Damn Nerve!
What is it about pre-conceived notions of sexuality that always got my back up. Well to be honest any pre-conceived anything gets my back up and always has. They way adults think children can’t handle bad news, the way football players think women can’t play the game at least not as well as them or the best one of all, that gay men can’t fix anything or make a decision when it comes to D.I.Y. I had the courage and strength of conviction to tell my parents I was gay. Straight people might not understand it but I know all my gay comrades know how hard that is for a teenager, I was liberated! Now though after the shock and then novelty wore off it was like I was an alien to the men in my life.
Low and behold one day my older brother was putting shelves up in our sitting room – a menial and common affair in any house hold and hardly brain surgery, but my brother is a straight man so of course it had to be done with the precision of an American ice skater – no gay pun intended there I hope. All he needed was nails from the local hardware store. I said I’d go but no, it was to technical – Don’t send Thomas, he wouldn’t understand! When I inquired further it wasn’t that wouldn’t be able to ask for these things but being that I was a gay man maybe I’d be distracted and get the wrong ones. The fucking cheek of him, like I’d come skipping out of Dixon’s with a pony singing “What am I like”.
Needless to say he screwed up the entire job and our Father had to step in and correct it. Serves him right, and anyway – I didn’t know there was different types of nails; I still haven’t to this day learned how to hang a shelf!!
Self-Respect.
I had it all, self-confidence, good looks and a decent body, it was 2002 and Thomas was in college, and what’s the best thing about college – the gay men – free flowing gay men that is! I’ve always practised safe sex of course but safety about the number of partners never had really ranked high on my moral code stats. I was barely three months in college studying for a degree in Hospitality Management and trust me dear reader I was hospitable to every hot man on campus. The day it hit me that I was going way to far was May 12th 2002, the morning of the last day of term. Of course the night before all my class mates had gone out, and in true Irish style we had all drank ourself into a alcoholic coma – ah to be young again. That morning though, I woke, in my dingy little student digs and looked upon my conquests – yes that is a plural – conquests. I lay there, in a single bed, with three other guys, very good looking and all as young as I, clearly as an eternal bottom I had well and truly been fucked – sorry for the gratuitous use of the word fuck, but I use it for emphasis.
What was truly fucked was my mind, three men, I knew none of their names, whether they were students or whether or not they were murders for God sake – this was insane. I has always been thought to respect myself, my mind and my body.
As I showered and heard those three leave, I cried, just a little to myself – if my Mother could see me now, was I a whore, had I gone too far, was sexual freedom something that had to be capped at some stage or had I blurred the lines between sexual confidence and sexual tolerance.
I didn’t know, I cared of course, but I decided that those questions were better left unanswered, if for nothing else but to relive my guilt. Needless to say I calmed it down after that, not entirely, I am human after all – and I was a student, sexual liberty comes with the territory. I had only one regret in the end – I never did find out their names!
The first boyfriend.
Mathew, dark and dangerous with the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen, not really he had pink and ruddy skin as most Irish guys are and I think his eyes were that kind of lacking brown that doesn’t inspire writers to fall over themselves. However in my head he was he most handsome man I’d ever seen, merely because he took an interest in me.
The year was 2000, I was finishing secondary school and the hormones were rife with get your cock out quick feelings! I remember that there used to be this thing called James date on our mobile service and my friend Emma and I talked and contacted guys from all over the place. Mostly for the laugh, never really meeting anyone, as you know I had no problem meeting strange men in strange places, but this seemed rather dangerous.
When Mat said he’s come to me, I was overcome with bragging rights and excitement, but alas it was the most disappointing two weeks of my life, well at the time anyway. He rolled in on the bus from town, town all though it was only twenty minutes down the road it seemed so cosmopolitan and to meeting a man from there meant something, it meant you were wanted and special.
Funny how these merger and unimportant things seem so paramount when you’re young. Needless to say Mat was a typical Irish teenager, not out long as I was and the whole thing was just practising our sexual techniques. I screwed it up by saying I loved him and he ran for hills, I guess the reason I’m telling you this is to make sure and tell every young lovers to enjoy it for what it is, fun, that is all fun.
Read more from the author on his blog: “A sarcastic bitchy look into everything queer and lgbtq related – I take no prisoners – well – not for fun anyway!”irishhomo.blogspot.com twitter: @anirishgayman
Follow
Loading ...
