Thomas’ story has in essence, variations spanning across time & Ireland. How does a young Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender person recieve information, sex. In the past there were exaggerated stereotypes to follow. Should we act on them? What happens if we do? Today there are youth groups around with LGBT specific space to help with meeting the world.

• Kildare: Kildare LGBT
• Waterford: Chill-OUT
• Wexford: Gay Youth Wexford
• Tipperary: OUT Tipp
• Trans*: IndividualiTy

Cousins and Cocks.
by Thomas

The First Time

That was so much easier than I had thought, damn my parents were easy. I had become quite the expert at manipulating people into doing anything I wanted, and at sixteen there was one thing I wanted most of all – sex, any sex would do, rough, smooth, quick or slow, what did I care, I was a virgin with hormones to spare, my one criteria was it had to be with a man. Having been openly gay for a year already, I thought myself an old hand at the matter and maybe I was, I was the only gay person I had ever known so to me I was the pinnacle of self-knowing. At the time cell phones were relatively new and dating through them even newer – yes it may have been 1998 but this was Ireland and I came from a poor family, living in a backwater village which considered being pregnant before marriage as an outrage. You can just about see my parents faces when I said I was a student of cock – yes I used that phrase, it took them nearly 10 minutes to realise what I was talking about. I had hoped for a bigger reaction, disgrace, shock or even a broken jaw at the prospects of no grandchildren or rich wife’s, but know my parents loved me too much – damn them and their non-verbal acceptance.

A year later I had to experience this sex, I heard others talk of it, mostly boys from the jail, I mean school, it was all very usual and non-descript – you know the talk, “her tits were this big”, “I see under her skirt” and my favourite “man I was so hard”, maybe things would have gone better had I had at least one curious friend who wanted to bend me over the science desk and give me their best “damn you’re so tight”, but it wasn’t to be. I like many others in my condition I imagine were banished to the library of gay erotica, the internet had become popular so at least I got to see some cock – all be it down a telephone wire which parlayed into a blank screen for thirty minutes as I eagerly awaited an image to masturbate at – I can’t complain really, it worked, I seen grown men screwing their brains out and I always felt satisfied, but as most people know there’s no substitute for the real thing.

My plan was simple, at 16 I felt I had a mature head, on my shoulders that is anyway so I started going on this “James Date” thing through the phone. The kind of texting potential partners through a service which was free and you could get each other’s number then and text directly, naïve as I was then it never crossed my mind about all the paedophiles lurking around every digit of the phone – but I had made my mind up. The first guy that I got interested in me, which took longer than I’m willing to admit was Eugene. Sickens me to think I actually found that an exotic name, now it lurks at the bottom of geeks or us shopping bags. He was older, much older than what he told me of course but those were the ways of sex addicts back then, manipulation was key – I may have had the balls to trick my two darling parents but I was no match for the sordid gay under belly that was the Dublin scene. After a night of pleading, crying and exposing my parents to the harsh reality that I was growing older and well capable of going to the capital city alone on a train to and I quote “experience a city” as I had never been – god they really were gullible back then. At the end of my tyrant assault on their mind, they stayed defiant and refused to let me go – but I knew better, I had shamed them into thinking that they were repeating their own parents rules and examples, which were good ones I suppose but didn’t exactly fit into my plans for being fucked each and every way I could get this guy “Eugene” to do! The following morning, I got the call, my mother bless her cotton socks gave me the news. “Son, we are trusting you with this, we’ve had a talk and we agree, you are mature enough to do this”, images of gay bath houses rushed across a hormone soaked mind, “just as long a you stay by your phone at all times and talk to no one, understand?” Of course I understood, and let me tell you that was the quickest bath and dress to impress I have ever done, yes you snobs we didn’t have a shower at the time! Waving goodbye to my father’s blue Opel corsa and looking up at Wexford train station I could feel it in my bones and let’s face it in my erect teenage penis that this was the day I became a man – a fag yes, but a man!

Standing outside the G.P.O waiting for my new and only lover, I was nervous, not much but enough to get the hundred people passing by to look at the child standing still on a busy pedestrian street. I don’t remember much before he came along, only people seemed to know what I was doing, waiting to be taken by an older man, my face must have said it all really, or maybe this happened all the time and of those strangers the parents were secretly grieving for my own mother and father because somehow they knew that I was about to lose my innocence, either that or I was a complete idiot and paranoid at the prospect of it all.

When he arrived I don’t know what I was expecting, but not a balding 35+ year old man, short and dressed like an undertaker, but that’s what I got and beggars can’t be choosers, a lesson from my mother and who was I to argue with tradition. The next two hours were a wash of memory block. It wasn’t a bad experience but looking back it was just right down there with the seedy side of gay sex. Eugene took me to a bar called “The Out House”, which I found funny, a bar named after an American toilet. Clearly this wasn’t his first time doing this because he tried to ply me with drink – raw rum if memory serves, I was having none of it, I played it down as I hated the taste, truth was I’d suck the alcohol out of a deodorant stick but I knew mama and papa would be waiting at the train station in Wexford and the smell of rum on their sweet sons breath just would not do. The worst thing, besides his need to get me drunk in order to have sex and drink himself of course was that we barely spoke to each other, just hello, nice to meet you, I live here, I work at this, how’s school are you sure you want to do this – the usual crap, but he could have been married with ten children for all I knew at the time.

He took me to a gay sauna, aid for both of us to get in, ah what a gentle man and the rest, well it went quickly and in true homo style. Shower, with a lot of older men looking on, just looking mind, my alarm bells were ringing a little but I told him, I wanted him no-one else, I think that made him proud or happy, maybe both. Then onto a tiny leather clad room which had that intoxicating aromas of sweat, cum and KY. It was over very quickly, I went down on him, he returned the favour, I came quickly and then he fucked me. Not very exciting, quite painful but that’s the name of the game really – I bit into a black leather cushion and fifteen minutes later it was all over, I was so exhausted and no better off – this sex thing so wasn’t what I had hoped for – then again it never is, is it? We went on to the steam room, he told me I’d like it, I got the sense that he sees it as a reward for letting him do pretty much what he pleased, which wasn’t a lot but at least I got that awkward first time out of the way. Then shower and back to the station to head for home.

The whole experience wasn’t all that bad, yes seedy and a little perverted considering our age gaps, but in fairness to Eugene I had instigated the entire affair and he fulfilled his end of the bargain – breaking me in for want of a better pun! I never spoke or saw the man again, I deleted his number and the two texts he sent me asking for a hook up again – the train ride home seemed longer, I didn’t feel different or more grown up, just tired and disappointed in myself. Yes I had wanted it to happen and I don’t regret it, but I knew deep down somewhere that it was an awful first time that I never got back nor ever will or could for that matter – I wondered if my mother or father would be able to tell if I had changed because I certainly couldn’t, they didn’t seem to either. Years later I asked my mother and she said no, but she said she had a feeling I wasn’t going shopping that day!

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