Perplexed

When I was an early teen, say around 14, I had a pretty significant physical relationship with a friend of mine over a period of about a year.  This young man was LDS and I went to school with him for many years.  Looking back I realize that the physical part of our relationship (which was in the very early years of our friendship) was highly sexualized and that I was very much in love with him.  There was no intercourse of any kind, but there was plenty of intense physical contact.  And I craved being physically affectionate - very tactile - with him.

At the time, it didn't really register with me that I was gay.  I knew that I had a longing for other boys with what I see now as several significant crushes starting in sixth grade.  And, as I got older, I liked the way other boys looked, particularly in the locker room.  I even used to go "visit" a friend in the soccer team locker room area because I like to sneak a glance at the kid next to him while he was changing.  Hanging around my buddy after gym was the only way to do it.  So I learned to change quick!  (The friend in question will likely read this.  Sorry, professor, but I used you as an excuse to indulge my carnal desires.  I apologize for my cheap, tawdry actions.)

I had only the vaguest of recollections as to what being gay was.  For whatever reason, when I was first in high school I came to believe from the comments I heard that masturbation made you a "faggot" and I didn't want anyone to know I was one of those - because Lord knows if masturbation made one thus, I was likely the biggest faggot in school!  It took me many, many years to gradually understand that it wasn't that I was more "sensitive" than other boys and that's why I wanted to be "close" to them.  Fact is, looking back, I just plain found some of them hot but really had no way of integrating that idea in my life or processing it intellectually.

Here's what perplexes me:  This buddy with whom I had the most intimate physical relationship with in my life (and, given that it occurred when I was 14, isn't that just one sad statement?) turned out to be straight.  I haven't spoken too him in a very long time, so I can't be 100% certain.  And the one thing I've learned through a few years of participating in the MoHo blog world is that appearances often are very deceiving.  But I'm pretty confident that he is as straight as they come.

And that is what I don't get.  We were 14 years old.  This wasn't some 9 year old "you show me yours and I'll show you mine" nonsense.  The physical contact wasn't fleeting, accidental or a single episode.  Rather it was significant, overt and took place multiple times over a year or so.  Of course we never labeled it as sexual.  And neither of us ever achieved, uh hum, completion so-to-speak.  But I just don't know how a straight person could participate in such activity.  Put another way, I'm certain that I wouldn't have had any interest in that kind of contact with a girl, and would have in fact found it disgusting to do so.  The few times I kissed girls were almost painful for me.

This morning I asked another friend, who is most definitely straight, whether he had ever had any physical sexual contact with another male, no matter how minor.  This friend knows who and what I am and, I believe, was perfectly honest with me in his response.  He said that he never had, except for inadvertent "touching hands", which I found really, really interesting.  He is so completely straight that he would consider intentionally touching another guy's hand to be tantamount to a sexual act.

All of which leaves me perplexed.  Of course it's anecdotal.  My "research" involved two people and hardly represented an application of the scientific method.  Still, I can't reconcile my 14 year old interaction with my peer who I am virtually certain went on to be and live a straight life with the response I received from my buddy this morning.  

I suppose I am looking at it all in too binary a fashion - a hazard that comes with an LDS background.  My upbringing taught me that a thing is one thing or another, right or wrong and, by extension, a person is straight or evil - I mean gay.  Perhaps my 14 year old buddy simply wasn't certain of what he was yet.  Perhaps he just didn't worry about it and knew it was something I liked so he went along.  Maybe he found it pleasurable and a fine substitute until the opportunity with a girl came along.

Not that any of it really matters.  Just something I've been stewing on for a while now.