Jason

We walked around, hand-in-hand, and fell in love.

I remember being attracted to a boy in school when I was four years old. He was kind of a bully, but a good-looking, well-formed child of my age. It wasn’t a sexual feeling, I just wanted to talk to him. I don’t remember anything about that school but that boy.

There was no abuse at all in my family. There was no sexual anything in my family. We were Catholic and repressed and went to Catholic school. When I was nine, I put on a hat and said to the family, just very innocently, “Hey, I look like Barbara Streisand!” My dad flipped. He threw the hat across the room and said, “No son of mine is going to be Barbara Streisand.” I was embarrassed, but I also didn’t understand what the problem was.

I remember finding pictures in magazines of men with their chest hair showing. I remember being in a bathroom — was I eight? eleven? — and looking over at a man’s penis. It was really big and I thought, “That’s what I want when I grow up.” In fifth grade, I found myself looking at men’s hair styles in magazines and wondering why, when I kept hearing my dad talk about the women that he looked at. I’d see World War II books with pictures of guys with their shirts off, and think, “What? Why am I looking at that?” I started thinking, “You know what? I’m a little different than most people. What do we call this?”

When I reached puberty, maybe 12, I turned my attention to exploring my ass. I put everything I could imagine in it. Fingers, at first. Then marbles, a feather (too pointy), a cucumber (a little too big), candles, and I learned to use an enema bag. Sometimes I have felt like I have some vagina genes somehow there. My prostate works really well.

My first sexual contact, I was maybe 14. I was crossing the street and a gnat flew in my eye. This man, probably in his late 20s, took me to a restroom and he gets a piece of toilet paper and he takes the bug out. And we’re standing there. And he kissed me. He kissed me on my mouth. There was no tongue. It was slow and sensual. And I liked it.

In high school, my friend, Bruce, came on to me. I was 15. He was probably 16½. We kissed a little bit and I let him fuck me once. But he wasn’t my type. He was too effeminate. It was like having a girl fuck me. I wanted a man, an older man.

Bruce and I looked at porn magazines and we whispered about a gay bar we’d heard of in town. I’d also seen a gay bar on TV. CBS did this documentary, and there were shots in a disco. I looked around our living room furtively and thought to myself, “Ah! Did anybody see me react like that? Um, can I see it again?”

And then came the highlight of my life. Castro Street on New Year’s Eve. I was still 15.

I went with my stepsister, Tricia, who was a lesbian. We told our parents we were doing something else and we took off with her girlfriend to San Francisco. I didn’t know what to wear. I wanted to fit in but I had nothing I thought was “Castro wear,” no jacket that I thought would be appropriate to look gay. But it was cold, so I wore two flannel shirts.

We drove around and found a great spot. We walked down the street and there was movement all around us. I remember seeing these three guys and one of them had a huge basket, like he was on Cialis, if that had been around back then. To me, it looked huge. It looked like a man’s cock, and I wanted it. I thought, “Baby, this is where I want to live! I want to be here, with that!”

And I’m flirting. So I say, “Tricia, I’ll meet you in a couple of hours. Bye!” And I’m walking up and down the streets and trying to catch any guy’s eye. I’m 15. I’m chicken. I’m young. These guys all look like they’re in their 30s. You know, they all look like men. And I look like a boy. I have braces on.

I pass by a man who was beautiful. Blonde hair, over the ears. Mustache. He looks just like one of those guys in the magazines. I kept walking, and he walked past me. He turned around and looked at me and I turned around and looked at him and inside my head, I heard myself shriek. This changed my life, that moment. I said to myself, “What the hay?” And I walked back up to him and said, “Hi.” And he said, “Hi.”

His name was Rob and he was 35. We talked for a while and then he took me by the hand and we walked around the corner to the parking lot of the Catholic school and I had what felt like my first real kiss.

I was hard and he was hard. He wanted me to suck his cock, and I’d never done it before. It seemed so wrong, but so right. So then he wanted to suck my cock, and you know, I felt so guilty. I was nervous. I’d never done it. I was Catholic, I was damned, I was aroused. I was a mess.

I kind-of laughed and he laughed. It was dark and there were guys walking around.

We got up and walked around, hand-in-hand, and fell in love. He took me to a gay restaurant, where I saw guys kiss, just to say hi to each other. I was swept away. “Ahh!” I thought, “This is so unreal. But this could be mine. I want this.”

He introduced me to his friends. And there I was, sitting with my new boyfriend, Rob Collins.

And then my time was up. The clock struck 12, and I had to go back to my pumpkin on the ranch and be the studious, quiet, farm boy.

Rob and I kept in touch through my stepsister. We sent long letters back and forth, had stolen phone calls. After two or three weeks, I made it back to the city again for a glorious afternoon with him. And then, freaked me out a little, Rob moved to the area so I could see him more often. So then, we finally arranged for a night — I told my mom I was going to be with Tricia — to have sex with him.

But it didn’t take long before my mom figured things out and confronted me. And Bruce’s parents found out about his being gay at the same time. He was shipped off to Japan, where his father was living and told him, “If you use it like that here, I will cut it off.” Rob high-tailed it to Montana to avoid being thrown in jail. I had known him less than two months, and I was alone again.

I started going very gay. Bomber leather jacket, tight jeans with the crotch highlighted by rubbing it. My dad, who had divorced my mom when I was eleven, moved to Los Angeles, and got “born again,” showed up one day after school. He spent the weekend with me, and then he got me to go spend the summer down there with him and his new wife and kid. At first, I wasn’t interested. — I didn’t like my dad — but then I realized there were a lot of hot men in LA.

So I went down there to that Christian environment and met Esther and Sandy, his new family. They sent me to a Christian summer camp and to Sunday school, and they took me to church with them. I became born-again and renounced my homosexuality.

They home-schooled me for the next year. I did a paper route, and I prayed, read books, got ready for the end times. I learned to navigate by the stars for when we would sneak through the hills because the Antichrist is here and the world is gone.

That lasted about a year and a half. Then, when I was 17, I found about nine reasons to understand that I was gay, that I want to have sex with men, and that it’s not evil, whatever they say. I don’t care what those people talk about, pray about, tell me about the Bible, I gotta be me. My dad punched me when I moved out.

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A few years later, I got in contact with Rob somehow and we met up again. I had my own apartment, a tiny and wonderful space with a little fireplace. I invited him over for a romantic meal, wine, fireside, blanket, pillows, lube, condoms. And he made this comment, “You’ve grown up, Jason.” And I suddenly realized at that moment, we’re not gonna have sex tonight. It’s not gonna work. Something’s changed, and it was only four years ago. That’s when I realized he was a pedophile.

I was disappointed. I felt disillusioned. I was disappointed in him because he wasn’t who I thought he was. I thought he liked me for me, and not because I was a young kid. When he was my boyfriend, it was wonderful. I was going to spend the rest of my life with him. I couldn’t sleep for thinking of him. I was so horny for him.

But you know what? Pedophile or whatever, he was the perfect person for me at that stage of my life. He was exactly what I wanted. He was like my window to a new world. And truthfully, I didn’t ever think I was really going to stay with him forever. That was a fun fantasy.

That relationship was good for me. It was good because I was so lonely. I had nobody. I had girlfriends, but there was no sexual desire. I felt so different and weird. So when I found this man — and I wasn’t interested, really, in my own age — when I found this man, it was wonderful. If things had been different, if that were allowed in society, I don’t see why it couldn’t have progressed. And if he had lost interest in me in a few years, well, you know, I’ve been learning that this happily-ever-after, one person your entire life, is exceedingly, exceedingly rare. Even with straight people who do it, a lot of them do it because of their kids or just because they don’t know anything else. You know, people die. So, what would be so wrong with a 35-year-old falling in love with a 15-year-old and letting them have that for five glorious years?

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I’m 43 now. I’ve had a number of relationships over the years. After all this time, I’m good with my dad. I’m good with my mom and my sisters. I have a decent circle of friends here. I’m very educated, a pharmacist. I think I’m happier than most. Life is very good.