe it, there would be a scandal. People
would lose their jobs and be arrested and it would be on the evening
news. Experts would decry the brutal damage and abuse being done to young,
impressionable developing minds. But this "scandal" was my daily reality.

So now, if you can, imagine you are no longer heterosexual; replace "Kim
and Christine" in the story with Bobby and Jeff. I stared, I gawked, I was
on overload. I couldn't get enough. So, in retrospect, while other gay boys
I have talked to in the years that have followed loathed gym class, I
couldn't wait for Tuesdays to come around. That first September day in
class as we sat in rows, I would look around the room and map out the
alphabet in my head, imagining who I would have my locker next to and who I
would get to see naked up-close at least two dozen times that year.

**

Getting back to Erick, we don't work together or see each other very much
anymore, though we talk sometimes on the telephone. He will still willingly
discuss his fetish, and has shared some stories with me that alarmed me
slightly... that he had joined a private club in the city where members all
have the same proclivities and take turns being tied up naked while others
watch and have sex around them. He told me that recently it was his turn to
be the 'guest of honor', tied up naked and put helplessly prone on display,
and shared with me some of the things that happened that night in the
room. I had to admit being worried about him. I feel a special affection
for Erick, maybe because we both have secrets that are so shameful. I don't
want anyone to harm him, and I fear that he is heading down a path that
could come to a bad ending. But, I admit feeling some excitement too, as I
envision his public arousal surrounded by other like-minded people, and
even feel a little envy that he has been able to connect with others like
him.

Erick hasn't married, and has had a tough time finding a stable and lasting
relationship. He says that once girls find out what he is "into" it makes
it difficult to continue the relationship. He shrugs and says he doesn't
mind, but I sense some loneliness whenever I talk to him that I just wish I
could help ease. I just want Erick to have the same happiness and peace
that I have found.