Thank you to all of you who have taken the time to write to me and encourage me to continue with my trip down memory lane. Again, some of the names have been changed, but the situations are all true. I have appreciated the feedback and hearing how your lives were the same as/different than mine. For those who don't want to read about M/M teen incest, then skip this chapter, or at least the first part. There's not much sex in this installment, but I promise I'll get to it in the next chapter. I'll also get to some adult relationships next time as the story carries me into my adult years.
Not a Matter of Choice
Part 2: "But you can't be gay!"
"Mom, Dad, I'm gay." That was a pretty momentous statement for a twelve year old to make. But I knew it to be the truth.
My parents looked at me for a while, not knowing how to respond to my bombshell. Or maybe they've always known. What they said though was, "But you can't be gay!" They then proceeded to tell me how it was against God and nature. No one in the family was gay (actually, my cousin on my father's side of the family is, I found out much later). Blah, blah, blah. I honestly can't say any more what the specifics of the conversation were, but that was the gist. We spoke for a long time, but I think I blocked it out of my memory. I just know that I knew in my heart that I was attracted to guys, and there was nothing my parents could do to change that. After our long surreal conversation, my parents told me to go to bed because it was getting quite late, and we would discuss this another time.
I don't think we brought up the topic again. I'm sure they hoped it was just a phase I was going through. I wish I had kept a journal of that turning point in my life when I came to terms with my sexuality and outted myself to my parents. But alas, all I have are my spotty memories. What I do know is that just because my parents told me I couldn't be gay did not change the fact that I enjoyed looking at men. So, my teen years were just like that of other teens—discovering and figuring out all this sex stuff. I graduated from masturbation when I started to mess around with my cousin.
My cousin Johnny was my maternal aunt's son, only ten days younger than I was. We did not live close to each other, but we did get to hang out together not infrequently. He was closer in age to me than my brother, so we did more things together, which I'm sure made my brother jealous. I was selfish at the time, so I didn't care what my brother thought. One day when I was 13 or so, when Johnny was at my house with only my brother there with us, I asked him to come into the master bed room to show him something.
Earlier in the week, I had discovered that my parents kept adult magazines, a torpedo-shaped dildo, and videos in a locked brief case. I was at home, and I happened into my parents' room. My mother was squatting on the floor in the closet, going through some things in the brief case. When she saw me coming by, she hastily shuffled things around and tried to close the lid. Now, a mother should know you should never try to hide something from a teenager. If she had not acted so suspiciously, I would not have thought about it, but since she did, my curiosity took over, and I glanced inside the brief case. I caught a quick glimpse of skin on the magazine cover before she was able to close the lid. I didn't make an issue of it right then, but I knew I wanted into that brief case. When my parents left for an errand, I snuck into their closet to take a look at the brief case. It was a three digit combination lock. I memorized the number that it started with, then I turned all the numbers to 000. I then methodically went through every number starting at 001 until I found the right number to open the brief case (530—the prefix of our phone number). I looted the brief case, enjoying all the magazines. They were straight magazines, but at least there were guys in the pictures. I stayed away from the dildo though, not wanting to think too hard about where it had been in the past. I furiously flogged my cock, coming strongly, cleaned myself up, replaced all the paraphernalia back into the brief case exactly the way they were before, and closed the lid, turning the numbers back to their original position. I realized that it was likely just a random number that my parents turned the dials to, but I didn't want to leave any evidence of my intrusion.
When Johnny accepted my invitation into the room, I closed the door and locked it. I then opened the brief case, got out the magazines, and we enjoyed looking at them. My parents weren't going to be home in a while, so I got bolder. I took one of the videos and popped it into the VCR. It was my first look at hard core pornography, and to this day, I have a vivid memory of the scene. A 30-something guy wearing a bathrobe was in a wheelchair with a leg in a cast. He was lamenting the fact that he was stuck in the wheelchair and couldn't get out to have sex. At that point, a very pretty buxom woman came onto the scene and came up to him. He opened up the bottom of his bathrobe and his dick was hard and jutting out. It was average length, just a bit over six inches, but it was pretty thick and cut. She then knelt between his legs and started to give him a blow job, going up and down and his dick. He moaned and encouraged her on with, "Come on, suck my big dick. You like sucking my dick don't you?" Finally, he said he was going to come, so she pulled away and started to jack him off until he came, covering her face with his thick white sperm. Well, obviously, Johnny and I were both pretty turned on with the scene, and we decided to try what they had done. So, we each took turns giving the other a blow job, trying to emulate what we had seen her do. I about died when his warm, wet mouth engulfed my 5 ½ inch dick and started going up and down on it. We were turned on and both came quickly. That was my first time to have a real blow job. Now, a few months earlier, Johnny and I had actually tried giving each other oral sex, but we didn't know how to do it. We had both heard about blow jobs, and we knew it had to do with putting your mouth on a person's dick, but that's it. So, the one time we had tried it, I put Johnny's five inch uncircumcised penis in my mouth and blew on it like I would a balloon. Then he tried it. Neither one of us found it very pleasurable. But, watching this expert at work, we realized that we had no idea how to go about it before. So, when we got the technique down, oral sex was so much better!
Over the next several months, Johnny and I would find opportunities to engage in what I now consider as relatively innocent sexual exploration. We mostly gave each other hand jobs, and we traded blow jobs, but neither one of us wanted the other to come in his mouth. Once, Johnny wanted to stick his dick in my butt, but the aim wasn't good, and I wasn't very enthusiastic about it either. It would be my last year in medical school before I received anal sex.
My brother Tuong knew we were up to some hanky panky, but didn't know how much. The three of us had a group jack off session together once or twice, but I wasn't at all interested in thinking about my brother in any sexual way. Johnny's parents were suspicious of our goings on, but they weren't able to prove it until I slept over their house. I should have been wary when his parents suggest that we all sleep in the same room, but I was naïve. Plus, I was always horny back then and took every chance I got to get off. So, in the middle of the night, when I thought Johnny's parents were asleep, I coerced Johnny to engage in some sexual fun. We were quiet about it, but not quiet enough. The next morning, I woke up later than they did, and when I walked out of the room, Johnny's father was chasing him down the hall, beating him with a belt and yelling at him. In my cluelessness, I didn't equate our sexual exploration the night before with Johnny's beating. But after that beating, Johnny was not at all interested in having fun with me anymore. And then he started hanging out with my brother almost exclusively, which made me really lonely and jealous. I know now that Johnny was trying to distance himself from me because of the conflict I caused and the fear his father put into him. All I knew then was that I lost a good friend, cousin, and sexual playmate.
For Johnny, our sexual exploration was a part of what almost every teen goes through I think, just blind groping and the releasing of hormones and pent-up sexual energy. He grew out of it, started dating women, and that was the end of the story between me and him. He's now a physician himself, and we haven't brought up that episode in our lives in years. I've kept those memories of mostly fond times trying to figure out my place in the world and my sexual attractions.
Although Johnny and I explored some sex together, I wasn't attracted to Asian men. I really was attracted to Caucasians, particularly those with lighter complexions. I used to wish I could have blond hair and blue eyes. The middle school crushes I had were all white boys. One of my first that I admitted to myself was a guy named Kevin Galloway. Kevin and I were in the orchestra together. He was shorter than I was, around 4'8" when I met him, and 5'4" to my 5'6" when we finished our growth spurts in eighth grade. Kevin had brown, slightly wavy hair, a bit of a pug nose, and freckles underneath startlingly green eyes. His crooked smile and mischievous grin, cocky attitude, and ready comeback completed a package I found hard to resist. Unfortunately, he was as straight as an arrow. I tried to figure out once if he had any gay tendencies at all by folding up a gay picture I had ripped out of a magazine and hiding it in a corner in the orchestra room. I called him over and pretended that I had just found it and wanted to show him. When he saw it, he scoffed at it and walked off. I was supremely disappointed. I asked him once in seventh grade how big his dick was, and he replied, "Big enough."
"How big?" I asked him.
"Well, average, I guess."
"Well, what do you think is average?"
"Six inches," he replied.
"Oh, ok." So now I knew he was about as big as I was. I didn't ever actually get to see it though. Kevin and I didn't go to the same high school after middle school, so we lost touch with each other.
Although Kevin was one of my first crushes, it wasn't the one that got me into the most trouble. That prize would have to go to Nathan Thomson. I met Nate in seventh grade at a church my aunt had invited me to. It was a very small church that met in a day care center that was set up for church every Sunday morning and taken down at the end of service. The first guys my age I met at the church were fraternal twins, Ryan and Jason Mooney. Ryan and Jason stood about the same height at 5'8" to my 5'6" with lean cut builds I equate with Navy seals. They both wore their hair short, Ryan's a dark brown and Jason with a good deal of red cut through. I really enjoyed talking to them at church, and their father took all of us to lunch afterwards and then to a church member's house for dessert. It was there that I first laid eyes on Nate.
Nathan was the pastor's middle child, Nate was the tallest and most well built out of the three, standing at 5'11", with short sandy blonde hair, hazel eyes that squinted when he smiled, and a booming laugh. He also had shoulders a mile wide and big `ole guns due to his many years in competitive swimming. I confess when I saw him, I was smitten. They were all three very sexy, but Nate took the cake.
It was evident that Nate, Ryan, and Jason had been friends for a while, as they cut up and joked around constantly. The four of us spent hours that afternoon discussing various aspects of Christianity, and it seemed I was readily accepted into the group. We all lived pretty close to one another, so we started hanging out more.
New Year's Eve, a couple from the church invited all of us to their country home to sleep over and bring in the new year. The four of us went along with my brother; my cousin Johnny joined us later in the day. We roamed the countryside on some bikes and horsed around. I won't bore you with the details. We played with sparklers, had hot cocoa and eventually went to bed. The house was not that big, so we all piled into a room, spread out our sleeping bags, and fell asleep.
I was the first one in the room to wake up in the early morning hours. I listened to the quiet breathing in the room, and I realized that I was sleeping right next to Nathan. I as always was horny, and I had morning wood. I decided to attempt a risky venture. Very slowly, I reached my hand out of the sleeping bed and gently laid my hand by Nate's crotch, barely touching the sleeping bag. I was getting really turned on at this point and was leaking copious amounts of precum. So, I went one step further. I found the opening to Nate's sleeping bag and carefully slipped my hand inside. I landed somewhere near his stomach, and I worked my hand downwards to his crotch, my touch light as a feather. I made it to the Spot, and Nate definitely had a bulge there, a sizable one at that. I wanted to cup his dick and balls in my hands, but Nate started to stir slightly. I decided not to push my luck, so I withdrew my hand, got it back into my sleeping bag, beat off furiously, and came all over my hand. I cleaned myself off as best I could and dozed off for a while longer. Nathan never found out about my illicit activity then, but he did find out when I tried it a few years later, and that's when then shit hit the fan. I'll tell that story later.
Over the next few years, I got to know the Thomson and Mooney families very well, along with the other members at the church. Shortly after going to the church, I decided to switch my religion from Buddhism to Christianity. When I was eleven, my uncle was tending his convenient store late at night when two teenagers came in with a sawed off shotgun, shot him in the stomach, left him there to die, and escaped with $44 from the cash register. That tragedy caused me to start asking all the tough questions in life. Is there a God? Is there any justice in this world? What is the meaning of life? I started looking for answers in the Buddhist religion, but the more I looked, the fewer answers I got. When I started going to church and looked at Christian doctrine, overall it seemed to ring true in my heart. There was one thing that the church taught that I had a big problem with though: homosexuality was an abomination to God. The church taught strict sexual purity, and even masturbation was wrong because you had fantasies and lusted in your heart when you masturbated.
So, to be a good Christian, I tried with all my heart to keep from fantasizing or masturbating. It would never work though, and eventually, I would give in to my carnal desires and masturbate again, feeling guilty afterwards. Still, as I got to know Nate more, I became more and more attracted to him emotionally and sexually. We were all pretty comfortable with hugging one another and putting our arms around each other, but they were all brotherly hugs, and I wanted more. One time, my brother walked into my room and caught me and Nate lying in my twin bed, spooned into each other. We had our clothes on, and it was not sexual, but it flustered my brother and he walked out quickly.
Because Nate and I spent more and more time together, I started seeing him in various states of undress. He was extremely athletic and even had a shot at being in the Olympics, but he lost his chance when he developed mono right before the national tryouts and didn't place high enough. By the time he was in high school, Nate was 6'1", and if he was good looking in middle school, he became just short of godly in high school. I absolutely loved seeing Nate with only his skin-tight skimpy speedos on, or better yet, naked. Breast stroke and butterfly were his two favorite strokes, so he had lats that looked more like wings, they were so well developed. And his six-pack abs... you could wash clothes on that washboard! And the icing on the cake was his sizable cock. It was about five inches and thick, hanging down from a blond bush with nice hefty balls. He was cut, with a slightly tapered head. I would sneak peeks at his body when he was getting out of the shower or any chance I got. What I wouldn't have given to suck on that piece of meat! Once, when we were talking smack, we decided to compare erections. I'm about 6 ½" hard, which is average for a white guy but a bit above average for an Asian. Nate's however was around 8 1/2", and my fingers just barely made it around the shaft. His cock head flared outward just a bit and tapered towards the end. He was a bit reluctant to let me touch it to measure it, as he knew at that time I was gay, but he let me hold the ruler up to his hard on to get a good measurement. That was the only time I saw it hard, and I didn't even get to see him come.
In tenth grade, I joined the high school diving team. I started out as a terrible diver, but I had a good work ethic, so I worked my butt off to get better at the sport. One definitely positive thing was that all the swimmers and divers spent hours in nothing but speedos, so no one had any self consciousness. We'd shower together and horse around, and every day, I would have dozens of boys walking around naked, all of them incredibly well toned from hours in the pool. I don't know how many times I lusted over those hot bodies, but I never got a chance to do anything with them. I was incredibly in the closet through my high school and college years, so I couldn't share my attractions with anyone. When Nate would come in for his afternoon practice, I would jump off the diving board, talk to him for a bit, and we'd go to our separate practices. The other divers noticed this of course, but they didn't say anything. Once, when I was a senior, I started developing an interest in a diver named Matt a few years younger than me. He was short, very funny, and a trouble maker. I would hang out with him at his house and sort of go out of my way to develop a friendship. Once, when we were in his room, he asked me, "Minh, are you gay?"
"No!" I immediately replied and looked down. I really wanted to say yes, but I was too afraid word would get out in school, and too ashamed of myself that I had those secret desires.
Growing up, I was always in terrible conflict about my sexuality. I knew that I had lustful thoughts about guys. But the church taught that homosexuality was a sin and that if I wanted to be right with God, I needed to change. If I just read the Bible enough, pray enough, and ask God to change me, He would do that and I could have sexual attractions to women, marry someone, and have a family. And I also saw how my classmates would use the word "gay" as a derogatory term, and I didn't want that. Things came to a head when Nate caught me groping him one night when he slept over.
I had a very small room, enough for only a twin bed, small book case, and a desk. So, the few times Nate spent the night, he would often just sleep in the twin bed with me. We would turn on our sides and fall asleep after staying up until the wee hours talking about nothing the way teenagers do. One night, I was sleeping against the wall and Nate was spooned up against me. I casually reached over, put my hand on his crotch, left it there for a minute, and then took it off. I don't even think I got to feel anything. When I woke up in the morning, Nate was sleeping on the floor. I didn't think that much of it, since it was a twin bed, and he was a big guy. But over the next several weeks, he was pretty distant towards me. I didn't really know what was up, but I didn't push it.
One Sunday before church, Nate and Ryan asked to meet me out on a country road. When I got there and met them, Nate asked me if I had touched him inappropriately that night in my room. Instead of trying to deny it, I told him the truth. That's when Nate and Ryan pushed me down, called me a faggot, stripped off all my clothes, and beat the crap out of me. No, I'm just kidding, they didn't do that. Nathan did something far worse: he told his father, my pastor, about the incident.
Nate and Ryan said that they were still my friends, and they wanted to help me change and turn away from my sin. They not only told Pastor Thomson about my situation, they mentioned it to our high school Sunday School teacher Tom Sanders, with whose family I had enjoyed a wonderfully close relationship for years. Tom and Nancy after that never trusted me to be alone with any of their six children, and when I went to visit the family once while in medical school, Tom told me straight out to stay away from his boys. I haven't spoken to the Sanders since.
Shortly after Nathan told his father, I got a summons into the pastor's room. He then set up a series of counseling sessions with me to help me beat this demon of homosexuality. We went through all the Bible passages regarding homosexuality and how it was abhorrent to God. We read how homosexuals would not enter into God's kingdom. Pastor Thomson explained to me that through his extensive reading of Scripture and his counseling of others in my situation, he came to the understanding that my homosexuality stemmed from an unloving attitude towards a significant female member in my life, most likely my mother. Because of my deeply unforgiving spirit towards my mother, I unconsciously X'd out all women in my life. When I started puberty and my hormones started to flow, I could not connect with women because I had blocked off that channel, so the only place I could turn to were men. So if I could learn to have a more loving attitude and forgiving spirit, especially to my mother, that blockage would be cleared, and I would suddenly have the natural sexual urges towards women as my homosexual urges faded away.
Well, I really tried to do that. The pastor was a person I deeply admired and respected, and I knew that he had helped many others with their sin issues. I was sure he was right about me, and it was my fault somehow that I was having these unnatural urges. If I could just do the right thing, allow God to work more fully in my life, I would start having sexual feelings towards women, and I would not fantasize about men. But, no matter how much I tried, I couldn't do it. I never had sexual thoughts about women. I knew then that I was a failure in God's eyes, and He must not love me or care about me as much as other people since I had fasted and prayed and begged God to take this burden away from me, all to no avail. So, on the outside, I was a very studious high school student with phenomenal grades and a model Christian young man, but inside, I was tortured and depressed. I came close to committing suicide several times. I thought that it would be easier to end the pain I felt rather than continue to live this life of lies.
When I graduated high school, I went Rice University, one of the nation's top schools right in Houston. It was in Rice that my conflict just got worse as I immersed myself in my Christian faith and at the same time had numerous anonymous sexual encounters.