A glimpse into my past and what’s made me the kinky guy I am today. There are some very sexy and kinky things described, so don’t let the wordiness fool you. You’ll be turned on. 😉
Back in junior high (well, now they call it “middle school”) and high school, I grew very attracted to The Twilight Zone TV show from the 50’s. With that came similar books. I used to read various pre-teen series such as Dark Forces, Twilight (not the one you know now… this pre-dates that and is completely unrelated), and Private School. This later evolved into Clive Barker (even before I knew he was gay!). And I also happened to run into an anthology called Hot Blood.
This book was one of my first memorable accounts of utter sexiness and kink. Now, unfortunately for me (and probably most of you), all the stories are of straight men. But two particular stories really hit home regardless. One was called “Punishments” by Ray Garton. It involved a female church organist who begins seducing a teenage boy. In one of her toying moments, she has him sitting in a chair, and pulls down his pants and underwear. She then scoops ice cream onto his hard cock, and tops it off with whipped cream. She then kneels in front of him and, “slowly, and oh so lovingly, ate her ice cream sundae.” Now, I don’t know if that’s really an exact quote (I no longer have the book, so I have to go by memory), but the image is definitely burned in my mind nearly 20 years later. This was one of my first memories of gunge play, and boy, did it really hit home. The story takes an extremely kinky turn as it turns out this woman was abused by her step-father (or something like that), and starts demanding the young boy start whipping her, torturing her, etc, and starts screaming repeatedly, “Punish me!” It didn’t take much to identify with many aspects of this story. Although I wasn’t sure if I identified with being that teenaged boy, or being the one who was corrupting that teenaged boy. To a certain degree, I still don’t know. I just knew I sorta wished something like that would happen to me.
This book also had a sequel, Hotter Blood. (To be honest, it’s actually had many sequels… and they can all be found on Amazon.) In this book was another story called “The Kind Men Like” by Karl Edward Wagner. While also straight, there are some very kinky aspects to it that undoubtedly influence my own kinks. In it (and again, I have to tell this from memory, so I may not be entirely accurate here), a man tries to track down a former porn star, one much like Bettie Page (nicknamed, “Better Page”), who mysteriously vanished from the scene. He does eventually find her, and it turns out she gains supernatural power from all the sexual energy men create when they jack off to her images. But she’s finding as she ages, she needs more intense imagery to get these men off. As I seem to recall, at the high point of the story, she convinces her daughter (!) to be encased in a tight leather sleepsack after having already penetrated her with twin dildos in her vagina and ass, gags her, puts a hood and collar on her, and suspends her upside down by the ankles to struggle and moan at her predicament as the camera begins snapping away pictures of her tightly bound form. It doesn’t take much to figure out I wanted to be that person. Well, minus the vagina part. 😉 This may be why I love sleepsacks so much today. I guess in a way, I sort of have lived this one out… although I haven’t yet been suspended upside down in one.
While I don’t read as much horror anymore, in college I was happy to find books similar to this that do cater to the gay crowd, called Queer Fear. I have read both volumes. I wish I could say I remember all of them, but it’s been a long time. I seem to recall that as with most anthologies, some were good, some were so-so, and some were not so good. I believe very few of the stories were actually kinky (although I do seem to recall a couple were), which seemed like a really sad missed opportunity. But if this sort of thing is up your alley, give it a read! I do believe all these books can be found on Amazon, or just searching around a bit with Google.
I was telling a friend/fan of the blog Matt I was about to post this topic. He mentioned reading a book called The Hydrofoil Mystery by Eric Walters in his school. To quote him, “There’s one scene towards the end where the young male narrator is tied to a chair and gagged with a cloth, and makes several references to being gagged, unable to speak except in grunts, and biting down on the cloth. Man. That was a rather fond memory, I must say.”
Thanks to our conversation, I recalled one other great source. Now, going back even a bit younger, there used to be a series of books called Choose Your Own Adventure. They were pretty awesome, and very popular at the time. They were just as described. You’d be reading along, and then at various points, the book would give you options of what to do next. If you wanted to do such-and-such, you’d turn to page 35, and to do this-and-that, you’d turn to page 72. Where you’d receive the next set of instructions. Thus, you did not read them from cover to cover. They were one of the first interactive experiences I can remember as a kid.
There were many themes: adventure stories, sci-fi, haunted houses, and even a mystery. In the book The Mystery of Harlowe Thromby, at one point, if you choose carefully, your character got tied up. And amazingly enough, they were generous enough to provide a full page illustration of how thoroughly you got bound with a towel wrapped around your head.
As you can imagine, that picture did quite a number of my still-developing perverted little mind. It’s funny to see it now today; the ropework holds up pretty well, even as an adult. 😉
On that note, I think I’ll end this with a tribute to one of my favorite childhood memories, While the Clock Ticked.
What about you? Did any of you have a book that influenced you or turned you on as a kid?
