Shale's Sexual History

Shale Stone is a character and part of my alter ego in my first erotic story written in 1984. This version of my sexual history has had the names of participants changed but the tale is real.

It is a very long read covering half a century (So do not be an asswipe and complain that it is "too long did not read" Just don't read it and move on)

But, for those researchers or other voyeurs, it might prove interesting.

Sexual History of Shale Stone

Preface

I suppose that writing an autobiography at age 38 is a common male endeavor, one of the lesser manifestations of what is called a midlife crisis. At middle age a man begins to see that although he is losing hair, muscle tone, and smooth skin, he has also gained in experience and knowledge.

It is comforting to know that this mid life phenomenon is nothing new; that in other cultures and times, such as Ancient Greece, a man with a bit of history and wisdom would have the pleasure of imparting it to the next generation. Even then the mature mentor would often become enamored of a young protege, and do ridiculous things for the youth's favors, much like the middle aged crazies of our own time. While not yet driving around in a sports car wearing mod style clothes and chasing after teen-agers, I do find myself more and more appreciating the beauty of youth. Such is the nature of man.

Though I admire youth, I don't envy it, for with the energy and firm, smooth body comes inexperience and lack of knowledge. As Oscar Wilde said, "Youth is wasted on the young." We all had our youth, and as I look back in these pages, I can now enjoy the time spent in gaining these first experiences, perhaps even more with my expanded knowledge of sexuality.

This then is a recounting of my personal sexual development within the sexual revolution which took place in our society during that time.

Shale Stone
Miami, 1983

 

Age of Innocence​

Pre-pubescence
St. Louis, 1950

Is there ever a time when a child is sexually innocent, or is that concept a delusion of adults denying innate sexuality in themselves? Perhaps I was more inquisitive than the norm, but I recall being sexually active at the supposed innocent age of five or six. I discovered the exciting physical sensation when pressure was applied to my penis, such as when shinning up a pole, and would often catch that sensation while on the pole and continue rubbing to prolong it. Then I learned that I could achieve the same sensation by rubbing my penis with my hands in my pockets. Of course it never occurred to me that anyone was aware of this activity or even cared until a first grade teacher told me abruptly to stop doing that. The age of innocence was coming to an end.

Shale Having a Good Time at 5 Years of Age


The Dark Ages

Having lost innocence by the age of five to Puritan repression, we formed a children's cult and continued our explorations of sexual phenomena in secret. We avoided the inquisitors and met in the cool dark dampness of empty basements, and the well lit heat of walk-in closets.

So, Kevin and I would explore our bodies privately, comparing wieners and olives, while urinating together in the bathroom. In a secluded walkway between buildings we each opened our pants and touched the other's penis, which stiffened, pointing straight out. On a dare we each took turns putting our mouth on the others stiff pink member, after assuring each other that we wouldn't pee. There was no lengthy pursuit of this act, and I still don't know why we did it.

Sexuality at this age was exploratory, and encompassed exploration of those hidden things of both sexes. I remember a baby sitter, a rather stout woman, who was taking care of my sister and me. As she was changing my sister in the crib, she was not aware that the child sliding around on the floor under the crib was actually looking up her dress, taking note of how the metal and elastic garter belt held up her stockings. Just seeing these hidden garments was as exciting as if she were nude.

Another early childhood fetish was to explore my sister's rubber doll. It was exciting to hide under the covers and lift up the dress and remove the panties, revealing the pink smooth crotch. These dolls were anatomically neutral, but in my imagination, by their lack of male genitals, they represented the female private parts which I had glimpses of with my sister. I had been taught modesty; that these private parts were not to be seen by others, so the excitement came from this close scrutiny of the forbidden.

Pre-pubescence
1950 - 52

In later childhood my male cousins and I would play a game in the bedroom by pulling each other along the bed with a rope. This of course "inadvertently" caused our pants to slide down, revealing our hidden parts when we got up. We found the game worked better if we unfastened our belts and unbuttoned our pants.

My female cousin and I had our own game called "Doctor." I would be in my office, the walk-in closet, and she would come in, get up on a shelf and lie on her back, knees in the air. As examining physician I would tell her to take off her panties, which she would pull to her ankles for quick retrieval in case this closet clinic was raided. She then spread her legs apart, exposing her naked crotch for my examination. I was about eight years old and she eleven, and this was my first intimate experience with female genitals. I explored this slit in her crotch, with the few strands of short coarse hair growing around it, and found that it parted to reveal a deeper opening of moist pink skin and a musty sour-sweet odor, that I have never forgotten. I've smelled it a few times hence in close quarters with girls and women who haven't learned, or been able to wash themselves properly.

I was seeing, feeling, and smelling the strange and forbidden and it was exciting, though at this age there was no sexual release. My cousin may have had some physical response, as she seemed to enjoy my probing hands in and around her vulva, and often I would be finished with my examination and she would insist I check her further. We played this game several times, but eventually stopped. I can't remember getting caught. One or the other of us may have believed it was nasty, or maybe our parents got suspicious of those quiet moments, but the game ended as if it never was. But, I remember it vividly with pleasure.

1953

Also within this first decade of my life, I became sexually creative. One of my earliest artistic endeavors was the clandestine tracing of a picture of Atlas, replacing his leaf-covered crotch with the missing parts. They were hairless and no doubt undersized, being drawn from my childhood experience of male anatomy, but it served as one of the few dirty pictures that we boys would sneak around.

I also created fantasies, and the most vivid one was with my forth grade teacher. He was a handsome young man in his early twenties, of Greek or Italian descent. He may have liked boys and projected it, for I really liked him. Perhaps I admired his masculinity, the pleasant deep voice, the coarse hair on his forearms, the shadow of beard, or the whisper of odor that a child seated in a desk could smell. So, for some unknown reason, in my fantasy he was lying on the floor of the small secluded coat closet in the classroom and I was the only one around. I unbuttoned his shirt, revealing a chest of coarse hair which got thicker on his abdomen between his navel and belt. I loosened the belt and unfastened his pants, unzipping the fly so that the white elastic of his underwear was revealed. I could now continue with a very titillating fantasy, but this much intimacy with a love object was sufficient excitement for a 9-year-old.

The sexual dark ages that I grew up in were not just a personal development, but a product of the Puritan American society at the time. Sexuality was not discussed openly unless one were vulgar, so no one knew that the "perversions" they secretly practiced were in fact the norm. The facts started coming to light in 1948 with the Kinsey research, "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male." It seems a lot of the population of my parents generation were doing all sorts of socially unacceptable sexual things. People throughout history have always done the same things, but during some periods it was done openly, and during others it was secret and denied.

My stepfather had a Polaroid Land camera in the early '50s that allowed black and white photos to be processed in the privacy of his home. I discovered by accident that his was the first generation to put the Polaroid to its obvious erotic use. While reaching into the cracks between the couch cushions as kids do looking for change, I pulled up a couple of Polaroid photos. They were out of focus and blurred, but still recognizable as two naked people. I could figure out what the pictures were of, and knew it was my mother and stepfather, but didn't quite know how the photos came to be stuck in the couch. I put them back and they eventually disappeared. Looking at them, my feelings were mixed, being excited by the sexual photos and at the same time guilty of sexual feelings connected with my parents.

By 1953 "Playboy" magazine had appeared with up front photos for the lusty male. I remember the nude pin-up of Marilyn Monroe hanging in my father's workshop. She was curled up on a red cloth with her breasts and clean shaved underarm exposed, with a good shot of her buttocks and legs (a preference of the '40s), but of course no pubic hair. These peeks at nude photos that I was allowed at age 10 were my preliminary rites of passage. Sexual knowledge still came from peers who were just as curious and confused as myself.



St. Ann (suburb)
1955

Unlike "primitives" who teach their young the mysteries, and how to masturbate, we had to learn this ourselves since our society, attempting to hide the obvious, perceived us as innocent for years after we were sexually active.

My first experiences were accidental, much like pressing my penis when climbing a pole. I would awaken in the morning lying on my stomach with my hands pressing against my erect penis, and my butt slowly undulating up and down. The physical sensation was what woke me and I would attempt to prolong the feeling while half asleep, but it would fade before ejaculation; or at least I don't recall such.

At about the age of eleven, Larry and I were in the basement of his house after school looking at his older brother's Playboys. He had once seen his brother "jack off" and suggested that we try it. I declined, but stayed in the basement while he sat with his back to me, doing this strange new thing with his dick. At first he reported that it felt good, but after a while he got quite excited exclaiming, "Ooh, ooh, it tickles!" He then got calmer, and was so quiet afterward that I went home.



That night in bed I wanted to experience what Larry had. I took my penis in hand, which had already gotten hard, and began bouncing it up and down, for I had heard the term "beating your meat." That gave some stimulation but wasn't doing it, so I stopped and just laid there holding my penis, inadvertently sliding my hand back on the loose skin. That was the motion. I repeated it again and again, each stroke more intense than the last, until quite unexpectedly there was a slight pain in my lower abdomen, followed by a quick pleasurable convulsion and a squirt of slippery fluid from my penis. My first orgasm was quite a surprise. Of course I tried it again with success, though not as intense.

In the light of day, guilt overcame me. There was nothing in my cultural upbringing that said masturbation was normal and natural. In fact, if there was any reference at all, it was to "self abuse." I even imagined that my hero uncle from his vantage point in heaven would be able to see me jack off and be disgusted. Luckily, I knew I wasn't alone, for Larry and I were both guilty of this dirty act, and other boys talked about it, although it wasn't openly admitted to.

This was also a time of change that we faced alone. Curious new hairs started growing under my arms and around my dick. Pubescence was exuding from my body at all points and no one explained anything, except for my mother telling me I should start using underarm deodorant. As the hairs around my dick increased and got longer and curlier I knew there was some significance to them. For a while I even saved the pubic hairs that fell out.

Puberty - Adolescence

Exploring myself was fascinating, and while concentrating on these new developments of my body, my dick would get hard and I couldn't resist holding it. The feelings of guilt were pushed aside, for the urge to jack off was overpowering.

Auto eroticism would be the only sexual expression of my adolescence, and would be explored fully before limits were established. I remember timing at less than half a minute from first stroke to ejaculation. I would also sustain an erection and keep masturbating for several ejaculations, which would be just an ooze of semen, and cause my penis to hurt. I also recorded a distance of over two feet that semen would squirt. A kid with a new toy.

I also remember the excruciating pain of "blue balls" or "lovers nuts," when prolonged sexual arousal was not alleviated. The pain in my scrotum hurt to walk, sit, or lie down. Relief eventually came after very gently masturbating to ejaculation. This condition happened when I played around at Joyce's and it was accompanied by the very embarrassing wet spot that would appear on my pants from seminal fluid leakage.

 

Adolescence
1961 - 63

Although I never had intercourse with a girl as a teenager, I did play stink finger with an 18-year-old girl when I was about 17. She let me caress her breasts and put my hand down her pants as far as her pubic hair. Eventually my hand would get lower, until one day my finger found its way to her vagina. After a while of this very heavy petting, on the verge of blue balls, I would hurry home to smell my trophy and masturbate.


There was one opportunity to have sex with another person during my mid teens. A male cousin and I were spending the night in the same bed at my grandmothers in Mississippi. We had talked ourselves into hard-ons and he suggested that we could lay together and rub our dicks between each others legs. The thought of doing this was exciting, but at the same time frightening and I declined. So we both laid there together, masturbating as inconspicuously as possible, and after the bed shaking had stopped, asked each other rhetorically, "did you shoot off?"

Except for an occasional admission among the guys, masturbation was done in secrecy, though not undetected. As is the unconscious state of teen-agers, I wasn't aware that the fluid ejaculated while masturbating on the couch in the basement and wiped on the slip cover, might be smelled when wet, or the stiffness noticed when dry. There was also my stiff sox and a occasional accident on my pillow case. Actually, it may have been more subliminal than unconscious, like a cat spraying or a dog urinating. In any case, my next rite of passage occurred about this time when my mother gave me a little book explaining in most clinical terms (it was written by a doctor of course) everything a young man needed to know about sex.

The first thing this taught me was that sex wasn't talked about in the early 60s. It didn't tell me to stop wiping cum on the slip covers, but it did let me know about V.D., prostitutes, the mechanics of the sex organs, and how babies exited their mothers, something I was curious about for years.

For all the repressive propriety of the early 60s, a teenage boy could still get visual stimulation. For a while we could pool our money after school and buy Playboy magazine at the local news store, but then they put it in a brown paper wrapper and stopped selling it to minors. The Puritans didn't protect us from lust, they just encouraged our larceny. While I would buy a candy bar and slowly count the change, Larry would lift the Playboy and put it in his notebook. We would then sneak off to eat chocolate and look at young women's breasts as we tore out all the good pictures which were easier to hide than the magazine.

Another visual experience was the burlesque show. Once, when going to see a movie downtown, I met an acquaintance from school who told me he was going to the Grand Theater. I went with him, trying to look older and more confident than I was at the box office, and we both got in with no problem. It was the only time a saw a stage performance in the old downtown St. Louis theaters. There was the buzz of the carbon-arc lamps, and a band in front of the stage. The drummer would accent punch lines of the old men doing tired routines between strips. There were some young women who would bounce bare breasted around the stage to my youthful satisfaction, but the older women, always in subdued light, did the most seductive stripping.

Another thing that impressed me at the burlesque theater was when I went to the restroom and saw a man on his knees sucking another man's penis. I thought it was a strange scene, with other men standing around, apparently unconcerned or waiting their turn. It was the first time I'd seen a sex act being performed and my first encounter with homosexuality (not counting the time when I was 10 and a man in a movie theater put his hand in my crotch). I was relieved to finish pissing and get out of there.

Renaissance

Adolescence - Adult
US Air Force 1964

My personal sexual maturity seemed to be paralleling the sexual maturation of society as both were coming out at the same time. Perhaps the great number of my peers making these discoveries together overwhelmed the contrived propriety of the established generation. The dark ages of sexuality were coming to an end as I was coming of age.



Though my personal sexual experience as a teenager at home was introverted, I came out with my final rites of passage in the military service. I was 19, it was 1964 and it was a classical education when the sergeant took a group of us to Villa Acuna, on the border of Mexico for our first piece of ass. He stopped at a convenience store and told us to buy rubbers, something I'd never used yet. He told us not to worry, just give one to the whore and she'd take care of it.

When we arrived at Villa Acuna and found "Boys Town," the prostitution section, the Sarge told us where to meet him in the morning and left.

Three of us went walking down the street of cantinas and were immediately propositioned in front of a bar under a red light and decided to do it now. I knew that the lady who had me wasn't young, but under the red light she didn't quite look the 50 years that she did under the harsh white light of the room we went to. We got down to business and undressed ourselves in this light. I was too nervous to care that there was no romance. She asked for the rubber and rolled it onto my penis, which only my youth could have made hard under these conditions. I was excited and nervous because this was "it," the first time to have sex with a woman. Not an autoerotic fantasy, but a real flesh woman, whose naked body was being held in my arms, her breasts touching my chest, my erect penis rubbing her thigh. She turned out the light and the room was total darkness, which put me more at ease as I had never stood naked before a woman. She lay in the bed, legs spread apart with me on top between them. She took my dick and guided it into her **** and started the rhythm by undulating her hips. I tried to stay in sync with her but my mind was too active and it was often awkward. I was too preoccupied to reach orgasm, and we finally stopped when my buddies were calling me from outside. My first sexual intercourse left me with some doubts about my manhood, but later in the night with a few drinks of tequila, and the realization that I was now a veteran of the naked woman campaign, I had a smoother fuck with another, younger whore, which included an orgasm (on my part at least).

An interesting observation of how the Catholic, Mexican prostitutes incorporated their profession into their religion, was when they crossed themselves, money in hand, once for each of the two or three dollars. There were several more trips to Mexico while I was stationed in Texas, uneventful reruns of purchased sex with partners pretending to make love.

It wasn't until I went home on leave before going overseas that I had my first attempt at non-commercial sex. The girl's name I can't recall, just an acquaintance that I met through Joyce. It was a typical teenage affair, sitting at her house on the porch talking endlessly about nothing, then walking around the neighborhood, stopping in the secluded yard of a closed school, for kissing and breast-fondling. Later we stopped at an empty laundromat, where, hidden in an alcove behind the dryers, I went down on her. It was late June 1964, a hot sultry day; a perfect setting for young passion, and this was my first impulsive act of cunnilingus. In the heat of the moment it was as if I were compelled to quit kissing her breasts and run my mouth down her belly, to unfasten her jeans and pull down the front of her panties, running my tongue through the coarse brown hair to the moist lips beneath. I found the odors of sweat and vaginal fluids exciting and was reluctant to pull away when some housewife came in to do her laundry. The woman gave us a wary look as we came from behind the corner, straightening our clothes with our hair amiss and a prominent bulge in my pants, obvious by our actions what we were doing there. We quickly left the woman to her laundry and otherwise dull day.

It was during this leave at home that I attempted for the first and only time to have sex in the back seat of a car. It was a '59 Ford Fairlane, an ugly product of the post classic period, and the family's second car. My mother loaned it to me to go on a date with the girl from the laundromat experience. We went to a drive-in movie, the traditional place for heavy kissing and finger fucking. Afterward, we drove to a secluded back road that she knew about, and began our petting anew. We became quite passionate in the front seat, but after one of our body parts hit the steering wheel and the horn blew, we moved to the rear seat where there was more room. It was still cramped, but I managed to get my pants down and she managed to spread her legs enough for me to get between them. After all this contortion we discovered that due to tenseness or poor lubrication, my penis couldn't penetrate more than an inch. Just as well, for about this time we saw car headlights coming down the road, possibly the police to catch us at this immoral activity. I still don't know how I managed to vault over the back of the front seat, land behind the wheel with my pants on and start the car with one motion, but that's how it seemed to happen it was so fast.

Thus ended the awkward attempt at making love in a car, a traditional adolescent activity of my generation that I had missed out on. Later, when we got to her house, we went behind some bushes, and laying on the ground proceeded with our erotic endeavor. Having sneaky sex on the ground seemed to fit my style better and was freer than the confines of a car. I never succeeded in penetrating this girl's vagina more than an inch, a problem she said had happened before with another guy. Considering we were using no birth control precautions, it's just as well we didn't succeed and I had to go home and masturbate to relieve the sexual tension.

We never considered mutual masturbation or mutual oral sex as an alternative to penile penetration sex. In 1964 in the Midwestern culture where I was raised, we were pushing it just having "natural" sex out of wedlock. Boys were expected to try this, but only bad girls would submit. The fact that girls liked sex as much as boys was creeping into the social awareness, but the old rules of sexual relations had not yet fallen to the sexual revolution that had just started.

Oral sex was still a legal perversion in many states, though legal consequences never entered my mind when I impulsively linged this girls cunus. Many girls were inhibited from letting themselves be eaten out, and the talk among the guys at this time still gave a certain gross reputation to those of us admitting to doing it. I had never even considered analingus at this time, when a married buddy at work described how he tungued his wife's anus. When everyone looked at him as the nastiest one among us, he defensively described it as unlike our big hairy shitholes, but more like a little pink raspberry. He also told us how nice it was when his wife sucked his cock. Few of us had this experience at the time, and those who did were with whores in the Far East. If it was a bad girl at home who would have sex, then it was a slut who would suck cock. These were the moral perceptions of a 19-year-old just discovering sexuality with others, and it seems I must have surfed atop the crest of this sexual tidal wave that rolled through our culture in the 1960s and '7Os.

Turkey

While stationed in Turkey, I made frequent trips to the Compound in Bursa. This was where the prostitutes were, in a walled-in block of houses with a uniformed guard at the gate who frisked for weapons, contraband, and cameras. I don't know what the Compound was about. I heard from other servicemen that it was a prison for adulterers and prostitutes and that the women were working their way out.

As you entered the compound you walked along the rows of houses, looking into the front windows at the women seated in the room. When you saw one you liked, you went in and paid the matron the equivalent of $2. Sometimes they would send for chi (tea) and you would sit awhile in the parlor with the women, being mildly groped by the one of your choice. Having chi during business transactions is a Middle Eastern custom, but here it was probably just waiting for a bedroom to be vacated. You would then go to a room for your twenty or so minutes of Turkish delight.

Denise was my regular; fifteen years old and attractive. There was every shape, size and age, including an old woman with sores on her body that I always assumed to be secondary syphilis. As with all the women, Denise shaved her pubic hair, either for hygiene or sexual preference, and I got my first real look at female genitals since playing doctor as a kid. I also got stubble burn on my legs and occasionally on my face as I impulsively went down on this little girl's hairless pussy. The reckless abandon of youth! I wasn't the only G.I. who confessed to going down on a Turkish whore, though my buddies told me I had eaten a hundred Turk men by proxy. It's amazing that I never contracted V.D. while in Turkey, for half the time I would forego the use of a rubber. Besides, they don't make rubbers for tongues so it would have been futile to use one on my penis. One Sergeant (who reputedly had crabs in his eyebrows) had a very suspect case of "strep throat" and the clap at the same time.
It was in the compound at Bursa that a new development in my sexual growth first occurred. Denise told me that if I came back before closing time I could spend the night with her for $7; a real bargain, not much more than a cheap hotel room. That evening I came back and the guard told me they were about to lock the gate and I wouldn't be able to leave before morning. I let him know I had made arrangements to spend the night and he let me in.

Denise and I went to a small room on the third floor. It may have been her own, as the bed was too small for professional use. Before we went to bed I sat on the floor smoking a cigarette while Denise sat next to me playing with some dolls and stuffed animals. I was only four years older than her, but found myself reflecting on her youth and how long she had been prostituting, and did she ever have a childhood, or was this it.
When we went to bed there was a feeling of intimacy as we slowly felt each others body and joined in sexual contact until we drifted off to sleep. It was the first time not to have to pull out, wash up, and leave. It was also the first time to lie entwined with another person, just sleeping and sharing the warmth of our naked bodies. I didn't sleep soundly that night, just drifting in and out of the consciousness of being intimately close to another human. It was the realization that having sexual intercourse was not as intimate as feeling her skin press against mine with the soft movement of her breathing as she slept in my arms.
I sometimes wonder how much enjoyment a prostitute gets out of sexual intercourse with a client; if not emotional, there is always the physical stimulus. I also wonder if Denise enjoyed the night I spent with her. I like to think it was not entirely for mercantile reasons that she asked me to spend the night; perhaps cunnilingus set me apart from other patrons. If that was the case, she may have been disappointed the next morning, for it was also the first time to wake up with a woman who had fucked before going to sleep. My experience up to this time had been with women who had recently douched. No way my mouth or nose could get near her crotch, but my penis didn't mind the smell and we had a good morning good-by fuck before I started back to base.

At 20 years of age, I was discovering that the biological sex act, which I had been indulging in for over a year was only enjoyable when there was an awareness of the other person's being. It didn't require a deep relationship, just an appreciation of the intimacy of the moment with another human. I no longer pursued prostitutes for sexual gratification, except for a few visits to Denise, which I felt to be a relationship within the confines of her profession.

During the summer of 1965, a group of us rented an apartment on Buyukada (Big Island) in the Sea of Marmara, to spend our three day breaks away from base. It was a romantic setting, a hill rising from and overlooking the blue sea, with Victorian style buildings mixed with modern, where horse drawn carriages plied the narrow winding streets.

Helen
1965

It was here that I met Helen, and as I look back it's only fitting that my first serious romantic encounter would be with a Moslem Turkish girl. I was 20 and Helen 17; our affair was forbidden, even if I had not been an infidel, but this is the ageless story of young passion defying the restraints of family and culture.



From my apartment I would see her pass on the way to market, and run to walk beside her until we came to some place where she was known and I would have to walk separately. Her friend Iset who lived in the apartment below mine helped arrange our meetings on the hill above her house, and at night I would sneak through the darkness and wait to meet her, to make forbidden love on a trench coat on the ground.

Meeting outside had its disadvantages such as finding ourselves several feet down the hill from the trench coat with scraped knees and butt. Her cat followed her out one night and decided to join us by sitting on my leg, purring and working its claws in and out through my pants. I was too involved to throw him off, and though irritating at first, as our intensity grew, it became less of an irritant and more of a stimulant. I sometimes wonder how conscious animals are of human mating, and if cats get off on pain when they do it.

Once, before I left, her family was away in Istanbul, and we were alone together in her house for an evening of intimacy. We were both very nervous, but soon found ourselves lying on the living room floor, naked in the candle light, listening to a Nat King Cole record on the radio, and exploring each other with our hands. What felt like nervousness was actually excitement at being this physically close to someone I loved so much. We kissed deeply, our tongues nearly entwined, and in the excitement I too hastily tried to insert my penis into her, but it would not go. As I fondled her breasts with my fingers and tongue, my other hand went to her vagina. Slowly I could feel her moistening and loosening and moved my mouth down her smooth belly to the slightly hairy mound between her legs. My tongue went for a while just inside her lips and back and forth over the top of her clit, but I soon found myself licking as far inside her as I could. I picked up her legs, raising her butt, and brought my nose into her vagina while my tongue licked below on the outside. Then as impulsively as I was with cunnilingus, I found myself licking around her anus, giving no thought to hygiene, just wanting to touch her, lick her, taste her everywhere; to try to be a part of her. I crawled up between her legs and pushed my penis into her vagina, which was still very tight though receptive, and without much sliding in and out we had a very fast and intense orgasm together. She clenched my back and said "Oh Bob," as I dumped my entire abdomen into her.

This was my first instance of such intense passion, the first time sex was integral with love. I was so involved in this, my first love affair, that I asked Helen to marry me, and fortunately she declined. It's unlikely that our marriage could have endured, but I'll always have fond remembrances of this strawfire romance that burned quickly and brightly and left few ashes.

However, Men are Dogs. On my way back to the states we had a room at the Istanbul Hilton for the nite and went out bar hoping. Got a pic of me an this bar fly who only wanted me to buy a drink (and the foto)



Fort Meade
1966-67

On my return trip to the States, I saw little things in Europe such as bidets in hotel bathrooms, and a woman attendant in the men's restroom at the Frankfurt airport, that showed me how sexually repressed our American culture was. Of course this was no new revelation, for the bits of erotica found in America since the late '50s had filtered in from Europe with such actresses as Anita Ekberg, Brigitte Bardot, and Ursula Andress (Undress).

For the remainder of my time in the service, at Ft. Meade, Maryland, I was sexually inactive except for masturbation. Prostitutes in this country cost more than $2, which just wasn't worth it, and for servicemen on a large army base there was no day to day contact with available young women. So, sexual gratification for most of us occurred in the toilet stalls at the barracks, our only semi private place. Here, we had easy sex, always in control with any number of variations from purely manual stimulation to autoerotic fantasies.

Material for some of the fantasies was supplied by Playboy magazine or an occasional sexually explicit novel. I also read an "Analysis of Human Sexual Response," about the research of Masters and Johnson in St. Louis (1966), and how they studied various sex acts in progress. I remember trying to visualize myself fucking or masturbating under the close scrutiny of cameras and technicians. I could almost see myself having intercourse in a room with observers, but could not even consider masturbating in front of others. It may have been the guilt that I grew up with about masturbating, or the fact that autoeroticism was too secret and too personal to be observed by others.

Another form of sexual release during this period were the nocturnal emissions, when I would awaken at night in the midst of ejaculation. Though a pleasant way to wake up, it was quite messy as the volume emitted seemed more than usual. These were common occurrences in the barracks, either due to our youth or restricted sexual activities, and when someone got up at night and went to his laundry bag or locker you would hear anyone awake say, "have another wet dream?" Sometimes I would recall having erotic dreams before ejaculation, but most of the time it seemed to be just a spontaneous release of pressure.

There was one episode of nearly having sex with a woman while stationed at Ft. Meade. My buddy and I were hanging out at DuPont Circle in D.C. where the beatniks and young people congregated in the late '60s. He managed to hit on a couple of roommates who took us to their apartment. While he was in the bedroom making it with the more attractive girl, I was in the living room with the fat roommate who was seductively lying on the couch, with her soft white belly protruding from under her shirt. This was a total turn-off and after a while of my inactivity, she went into a rage, disturbing her roommate and my buddy, bringing the evening to a miserable end with us leaving.

It was about this time that I became aware of what physically turned me on. I did not like soft round white bellies, but preferred tight, straight, smooth ones that dipped slightly inward from the rib cage. I preferred firm rounded butts and breasts to large ones, and liked long slender legs. I found feet, armpits, and the back of the neck and shoulder exciting.

The fact that I was turned on by the male physique was also creeping into my awareness; not just artistic appreciation but a gut-level attraction. This was disturbing in light of the attitude toward homosexuality by the military and society in general. I tried denying it but it was there, in the shower with other guys, in nudist magazines where both sexes were shown, and in my fantasies. There was an article in Playboy about homosexuals on Fire Island, N.Y., which I found enticing, and discussed with one of my more liberal buddies. He was surprisingly understanding of what I was feeling, which made me realize that others had encountered these same feelings. But, he did add that if I were making it with someone and running my mouth down to their crotch, wouldn't I rather fall into a pussy than have a dick in my face? I laughed and said I guess so, not telling him that I could take it either way.

If homosexuality were so perverse how could there be so many of them at present and throughout history, including my favorite artist, Michelangelo? These were the thoughts that I would entertain secretly for the next couple of years, not daring to act upon them because I had been taught that it was abnormal.

 

New Orleans
1967

I left the service in June of 1967, attempted to live in the rural south, but found I needed more urbane social surroundings, so by September I was in New Orleans, working for Pinkerton's Security and assigned to West Jefferson General Hospital.

There was a new soap opera on daytime TV called "General Hospital," (1963) which I never watched, but always assumed could have been made at West Jefferson General. As a young guard of 22, I made rounds and learned of all the affairs going on. An ambulance driver and inhalation therapist, both married with families, had the most open affair, but a coroner's examiner and nurse were also a hot item. I think it was the strong Catholic culture on the West Bank that didn't allow divorce, which created acceptance of these open "secret" extramarital affairs.

During my year at the hospital, I had a few casual affairs with nurses and other hospital workers, and there was an open feeling of sexual freedom. There was, at this time, a growing subculture of young dropouts who were into drugs and free love, but here at the hospital there was still the facade of being straight. There was no drug culture, but the pharmacist and a few nurses seemed to get high without drinking. Free love was not practiced openly, but it was easy enough to find yourself spending the night at someone's apartment. Being a part of the grapevine, I'm sure the entire hospital knew which nurse took the young security guard home last night.

One nurse who took me to her apartment was still married though separated from her husband. She was rotundly fat and not my ideal of physical attraction. We had dinner together one evening in the hospital cafeteria and arranged to meet after work. It was a rudimentary quick drink at a local bar and I followed her to her apartment. Hot to trot would describe our feelings as we soon found ourselves in bed. Though I don't find fat visually attractive, I found it soft, pliant and quite comfortable while fucking, which she seemed to enjoy so much that it increased my pleasure. I stayed the night with her, and discovered another pleasure of screwing a fat, married woman when she cooked me steak and eggs and potatoes in the morning before I left. We never got together again. She went back to her husband and soon became pregnant. She said she was sure it was his child, so I didn't question further since everyone involved was happy with that arrangement.

I was often invited to parties at nurses' houses at the end of the 3 to 11 shift. They were much like the parties in the service where everyone got quite drunk. At one such party, Willy, a male nurse, proclaimed me too drunk to drive and insisted he drive my car to his house where I would stay the night. Willy worked private duty and I suspected him of being queer by his mannerisms, and stories he told me of sticking needles in beautifully shaped butts and catheterizing males with hard-ons. Once he even tapped me on the butt in passing.

We had gone out drinking once before and I found out that he was married and had kids, so my assessment of his sexuality vacillated and I agreed to go home with him as his wife followed in their car. I was too drunk to see the illogic of his wife preparing the large bed for Willy and me, while she slept in the guest bedroom. During the night I recall Willy removing my shorts and fondling my penis, and it getting hard enough for me to make a feeble attempt, with his guidance, at sticking it into his anus, but I was too drunk to maintain this activity and drifted off to sleep.

It was afternoon when I finally came around and found myself naked in bed with Willy. I was very groggy and hungover, but finally found my underwear in the covers and got dressed. His wife fixed us coffee and lunch, which I picked at until I eventually got it together and went home. I just laid around at home the entire day, physically ill from the hangover but also depressed about the activities of the night before. I rationalized that I was drunk, but then I was aware of what I was doing; that I was the passive participant, but then I did try to hump his ass before passing out. It was the guilt of finally doing what I had always been taught was perverted and abnormal and it took me at least a day to realize that I had been taught wrong. I was still not ready for homosexuality but had been initiated and felt better by the next day when I went back to work. I don't know how many people knew that Willy and I had slept together, for nothing ever got back to me, but we maintained a friendly relationship at work as if nothing had ever happened.

1968

Not every sexual encounter at this time was a one-night stand. One friend that I saw frequently for a while didn't work at the hospital but was a friend of the pharmacist who let me know what a fox she was before he introduced us. Paula was naturally very beautiful, but she also worked at it with make-up and hair curlers, which I found out when spending the night, that she slept in. I think it was with Paula that I started realizing that hairdo's and make-up, though visually attractive, were fetishes that didn't stand up to touch, and that I preferred the freedom of the more natural woman. It's a wonder Paula and I saw each other as much as we did considering our contrasts of style. She would have fit perfectly on the arm of a gentleman in a suit, and I didn't even own one. It may have been my natural uncultured style that she found attractive, or maybe she just liked cunnilingus. The first time I started going down on her, she held my head back and wouldn't let me, saying she was embarrassed to let me smell her. I convinced her she didn't smell offensive to me and finally got my tongue in her. I suspect it was her first such experience though I thought by 1968 cunnilingus was pretty much in common practice. By now it had become a routine practice with me because I found that besides my own compulsion, most women really got off on it. It was the subject of male lore as to how it gave a competitive edge to securing a woman's affections. So, here I was doing my thing with my tongue in Paula's **** and she was really getting off on it, when she said in her soft voice, "suck it Shale, suck it." I found "It" to be her stiff clitoris, and began sucking on it, drawing it in and out of my pursed lips while Paula became ecstatic. I had just learned a new technique in the art of lovemaking, and was soon doing variations with my tongue, lips, and upper teeth.

When guys got together and talked about eating pussy, there was always something gross said about menstruation. "A real man pulls the Tampax out by the string in his teeth." I had by now encountered women on their period, and though many of them wouldn't have sex at that time, some would, and we did. One particularly uninhibited girl let me remove her tampon (with my fingers) and I didn't find it at all repulsive, though the fluid left a grey stain in the center of my sheet that never came out. I wasn't compelled to go down on her, but if my sexual arousal was intense enough, the menstruation wouldn't have prevented me from doing it. In fact, I once was eating out a girl who had just started her period and we weren't aware of it until I lifted my head up and had blood on my chin. She was surprised that I wasn't upset, but I didn't notice a difference of taste or smell so it didn't bother me.

Anne

Getting away from menstruation, let's move on to the other affair I had while at the hospital, but first a little background. By the age of 23 I was becoming aware of being attracted to older women. Sigmund Freud would probably have attributed it to the fact of my mother marrying my stepfather when I was age six and the male competition for her affections resulted in my Oedipus complex.

In the Air Force, when I was just 21, I had a secret crush on a Major Hotinski, who was at least in her 40s, but still fit nicely into her tailored uniform. Being an officer in addition to being much older than me, she was unapproachable and our only relationship was in my fantasies. Even at the hospital, a 41-year-old nurse and I toyed for a while with the idea of having an affair. We met in restaurants after work, and talked around the subject of our attraction to each other. Finally, one night while at her car in the restaurant parking lot, I braved kissing her good-by and found her very receptive. We got into her car and kissed more passionately and she invited me to her house. In the kitchen we had a beer and when she got up to get another I took her in my arms and we began kissing. I turned out the lights and went down on her while she leaned against the kitchen counter. She seemed surprised and after a while stopped me and pulled me back up. Her husband was off driving a truck somewhere, but she had second thoughts about taking me to their bed, and apologized for bringing me home. Even in my youthful glandular condition, I could appreciate her fidelity and she thanked me for the experience and for being so "gallant." As usual, talk of this affair between me and the older nurse circulated around the hospital, and I'm sure Anne heard of it before we started seeing each other.



Anne was a switchboard operator at the hospital who was much older than me. I always found her attractive, and spent a lot of time between rounds in the switchboard room. She was 42, and had nine children, the oldest nearly my age. She was of Scottish descent and had lived in Canada and England before coming to Marrero with her American husband who she had met during the war. Like myself, she was a Scorpio, and throughout our relationship there was a psychic closeness that we shared. We could both feel the intensity of attraction that went beyond the innocuous conversations we were having, and knew our destiny to be lovers even before that first innocent meeting for a drink after work.

There was another switchboard operator who worked with her, a vulgar, lusty woman who quickly picked up on my attraction to Anne, and told me about it. One night while Anne was off and I was alone in the switchboard room with this woman, she made a most obvious forward move on me. I thought she was playing until I found her in my arms and we were deep kissing. This woman was also older, about Anne's age, and though I wasn't particularly attracted to her, I continued participating in this caricature of a stolen moment of passion, holding her close to me, squeezing her breast through her clothing and caressing her thigh with my hand under her dress. We separated, I went on my rounds, and the scene never happened again. It was just a fun moment, perhaps fulfilling a mutual fantasy of the absurd, she the aggressive older woman, me the innocent youth.

Anne and I met several times at restaurants for casual talk, and although the pressures of longing were always present, we refrained from rushing into a physical relationship. We even discussed our obvious desire for each other, but Anne was hesitant. She was estranged from her husband and had not had sex for a year. She was apprehensive about jumping into bed with a young man, and not being able to go through with it. She was also a little self conscious about her body, the sags of age, the hysterectomy scar which ran from her navel to her pubis. But as we talked, she learned that although I was a young man, I was not an immature teenager, and she finally came with me to see where I lived.

My apartment was a one-room efficiency on Camp St., furnished with a bed, a desk, and table with chairs. There wasn't much to show as I nervously let Anne in the door. She walked around, into the kitchen and bathroom and was complimenting me on the charm of my little home, when I couldn't contain myself any longer. I slipped my arms around her and pulled her to me and she seemed to melt against my chest, relieved also that this moment had finally happened. Building up to and fulfilling that first embrace is always like some kind of mental orgasm. We immediately had our mouths together, tongues thrusting to be inside the other, and we knew this was the beginning of our physical intimacy. We would fulfill each other's needs as lovers, and although we were both aware of the difference in our ages and that it would be a transient affair, it made no difference in the intensity of the love we shared.

Anne stopped me from unbuttoning her blouse, and smiling at me, said she had to go. I walked her to her car and gave her a more appropriate public kiss and arranged to see her the next morning. Perhaps she was still hesitant or perhaps just being coy. Being raised in the same Victorian culture that she grew up in, I could appreciate playing the romantic game of seduction, where unbridled impulses were met with restraint and the tension created could be patiently savored.

The next morning I was awakened by a knock at the door. It was Anne, all smiling and exuberant, looking like a teenager next to me, unshaven and unkempt. We had coffee while sitting in the bed, and as I awakened, found ourselves kissing passionately with me unbuttoning her blouse. She got undressed quickly and got under the sheet as I removed my shorts. I went under the sheet and began caressing her breasts and abdomen with my hands and mouth. She had a very nice figure though her breasts and skin were not as firm as with younger women. At first she seemed uneasy as I explored her body, but she soon relaxed with her hands on my head and back as I moved beneath the sheet. I ran my mouth down her abdomen and my tongue into her navel, then along the straight scar to her pubic hair. Her vagina was not as wet as with other women and even after much licking she had to put KY jelly on my penis before it would slide in. She said she had given up on sex and had not been taking hormones since her hysterectomy.

During the time we were seeing each other she started taking hormones, but we often used the KY jelly, which was my first experience with artificial lubricants, as most of the young women I went with were quite wet by the time of insertion. But, Mrs. Robinson, as she began calling herself (from the movie "The Graduate"), turned the lubricant into a part of foreplay by stroking it onto my engorged penis. This mature woman of another generation would prove to be the most accomplished lover I had met at this time. She seldom dressed as casually as younger women, and it became such an excitement peeling her. She projected that middle age propriety, about to be debauched by the kid as I removed her jacket, blouse and bra, then roughly pulled off her skirt, slip and panties. She would sometimes forego wearing the more practical pantyhose so I could have the titillation of removing her nylons and garter belt.

She was adventuresome and we tried various positions; things I had never tried with other women. This was my first time fucking "dog style," approaching her rear while on my knees. Not being used to this it gave me a back ache the next day. We also coupled with me standing and holding her by the butt to my middle. We laughed together at some of the attempts that were too awkward, and were content to just lay together on the bed. She particularly enjoyed the brief time humping on top of my penis while I lay on my back, but got a leg cramp and had to give it up. Once, while walking along a deserted levee in Plaquemine Parish, we became amorous and impulsively had sex on the ground on the riverside of the levee. I remember the mosquitoes biting my butt, and my knees getting skinned on the rough ground, but these were lost in the act of passion. We also enjoyed oral sex together and she was the first person to suck my penis and put my balls in her mouth. She brought me to heights of lust, and apparently I rekindled a sexuality in her that had been dormant for a long time.

I would often be aware of our age difference and wonder what Freud would have to say about sucking the breast of a woman four years older than my mother. Was it Oedipal or just an oral fixation? We would be lying naked in bed talking, and she would tell me things of her youth, like how it was in London during the bombings of WWII, and I realized that I was not yet born when she was a young woman.

There were sometimes awkward and comic moments of our generation difference. She would come to my house in her new Olds Cutlass to pick me up for a date, but I would drive while we were out together. She would slip me money in restaurants to pay for the meal, and there was one embarrassed young bartender who made the assumption that Mrs. R. was my mother, and had to squirm out of it when she told him we were lovers.

Though I wasn't particularly promiscuous at this time, Mrs. R. knew that in my youthful abandon I would fuck another woman if the opportunity presented itself. We had no commitments to fidelity between us, but in the caution that comes with age, she was mostly concerned with contracting V.D., and felt she couldn't just run to a clinic and get antibiotics like a young person would.

What really brought home the generation spread was when I half jokingly asked her to introduce me to her very attractive 18-year-old daughter. In my youthful inexperience, I could see being intimate (at separate times) with a mother and her daughter, but I never realized the dynamic of that relationship that made Mrs. R. react so strongly.

We each grew in our own direction, and our affair diminished after I left the hospital, and we both pursued romance with those of our own generation. However, over the next couple of years we kept in touch, and though I was exploring things in the Hippie drug scene that Mrs. R. could not accept, we still had our common bond of sexual attraction and she would visit now and then, and we'd get together and see where the other was at.

Free Love
1969

At 24 I was again chasing after women for the ageless reward of sexual favors. There was no thought of having relationships, as the concept of free love had spread through our generation by 1969 and doing a one night stand was as acceptable to a lot of young women as it was to men. I remember being aware of this phenomenon of casual sex at the time and took count of all the women I had been physically intimate with these past six years of my sexual life (not counting prostitutes), and it was about a dozen. That wasn't actually too many different partners, but it seemed the frequency of casual coupling was increasing.

What made me start thinking about how casual sex had become was when I picked up a girl in the Quarter, took her to my apartment, fucked her, ate her pussy, and slept the night with her, then while driving her back to the Quarter the next morning, realized we didn't even know each others names. I didn't consider myself a rake or even particularly promiscuous but sex was just a natural function and not something to be saved for that one right person. Of course, when everyone is viewed as a sex partner, you're bound to end up in bed with a few hangups.

Sera was a young Honduran woman I met in the Quarter. We saw each other several times in the company of a gay male friend of hers and at the time I didn't even consider that she might be a lesbian or fruit fly (women who hang out exclusively with gay men). One night, after a few drinks we ended up in bed together at her Ursuline Street apartment and after much seduction she finally spread her legs and let me push my dick into her. We both pushed together and she seemed to enjoy the fuck as much as I. The next morning however, she said that had she not been drunk she never would have slept with me. I told her that if lid known she was that drunk I wouldn't have fucked her. She let it drop at that, knowing that she was playing a game with herself for whatever reason, to justify her sexual activity with a man.

By the end of 1969 I was becoming more aware of the "Hippie" subculture that was growing in New Orleans, and started identifying with it. While still a police patrolman I started dressing in the mod style of bell bottom pants, sandals, wide leather watch band and long sideburns, and hanging out at the Seven Seas bar at St. Phillip and Decatur streets in the Quarter. I was attracted to the tell-it-like-it-is impropriety of these dropouts, who were abandoning the contrived social values, which we were raised with and forming new values from their own exploration. Sexuality was openly discussed and practiced, and things once considered abnormal, were now the accepted norm.

Again, it was the liberal sexual forum of Playboy magazine at this time that communicated the acceptability of sexuality in a variety of forms. Besides having accumulated an entire wallful of centerfolds of young nude women over the past couple of years, (still without pubic hair), I had been reading the letters and comments of others on the subjects of cunnilingus, fellatio, group sex, homosexuality, and the antiquated sexual attitudes and laws of our society. I wrote one of my first letters of protest after reading about a man imprisoned for being caught in the act of oral sex with his girlfriend. The letter, addressed to the dept. of corrections at the state he was, admitted to my performing those same acts, though in a foreign country, where I was lucky not to be caught as this unfortunate man was in the "land of the free." I received a reply that due to the volume of protest, his case was being reviewed. Playboy ran a follow-up letter in a later issue that he had been paroled, and I felt we had made a small collective contribution to sexual freedom.

 

Homosexual Coming Out
1970

I also had a brief subscription to a magazine by Ralph Ginsberg called, "Avant Garde," which presented contemporary and usually erotic works of photography, art, and writing. It was while reading a poetic piece called "A Day for a Lay," by W. H. Auden, describing the pick up and seduction of a young man by another man, that I admitted to myself how exciting it would be to have sex with a man.

Warren was a middle aged and outspoken homosexual who frequented the Seas, probably in search of moderate rough trade. He was loud and often jokingly made lewd propositions to certain men at the bar, which everyone heard. One evening I happened to be near him and he inquired about my sexual preference. When I let him know that I was inexperienced with men he proposed that I go home with him and try it. I was loose from alcohol but cognizant of what I was doing when we got in a cab and went to his apartment on Barracks St. in the Treme.

This was to be my first willfully chosen homosexual intercourse, and like my first heterosexual intercourse with a prostitute, it would be an exploration of sexual mechanics, devoid of emotional involvement with my partner. My memory of the evening is not too vivid considering the impression of this new experience should have made. There was another middle aged man in the apartment, possibly a steady lover, who stayed an awkward amount of time before finally leaving Warren and me alone. After bathing, at Warren's suggestion, we got into bed and fondled each others genitals for a few moments; the feel of scrotum and erect penis in my hand being both familiar and strange. The most vivid impression, as usual with me, was of odor. I was aware of Warren's male odor, which really accented the fact that I was making it with a man. I remember going down on him, and the feel of his large cock in my mouth, almost a dare to myself to experience this homosexual act. He attempted to have anal sex with me, but my tight sphincters wouldn't allow penetration, so he stopped. I can't recall what we finally did to attain orgasm, or whether I stayed the night or left that evening. It was just an uneventful initiation; finally being physically intimate with a man and now being aware of the expanse of my sexuality. There was no feeling of guilt afterward, for by now I had met enough supportive people in the Quarter to realize that it is sexual repression, not expression, which is perverted.

After finally coming out and allowing those lifelong secret urges to be expressed, I not only could reflect on my own repressions, but could now see through the thin closet doors that others were hiding behind. One such person was a very macho police sergeant who was reading a detective paperback, where the hero, for some reason in women's clothes, was caught in a back alley by some rough guys. The sergeant read aloud a very graphic passage, something like, "The two guys pushed me to my knees and twisting my arms, held me down. He unzipped his fly, producing a fairly large member that had a slight odor that I could smell as he pushed it to my mouth." I could tell by his reading of this S&M/Bondage passage that it excited him, and it was almost embarrassing to see his feelings so close to the surface, wondering if he or any of the others present realized it, for like true macho cops, they would have been most abusive toward a homosexual.

At that time I concluded that there were two types of homosexual; latent and overt, and that everyone was one or the other. There are those (latent) who deny this vehemently and overreact by attacking anything overtly homosexual. Out of self fear as much as social conformity they punch their buddy on the arm or slap him on the back, when their hidden urge is to hug him.

Though I had now experienced sex with a man, I didn't identify as a homosexual, and it would be over a year before my next sexual encounter with a man. Among my new acquaintances and friends were many openly homosexual men and women, often living in stable marriages, much like heterosexual couples. I was into the new sexual freedom and enjoyed identifying as bisexual, which meant that I was not limited to half the population, but could make love to anyone with whom I had a mutual attraction, whether male or female.

Dope - Crash Pads
1970

By early 1970, having quit the police dept., I was now making new acquaintances of young people in the subculture. This was an awakening time, a time of rapid exploration of sexuality, philosophy, and mind-altering drugs. I was now in the thick of the sexual revolution, and at 25 enjoying the carefree abandon of the teenage runaways that lived in crash pads in the Quarter.

"Mike," a curvy young girl I met at the Sphinx Coffee House, took me to her crash pad on Ursuline St. where I met "Shepherd" and another teenage girl, and where I smoked marijuana for the first time. There were five of us passing this joint around, and Mike showed me how to inhale and hold the smoke. I had no idea what to expect from being stoned, my only experience with altered consciousness was being drunk from alcohol. All of a sudden I realized that I couldn't keep up with the small talk going around. It seemed as though no one was into the same train of thought, except for the occasional agreement that this was some heavy Colombian grass. As I looked at the others in the room, they became two dimensional, as if they were cut out of cardboard. This was frightening but soon distracted by Mike who had crawled onto me and began kissing me. She had very large soft lips and it felt as though they were all over my face, suffocating me. I pushed back from her and laid there with my eyes closed, wishing it would end and I would get out of it intact. As I came down and reality was again a familiar thing, I felt a rhythmic shaking above my head on the mattress, and looked up to see Shepherd's naked butt and balls pushing up and down, his cock sliding in and out of the teenage girl he was with. They weren't totally uninhibited, for she said, "Shepherd, this is embarrassing." But, they kept on humping at the top of my head and I discreetly closed my eyes, not knowing the proper etiquette in such situations.

"Why don't we do it in the road? No one will be watching us, why don't we do it in the road?" Beatles, 1969

Sexual intercourse, which I'd always been taught was one on one and private, was now being done in view of others. This is nothing new to cultures where overcrowding leaves little room for privacy, much like the conditions in a one room crash pad.

After surviving a frightening first experience with marijuana, and coming back to the familiar world, I immediately wanted to try it again, and regularly went back to those distortions of reality, even financing some dope scores for the crash pad. Not too long after that Mike scored some acid and I took my first psychedelic trip. As with most first experiences, it left a most vivid impression. The distortions were much more intense than with grass, and as I looked down the straight streets and sidewalks of the French Quarter, they seemed to curve and twist like ribbons. With each step my foot extended far out on a long elastic leg, distorted and flowing as with everything else coming into my awareness. Colors, sounds and taste were amplified and often intertwined. Time and distance had no relevance. Everything flowed in oneness, and street sounds and language were in harmony, though not always discernible. The feeling was of new found awareness of secrets and truth that are always there but unseen by the uninitiated. We went to the Sphinx during our wandering and it was aglow with a myriad of candles and the knowing faces of our brothers and sisters.

Later that night when we came down, we went to the pad to crash, finding a place on the floor among the half dozen other people. Mike got undressed and I stripped to my underwear, by now getting used to the in-house nudity that was a matter-of-fact. At first I was a little uneasy when Mike started fondling me, then sucking my hard cock, with so many people laying so close by, but it was dark enough to feel that no one would be watching or hearing us, as we fucked there on the floor, and another inhibition eroded away.

This was the core of the sexual revolution, telling it like it is. We all had similar bodies, and we had seen those of the opposite sex, so why hide those parts from each other any more than a hand or foot? Likewise, we had all engaged in sexual intercourse, so why bother hiding that act from others. It was all very logical.

The subculture was a community of transients; people came and went, crash pads sprang up and folded, friendships developed quickly on an intuitive level, often becoming intimate with casual sexual alliances. For a while, as the transients in the Quarter were changing, my interests shifted to a group of new friends living uptown on Magazine St. They were from the Florida Gulf Coast and all close to my age, in their early to mid twenties, and though I wasn't a part of their household, I spent a lot of time smoking and tripping and sometimes sleeping with them.

Murielle and I had an immediate though brief sexual relationship, as I suspect Murielle had with most of her male friends. She and her household were exploring progressive sexual attitudes and I quickly joined in. Nudity was acceptable in the house, very casual and natural, such as changing clothes or sitting in bed naked with friends around. It was mutual voyeur/exhibitionism and a way to break through those inhibitions and hang ups we all had acquired. One afternoon while tripping with the group on some fairly heavy psychedelic and laying together naked holding hands, I started crying for no other reason than just being overwhelmed by the physical closeness we shared and the release of those inhibitions that always kept us apart.

Frolicking is the only word to describe some of our actions at this time, such as four of us cramming into the shower stall together. There was little room to move, but we lathered with soap and rotated and rubbed against each other. Murielle couldn't resist the chance to hold Ron's and my penis at the same time. We all dried each other off and by this time I wasn't self conscious about having a hard on in front of so many people.
There were quieter moments of shared intimacy. Murielle's sister "Myke" and I had balled once, but it was almost a free love formality, like an introduction where we joined penis and vagina. Therefore, all of us being familiar, I slept at their house one night, between the two of them. It was fun sleeping with two sisters, a new experience in intimacy, even though we didn't get sexual that night.

Murielle liked to smoke dope and fuck and I soon began to appreciate that combination. Grass is such a sensual dope for accenting mellow music, or the rhythmic pushes of fucking. Besides heightening physical sensitivity, it distorts the concept of time, allowing deep concentration on every moment and every sensual impulse coming to mind. Even shitting becomes a sensual experience while stoned on grass.

"Don't you worry 'bout what's on your mind. I'm in no hurry I can take my time.
I'm going red and my tongue's getting tied. I'm off my head and my mouth's getting dry. I'm high, but I try try try

Let's spend the night together
Now I need you more than ever
Let's spend the night together."
Mick Jagger, Rolling Stones 1967

Psychedelics, like grass, also heighten sensual perception, but usually the distortions are too intense and distracting to concentrate on a single activity like fucking, at least not until coming down from the peak experience. There was one time however, while tripping together at my apartment, Murielle and I got undressed and started playing around on the bed. The effect of the psychedelic intensified every touch and caress to unreal proportions, where they became sensual waves echoing throughout our bodies and into the room. When my penis slid into her vagina, every nerve amplified its response so that we could feel each cell of our membranes as they made contact with the other's flesh. At the time I had an irritation at the opening of my penis, and with each downward stroke the pain of the irritation which was also intensified by the psychedelic felt like the slit in my penis was being ripped apart. The pain was not distracting but merged into the whole sensual symphony and actually became a stimulating side note. As the waves of sexual stimulation grew in intensity, we began to get lost as body, and soon there was just heightening rhythm and surges; electrical impulses that flashed through us and covered our skin in changing colors, until finally in deafening silence there was a flash of white light which strobed in increments of declining duration until we were lying there, aware only of the rhythm of our heavy breathing and the droplets of sweat trailing down our wet skin.

Sharing sexual intimacy with another person while also flowing together with them on a trip makes them very close, and yet Murielle and I didn't develop any more of a relationship than we had with others in the house. While I was enjoying cavorting with this new sister I had met, I wasn't aware of George, her ol' man who was away working on an oil rig in the Gulf. When he came back it could have been an ugly scene, the primitive competition of two males for a female. Though he was a little displeased with Murielle for a while, he didn't blame me and we became good friends. There was no real loss to him that I was fucking his ol' lady while he was away, and they resumed their relationship, which now included me as another close brother. Murielle and I were no longer sexually intimate even though there was often opportunity in George's absence, for I knew that it would infringe on my relationship with him. There was now a trust between us that any changes in our relationship would be openly communicated.

"Free Love" was an expression with deeper relevance than the traditional thinkers gave it. It meant that Murielle was free to share her body with me or any number of others while still keeping commitments to the relationship she shared with George. It also meant that George was free from the traditional possessive, jealous role, the terms of his relationship with Murielle being defined by the two of them as equal partners. Thus, George and I were free from the traditional competition, and free to form a friendship.

Of course this is just one example to show how the new liberal sexual attitudes could make relationships more honest. There were still the old traditional relationships and games among some young people at this time, and I had the pleasure of enjoying such an intrigue with a married woman who was sneaking out on her husband. I personally knew of the upheavals in their marriage because the woman was my cousin, and being family, had an excuse to be at my place when they were on the outs.

Cousins

Actually we first got together under good circumstances, before she got married, when we discovered through family that we were both living in New Orleans. We visited occasionally, talking about relatives and old times as kids when she (being more sophisticated) taught me and another male cousin about "French kissing."

One night we went drinking in the Quarter and ended up a little drunk at my apartment on Camp Street, where, being of modern attitude, we were to share my bed just to sleep. Technically, we could not be incestuous since we were second cousins, and were no more restricted than any other unrelated couple sharing a bed, but by emphasizing our family relationship, it increased the sense of forbidden excitement when we found ourselves embracing intimately. It was a ride we both intuitively knew we would be on when we went out that night, and now as the ride picked up speed with our sexual arousal, we no longer controlled it as cousins, but rode along watching this young man and woman make love.
Sexual intimacy with a relative was exciting and we stayed in bed most of the next day exploring each other fully. It was my most prolonged sexual activity, having intercourse about five times that day besides our oral contacts, until we both admitted our parts were hurting.

July 4, 1970



Atlanta (Byron Ga.) was possibly the last of the big Pop Festivals, and though not as widely known as its predecessors "Monterey" and "Woodstock," it was impressive to someone just dropping out, and turning on to dope and free love. An estimated quarter million people converged on this rural area of pecan groves, ostensibly to come together and listen to rock music for a three day weekend. As with most of the people, none of us from New Orleans had tickets to the stage compound, but just came for the gathering of the tribes, with the hope that the gates, guarded by bikers, would come down.

To me it didn't matter whether I was sitting on the ground in front of the stage or overhearing the music with the thousands of heads sitting and lying outside the walls, for it was the total experience of the occasion that turned me on.

We were also turned on by an unlimited supply and assortment of drugs, being openly sold and consumed in the presence of the vastly outnumbered sheriff's deputies. It was our culture and our celebration, running by our rules and mores, which were basically; "if it feels good, do it."

I only did one hit of acid that weekend, and managed not to stay too stoned despite the frequent offers to toke someone's joint or pipe. There was enough contact high to pick up on, wandering through the groves smiling at brothers and sisters and sharing the good vibes.

At the local swimming hole, a stream that went under a bridge, someone did what we all did in our childhood in the country; went skinny-dipping. The shedding of inhibitions and clothes spread, and there were hundreds of us wading and swimming naked along the stream. There was no feeling of sexuality in this mass voyeur/exhibition, just a feeling that it was natural for men and women and children to bathe together naked. We had set the norm for this moment and those few who wore bathing suits seemed as out of place as the deputies and other straights with binoculars and cameras watching us from the bridge.

At the end of the three days we all left, and dispersed back into the real world of our minority. With the crowds gone the deputies could pick up anyone hanging on, for Byron Georgia was again just another small town in the rural south. But, for those three days we lived in a free society, doing our own thing, and being intimate with thousands of others with like values. It was a most moving experience.

San Francisco
1970

Roy and George went back to New Orleans and Myke and I went to San Francisco. It was a pilgrimage of sorts to the hub and source of the Hippie movement, and also to the place of my birth a quarter century earlier.

On the way out west we stopped at my mothers in St. Ann, Mo. but the visit was strained and we ended up leaving before the first night. She didn't approve of Myke and me living and traveling together casually. Ironically, Myke and I were not having a sexual relationship at the time, for she was being faithful to some other guy. My mother was hung up on propriety, like so many of her generation. I was no longer the son of her ideals, the high school graduate, the military serviceman, the police patrolman or computer operator, but instead had dropped out and was wandering aimlessly with friends of dubious character. She couldn't appreciate that this was a necessary course of my life; that I was searching for meaning that I had not found while living in the shell of her acceptable standards. The person I had become was the same as I'd always been, but more truthful and less inhibited. Defining my own lifestyle was more and more an attack on hers, and a generation gap grew between us, as with so many families at this time.

In San Francisco we crashed with a friend of Myke's from Florida. Patrick's pad was two rooms in an old building on the edge of the Fillmore ghetto, sharing a bath and kitchen with two other apartments. Myke left with someone else in a couple of weeks, and I stayed on with Patrick, dealing a little dope to get food and rent money together. We stayed stoned a lot and I experienced some of the declining Hippie Flower Children lifestyle that could still be found in Haight-Ashbury, but for the most part there were just hard drug abusers and burned-out freeks hanging on.

This is where I went through some head trips, becoming a vegetarian and getting into Eastern thought. Sexuality wasn't quite as wild during this period. I thought about it at times, such as when a middle aged gay man visited us and I was considering if I should take him up on the eye contact invitation he gave me. I was becoming aware that I wasn't too excited by older men, they had to be my age or younger.

There was a young girl crashing with us for a while, and she put me and another guy at the pad in an awkward competitive position. She and I were sitting on the couch under a blanket rubbing each others crotch with our bare feet. This secret foreplay may not have been detected by the other guy who sat beside her and put his arm around her, or maybe he was trying to suggest the three of us get together. I thought he was being uncool, but the girl, being a teenager and into such games, really enjoyed the attention of two guys. Eventually she rubbed membranes with both of us, though not at the same time. At 25 I was seeing a dilemma of the free love attitude; to be so physically attracted to available youth, but finding that the only level of relating was sex.

Highway Cruising
1970

At the end of summer (If that's what you can call it in San Francisco), I started hitchhiking back east. Several times I was picked up and propositioned by homosexual men who cruised the highways looking for available young men. Finally, after three days on the road with no sexual release, I agreed to have sex with a guy who picked me up one night at a rest stop somewhere in New Mexico. I was self conscious about the fact that I hadn't bathed in three days, and could smell the odor of smegma wafting up from my penis when I pulled it out to piss. He didn't seem too concerned but indulged me time to wash off my dick at the sink in the men's room while he watched.

We drove into the night in his car and turned off of the highway onto a deserted country road. I became aware of the potentially dangerous position I was in when we stopped at a dark secluded place, the kind you read about in the newspapers where unidentified bodies are found. I didn't know this man and he didn't know me. Was he just cruising for a brief sexual contact, or was he a pervert looking for someone to cut up and leave in the desert? I applied my newfound knowledge of Eastern thought by accepting fate and whatever our Karmic involvement was, and by dispelling those morbid thoughts before projecting them.

He slid his hand along my upper thigh and gently rubbed the tight bulge in my stiff jeans. I let him know that this was just my second time with a man and I wasn't too experienced. It still felt strange to me for a man to touch my body as he was. My shirt was unbuttoned and his had was sliding into the top of my jeans. I could smell my own underarms with my shirt open, the strong odor of three days on the road and not using deodorant. He didn't mind, in fact I think he got off on it. I unfastened my pants and he reached down and freed my penis, stroking his hand slowly up and down the loose skin. As he pulled back the skin there was the faint odor of smegma, since my first washing in three days had been without soap. He seemed to enjoy it, rubbing his nose behind the head before putting it in his mouth.

With him being this intimate with me, I felt I should reciprocate, and unzipped his pants. He had on underwear and had to pull them down with his pants, exposing his stiff organ. I wrapped my fingers around it and was again very conscious of the feel of another man's cock in my hand. He was really doing a number on my cock, and with several days of no sex I was very fast to get off. He stopped for a moment to tell me not to tense. I tried relaxing, concentrating on jerking him off and not on my own impending climax, but when he started sucking me again, I erupted into his mouth. He leaned out the window and spit out the come. The sexual frenzy which had brought me here had been quelled, but I dutifully kept jacking him off until he came into a handkerchief he had. We both dried off, and pulled our pants up, and he drove me back to the rest stop where he picked me up.

On the way back I tried to get into his head a little, not really knowing all the nitty-gritty of homosexual cruising. Like, does the smell of public restrooms, or a hitchhiker who hasn't bathed in a while, add to the excitement of clandestine sex. I didn't get into this study of depravity with him, but I did find out he was married and had kids, and this was a regular diversion for him.

New Orleans
1970

The next 4 years would be spent in the same free-love lifestyle that I embraced in 1969, with some variations of experience that would add to my expanding awareness of sexuality. Without being too redundant, I'll skim through these various experiences. Some of the situations appear almost surreal as I look back on them.

In late 1970 I was back in New Orleans and crashing at Ramona's shotgun duplex on Royal and Desire Sts. Ramona was into the occult, very much the witch, and probably eccentric by some standards, but who am I to say? She had a young daughter as well as another child she was taking care of for a friend on the road. We lived together for about two months, sharing expenses and occasionally her bed, but not exclusively, for during that time she brought home a couple of other guys. They were nice guys and we all got along well for the brief time we all shared in Ramona's life.

I was regularly doing acid and grass, and perhaps the emptiness I was feeling during this period came through in a poem I wrote while tripping at Ramona's.

See the cat
chasing it's tail
See the witch
play with her veil
See the poet
watching, waiting,
A ship without sails.

A sinking ship
deserting drowning rats
Seeking solace slips
beneath the darkening depths.

When I got it together and left Ramona I felt a hurt, like abandoning someone in need, but I was not yet ready to form a lasting relationship. I moved in with George and his new ol' lady for a while at their apartment on the corner of Royal and Mandeville. Ramona and I often saw each other in the Quarter, as well as a number of flaky friends we knew at this time.

There was a young man named Snowflake, who hustled about anything and lived loosely with Sharon, who was sometimes known as Natasha. Then there was Jeremy, an artistic and creative person from New York (Bellevue Hospital) who sometimes crashed at Ramona's or Sharon's when he wasn't staying at the Charity Hospital psych unit.

 

Group Sex
1971

One evening Jeremy, Ramona, Sharon and I were in the Quarter together and ended up at my pad for a little wine. We sat around on the carpet talking and our conversation turned to the subject of group sex. We all decided we should get together, and started undressing. For a while we all laid together in a pile, groping and stroking each other, each of us having some oral contact with the others. After switching back and forth like this, it became apparent that there was a limit to what a group of people could do at one time. We soon paired off, Jeremy and I giving each other head, leaving Sharon and Ramona to wing it. They were basically heterosexual but daring, and I noticed they each had their head in the others crotch getting it on.

After getting off we all laid around naked for a while. When Jeremy and I recovered we switched up with the women. I think he and Ramona were just fondling each other while mostly watching me and Sharon fuck. All-in-all it was a very entertaining evening.

This was my first and only experience of group sex. It was fun to try, but with this group I found it too distracting. I could see it possibly working better if all the participants were really close on other levels, but I found it necessary to concentrate on just one other person while coming to orgasm.

I stayed at two other apartments in this house on Royal St. until spring of 71. It was a period of sexual gratification with a number of partners and by now I was a practicing bisexual, making it with men and women equally. Mrs. R. stopped by to visit, and we got together for the last time, stripping down and doing it on the living room carpet. I think she was excited by the risk that someone could have walked in on us in the midst of our impulsive act.

Sharon came over one night for a little in-out-in-out, wearing one of her usual old fashioned long dresses. We couldn't get her dress unfastened, so we did it with the dress hiked up around her waist, giving us the feeling of a Victorian era stolen moment of lust.

Jeremy and I got together again, as well as Ralph, another man of slight build, and the thing I remember most of these encounters was their penis size. While not being a size freak, that is, not being impressed with a larger than average cock, I was conscious of the feel of their smaller erections. They were proportionate to their size, but small to what my hand was accustomed. It was still exciting and fun fondling these smaller though very stiff hard dicks. They were another variety of the male physique which provided the excitement of intimately exploring new bodies even though we were of the same sex.

Besides the different sizes, there were differences in head shape and angle of erection. Unlike my own erection which tends to point straight out or downward, and can be moved around to different angles, were those that pointed upward and resisted any downward pressure from my hand or mouth, springing back along the belly when released. Also there was the more visually sensual uncircumcised penis, which always gave me a thrill watching the hidden head emerge as the prepuce was slowly slid back, often releasing a fragrance of smegma that had accumulated under the skin.

With these regular homosexual encounters it was inevitable that a man should shoot off in my mouth during oral sex. At first I only gave oral foreplay, stopping well before orgasm and switching to some other stimulation. Then one time, due to my own passion or whatever, I decided to take the guy all the way orally. I could feel him tense right before he shot off, and the come filled the back of my mouth. I knew it would gag me to think about it, so I didn't. I just swallowed and it was gone, leaving just a slight mineral taste that wasn't unpleasant and a little stickiness that was soon dissipated by saliva.

In the spring of '71 I left town for about a month and when I returned, looking for a place to stay, met some people at yet another apartment on Royal St. This one was in the 300 block, a more commercial section close to Canal. The apartment had five small unfurnished rooms on the top floor of the building. All the rooms had numbers on the doors, so we assumed it must once have been a cheap hotel that rented to whores.

The apartment rented for $75 a month, so we each paid only $15 for our room. We weren't a commune of people sharing their lives, but just a bunch of heads on different trips buying into a cheap pad. For the most part we all got along, with just a few gripes about eating each others food in the shared kitchen. Our lifestyle was contemporary. Nudity was acceptable, although doors usually closed when people became sexually intimate. For a while a few of us would crawl out the small window onto the adjoining rooftop to sunbathe nude, but the landlord got back to us with complaints from the Monteleone Hotel, which was a block away, and we had to cover up. Straights were really a drag. They didn't have to look at us out their windows, and they would have needed binoculars to see any details of our nudity.

I only got sexual with one person while at this apartment, a woman who was yellow with serum hepatitis. She caught the hep from a needle and we assumed that it was a type that could only be transmitted by blood. Apparently it was true, forr I never contracted hep, eve though we were very close, with me kissing and tonguing her mouth and vagina. (Update: I now know this was pure luck. We knew nothing of HBV, which is sexually transmitted.)

Matthew
1971

I later had a very pleasurable moment with a young man whom I got to know while we lived together at the apartment. At this time I was getting involved in the H.E.A.D. free clinic (Health Emergency Aid Dispensary) on Decatur St. and by Sept. of '71 had moved into the household that ran it. Matthew and I met on the street one evening and went to the Abbey Bar for a beer. I was always attracted to Matthew. He was creative and witty and very deep for his 20 years. I think at 26 I was already being attracted to youth.

As Matthew and I talked over the beer, the conversation moved around to homosexual attraction, and how it should be no different loving a man than a woman. I don't remember if Matthew said he had ever had a homosexual experience before, or had just considered it, but I do remember the excitement I felt when he asked if I'd like to make love with him. He was so straightforward, cutting through the mind games we build.

We went up to my curtained cubicle in the apartment above the clinic. We sat together on the mattress in front of a poster of Mick Jagger with his sensuous lips and kissed. My heart was pounding with excitement as my mouth touched Matthew's. I rubbed my upper lip along his fine mustache, enjoying the fact that it was a male that I was making sensuous contact with. His tongue darted into my mouth, just as with any number of women, but the mustache kept reminding me it was a man. After Matthew removed my shirt, I removed his, kissing him on the neck and upper chest as I pulled it off his shoulders. He laid face down on the mattress and I pulled off his pants. I removed my own and warmed up some lotion, in my hands and rubbed it onto his back. Such a sensual moment, tracing the contour of each muscle in his back with my fingers, the curve of his shoulders sliding through my palms. I grabbed and squeezed and felt every part of his back, finally rubbing my hands over the firm contour of his butt, slowly savoring that moment. My thumbs slid deep into the cleavage of his butt, teasing the bumpy surface of his anus, then the base of his scrotum before my hands moved on to his hairy legs. Kneading his legs in a twisting motion, I picked up his foot and massaged it with my thumbs and fingers and lips, even savoring the slight foot odor in my excitement. I straddled his butt, again rubbing his shoulders. My hard cock was laying on the small of his back, dripping seminal fluid as I worked myself into a quiet frenzy.

He rolled over and caressed my arms while my fingers gently caressed his chest, gliding over the small bumps of his stiff nipples. His hard dick was sticking up next to mine, our balls touching as I laid down on his chest. We held each other tightly, rubbing back and forth, our dicks touching and sliding in our sweat and their own seepage. I could feel him tense and we both pushed faster with forward thrusts until it happened. The tension released, I could feel the pressure of the warm come surging through my penis and erupting into the space between our bellies. I felt, beside my own spasms, those of his dick pushing against my belly as he too was squirting come, mixing his with mine. We pushed slowly for a while after that, our dicks retreating along our slippery bellies, as we lay there sweating and breathless, enjoying the brief moment of physical love that we had shared.

This was my first homosexual contact where I felt love for the man with me, and it was every bit as exciting and fulfilling as any other intense moment of first seduction.

During this period I had sex with another man that I met at the clinic. He too was of slight build, maybe a preference of mine in male sex partners. Unlike Matthew, Chris was openly gay, and when he invited me to his pad one night, I knew it was for a get together. He initiated the first kiss and I showed that I was receptive. We undressed and explored each others body with our hands. After this initial fondling and kissing he let me know that he enjoyed being fucked in the ass. He greased my cock and laid on his back with his legs drawn up, exposing his wrinkled anus in the smooth cleavage of his butt. I pushed my dick slowly into the wrinkled orifice and it expanded around the head, which met resistance just inside. I pushed some more and the inner resistance gave way and my hard shaft went all the way in. Chris held me to him in his arms and we were laying face to face, his legs spread around me. It was a position very much like fucking a woman, except that as I thrust in and out I could feel a tighter grasp on my penis. His dick was laid back between our bellies and I suppose the simultaneous friction on it and his prostate would give him an intense orgasm. We came pretty close together, and his sphincters grasped me even tighter as I shot off in his rectum. .
I had his come smeared on my belly, but was by now used to that sticky mess. What I did find a little repulsive though, when I took my dick out of his ass, was the layer of brown shit that had collected behind the head. I went to the john and gingerly wiped it away with toilet paper, and thoroughly washed a couple of times.

Sexual Risks

I suppose there was a potential to get an E-coli infection in my urinary tract by pushing my dick in shit, but I was unaware of such risks at the time. Chris also had what appeared to be warts on his balls, and at the time I was also unaware of such a thing as contagious venereal warts. I've been very lucky in all my sexual exploits to escape the touch of V.D. unscathed. I was once part of an amusing scene of the times, when a woman I had fucked, (the one with hep) found out from another man at the pad that they had shared the clap. He in turn had shared it with another woman, and she with another man, until it turned out that free love had exposed all of us to free V.D. We all went together to the H.E.A.D. clinic to be treated as a unit. We were examined, but only those men with clear symptoms were treated, and I never developed symptoms of the disease.

There are other risks of indiscriminate sex besides V.D., when you find yourself in intimate situations with people you don't know. During this period I once found myself spending the night with a woman who I suspect had some psycho-sexual problems. Ironically, she was a counselor and social worker at the newly formed Greenhouse for runaways. She was young and attractive in her skirts, nylons and high heels; the professional woman so different than the Hippie freeks and heads around her. A group of us went to the Abbey for some drinks, and she and I ended up together talking. She invited me to another bar, so I assumed we were going to become more intimate. She drove to a bar in the suburbs, close to her apartment complex, where she did some uncool flirting with another guy, then dropped him and left with me in tow.

While she drove to her place she mentioned that she had picked up a guy before who was dangerous and she barely escaped harm. I was beginning to see that this straight woman was perhaps a little kinky. She entertained me at her nice modern apartment, having drinks on the patio while she changed into more casual clothes, often in my view. The evening went on and we never went back out as originally planned, but sat and talked while having a light meal. When I finally made a romantic move on her, she said that she had heard that I was bisexual. I informed her that bisexual included men and women and she seemed surprised that the man she had brought home was after her bod. I don't know exactly what her game was. She may have wanted a homosexual to just sleep with her, but she did allow me to fuck her that evening. We slept together that night but didn't fuck any more.

I saw her a few times since, flirting with strangers in the Abbey, and I wonder if she ever finally took home that special person who gave her the ultimate thrill.

There was another time when I ended up in bed with a young woman, both of us naked and engaged in foreplay, before she said we couldn't fuck. This woman was from a well-to-do family who lived in a mansion uptown, and hung out with a mutual gay friend who, by the way, was present in the room with another man when this took place. I don't know what excitement she got from her game, but at the time, laying there naked with a hard-on, I made a half hearted attempt to forcefully spread her legs and stick it in her. I finally got dressed and told her she shouldn't have taken her tease so far. I don't know if she wanted to be forcefully fucked, but there are guys who would not have stopped when I did.

Lily
1971 - 72

While working at the free clinic I met Lily, a Methodist missionary from Saint Marks Community Center on Rampart and Gov. Nicholls. It's interesting that during a period of experiencing homosexual love, I should also start seeing Lily. She was from Minnesota and of Germanic extraction, very light-skinned with pale blue eyes and long blond hair. She had just left her apartment at the community center, where I later was surprised to learn that she had been in a three way marriage with another missionary couple. I also learned of a sexual affair she once had with a black missionary from Africa and that she originally had requested an African assignment. I found it amusing that this "missionary" was carrying on like the natives.

She invited me to dinner a couple of times at her Gov. Nicholls St. apartment and we became close, having desert late into the night. When it was time for me to move on from the clinic she said I could stay at her place for a while. The while lasted for six months as we shared our lives and bed in a modern unofficial marriage. It was my first attempt at such a stable relationship and it fell apart within the half year. I may not have been ready for the concessions required of an individual in a marriage, or I may not have been ready for an exclusively heterosexual love life.

Lily and I did have good romps in the sack, and for a while we fed each others sexual appetites. As is my oral nature, I often went down on her and she really got off on it. She would even take me into her mouth in foreplay. We pushed together to the sound of jazz from the stereo, and making love was now the only occasion when we smoked grass. We had our sensual moments, but it didn't last. As seems to happen with steady lovers, there was a loss of excitement as our familiarity grew. Our (or my) timing was often out of sync, and I found myself "performing," trying to come on cue. It helped to be loose with a little wine or smoke, and the music also seemed necessary. Her body no longer excited me, and I became more critical of vaginal odors, lessening my oral contact.

Looking back I can now see that it was just not my time to try living with a woman. Though priding myself on being bisexual, I had not yet fulfilled those growing cravings I had for men. Lily had an attractive female body, (resembling the bronze of "Eva" in the N.O.M.A.) but I wanted narrow hips and firm muscles. Tuna casserole is to be expected on the female menu, but I wasn't hungry for it at the time, craving instead a thick firm length of sausage.

By the end of our living together we were having some good door-slamming arguments, as we began venting our suppressed frustrations of the past half year. It was an irony of our modern free thinking culture at the time that we didn't accept the reality of the domestic squabbles that our parents' generation indulged. Edith, a counselor at the clinic and our mutual friend, informed us that we had neglected to tell it like it is, in the erroneous assumption that love would automatically produce understanding.

Lily and I managed a truce for our last few days together, and in June of '72 I drove her to her new home, St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, where she would pursue her Masters degree. On the way we visited family, the first being my mother in St. Louis. Mom as always, clinging to the old propriety, made us sleep in separate rooms, denying the fact that we had shared our bed for the last half year. When we stopped by my dad's place in Illinois, he and his wife fixed us a double bed together, respecting the unofficial union we had been living in. Shirley, my dad's third wife who was about my age, admitted that she and my dad had slept together before they were married. She also let me know that my dad had tried marijuana in his youth. Apparently my dad's moral standards were as liberal as those of the new generation, though not as public.

We stayed with Lily's family in their Minnesota farm house, and were allowed to sleep upstairs in her old bedroom. Her younger sister would be sleeping in an adjoining room. At first we were going to sleep together, perhaps her way of showing her family she had come of age, but I felt uneasy about the effect on her young sister and we agreed it would be best if I slept alone and she slept in the other room with her sister.

We arrived at the Methodist seminary and unloaded Lily's things into her apartment on campus. I was concerned where I would spend the night before heading back, so we inquired about possible guest rooms. The man in the enrollment office, assuming we were close friends, said it was alright for me to stay in Lily's apartment. We were surprised at the liberal attitude a church school would have toward an unmarried couple sleeping together, but they felt that morality among adults was a personal choice and couldn't be regulated by the church. Not that we were going to indulge in a night of lust and passion this last moment together, for we barely managed to avoid having another argument about nothing. As bad as our relationship had deteriorated, it still hurt to break up and leave Lily.

Solitude

I went back south and stayed at my shack, alone in the woods. Solitude seemed a good way to recover from my recent turbulent relationship. My time was occupied with daily chores, reading and just wandering the woods. Sexual needs were fulfilled auto-erotically. While having sexual stimulation with my own hand and mind, I discovered that during orgasm the mind ceased momentarily. Erotic thoughts that had brought me to climax disappeared in the convulsive moment, as did awareness of surroundings or anything else outside of the actual orgasm. Somehow this phenomenon had gone unnoticed previously, but at this time and place I was perhaps more reflective. I could see the power of sexuality in sentient existence, and its potential to immerse two people having simultaneous orgasm into some Sanskaric bond. Metaphysical sex was an interesting thought.

My solitude didn't last for long. One morning I was awakened by a couple of local young women who had heard of the hermit in the woods and came to check him out. One of the girls was just a middle class preppy, into mod styles and smoking grass, but Lori was deeper and I was attracted to her. She was into a natural lifestyle, herbalism, and followed some occult discipline that I never fully understood. My interest was growing in these areas so Lori and I saw each other frequently over the next couple of weeks, until I drove her to her spiritual commune at Hot Springs, Arkansas.

We laughed and played together almost childlike, romping through the woods or skinny dipping in a small creek. During our stay together we had sexual contact several times at her place or my shack, or in the woods on the ground, but it was never all consuming. It was as if we were eating to abate hunger instead of enjoying the food. There was a part of her that always remained distant, no matter how physically intimate we were. Maybe she felt the same about me. At this time in my life, I may not have been passionately turned on by women, just going through the motions while with one.

 

Gay New Orleans
1972, 73

By fall of '72 I was back in New Orleans, working at the French Market. My coworker, Eli, and his girlfriend Patsy were looking for a place to stay, so the three of us shared rent on a large shotgun apartment at 811 Bourbon St. I had the front room that faced the street, which was Bourbon at St. Ann, the most active male homosexual cruising spot in the Quarter. Pete's bar was on one corner and the Caverns on the other, and between the two there was always some action happening. I could lean out my open window and watch the gays cruising, drag queens strutting their stuff, and tough boys, too young to enter the bars, hanging out looking for johns. Further down Bourbon was Lafitte's in Exile, which was more the leather types, so there was quite a bit of action going past my window.

I started hanging out at Pete's, the most lively dance bar where you still saw an occasional woman or curious straight. I didn't dance but started meeting people and talking and cruising. If I found someone appealing and the attraction was mutual we could just walk across the street for a quickie at my place. I became quite promiscuous at this time, bringing in strange men for a moment of physical intimacy, even cruising from my window and inviting them in from the street.

There was one man who stands out in my memory. His name was Bob, and he was quiet and hesitant, though an experienced homosexual. His build and features were very much like mine and as I took him into my mouth in foreplay I could imagine sucking my own dick. We made love lying face to face, rubbing our dicks between us as if either of us was fucking a mirror image, and it made me realize that homosexuality, like masturbating in front of a mirror, could be a form of narcissism.

During this time my sexuality was almost exclusively with men, but they weren't all strangers. Mark was an openly gay (flaming faggot) acquaintance of mine and a regular in the Quarter and coffee house scene. For the year or so that I knew him, his thing was to openly proposition any male who would put up with his lewd advances. He had often played this game with me in front of our mutual friends, and I would be the straight man, very calmly uninterested, while he caressed and groped all over me in a stereotypical come on. This was back when I was romantically bisexual but not into the gay scene, so Mark's sexual advances were taken as a joke. But now, I was out cruising the streets, and when I ran into Mark one night and he predictably propositioned me, I said what the hell, and we went to my apartment.

Mark was into anal intercourse and as we started penetration he excused himself to go shit because of the anal stimulation. When he returned he explained all about relaxing sphincters, inner and outer, and that butt fucking didn't have to be gross. After we got off, and I pulled my dick out of his ass, it was relatively clean and free of shit. Mark and I were just friends, not lovers or even particularly close, but it felt good to have him spend the night; to hold him in my arms while we laid in bed together and know that there was someone there for the moment. At 28 I was free of any close relationship and free to indulge in any number of sexual partners, but with this freedom there was also loneliness. My sexual promiscuity at this time was probably an attempt to dispel this loneliness, though the newness of exploring homosexuality could have also added to it.

There was one woman I saw occasionally during this period of homosexual love. Our relationship was light and shallow and sexual. I can't even remember the circumstances of how Paula and I met, but I remember instantly liking her. She was very attractive and her style appeared very straight, but she had that inner earthiness of a Hippie Flower Child. She was friendly and open, and loved to fuck. Whenever we saw each other, we knew we would be rubbing skin in the bed or on the carpet or wherever was convenient.

Our love was free, with no commitments or expectations beyond the moment that we shared. Often, when I visited her apartment, her bed would be in disarray, and I could almost sense the warmth of a previous lover moments earlier. This excited me, knowing that someone else had recently shared this sensuality which I was about to indulge in with Paula.

Honda
1973

By early summer of '73 I had hit the road on my Honda 450 motorcycle, touring the countryside, visiting friends and family. Even in this diversion of travel on my solitary machine, I was aware of loneliness. Seeing other bikers on the road made me feel like a member of a club, and I fantasized on those long lonely stretches about meeting another single biker to travel with. There were a few young women on bikes, but my fantasy was of two brothers sharing their adventures and intimate moments as they traveled together on their phallic machines. This never happened, and the 4,000 miles of my travels were done alone, just me and my metal steed.

After enough time and miles alone together, even a machine becomes close, almost an extension of your own groin. It may have been the pressure and vibrations on my prostate, from sitting so long in the saddle, but one night after miles of deserted hiway and wandering thoughts, I found myself with a very hard cock straining against my jeans. I leaned forward, as bikers do to decrease wind resistance, and put more pressure on my dick between the seat and my leg. With ever so gentle thrusts in the seat, I made love to 400 pounds of hot throbbing steel between my legs at 60 miles per hour down the open road. Having an orgasm on a speeding motorcycle, with the stimulation of wind and oncoming hiway is an exhilarating though possibly dangerous experience.

Nora and Clara
1973

By late summer of '73 my funds were getting low and I was tiring of my lone wanderings, so it was back home to New Orleans. I knew a couple of sisters (literally) who let me stay with them for a few weeks at their large apartment on Bordeaux St., uptown. I met Clara when she was going with Rob, a fellow member of the H.E.A.D. clinic commune. Nora was also involved in the clinic at that time.

Nora was the more outgoing type, and we would joke around a lot and be very tactile. We sometimes played with each other intimately, giving full body massages in the nude. We never made sexual contact, although we did spend time together in bed just sleeping and being affectionate. I made a couple of sexual advances which came close to being accepted, but Nora was ambivalent, remaining faithful to a boyfriend who was away at the time. This teasing and extended foreplay with sexual denial may appear a little perverse, but we both appreciated the unencumbered relationship we had, and knew it could change if we had sexual fulfillment together. As it was, we were brother and sister; close, even intimate, but not lovers in the sexual sense.

Clara had recently broken up with Rob after living and traveling with him for some time. She was more reserved and quieter than Nora, but we were also close friends, and one night, perhaps in a moment of insecurity, Clara asked me to sleep with her. I knew it too would be non sexual, just friends sharing a bed, the closeness of our bodies dispelling the others loneliness. Unlike Nora, Clara and I didn't play around. I just laid beside her with my arm around her, and she held my hand in a moment of tenderness as two friends helped each other make it through the night.

The free love atmosphere had come full circle. It was perfectly acceptable by our modern standards for a man to cohabitate with two women in a sexual relationship. Clara, Nora and I did not have to sneak into bed together, and perhaps it was this openness that gave us the freedom to focus on things other than sex. We could share our lives, our warmth, and our bodies without being sexual lovers.

While experiencing the more mental forms of love with Clara and Nora, I was not yet celibate, once running into Mark in the Quarter and going to his apartment for an afternoon of dick sucking and butt fucking. Nor was I homosexual, for I also ran into Paula, and had her over one night to share tongue, penis, and vagina on my pallet on the floor. The promiscuity that I had indulged in on Bourbon St. had slowed, but I was still quite sexually active.

Marigny Street
1973

By early fall I had moved to an apartment in an old building on Marigny St., and there, along with my old contacts, got to know a whole new set of friends from that Fauberg and the Quarter.

Free love without commitments was still available, but I was feeling more a need for a relationship with commitments. Sexual contacts were fun but between them there was an emptiness that I had become more aware of at this time. Without even trying you could still find yourself in bed for a quickie with someone like Marsha a sweet, bubbly, scattered young woman, who, in the midst of fucking lets you know she's taken no birth control measures. It was my first experience of coitus interruptis as I pulled out of that potential long term involvement.

Black Mystique

Another first experience at this time was making love to a black person. While we, the free thinkers, accepted everyone as brothers and sisters regardless. of race, and lived together closely, there was with some of us, those deeply engrained racial myths that hadn't been brought to light. I had lived with black brothers and sisters communally and knew that race made no difference in our daily lives, but our generation was the first to break the barriers as a group, and it was still new on a personal level. There was a black sister who lived in the La Phire commune on Barracks St. She was sensual in her angular build, very sexual and available. I never made love to her; not because of negative racial prejudice, but because of the racial myths of my culture that made me very insecure. It was accepted that all black men were well hung so I was apprehensive of not being large enough to satisfy her. The myth also implied that black people were more actively passionate during sex, so I was afraid of not having the moves to keep up with her. A lot of the black mystique could have been caused by cultural differences; by whites taking too seriously the black jive about sexual prowess. For whatever reason, the hype took, and this white boy was not about to humiliate himself with this black woman.

Getting back to the time when I did get intimate with a black person, it was while at Marigny Street, and the person was actually the color of cafe au lait (coffee with cream). He was an aspiring young actor, very articulate and well educated, who was crashing around the various pads in our circle, and ended up spending a couple of days with me. Brad was openly homosexual, and one lazy day when there was nothing going on we decided to explore each other physically. We were on the mattress naked, caressing each other softly. His smooth skin was not much darker than my own, but his hair was the new sensation to me. It was coarse, covering his chest with a few loose ringlets, but his pubic hair was of tight spiraling curls. It's always exciting exploring someone new and as I moved my fingers over his hard cock, I was also enjoying the feel of the coarse bush from which it protruded.

Making it with a black man for the first time was less threatening than if it were a black woman. Looking back on all the sexual contacts I've ever had, I think I've always been more at ease with. men than with women.

Perhaps it was the sense of familiarity, both with the body and the male role, as opposed to the female who was somewhat alien and unfamiliar. With women there was more or less a sense of having to initiate moves and to perform well, whereas with men we approached each other equally. This feeling of having to be in control was one of those deeply engrained sex roles taught us by our culture and not easily diminished by logic.

Jim
1973

Now comes the next stage of my interpersonal development - living with a man. Marsha and I were hanging out in the Quarter one night and stopped in at Morin's Castle Hamburgers on Decatur St. She already knew and was a little infatuated with Jim the counterman, and introduced me to him. At this time, like so many long haired men, I was into wearing several rings, bracelets and personalized silver wire jewelry made by local artisans. One piece on a necklace was a double Mars glyph entwined with a Venus, a symbol of my bisexuality. Jim noticed this and asked me if I was sexually political, indicating that he was. We talked awhile, the three of us, then Marsha and I went back to Marigny St. where she was crashing at Katy's pad upstairs from mine. On the way she talked about Jim and how she would like to fuck him. I told her I found him interesting too, and we jokingly set a competition as to who would make it with him first.

I don't know if Marsha and Jim ever connected, for he didn't seem too sexually interested in women at this time, but I saw him again the next night and we went out for some drinks, ending up at my place for a glass of wine by candle light. Sitting on the mattress on the floor we talked of occult and spiritual things, as well as art and style and attitudes, getting to know where the other was coming from. As we explored each other, we found an immediate attraction between us. There was a moment of silence, a lull in the inquisitive conversation, as our inquisitive hands and mouths met.

As we kissed I was aware that this could be a heavy relationship. I was 28 and Jim 34, not the usual age spread of my male lovers. He was also large and heavy set and had a thick beard of gray and black hair. He was a man of some experience, was once married and had a daughter in Pittsburgh, and had gone through more desperate times than I, having been hooked on smack. He kicked that habit cold turkey, and now just used grass and tobacco, and occasionally got drunk. He was into the occult and followed a spiritual master, Meher Baba, which seemed compatible with my loose Buddhist aspirations. I realized my attraction to him went beyond my lust for firm young men, but here we were baring our bodies to the others touch.

Jim and I had sexual contact several times over the next couple of weeks. He moved into my apartment and we began sharing our lives. To our friends we became Shale and Jim, the team, just as our sisters Milly and Cindy were known as a unit. It was an acknowledged marriage by our community and it felt good to have a stable, sharing relationship with another person.

Shale & Jim 1973


Sexuality was another matter however. Jim and I felt an attraction and knew we were Karmically involved, but he wasn't the object of my gut level lust. One night I brought a male friend home who did excite that lust, and we were nude and aroused when Jim came in. An awkward situation in any kind of marriage. Jim left us alone to fulfill our passion, but we got into it later. It was one of our first arguments of the many we would have over the next five years about commitments and sexuality. I knew I loved Jim as a brother and companion, but I also knew that my lusts were with others, and resented being restricted by a relationship.

Celibacy

Not long after this conflict, while I was at work, I came to the realization that my sexuality was due for a change. I called Jim and told him I was becoming celibate. He said he had the same spontaneous inspiration himself and we decided to share our lives as nonsexual partners. It was an exercise of conscious will over lust, a way to resolve my conflict of not being physically turned on by the man I was living with. I was also getting more into a spiritual lifestyle and identified as a monk or brother, renouncing sensual desires.

It was a noble experiment, being a celibate brother, but not everyone is capable of such renunciation. Sexual pressures would build and I learned in a week that I had to moderate total abstinence with masturbation. With no sexual release, desires became oppressive, and fantasy thoughts of the most bizarre kind would enter my mind, making me more preoccupied with sex than when I was promiscuous. In my effort to abstain from masturbation I got so out of control that I found myself inserting an oiled finger into my anus to massage my prostate. This just gave me a very hard, over engorged erection which was dripping seminal fluid onto my belly, and which I finally couldn't resist and took into my hand to stroke. Orgasm was intense with globs of come spurting onto my belly, and a hot sensation in my penis, which was also hurting a little from being so engorged. There was some guilt that I had failed in my vow to refrain from "sensual misconduct," but the pressure and frenzy had abated, and the reality of my sexual needs were better defined.

I admitted to Jim that I had to masturbate, and that my celibacy would be in its literal sense of one who lives alone, not having sex with others. In keeping with my attempt to refrain from sensual misconduct, masturbation was often done perfunctorily, while bathing at night, or using the toilet in the morning. I would attempt to keep sexual fantasies to a minimum, and just release the physical sexual pressure that would build on a regular basis. It was a bodily necessity, much like urinating or defecating. This autoerotic discipline would continue for the next five years while Jim and I lived and traveled together.

Even with sexual release, desires were not always subdued and I would have wandering fantasies, especially on long bus rides where sitting and bouncing put pressure on my prostate. On two occasions in London, after long plane flights, I had wet dreams while sleeping at night. I found it strange that the only two wet dreams since being a young man in the service, should happen at the same cheap hotel in London, and being into the occult gave some thought to psychic influence. Jim and I, on a few occasions when we shared the same bed, would awaken at night and find ourselves engaged in sexual acts, both of us claiming the other had initiated it.

There were also moments of conscious lust that I never acted on, but were entertained in my thoughts. While working with adolescent boys, I was often turned on by the sight of some tender nude body (young but pubescent). In India I found the small brown people who lived on the streets of Bombay particularly sensual, and at the hostel in Ahmednagar, there was Babun, the young man who worked in the kitchen. He was in his late teens, thin, lanky and firm, with light brown skin and black straight hair. I found myself often fantasizing about seducing him. He was Hindu, so I could imagine his dark penis enlarging and his foreskin sliding back from the head. I was even turned on by the thought that he didn't bathe frequently and that there would be under arm and crotch odors, and smegma under his foreskin. My interest in Babun may have been apparent, for one old man in the restaurant hinted that he was available. This fantasy, which often accompanied masturbation while bathing, never culminated in reality, for I was determined, at least here in India, to maintain some sensual restraint.

Jim wasn't so determinably stoic and I think he had some occasional sexual contact with others over the years. I do know that by Feb 1978, when I was leaving India and he was going to explore some more on his own, that he was actively cruising in Bombay. He told me about making it with either a Parsi or a Sikh in the bushes at one of the parks.

By summer of 1978 Jim and I were again back in New Orleans, at an attic apartment on Barracks St. in the Treme. (Coincidentally we were next door to Warren's apt. where I had my first homosexual encounter, ten years earlier.) Jim had given up on celibacy and was cruising the Quarter, sometimes bringing guys to the apartment when I wasn't around. I once came home early from a trip out of town and found a naked black man in Jim's bed. The man was very uptight, expecting a lover's fight, even though Jim said it was cool, and I was very friendly toward him, even entertaining how it would be for the three of us. But, I was still doing my celibate thing, and Jim and I were steadily drifting apart in our relationship but weren't able to terminate it. Finally in August, I moved to my own place a couple of blocks away on Esplanade Ave. and Jim and I parted good friends to live our single lives.

Single Again

I was working at a group home for retarded men and living alone, so it was inevitable that I would find someone there to excite me. I was still dangerously celibate, from the inertia of five years, and had cravings that needed fulfillment. Masturbation was a physical release but I also needed contact with others. There was Jorge, a street wise young Cuban man, more psychotic than retarded, who enjoyed getting back rubs and seemed soothed by them. I enjoyed touching him as much as he enjoyed the massage, and I'm sure he was aware of this relationship, perhaps sizing up a hustle for himself. As it was, we just toyed with inappropriate contact, the massages were done in the TV room while others were present. However, while rubbing his upper thighs I could see into his shorts. The lower part of his butt and the back of his scrotum were visible. With each stroke my hands would go further and deeper until my fingertips were "inadvertently" stroking his balls. He laid there on his stomach quietly enjoying it, but getting a hardon, which I could see swelling below his scrotum, and which I could smell when the foreskin pulled back releasing the accumulated smegma. At least Jorge got a needed instruction in hygiene as a result of this teasing.

 

Brenda
1980

This pretty much concludes an account of my varied sexual experiences and attitudes over the years. At 35, this accumulated experience had perhaps given me a sexual maturity that enabled me to embark on a lasting relationship with one person, in this case Brenda, a black woman who worked at the boys home.

It was one of those hesitant, slowly developed affairs, where we got to know each other through our work situation, then braved little glimpses of our growing attraction. It was almost an adolescent courtship, reminding me of those exciting first moments of attraction and pursuit at a younger age. The excitement of new romance apparently does not diminish in intensity with maturity. You still find yourself secretly watching from a distance, setting up circumstances of "chance" meetings, daring not to reveal too much of your desire until you see that it will be accepted by the other person. We had lunch together in groups a few times, then one day she came alone for lunch at the house on campus where I was staying. We talked of many things about each other, revealing intimacies to determine if we were compatible.

I was concerned that she would not accept my bisexuality, but when I revealed it she told me of her gay brother, who she was close to and once lived with, so homosexuality was not alien or repulsive to her. There was still my own attitudes to overcome, those vestiges of the black mystique that had yet to be fully resolved. I was still a little apprehensive of black sexual prowess, and not being able to perform satisfactorily. At the same time, like a moth being drawn to his downfall in a flame, I was attracted to the visually sensual brown skin. I had to resolve whether I was truly in love with this woman or just pursuing my psychological attraction to the chocolate/coffee sensuality of her brown body.

Finally, these intellectual doubts and insecurities were overcome by the physical reality as we spent that first night together at her apartment, and found ourselves to be compatible lovers as well as friends.

I moved into her apartment and we began sharing our lives in a partnership which continues to the present.




Note: This is where I stopped in 1983. I have since started updating my sexual activities and changes with aging - but that is another few decades.

 

too damn long

 

Or too damn short attention span?

I think I said it was long on the first page.

 

This is a compelling account, Shale: I have not read it all, but I wanted to let you know what I think (so far). Then I'll leave another reply when I'm done. First, you really are a talented writer: I admire how you are able to describe your sexual experiences in such an honest and vivid way. It's not such an easy thing to do (I once wrote a series of prose poems about my first sexual encounters -- it proved to be a difficult task).

Anyway, I've already learned a thing or two from your post: I didn't know that oral sex was so taboo in the early 1960s. I just figured a lot of people did it, but few people talked about it. So the "Bad Girl" label really made me think about how far society has come. We still have a long way to go, but at least society has figured out that it's cool for women to enjoy sex as much as men.

And the part about Catholic prostitutes is very interesting: Many Christians damn hookers straight to hell. But I always wondered about that. Jesus was more forgiving -- so it just goes to show how puritanical society still is. Anyway, this is excellent writing. You certainly taught me a thing or two!

--QP

 

lol, this nearly crashed my browser, I'm going to read it all though.

*Puts on reading glasses and drinks caffeine* This is gonna take a while!

 

Hey QueerPoet, thanx for the kind words. I started getting into writing at the time I did this memoir. Sort of a renewal of writing since high school twenty years earlier. Then I started getting published, mostly articles on nudism under my column Nude Attitude, but a few on gay and other civil rights issues.

I wrote this because the Sexual Revolution of the late '60s and '70s seemed to be my thing and this long read is an accounting of the repressive '50s which is where that sexual freedom came from.

The Kinsey Institute seemed pleased that I sent it to them for archiving and I would suggest that others here may wish to add to the first-person history of the era. The copy at Kinsey has my real name and actual first names of the ppl involved in my sexual life. You need to be a scholar to access it and it would take a researcher to find the actual ppl. Some names in this pseudonym account are the same pseudonyms used by the ppl in the '70s.

I also sent Kinsey my other essays on sexuality and porn writings, which are posted on Literotica. So, I am pretty out there as Shale and a few pieces floating around the Web by my other persona.

(Of course I sent Kinsey Institute stuff in my real name)

(BTW, go check the first part of this memoir. I just found a cute pic of me at 5, amusing myself. Don't know if the picture taker knew what I was doing but it looks like one of those happy moments I had discovered early on.)

 

u were in the Air Force!

 

Wow, this takes the phrase "too long; didn't read" to a whole new level.

 

really enjoyed your story . Thanks for putting it out there

 

You actually read that!!?? :yikes:

Yeah, it is long but glad someone enjoyed it. Thanx for the feedback.

BTW, it is only about 40 pages in a book.

 

Yes i did read it all! i actually started and something came up and i had to stop and come back took me a little while to find it again lol. would love to read the whole book. Being in a relationship with someone that doesn't get my desires for the same sex and would never even consider "letting" me be with him and another man has driven me to live vicariously through this website and others for now. I am also throughly turned on by the thought of watching 2 men together(i am a woman ) so in your writing i got to live some of my own fantasies in a way.again thank you !

 

That is a shame that your ol' man can't expand his sexuality to accommodate your needs. As said in my long history, I have always been upfront with my woman that I was bi. She was actually rather conventional in her sexuality but knew also that I would need more and never tried to restrict me. So, we never did anything but the fun sex with each other, but she knew I would occasionally have my night out with the boys. (that will be coming out in more detail when I update my history.)

I met Raul thru his partner and later his wife. She invited me to their one-room apt. to fulfill Raul's needs that she could not. She watched and even took some phone pix of us together and could appreciate the joy I was having with his young bod (She too was older than him).

Shale & Raul 2001 (Pic by Raul's Wife)



I guess when you think about it that kind of stuff is pretty weird, but coming from my sexual revolution background, it all seems perfectly normal to me.

Oh, I also got pix!

 

yes it is too bad he couldn't open up more we could have some amazing times i gues i was born a little late lol but my life's not over yet who knows what my come...look forward to your updates!