Owen's Own -- Skinny-Dipping Days
As an eleven year old in the closet gay boy, I learned to swim sixty-five years ago, when in those days traditional YMCA swimming classes entailed and required skinny-dipping. It helped to ease my apprehension when I learned how all my classmates were of my own age and well behaved, including no bullying or disruptive antics in the locker room. The quality of instruction and supervision was excellent.
On my first day, a gracious and handsome boy showed me around the locker room facilities (talk about no partitions, anywhere) and then began to undress. After he took something off, I took something off. This was new to me.
Soon, we were in our birthday suits and showering together in the YMCA's large communal showering room. In the showers, an attractive boy asked me to hand him a bar of soap, giving me an opportunity to touch his sweet soft hand while I struggled to control my curious and somewhat tempted young eyes.
What an eye opener it was to see so many charming boys in their birthday suits. However, I was troubled that my privates looked different than most of the other boys. This was my initiation into being sexually different in yet another way.
I knew nothing about circumcision and the majority of boys were cut while I was intact or uncircumcised. In an effort to pass as one of the boys and not stand out, I considered it simpler to roll back my naturally sensitive unstretched foreskin for my helmet to come out for all to see.
An engaging boy inspired me to play a game of tag in the pool with him. We were both good sports as we boldly and eagerly tagged one another back and forth in the chlorine-rich water, wearing our locker keys strapped around our ankles and nothing else. Tag in the pool was good clean play, and perhaps so gay.
One day, we were instructed to climb the steps to a diving board. While it was one thing to be bare-skinned in the swimming pool, it was yet another thing to feel like the center of attention on a diving board with all my privates hanging out.
I felt like a fool, standing alone at the end of the diving board without a clue how to dive safely. This was my first time on a diving board and I was afraid of losing my balance and slipping or getting hurt screwing up my dive, and then being laughed at and made fun of.
Never the less, I put my palms together as if to pray, stretched out my arms like an arrow, and performed an out of the ordinary dive, somewhat parallel to the water surface.
It hurt everywhere as I came in for a flat landing, leaving me almost in tears but I dared not cry with everyone watching. No one laughed or made wise cracks.
What more could I ask?
Perhaps a boyfriend but that is another story, Owen
[Thank you for reading my story and please write (capeiguana@aol.com).]