The Back Path

For my first time there is that moment in my youth that will always stand out as perhaps all firsts combined and more, maybe not in action but surely in spirit.

How does one decide what his first time might really be? Is it the first time you masturbate with another boy or in front of him? Perhaps it’s when you and another boy kiss or feel each other up. Some might say it’s the first time you get laid or fall in love. I would venture we all have had many firsts in our lives. In most memories, especially if you are a romantic like me, and the story many years removed, the facts may have melded into wishful myth. But rest assured that’s not the case here. This story is true, as fresh as if it just happened only minutes ago. I have altered the names a bit just in case others may not remember it the way I have.

As far as first time experiences go this may seem tame, but it was the year 1964 and things were very different back then, simpler and maybe saner. At seventeen I was well aware of my being different, of being gay, I think I was aware of it since I was about 10 or so. We didn’t call it that back then. We said homo or sissy and as far as I was concerned not a soul knew or even thought that I might be one. I was a quiet, shy boy as a child, maybe what would have been called a wallflower. I was cute with a great smile and, if I kept my mouth shut, no one would know how dumb I thought I was. Of course, that went for knocking over stuff and tripping over myself too. If it weren’t for my cousin Kate I would have had no teen social life at all. Kate’s friends were my friends and they were all classy people even if they sometimes treated me like a pet or mascot. After all, I was four months younger than Kate, and a year behind her in school and, of course, very short. So while I was fooling around with all my boy cousins and the local paperboys that shared routes and circle jerks with me, Kate dragged me off to social events and saw to it I wore the right clothes and always had a girl on my arm. We were very close. Still are to this day. I’m sure she was one of the first to realize I was gay. I think in my mind back then our concept was we dated girls, had sex with boys, grew up, married a woman, had sex with men. It all seemed very simple at the time.

The school I attended went from grade seven to twelve, most of us kids having been friends from back in grammar school. We were in most classes together, with the exception of Wayne Limon and our lunch gang. Wayne was the most beautiful boy in seventh grade; he was new to our lunch gang. I say our gang because from the seventh grade to graduation we saw each other only in the lunch room. We were the misfits, so to speak, the table of six. I’m not sure how we gravitated toward each other in those first few weeks of school, but we managed to form lasting friendships just over lunch, during six school years, for forty-five minutes a day. I never made friends with any other