Note from TFG: After over 10 years of content, I think it could occasionally be good and repost some of my favorite posts over the years. So enjoy this trip down memory lane.
I’ve mentioned before that I was a late bloomer. I thought I should expand on that, so that others can possibly related to my story, or at least parts of it.
When I was growing up as a teenager, there was no internet. So for all you young’uns, imagine this site didn’t exist, as well as every social network you can think of. No Grindr, Scruff, GearFetish, Fetlife, Reddit, Recon, or any other forum. Doesn’t leave you with much, does it? All you had available was TV, books, magazines, and the phone (and I’m talking landlines here). Granted, the book and magazine scene was larger, which helped a little bit… if you knew where to go to get materials, or were able to.
I was in self-denial for a while. Well, maybe not self-denial as much as I didn’t even think about it. My family was very nice and relatively open-minded, but sex, let alone being gay, was rarely talked about. I think my parents took the “let’s not talk about it, and let them discover it for themselves” approach.
Looking back, there was one small sign of unspoken tolerance. Our next door neighbors were two older women who lived together. Looking back, they basically fit the stereotypes of a lesbian couple. But they had a pool, and we didn’t, and they were kind enough to let us use their pool when we were kids. My parents would often come over and talk with them as we swam. My parents never said anything about them being gay, although I’m sure they knew. I thought it was a bit odd at the time (I was quite young myself, probably pre-teen), but since my parents didn’t say anything about it, I didn’t either. Perhaps setting up how I’d deal with my own feelings later on.
As I’ve mentioned on my blog before, I did have an inkling I liked bondage even at an early age. I tied myself up quite a bit in my room with a jump-rope, roll up in a rug, or even string if necessary. (See this post for more details, it has a very amusing story about how I first ejaculated with my Spiderman doll tied to my dick.) Later, I would notice myself staring at guy’s feet. I didn’t know why, I just did, and it excited me inside. I knew this wasn’t quite “normal”, but I was drawn to them. Remember, you couldn’t just go and look this up online. There was no online, and no real sense that there were other people having those same thoughts and feelings. Hence why so many people felt so utterly alone and isolated. I didn’t really understand this until much, much later. We’re talking even beyond my 20s.
But you know how most guys eventually discover their dad’s porn stash? I was no exception. My father was definitely straight, and my eye tended to lean towards those uncommon occasions a guy was included in the pics. As is the stereotype, most of the guys in straight porn aren’t exactly attractive, but I manged to enjoy a few. But the most interesting part? The porn mags were largely called Leg Show, which seemed to lean towards women’s feet. Part of me wonders if a foot fetish can be genetic…
In high school, I got along with girls great. (Imagine that.) I didn’t have a lot of guy friends, but it didn’t seem to matter too much when I had so many girls around me. I did manage to date girls in high school, because quite a few were infatuated with me. I was cute then as now, lol. I never much went past the make out stage, though, before we’d lose interest. I did start to develop crushes on guys, which I never said anything to anyone about. Again, I didn’t really understand it. I don’t even think I would have known it was called “gay” at the time. In my mind, these weren’t crushes. They were my “secret friend.” Secret because only I knew they were my friend. Kinda strange, but that’s how I justified it in my mind.
I loved to read. And around then a YA (Young Adult) book came out called Slumber Party, by Christopher Pike. It was one of the first YA books that I knew of that was written as a thriller murder mystery, and you can argue it paved the way for books such as The Hunger Games, Twilight, and Divergent to be as successful as they are now. This book was wildly successful in the YA market, and he wrote many others. A fair number of them contained mild bondage. Also at the same time was a book called Blind Date by R. L. Stine, who is still very big with the YA and juvenile book scene. This was one of his first YA books, and I mention it because the climatic chapter has an extended scene with the main guy tied to a chair and tortured (semi-graphically for a YA novel).
I mention all that because I decided to write my own “books” in high school (averaging about 60 pages or so each), staring both my friends and guys I had crushes on. Invariably, in these stories, many of my gay crushes ended up tied up. I even shared these novels amongst some of my friends, and they actually became somewhat popular. Since they were sort of adventure/mystery stories, having guys tied up in them (and a few girls… the plot sometimes worked out that way) wasn’t unusual.
Entering college, I had to take a class that forced us to do a personal journal. It was here that I first wrote down that while I suspected I’d be married to a girl one day, I really wanted to try something with a guy. I believe I wrote, “If I don’t make out with a guy, I may die.” I did still think I’d ultimately be with a girl. There was one girl all throughout high school that I was very close to. And my parents, especially my father, would often nudge me to girls. It think it was around here that I began to acknowledge I had at least some gay feelings… but I was still convinced I’d be with a girl one day. Guys were just a fleeting thing.
Still, I wanted to see. That lead me to put out a personals ad in the paper. But more on that next week…
