I have been feeling a bit nostalgic lately and between Google, Facebook, Linkedin, etc have been looking up some old sex buddies from my youth. Not contacting them - just looking them up.

Mind you most of the guys I played with back then we never talked about it being "gay sex" it was just sex - we were horny young men that needed to get off.

But what is surprising me is how most everyone I have found so far is married with children - they really were just fooling around back then. It wasn't all talk to make them sound straight!

It makes me believe even more that sexuality is a 0 to 10 scale of straight to gay and most are not 0 or 10 but somewhere in the middle.

But it is fun to find a picture on Facebook with his wife and kids and think "I knew him before you did!"

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I actually didn't have sex with anyone until I came out in 1984 while I was a senior in college. I was one of those who had to "figure everything out" before I actually did anything. :-) After feeling sure of myself, then I was completely ready to begin and totally into things. Of course, those were difficult years to come out and start having sex, since HIV/AIDS was am ever-present issue.

A few times I've looked for some of the guys I played with. I saw a couple familiar names on Facebook but they didn't have photos and I wasn't sure if it was them, although the city or state was correct.

I did find a few guys from those years who I did not play with. The ones who had been friends I became friends with on FB and it was good to reconnect. I sometimes wonder what happened to the others.

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I met a trucker trough craigslist and always wondered if he passed through town again, or returned to the same truckstop.
It was my first time being with another man, and he was the perfect top.

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Thank god I was not like that or I would STILL be a virgin!



I know exactly what you mean - I so wanted to "out grow" fooling around with guys since I did not want to catch anything. And right at the time I started to get comfortable with the idea of anal sex the news starts saying that is how it is spread - and that scared me farther back into the closet.



It is funny when you find them. You know they remember as well - but you can't message them "Hi. Remember me? We used to blow each other at summer camp."

But I found one guy who I was SURE was going to be gay - and he was living in San Francisco - which I took to be proof as everyone knows there are no heterosexuals in San Fran!

And there he is with his wife and kids! I know that does not mean he is completely straight - but still surprised the hell out of me.



It really is fun. So much time has passed you would never have enough in common to call / visit - but it is great to just get an idea what became of them through FB.

In that sense I envy the kids in college today - they get a school e-mail address they will have for life - and years later they can contact someone and just say "hi".

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Yup. I did try to reconnect with a few of my college time buddies on the FB. As expected, it turned out to be quite a mixed bag.

A few dudes never replied. I am sure that they must have had their reasons. I left it at that.

A few guys sounded pretty thrilled, and wrote back giving me a longform on what has happened in their lives since we graduated, and went on living our lives. It made an interesting read. By far, most guys got married, have kids, got divorced, married again, etc. The usual ...

The dudes who replied to my message referred to the 'good, ole times, in one way or the other, mostly discounting the sex bit as the follies of our youth. I did not think that I should contest this. Frankly, I knew it then and there that these guys were simply horny, and were looking for an outlet. I used to be one of them. A guy has got to do what a guy has got to do.

One dude wrote a long reply telling me that it all did not matter, that he has changed, that he is now straight, and that I should not be dwelling too much on the past. He was not going to do it again, ever. Judging by his FB pic, I would not be touching him with a long wooden stick either. I never thought that the sex we used to have really "mattered". We did what we did, but there has never been any promise about any common future, love or anything else. So, a dude was like stating the obvious. His "super str8" attitude led me to believe that there was little truth in his words, but I left it at that, too.

Couple of dudes have stayed in touch. They are single or divorced, mostly fooling around with other dudes if not living openly gay lives. Sort of being semi-closeted. Yup, life could have been better, but it was not too bad either way.

It used to take a lot of very hard work, and quite some skill to swim against the current in those days. The societal acceptance of gay dudes was pretty low in those days, and no one should blame them for not calling the right shots. We have the doubtless benefit of the hindsight.

One of the guys was kind enough to open up and send me a few cute b/w pix of him with other dudes. Pretty tame by present standards but an act of doubtless courage in those days.

KD

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Yeah - a lot of guys that fooled around never thought of it as anything more than getting off - it was just a means to an orgasm. And most would NEVER talk about - until the next time. Nothing weirder than just finishing some great sex and having your buddy start talking about tomorrows math test!



Very true. None of us were "gay" back then - even the ones you knew would turn out to be gay. It is amazing to think how far society has come in just a few years (yeah I know - it has not been that few but thinking about how many years makes me feel old!). Although in some ways there is now almost TOO MUCH pressure to "accept who you are". You see youtube videos of 12 year olds "coming out" and I more than understand that 12 year olds are sexual and interested and may even know they are gay - but does it really help them to be that public or does it just typecast them at an age way to young?

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The good bit then used to be that no one really felt compelled by the media and marketeers to come out, and wear their sexual orientation on their sleeve. You were who you were, and that really used to be only your business. The notion of the 12 year olds coming out on the Youtube is ludicrous at its best. And ruinous at its worst.

"Just Do It" and "Go For It" kind of campaigns are wonderful marketing gimmicks. No one is telling you to think long and think hard about the consequences of the decisions you are making. Good intentions are usually just the opposite of good.

So, we used to live in a relative closet. We were hooking up with the like-minded guys who we were interested in. The idea that someone is gay or not does neither add nor subtract the degree of sexual attraction I feel towards this guy. If the vibe is right, we shall be going at it soon enough. If it ain't no amount or rainbow flags and pins will ever help.

The other problem that all this coming out business has created is the very idea of gay identity. True, this has been a wonderful tool in achieving most laudable political and legal victories in many countries. Equally so, it has put on neon labels on a number of men who have reduced their dating/mating pool to the members of the neon labelled tribe either willingly or not.

Quite a few guys out there are happy to have sex with other men. They simply do not see why should their sexual behavior become a matter of great public interest. Such dudes, qualified or not, run for the hills if approached by someone who is out to everyone. For many people, sex is a private, intimate affair, not to be openly shared with the rest of the world. So, the proactive guy dudes coming out on the FB, YouTube and everywhere else are essentially reducing their own dating pool. Do they believe that other guys who do NOT find them attractive will go and have sex with them just because they are openly gay?

KD

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You know, I agree. There's a lot of value just to try things out and experience life and experiment before you start publicly applying labels to yourself that will stay around for the rest of your life. That goes doubly or triply or even moreso for kids who are 12 or 13 or whatever.

The Internet, for good or bad, is a permanent record. You may "erase" something, or you think you can, but it never really goes away. There are screen captures or the "Wayback Machine" or whatever database collected and stored by who knows what marketer or agency or what.

As a side point, that's one of the reasons why Keith and I always tried to keep people from putting contact information on the Message Board. I did program the Member Profile pages so that they aren't supposed to get indexed by search engines. Even so, if someone takes a screen capture of your personal information -- here or on any site -- it can't be undone.

As I've matured (I'll be 54 next month!) I came to understand that nothing is "really secret" anymore to anyone determined to know. At my age, I'm OK with that -- or at least I know I have to be -- but for kids who are still deciding who they are and who they will be, it's damned easy to get carried away with the openness encouraged by our culture.

/steps down from soapbox

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The weird bit is that we are all being bombarded with all sorts of warnings. A friend who lives in the UK told me a story about the Cadbury's "Fruits & Nuts" Chocolate bearing a warning that it may contain nuts. Rite, it IS called "Fruit And Nuts".

The 12-13 year olds are not receiving any warning, for the acts that may change their lives for better or worse, far beyond eating a chocolate bar which happens to be appropriately named.

The worst aspect of the whole thing in my books is that so many people are being brainwashed NOT to use their own brains. We want them to be consumers, not thinkers. So, a dude who goes totally public cannot really tell you what are the benefits he is expecting to receive for his brave action? So many people have come out, so he is doing the same. So many people buy those sneakers, so he wants to do the same.

Yet another aspect of this is that many people lull themselves into what is called 'liking to believe' that we are all somehow equal. And that we all have equal life circumstances.

There you have a successful dude who owns/runs his or corporate business. He chooses to come out. Sure, welcome to the tribe.. Think now of a college dude who depends on his possibly conservative parents, who may totally disown him? He braves this step, too. The former dude ain't really going to fire/disown himself. The latter may end up with a huge debt, possibly homeless. Go, figure...

KD

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Very true. By 12 or 13 although I still thought I would out grow it someday - I already knew that my interest in guys was stronger than theirs was. The gym showers, sleepovers - I only had one thing on my mind. But instinctively I knew not to say anything. Even with guys I fooled around with it would always start with talking about girls - it was really "don't ask don't tell" in a workable situation.



And when I was young the stigma was still very strong. Even in college the few that were fairly open about it were relegated to a different status. "Oh that's Paul. He's the gay guy"

I am still not "out", I am just me. And to this day I still don't see what business it is of anyone that I like to suck cock.

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I always felt that we were doing was pretty obvious to us. Giving it any particular name hardly made any sense. And, yup, quite a few guys grew up either to be str8 or chose to live a str8 life. Branding them "gay" then and even now would have been only detrimental to their future. No one needs an extra burden to carry around.



This is precisely the point of dispute I am having with some of my openly gay friends. Frankly, it is no one's business what they do in their bedrooms, and I do not want to know. And equally so, what I do with other consenting adults is really only our business.

KD

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