I’m not gay!

My experience with sex, girls, and pornography was somewhat limited.  There had been moments as a pre-teen when my friends and I would find pictures of naked ladies, and one time my cousin and I found a stack of old Playboy magazines in my grandpas garage.  Another time me and some friends found an abandoned house with a stack of pornographic magazines.  I remember in sixth grade when a deck of cards were passed from locker to locker, with a different naked woman on the back of each suite.  The deck even found its way to one of the Elks Lodge sponsored dances one weekend night.  Another time somebody threw a pen in my locker...when you clicked the pen the black underwear on the woman would disappear to reveal the woman in all her glory.  But I didn’t quite feel like what I was seeing was all that glorious.  I kept the pen hidden for some time but then threw it in the woods behind my house for fear of my mom and dad finding it.  I did my best to act like all the other guys when I saw the pictures, displaying a sense of awe and excitement, but I really didn’t find it exciting.   I was curious of course, but there was no real attraction. There was something missing from all this. 


I must have been about sixteen.  I remember because I had only just started driving, and I was asked to house sit for relatives for the first time. This house sitting opportunity was to become a defining moment for me.  It was neither sought after nor expected, but it happened none the less.  The Internet was something of a new resource that we didn’t have at home yet, but while house sitting, for the first time I had unrestricted access, without interruption, to the World Wide Web and all the naked pictures I could ever dream of.  Like any horny, sexually frustrated teenage boy I utilized this unprecedented freedom to search for “Naked Women”, “Boobs”, “Sex”, “Pussy”, and a plethora of other search words that I wouldn’t even say out loud and that I though would bring up something that would excite me.  Most of what I came across starting out, just as my previous experiences with porn, bored me.  But then something happened.  I found pictures with men and women and this was much more exciting!  Finally I started to understand what it must have been like for all my friends all those times.  So I refined my search for pictures that were a bit more hardcore...ones that showed more interaction, more sex, more penetration.  This was very exciting but it didn’t take long for me to realize I was looking at the men, not the women.  My search words transitioned to “Men”, “Naked men”, “Penis”, “Cock”.  Now this was exciting...but I felt exhilaration and guilt all at the same time.  It was bad enough that I was looking at porn, but gay porn?  Maybe I was just curious...just comparing what they had to what I had right?  Maybe all guys are curious sometimes after all.  

"I’m really not gay," I told myself.  "I’ve made a decision to maintain my virginity until I get married, to a woman.  But why can’t I find a girl that I’m attracted to?  I know I’m picky but seriously, the right one has to be out there.  Maybe this is just a big test from God to see how committed I really am right?  But these urges are strong…intense.  Please God, help me get through this…"

These are just a few of the thoughts that went through my head as I thought about sex with men.  I say “sex” because the idea and possibility of loving another man was years away.


Years later, when I was probably twenty, after I had a place of my own, I started to spend my fair share of time in online chat rooms, just chatting of course…because "I’m only curious."  So during my many nights of chatting, offering fake names, refusing to provide a picture lest it be copied en masse and distributed to all of my family and friends, I began to discover the tip of the iceberg of what it meant to be a gay man.  But I was just curious…right?

So one night I meet “Mike”.  I really don’t remember his name, I’m sad to say; not that I think either of us gave our real names anyway.  If I recall I provided my middle name, just in case he decided to tell the world about me.  There was so much paranoia and fear of being caught and exposed as gay, which would be unbearable, because I wasn’t gay!

Mike and I chatted for several nights, becoming as comfortable as can be expected with a nameless, faceless student from a college town about ninety miles away.  We decided to finally email pictures to each other…he was hot!  He thought I was hot too and this was exciting, especially since I had never had a guy exhibit any interest in me…since I wasn’t gay of course.  Mike and I started discussing how we could meet up.  We decided he would drive to my apartment since I lived by myself and we could be discreet.  This was after midnight already so he wouldn’t be here until around two, but it was worth the wait, although I was nervous beyond belief.  I can only guess that this is kind of what a first date feels like, although this lacked many of the traditional elements of a date.  I made sure the house was clean, I showered, I rehearsed how I thought the night might go through my head…and hid anything that might identify me in a way I didn’t want to be identified.

Now again with the paranoia! Nobody in my neighborhood was ever up past midnight, and none of my friends were even remotely likely to “just drop in” unannounced this time of night.  Nevertheless, I was on edge; constantly looking out the front door to insure nobody was approaching.  Mike arrived and I convinced him to park down the block, just in case.  So he finally shows up to the front door and we were both visibly nervous. After all, this was quite possibly about to be my first sexual experience, and allegedly only his second.

There were few pleasantries.  We had agreed that we would not kiss, as this was gay and we were both just curious.  We weren’t going to have sex either; we were just going to “fool around”.  We went straight to the bedroom and Mike took his pants off first.  I remember he was wearing some pretty sexy bikini underwear and had hairy legs, which I liked.  I took off my pants and we sat down.  Mike began touching me and it was very exciting, and then for the first time I touched another guy in a sexual way.  On one hand I was convinced what I was doing was wrong, but then again it felt more natural than any experience I had ever had with a girl.

I felt so guilty, but at the same time I felt satisfied, happy, invigorated.  It was extremely confusing, these conflicting emotions.  It was at this time that I began my “other” life.  Splitting as Allan Downs, author of “The Velvet Rage” explains.  I still wasn’t gay, just biding my time until the right girl came along or until this “test from God” was over.  I never saw Mike again, as I was to find was often the case with men I met online, and in the gay world in general.