William by Brad Gillespie

William

by “Brad Gillespie”

This is a true story, which took place many years ago, in the late 1960s. By not giving William's last name, since it's a pretty common first name, and by not mentioning where this took place, I think I've hidden enough to protect his identity.

First, let me tell you a few facts about myself. I'm no longer young, but back then in the late 1960s I was in my twenties. (William was a bit younger; I didn’t ask him, but I believe he was 19 or about.) I've always been bisexual, though I never realized that this was anything “special” until many years after my sexual orientation made itself obvious. Although most “sexual” things one read about were straight, and I knew I could be turned on by a boy as well as a girl, I'd simply thought most people were like me, but since sex-for-reproduction was only possible with females, that the other things I'd done didn't even constitute “sex,” and therefore didn't get mentioned much when sex was discussed. I'd actually never been exposed to much anti-gay “propaganda,” because in my world, homosexuality was never discussed: if it was taboo, it was so much of a taboo that the subject never came up! In the days between puberty and the period I'm describing, the only sexual activity I'd actually been involved in would be described as homosexual, but this was not arising from having no interest in girls; rather, I was a sort of nerdy type that most girls weren't interested in, and the few that were weren't inclined to let anything get beyond friendship. Most of the sexual activities I had been involved in, even with boys, had been years ago; I'd done nothing much but masturbate in the last few years before the period this story covers.

I was a graduate student, living in a rooming house that had been converted from a very large single-family home, about a block from the university itself. None of the other roomers, as it were, had any connection with the university that I knew about, at least most of the time. (There were a couple of students who moved into the basement below me, which was a room big enough for the two of them, during part of the time I was there, but I don't even remember whether their being there overlapped the incidents I'm about to relate; at any rate, they don't figure in this story.)

I am not a racist; I'm perfectly willing to have friends of all races, but I don't consider African-Americans physically attractive. So the fact that William was of that race is a bit strange, considering what happened. (And the fact that he had a room in the house was a bit surprising, since it was in the South. But I guess the owners of that house were less racist than one expects in that part of the country.) It all began one day when I was sitting on the porch of the house, and this other person, whose name at the time I didn't know, but I knew he had a room on the 2nd floor, was also sitting there. He struck up a conversation, the first time I'd ever spoken with him. Most of the conversation concerned the usual sort of trivia that one would expect, particularly between two people who didn't really know each other, and whose only thing in common was that they roomed in the same building. But at one point, he asked me what I thought about homosexuality – I guess, by this time, he felt comfortable enough to bring it up. I was a bit surprised at the question, and my response was what I truly believed at the time: that all people had some homosexual impulses. The conversation continued in another direction, but I guess that William (though I still hadn't learned his name) had taken my response as a positive sign, given what followed.

A short time (I mean days, not hours) later, he invited me up to his room for a visit; clearly by then he felt comfortable talking with me, but although he had more than just talking in mind, I didn't realize that (though, because of his question on that early occasion, I guessed that he probably was a homosexual – we didn't use the word “gay” in those years; it was only used by gay people among themselves). I don't recall whether I had even slightly entertained the thought that he was, in any way, sexually attracted to me, but I certainly wasn't expecting anything more than just talking and the like. I went upstairs, he served me some Kool-Aid or the like, and we talked. Just talked, for a while.

But then, he asked me if he could feel my penis. As I said before, I'd by then figured that he probably was a homosexual, so I was hardly shocked, but I was a bit surprised that he wanted to do it with me. And, based on what I've already told you, you can tell I was not really turned off by his request, though I didn't really consider him attractive, but I already knew that being felt by someone could feel good. So my response was: “If you let me do it to you too.” Clearly, that was no problem with him, we did it, but nothing more on that day – we didn't even take off any clothes, only unzipped each other's flies and played with each other's penises a bit.

Now I don't know about the 10ʺ penises one reads about in fiction; mine is about 6ʺ, and I've rarely seen one much larger than that. And despite the rumors of African-Americans having massively big ones, his was not much different from mine in size. In fact, except for the color, it looked much like my own. (Being Jewish, I am of course circumcised; but in the United States, in this era, uncircumcised penises were extremely rare, even among the general population. I had only seen one in my life, and thought it weird.)

This was as far as it went, that day. And it was the only time we ever did anything upstairs in his room. A few days later, he came to my room and knocked on my door. He wanted to use my typewriter to write a letter. By this point, I considered him a friend, so of course I ler him in, got out my typewriter and some paper, and he began doing what he said he wanted to do: type a letter. But after a page or two came the question: “Do you want to have sex?”

That puzzled me: First of all, “sex” to me involved females, so I asked him, “With whom?” He responded, “With me.” I realized that for him what we would be doing constituted sex, even though I would not have thought of it so. I said “OK,” and we turned out the light, undressed, went to my bed, and what we did was simply mutual masturbation. It never, on any subsequent occasion, got beyond that – though at one point, we tried; that will be described later.

Afterwards, we still saw each other mostly in a non-sexual manner; he worked at a cafeteria where I often had my meals, behind a serving line, and when he was there when I went to lunch or dinner there, he'd smile in recognition and I'd smile back.

But every so often he'd come down and knock on my door; always the same scenario, asking to use my typewriter for a letter, doing a page or even less, asking if I wanted to have sex. And my response was always “With whom?” and it always continued the same way as that earlier time. I suppose you'd figure that after the first time I'd realize what was going on, but the routine never changed. In retrospect, I wish he hadn't felt he needed to pretend he was using my typewiter – I wasted a lot of typing paper on “letters” that never got finished. If he had asked, “Could I come in?” and immediately, on closing the door behind him as he came in, saying, “I'd like to have sex with you” (or even phrasing it as a question, the way he did), we would still have done the same as what we did. But I guess he never got up the courage. And I never got up the courage to say, “I know you just want to have sex with me, not write a letter,” so the routine never changed.

Oddly, I never found out his name until one time when we were in bed together – that's weird, in retrospect. But that's the kind of relationship we had. And we always did everything with the lights out; which, I guess was better for me because I never really considered him attractive (I just loved how he made me feel). Perhaps he thought the same of me.

Only once did he suggest trying something beyond mutual masturbation. He wanted to try anal sex, but neither of us knew of one major requirement for that: lubrication. So neither of us could get into the other, and we gave up trying. I guess that, though he was admittedly a homosexual, he'd not really linked up with others enough to find out about it, and I never considered myself homosexual: just a normal person who got aroused by anything sexual, even just a bit of nudity, regardless of what sex the person was.

Eventually I got my degree and left that place, and that was the end of my contacts with William.