Uncategorized at M Y O B

CHEMISTRY

Among some old textbooks in my Dad’s library I found a few about chemistry, and quickly developed an interest in that subject. Something about it “spoke to me”, and I found it very easy to comprehend. I converted an old potting-shed behind our garage into a “laboratory” using various “found” items. It was leaky and cold, so Dad helped me build something a bit more substantial: perhaps he realized I would soon be needing a place where I could be alone! I ransacked various middens around town for chemicals and containers and eventually got a chemistry set. I cannot imagine these are still available in anything like the form they were then: there were real chemicals in sufficient amounts for numerous experiments—or for committing suicide! But leaving this earth was far from my mind in those days, so I did the experiments, and learned. I begged a friend for his high-school chemistry workbook and did as many of those experiments as I could, as well.

The friend who supplied that book was “Gerry”, a chap four years ahead of me in school and far ahead of me physically. For some reason, he was willing to pal around with me. He had a scientific bent similar to my own, and we spent a lot of time together in the “Bramson Laboratory” (so the sign on the door stated). I was fascinated by Gerry’s prominent basket, and got up the nerve to push myself against it as often as I could, but never had the “balls” to grope him forthrightly. Damn! Mind you, I was still not getting my own erections yet, so my interest in Gerry was fairly innocent. Whatever his interest in me, it appears now to have been entirely above reproach. If he had only allowed me to explore I’d have been in seventh heaven: but, he never touched me. Damn!

HIGH SCHOOL

Again, having begun grammer-school at 5, I was just 14 when I entered Modesto’s only (then) High School. Not surprisingly, it was called Modesto High School, MHS from here on. My freshman year did not go well. For one thing, there was the same old problem with PE, which I could not get out of. My peers, with few exceptions, were ahead of me physically, and I still had the problem of surreptitiously enjoying the views in the locker-room and showers. One of the coaches did take my problems into consideration, allowing me to play hand-ball in one of the two courts out on the playing field: but I had to find someone willing to play against me, and since hand-ball was considered a “sissy” sport, I usually played with my (tennis) balls by myself. Coach also assigned me as towel-boy for the PE period I had, which cut my playtime a bit short, and put me behind a counter where I could watch the boys toweling themselves, but they could not see me below the middle, giving them less excuse to badger me about my lack of equipment “down there”.

My favorite class was General Science; my favorite teacher taught it. Mr. Bosch (not his real name) was a tall, lanky blond in his thirties. He had a rather Germanic appearance and bearing, with a butch haircut and a melifluous voice. But he was a good instructor, got us a lot of interesting movies, and took us on several field-trips around town. I developed a crush (my first) on Mr. Bosch, and did some terrific learning for him and from him. But what I would have liked most to have gotten from him—a pat on the head, or elsewhere—I never got. Apparently, some DID! A couple of years on he was discovered to be diddling some of the boys, and was summarily fired and run out of town. Like everyone else, he never touched ME! Damn!

My freshman year was also distorted by the death of my mother. It was not unexpected: she died a horrible death, from the cancer we had discovered 5 years earlier. This put us all in a funk for a while, and that summer we took a long trip around the US to recover.

But the major event of my freshman year occurred as that school-year was winding down. I had gone to watch our basket-ball players practice for a game to take place that night. I would not actually attend the game itself: I was supposed to be home, studying. But I tended to hang around that hated gym when the guys were playing basketball because I was rapidly becoming a “leg man” (which I still am). In those days (unlike today) most sports were played in very brief shorts: between where these ended and knee-socks began was a gorgeous display of healthy young thighs, and now and then in a particularly vigorous run-up or jump, one got a glimpse right up to the jewels within. Indeed, many of the guys wore shorts they split up each side, to be as revealing as possible! Believe me, there is NO fun watching a basketball game any more, what with those stupid bloomers the guys wear now!

Anyway, there I was getting my fill of eye-candy, when I happened to overhear two chaps nearby comparing their ability to shoot their jizz. All at once, a whole lot of things fell into place! The scene from years before, when my cousin had shown me the ropes, sprang instantly to mind: I knew at once what the boys were discussing and describing, and it occurred to me I was probably missing out on something.

That very night, alone in my little room at the top of the stairs, I determined to find out just exactly what those boys (and my cousin) were experiencing. Dad was downstairs showing slides to friends, so I figured I’d have some time to myself. [He’d invited me to watch with them, but I told him I had to study: he must have known “something was up”, ’cause I NEVER studied!]

I laid my bod across my bed, pushed my pants down, and went to work with my fist: I can remember it as if it were yesterday! By this time almost 15, my body was ready, even if my mind wasn’t. Once I “got the feeling” (which didn’t take long) I could NOT stop, and before long I shot my first wad all over the place, just as I heard my Dad’s foot-fall on the steps to my room! Jesus!

By the time he opened the door I had hiked up my pants and was seated at my little desk with a book open, but the tiny room reeked of semen and I’m sure Dad knew what I’d just done. Nevertheless, satisfied I was studying, he departed. No sooner was he gone, I dropped trous’ again and whacked off a second time, then set about cleaning up the mess. It was the first of an untold number of joyous jack-offs.

Some of these early experiences, hugely embellished, can be found in my story, Central Valley High, at Nifty.

To be continued …

AND NOW, FOR A SPECIAL COMMENT

With apologies to Keith Olbermann! He and Rachel Maddow are the freshest breaths of air to hit televised news in years! I’m sorry they have to share MSNBC facilities with that loathsome “Predator” series and the interminable, disgusting “Lock-up” crap, but at least they are ON THE AIR!

So far in this blog, I’ve described some of my life up to the age of 15, when I finally discovered what the thing between my legs could be used for besides taking a whiz. In today’s environment, especially in San Francisco, I can’t imagine a boy reaching the age of 15 without making this wonderful discovery much earlier. Indeed, polls at many of the blogs I read suggest that it’s fairly typical for boys to get their first blow-job around 12, by which time, one presumes, they had been jerking off for some time. [Now that the “Fondling Fathers” have been largely put out of business, this age-level may rise a bit] {chuckle}.

But, it is fair to ask, how did I manage to get to 15 without even masturbating? Even after a cousin had been so kind as to show me how!

Well, for one thing, my “hormone treatments” were late to arrive. I had my own bedroom always, so it was unusual to see even my brothers nude. I rarely saw my parents in the altogether either, and seeing any other people nude, in fact or photos, simply did not happen in those days. While I’m sure there was an underground trade in “smut”, it was never seen or discussed in my family. And remember, in those days, even Batman & Robin, always fully dressed, didn’t show a lot of basket, and genitals were routinely air-brushed out in most of the illustrations in the National Geographic! I do remember poring over the Monkey-Wards and Sears catalogues, looking at the underwear ads. Even there, though, “bumps” were not prominent, body hair was generally de-emphasized (on those guys and men who would have had any to start with), so there was really almost nothing salacious for a budding young queer to enjoy! I was not into sports or swimming, so even a classmate in a bathing-suit was a rare sight.

I remember being fascinated by a boy named Frankie in my Carmichael days: I was particularly attracted to his arms, which were finely shaped. He was many shades darker than me due to some mediterranean blood I suppose. I joined the Cub-Scouts, not because I had any interest in badges and all that stuff, but because the pack generally met at his house where his mom was den-mother. When it turned out all they ever did was play tag football on the huge expanse of lawn there, I lost interest in the scouts and retreated into my fantasies of touching Frankie’s lovely limbs. I still enjoy a well-shaped arm. It does not have to be particularly muscular; in fact, many of the photos I see nowadays are of guys whose arms are too muscular. My favorite pics are of naturally well-built fellows without the evidence of “pumping iron” so common nowadays.

There were lots of “pin-up girls”, but I was utterly uninterested in them: the belief that I ought to be interested led to a lot of grief!

Neither my own parents nor any others I knew were particularly demonstrative. Anything beyond a casual embrace was reserved for times when we kids were in bed! There were no TV shows for me to watch: Dad didn’t allow a TV into the house until good color-sets became common (late 1950’s).

Carl (he of horse fame) did show us (often) his dad’s collection of porno pictures, clearly obtained through underground sources. But these were straight porn, all in grainy black & white, and mostly in a tiny wallet-size format. Despite being dog-eared and grimy, they seemed to do it for Carl and his friends: they did nothing for me!

But the most telling feature that led to my remaining so innocent so late was my belief that I was some sort of one-off freak. In those days, “gay” meant light-hearted and charming; “queer” meant odd or strange; a “fairy” was something that took a tooth in the night. It would be years before I heard the word “homosexual” uttered by anyone, even though throughout most of my high-school years, the faculty and administration thought I WAS ONE!

WHY THE F*CK DIDN’T THEY TELL ME?!

I learned, years later, they all thought I was sucking every cock in the school. If they had only told me, I’d have obliged, willingly!

Even after my revelation in the gym, overhearing two boys discussing their alleged shooting prowess, I did not immediately realize my peers were probably doing and thinking the same sexual things I was because I was convinced they would all be thinking in terms of doing it with girls. Even when I kind-of figured out that guys might be relieving themselves just as I was soon doing daily, the idea of approaching any of them to do it with me remained beyond the pale. Much as I wanted to, I could not bring myself to proposition any of the guys I lusted after and dreamed about. Damn!

So, I blundered on, oblivious to what adults around me thought I was up to. I was a Junior in college before I learned there were, in fact, other guys with feelings similar to mine, willing to act on those impulses. I was in my 20’s before I got or gave a blow-job, but that’s for another page later on.

To be continued …

In 1994, I wrote The Orphanage. While it was on alt.sex.stories, it was reviewed by a reader who remarked about its “sly political humor”. As with all my stories, it wound up on the Nifty Archive.

In 2004, I wrote the sequel, The Orphanage Revisited and sent it to Nifty. Here is the penultimate paragraph:

“But in the end, it was Wayne Henry Lane who was right: the Hilltop scene couldn’t last, and it didn’t. The complete melt-down of the Middle East in 2005 and the world-wide economic collapse in 2006 put us and thousands like us out of business, but also put the skids under Dubya and his neocons and his “Religious Wrong”. There’s never before been an impeachment of both the President and the vice-President. The Republicans were crippled, and when in 2009 President Obama declared a state of emergency, it was so the New Deal could be dusted off and people could get to work to un-do the damage of the previous seven years.”

So, I was off a bit in my timing of the economic collapse (which we are living right now), and so far, the Middle East hasn’t quite melted down (yet), but it seems I WAS right about Senator Obama’s successful run to be our President. I’m delighted he made it!

My only regret is that Dubya will leave office, rather than being thrown out of office. Likewise, it annoys me greatly that none of the perps responsible for our current economic meltdown are in jail, or are even likely to be. There’s no accountability any more for ANYthing: I hope Barack can do something about that once he is actually seated in the White House.

Like many others, I’d made up my mind to leave this country if Mr. Obama lost to the Repugnant Party. This posed a little problem, because my house-mate (thinking likewise) thought New Zealand might be nice, but I thought Portugal was a better choice for me. I read a blog that includes wonderful photos of Portugal. Most of the men are too butch and beefy for my taste, but it looks like Lisbon closely resembles San Francisco; it has hills, a bay, bridges, antique trams, and pretty mild weather. However, except possibly to visit, I doubt I’ll go there.

Likewise, I decided that if Mr. Obama won, I’d have the engine in my Chrysler rebuilt: the car has gone just shy of 200K miles. I know I’ll never go out and blow 20-30-40 kilo-bucks for a modern plastic car that I don’t fit in, so $6K to have the engine running well seems like a bargain.

My Chrysler

This car will run until I crash it or my body crashes! The engine rebuild is complete, and I’m still breaking it in. Too bad I can’t be rebuilt in like fashion.
My regular narrative will resume on the next page.

MISCELLANEOUS

• I read a lot of blogs, including some by youngsters dealing with finding themselves gay. Of course, every situation is different, so there’s no universal advice to be given. Except to say, “hang in: as my own blog will eventually relate, I figured things out to my own satisfaction and had a full and interesting life. It does take time…“

• While I empathize with these kids, I envy their ability to put together blog pages and web sites that are absolutely smashing! The process has pretty much defeated me so far. Maybe some cute young thing who likes old men (yeah, right!) will come along and give me a hand. With the blog, I mean…

• As it is developing, my format seems to be a chronological exposé of my life: So far, I’m not even out of high school! But, the pace will pick up as I got out into the world. A buddy (well, he started out as a lover but things quickly degenerated) went to Europe the summer of 1963. This was my first glimpse into other life-styles. Later, I spent time in Vietnam, rode a motorcycle from Phnom-Penh to Singapore, worked in Australia, Philippines, Egypt, Ecuador and elsewhere, so there is much to tell. Here are a few photos to give you some idea of what’s in store:

Ready to depart Saigon, September, 1968, on a Honda CB-125

Ready to depart Saigon, September, 1968. I have two saddle-bags and a cheap suitcase strapped on the luggage rack. The bike is a Honda CB-125 bought used from a compatriot leaving the country. The national assembly building in the background had been hit by a rocket a week earlier: note the canvas roof, top right.

All wood Siemens Train, Athens 1979

These beautifully maintained all-wood Siemens train-sets were still in use in Athens in 1978. I loved riding them. I hope some have been preserved.

Guayaquil & Quito Railroad, Ecuador, 1979

Perched on the tender of Engine Number 11 of the Guayaquil & Quito railroad, Ecuador, 1979. I had a fabulous time riding almost everything they had working at the time. I went back in 1994 to find very little of it running, and now there seems to be almost nothing left.

• Throughout it all I was queer—not flaming, but not really hiding it either. I had my share of “interactions”, and have no regrets, now that things are winding down.

• The chronology will be interrupted from time to time by observations on the current scene, political or other sorts of rants, and whatever else occurs that I think worthy of note.

• WordPress has informed me three people have registered with my blog. You know who you are, and I hope you find my recollections entertaining. Someday I may find out how to give proper credit, but right now I remain a novice. I managed to figure out how to number the pages so they come in the right order, and that is a big accomplishment for a newbie. But for the time being my readers are stuck with the plain-jane WP theme. Any cuties out there wanna give me a hand?

To be continued …

HARD TO BELIEVE:

Despite growing up on a farm, watching animals being bred, watching Betty’s horses, and working with Carl, the notion of doing something other than taking a leak with my own little wiener never occurred to me. Even after an older Cousin, who must have been about 15 at the time, let me watch him jack off and reach an orgasm (he was into keeping his loads in a little bottle in the refrigerator for some reason) I did not put “two and two together”. Throughout my extended youth (I would turn out to be a “late bloomer”) not one person of any age ever touched me — dammit! [Why, if I’d known then what I know now, I’d have joined the Catholic Church (except there wasn’t one in Carmichael then)]. The blessed event that was my own first orgasm came much later. Meanwhile…

BACK TO A CITY

Dad took a new job in Modesto, roughly 90 miles south of Sacramento, so all our stuff got packed up and shipped in a huge van to a new house in a small corner of Modesto. There were a number of adaptations that had to be made, not the least of which was receiving milk by delivery in quart bottles: like, 20 at a time? On the farm, we had our own cows, and kept their milk in gallon jugs: my bothers and I would polish off an entire one at every meal, and that was whole milk, not pasteurized or skimmed. But the stuff we got in the bottles was skimmed milk, and we thought it was like drinking water: our intake of milk dropped off rapidly.

JUNIOR HIGH

The 7th grade was a whole new experience for me, much of it quite negative. For one thing, I was a natural hellion, and disliked regimen in almost any form. I also disliked sports, since I was very uncoordinated, but also could not see any real point to the kinds of sports we were required to play: baseball? I couldn’t hit the ball even off a stand! Football? I couldn’t hang on to it and run at the same time. And so it went. But the real problem was the requirement to dress for PE. Actually, we had to UNdress, put our clothes in a locker, change into little grey shorts, go out and play, then come back, UNdress again, shower, dry off, and put our street-clothes back on and go to the next class.

The problems came particularly in the shower-room: there were guys there who were men! They had hair down there! They had huge penises! And they loved to beat up little Bruciebabe, who was still a child.

Further complications arose because I loved to look at all the nude guys, but didn’t want any of them to see me watching! Of course I got caught peeping, so I also got towel-snaps and occasionally more brutal forms of abusive bullying. I tried getting a Doctor’s excuse: no deal—there was nothing wrong with me. I tried making myself appear sick: no deal—the Doctor saw through that in a heartbeat. So, I stumbled along, knowing there was something wrong with me because I hated sports but loved the nude guys! Such angst! I formed no friendships, kept to myself and somehow managed to get through the first year intact. I dreaded the approach of the eighth grade.

NOT ALL BAD

Modesto did have a few redeeming features; most notably (for me) its location on the main line of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Our house was just a few blocks away, and when I was not in school, I was usually somewhere around the railroad. I met the southbound Daylight every afternoon: it was due in at 4:50 or so, and usually made it. For this little tyke, standing beside one of those gorgeous GS-4 locomotives all decked out in the smart orange and red scheme of the Daylight trains, this was the high point of each day. Once in a while a kindly fireman would beckon me up into the cab, where all the heat, fire, handles and gadgets were simply awesome!

GS-4 Orange and Red

The Daylights ware Southern Pacific’s Premier trains in the hey-day of passenger trains. In my youth they ran from San Francisco to Los Angeles via the coast (The Coast Daylight), and between San Francisco, Sacramento, and Los Angeles (the San Joaquin Daylights); later they also ran North from Oakland to Portland (The Shasta Daylights). Still regarded as the most beautiful passenger trains to operate anywhere in the world, they are, of course all gone. Just one example of their famous locomotives still exists:

All other examples of this spectacular machine have been scrapped.

For most of my years in Modesto I continued to meet the afternoon Daylight as often as I could, usually every day. I could watch the train depart and ride my bike home in time for dinner. There was not a lot of other excitement around Modesto’s station, although once the local steam switch-engine failed to clear the high-iron for a northbound freight, resulting in a spectacular wreck. I lingered past dinner time to watch crews trying to untangle the mess, and caught holy hell for not being home on time.

The SP also occasionally sent one of their famous cab-forward locomotives down the valley if they had a particularly long train to handle. What went south had to come north, and this usually occurred in the afternoon when I was out of school. I would hear the distinctive sound of the air pumps on those huge machines and ride my bike over in time to see them getting under way again after having taken on water. These things were amazing:

SP Cab-Forward Locomotive

They are essentially two locomotives on a single frame and designed for heavy drag-freight use. They were used almost exclusively on Donner Pass. Putting the cabs in front prevented asphyxiating the crew when passing through snow-sheds which were essentially wooden tunnels designed to divert the avalanches so common in the high Sierra. On our trips to Tahoe it was not uncommon to see a freight-train with three of these mammoths working their balls off: one in front, one in the middle of the train, and one at the rear. The three crews could not communicate: they simply had to know when the engine was doing the right thing.

f the 400 or so of these built, just ONE remains – in the Railway Museum in Sacramento.

Watching one of these get under way was incredibly exciting (with tender, these are a city-block long)! All the machinery is exposed and beefy. I could ride along the tracks for a quarter of a mile or so before the thing out-ran me: I’d stop and watch as 125 cars rumbled by, gathering speed, so the caboose receded into the distance rapidly. Naturally, I wanted to become a locomotive engineer, but while I was in college, steam died. Diesel locomotives just don’t have the charisma of steam!

EIGHTH GRADE

Too soon, September rolled around and I entered the eighth grade. But, something had happened along the way: I was beginning to grow up!

So, the eighth grade was perhaps a little less stressful than the seventh. I remember less about it, though I know my feelings of inadequacy and differentness persisted. By the end of Junior High school I was at least beginning to mature, and there were a few stirrings of the hormones beginning to rage. But, I was still far behind most of my peers physically: academically, I was ahead of many, being something of a bookworm, or what we now call a nerd. High School terrified me, because I knew the Physical Ed bullshit would continue for another four years!

To be continued …

HARD TO BELIEVE:

Despite growing up on a farm, watching animals being bred, watching Betty’s horses, and working with Carl, the notion of doing something other than taking a leak with my own little wiener never occurred to me. Even after an older Cousin, who must have been about 15 at the time, let me watch him jack off and reach an orgasm (he was into keeping his loads in a little bottle in the refrigerator for some reason) I did not put “two and two together”. Throughout my extended youth (I would turn out to be a “late bloomer”) not one person of any age ever touched me — dammit! [Why, if I’d known then what I know now, I’d have joined the Catholic Church (except there wasn’t one in Carmichael then)]. The blessed event that was my own first orgasm came much later. Meanwhile…

BACK TO A CITY

Dad took a new job in Modesto, roughly 90 miles south of Sacramento, so all our stuff got packed up and shipped in a huge van to a new house in a small corner of Modesto. There were a number of adaptations that had to be made, not the least of which was receiving milk by delivery in quart bottles: like, 20 at a time? On the farm, we had our own cows, and kept their milk in gallon jugs: my bothers and I would polish off an entire one at every meal, and that was whole milk, not pasteurized or skimmed. But the stuff we got in the bottles was skimmed milk, and we thought it was like drinking water: our intake of milk dropped off rapidly.

JUNIOR HIGH

The 7th grade was a whole new experience for me, much of it quite negative. For one thing, I was a natural hellion, and disliked regimen in almost any form. I also disliked sports, since I was very uncoordinated, but also could not see any real point to the kinds of sports we were required to play: baseball? I couldn’t hit the ball even off a stand! Football? I couldn’t hang on to it and run at the same time. And so it went. But the real problem was the requirement to dress for PE. Actually, we had to UNdress, put our clothes in a locker, change into little grey shorts, go out and play, then come back, UNdress again, shower, dry off, and put our street-clothes back on and go to the next class.

The problems came particularly in the shower-room: there were guys there who were men! They had hair down there! They had huge penises! And they loved to beat up little Bruciebabe, who was still a child.

Further complications arose because I loved to look at all the nude guys, but didn’t want any of them to see me watching! Of course I got caught peeping, so I also got towel-snaps and occasionally more brutal forms of abusive bullying. I tried getting a Doctor’s excuse: no deal—there was nothing wrong with me. I tried making myself appear sick: no deal—the Doctor saw through that in a heartbeat. So, I stumbled along, knowing there was something wrong with me because I hated sports but loved the nude guys! Such angst! I formed no friendships, kept to myself and somehow managed to get through the first year intact. I dreaded the approach of the eighth grade.

NOT ALL BAD

Modesto did have a few redeeming features; most notably (for me) its location on the main line of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Our house was just a few blocks away, and when I was not in school, I was usually somewhere around the railroad. I met the southbound Daylight every afternoon: it was due in at 4:50 or so, and usually made it. For this little tyke, standing beside one of those gorgeous GS-4 locomotives all decked out in the smart orange and red scheme of the Daylight trains, this was the high point of each day. Once in a while a kindly fireman would beckon me up into the cab, where all the heat, fire, handles and gadgets were simply awesome!

GS-4 Orange and Red

The Daylights ware Southern Pacific’s Premier trains in the hey-day of passenger trains. In my youth they ran from San Francisco to Los Angeles via the coast (The Coast Daylight), and between San Francisco, Sacramento, and Los Angeles (the San Joaquin Daylights); later they also ran North from Oakland to Portland (The Shasta Daylights). Still regarded as the most beautiful passenger trains to operate anywhere in the world, they are, of course all gone. Just one example of their famous locomotives still exists:

All other examples of this spectacular machine have been scrapped.

For most of my years in Modesto I continued to meet the afternoon Daylight as often as I could, usually every day. I could watch the train depart and ride my bike home in time for dinner. There was not a lot of other excitement around Modesto’s station, although once the local steam switch-engine failed to clear the high-iron for a northbound freight, resulting in a spectacular wreck. I lingered past dinner time to watch crews trying to untangle the mess, and caught holy hell for not being home on time.

The SP also occasionally sent one of their famous cab-forward locomotives down the valley if they had a particularly long train to handle. What went south had to come north, and this usually occurred in the afternoon when I was out of school. I would hear the distinctive sound of the air pumps on those huge machines and ride my bike over in time to see them getting under way again after having taken on water. These things were amazing:

SP Cab-Forward Locomotive

They are essentially two locomotives on a single frame and designed for heavy drag-freight use. They were used almost exclusively on Donner Pass. Putting the cabs in front prevented asphyxiating the crew when passing through snow-sheds which were essentially wooden tunnels designed to divert the avalanches so common in the high Sierra. On our trips to Tahoe it was not uncommon to see a freight-train with three of these mammoths working their balls off: one in front, one in the middle of the train, and one at the rear. The three crews could not communicate: they simply had to know when the engine was doing the right thing.

f the 400 or so of these built, just ONE remains – in the Railway Museum in Sacramento.

Watching one of these get under way was incredibly exciting (with tender, these are a city-block long)! All the machinery is exposed and beefy. I could ride along the tracks for a quarter of a mile or so before the thing out-ran me: I’d stop and watch as 125 cars rumbled by, gathering speed, so the caboose receded into the distance rapidly. Naturally, I wanted to become a locomotive engineer, but while I was in college, steam died. Diesel locomotives just don’t have the charisma of steam!

EIGHTH GRADE

Too soon, September rolled around and I entered the eighth grade. But, something had happened along the way: I was beginning to grow up!

So, the eighth grade was perhaps a little less stressful than the seventh. I remember less about it, though I know my feelings of inadequacy and differentness persisted. By the end of Junior High school I was at least beginning to mature, and there were a few stirrings of the hormones beginning to rage. But, I was still far behind most of my peers physically: academically, I was ahead of many, being something of a bookworm, or what we now call a nerd. High School terrified me, because I knew the Physical Ed bullshit would continue for another four years!

To be continued …

July 5th, 2009 Mail to: [email protected] (if you’re so inclined).

FOURTH OF JULY

As anyone who has read this blog knows, I wanted to be a locomotive engineer when I was a youngster, but it never happened. So, I spend time around steam whenever I get the chance. This past weekend on the Niles Canyon Railway was terrific fun because there were two locomotives to be admired:

Double-Heading With Two 2-6-2T Locomotives

Except for getting my face rather sun-burned, it was a fine day and will keep me satisfied for a while.

PREPARATIONS FOR VIETNAM

This photo was taken in the lab, of which I had just become the Director. It was 1966, just before the end of my brief affair with Cornell. I was 30 years old.

Bruce at 30

Within two years, having survived a year of therapy to get over Cornell and nearly a year of harangue from the IRS, I was ready to move on.

It turned out that all applications for employment with PA&E were sent to the Contract Management Office in Vietnam, where the decision was taken to hire me; paperwork was then returned to Lost Angeles for further processing. All this took several months, and I had forgotten I’d even applied. So, when the phone call came, “Do you still want to go to Vietnam”? I thought it over briefly and said “Yes”.

PA&E stood then (and I believe still does) for Pacific Architects and Engineers. They were neither Pacific, nor Architects, nor Engineers, but never mind: they had a contract to provide bodies (which they called personnel, of course) to go to VN “in support of the military”, which is to say, “do things the military did not want to bother with”.

A few days after agreeing to be a candidate for the job over there, I resigned my job, and began to “lighten up”. I ran an ad in the paper, “ECCENTRIC LEAVING THE COUNTRY: EVERYTHING GOES”, which drew more folks than I thought possible to pick over the few oddments I had accumulated up to this time. I sold enough stuff to put together the final payment to the IRS.

The Company sent me to a local physician for a physical exam. This consisted of the doctor looking at me as I stood before him fully clothed: “You look healthy,” was all he said, then, “I’ll be right back.” When he returned, he carried a small metal tray with a white cloth on it: on the tray were six hypodermic needles, a sugar-cube of polio vaccine and a small-pox scratcher, and in the next few minutes all eight items had been administered. Three shots in each arm, a small-pox inoculation on one, and a cube-full of polio vaccine on my tongue. It was about 3 in the afternoon.

Holy Jeezus! By evening I could scarcely move either arm. I remember going to Zim’s for a hamburger, and could barely lift it to my mouth. By the time I got home from that, I was running a fever. I called a friend I knew and told him to being over a “gallon of red”, which he did, and together we got smashed.

A few days later, arms still barely functional, I tossed a few clothes and what little else I still possessed into my Dad’s former car, a nice ‘53 Chrysler, and headed South. I would stay a couple of days with my brother and then be off to Vietnam. It was late January, 1968.

However, thing took a slightly different turn. There were delays. More papers to be filled out. Eventually, my brother dropped me off at LAX early one morning where we were to have an “orientation session”, before departing for for Vietnam. There were about 15 of us at the meeting, where we got “filled in” on almost nothing of any real importance. About ten we walked out to a Pan Am plane and headed out across the Pacific Ocean.

Now, whenever I fly, I watch the waiting crowd and try to guess who my seat-mate will be. It wouldn’t have mattered if there HAD been a handsome dude there: he would not have wound up seated next to me in any case. Instead, I picked out my seat-mate alright, and, typically, he was old and ugly—and the nicest fellow! He saved my life, in a sense, because he was going back to VN for his third tour with PA&E and his girlfriend there. He went by the name “CA”, had a slow texas drawl and a dry sense of humor. Most importantly, as it turned out, knowing the ropes as he did after three tours gave him an edge on the rest of us who were neophytes.

I saw my first tropical sunrise ever from the airport at Guam, our first stop (for re-fueling). One minute it was dark, and the next it was full sunshine! We had an hour or so on Guam, which was essentially an hour too many. It’s a god-forsaken place, and the passenger terminal was run down and messy. Not soon enough, we were airborne again; next stop Ton-son Nhut airport, Saigon.

Now, I knew there was a war going on and I knew it was going on in Vietnam: but exactly where Vietnam was, I would have been hard-pressed to say. “Somewhere in Indo-China,” if you had asked…

COMING UP:

I learned a whole lot in a short time over the next few weeks: some of what I experienced and what I learned will be in the next page of this blog.

Until next time!

FIFTH BIRTHDAY:

Carrots!

I hate cooked carrots: I love ‘em raw, or in carrot & raisin salad, but they (and most root-veggies) take on a bad flavor when cooked. Now, my folks generally would put up with my tantrum when Mom served carrots, asking me to “just eat a few”, but I was a stubborn tyke and they usually gave up. So, I thought it was a particularly bad choice to serve carrots on my BIRTHDAY, and I absolutely refused to eat any of them. My Dad must have had a bad day, because he was determined; so, as never before (or ever again), he took me out into the kitchen and forced those damn carrots down my throat! I suspect you know what’s coming: as soon as Dad turned his back, I launched those friggin carrots (and everything else in my stomach) all over the floor. My Mom (who I am sure was aghast at Dad’s behavior) made him clean up the mess. I never had to eat carrots again!

ALMONDS:

Our little spread of five acres had mostly almond trees, which — by golly — produced almonds! The problem was, we could not afford to have them harvested by others: we did it ourselves. Mostly, I was too young to get involved with the heavy work, but I could be pressed into service removing the hulls. (We sold the nuts to a co-op: they fetched a better price if they had no hulls, and money was tight in those days). Gad, how I hated that work! It was dirty, the fuzz got into your eyes, nose, and elsewhere causing severe itching. It should come as no surprise that I still do not like almonds!

OLIVES:

Across the road from our place was a group of olive trees. No one ever harvested them: they were just there. But, although olives eventually turn black while still on the tree, they taste HORRIBLE: olives must be “cured” before they become edible. But one of our favorite little tricks was to put a couple of the UNcured olives in the dish of olives Mom like to have if we had guests. We boys knew which ones were uncured, but the guests didn’t. With much giggling we’d watch a guest try to get one of the bad olives down without revealing they tasted awful. Mom, of course got on to us soon enough and would carefully inspect the dishes of olives she put out, thus ending that little prank.

CREAM:

But we had lots of other pranks! One was to put a table-spoon of vinegar into the coffee urn at church socials. It does nothing to the flavor of the coffee, but it makes any added cream curdle. Here we were in the middle of farm country, where fresh cream was the very finest, but it curdled. We three really were hellions, and soon became suspect whenever anything “went wrong”.

ENTRAILS:

All of us loathed beef-kidneys and beef-liver. I still do! But Dad loved them, so Mom would buy them from time to time. She always left them out prominently, so the three of us would be absolutely beastly all day, and would be punished by being put to bed without any dinner. Mom always relented, and allowed us to come down later to eat bread and milk with sugar and cinnamon on top, which we all loved. Only many years later did I realize the whole thing with entrails was a charade: when Mom & Dad wanted a quiet dinner alone, serving something we hated was their way of getting it!

TONGUE:

On the other hand, we all loved tongue, and in a farm community, they were plentiful and cheap.

The only problem was, we kids got the back part, where there were all those veins and things that were kinda “icky”. It took me many years to appreciate the fact Mom saved the front—the good part—to put in Dad’s sandwiches which he always took to work.It was the same thing with chicken: we had one in some form every Sunday. But there were three of us boys and only two drumsticks. So we fought over who got what part and who had the take the back (”yuck”). The second-joint (thigh) we never saw! These were set aside for Dad to take to work. Once I got away from home and discovered chicken thighs, I couldn’t get enough of them. I still can’t…

Mom took very good care of my Dad: he got the goodies while we got the scraps. Not that we were not well fed: all through the war we had beef on the table because we raised and slaughtered our own cows.

Beef Tongue

WORLD’S FAIR:

Shortly after we moved to Carmichael, I tripped while running and happened to fall on a board that had a rusty nail sticking up: that nail went right into my left knee. Ouch! The local Doctor fixed me up, and as I was young, things healed quickly enough. Nevertheless, I malingered long after I was able to walk without a limp, and climbed the stairs to my bedroom on all-four. So, one day, Mom casually remarked, “If that knee of yours doesn’t heal, you won’t be able to go with us to the Fair.”

Worlds Fair Treasure Island 1940

“The Fair” was the World’s Fair on Treasure Island, held over into most of 1940. Needless to say, my “wounded knee” healed right up, and our little family of five spent a day at the Fair. I still have the 16mm films Dad took there, which form the real basis for my memories of the event.

FARM BOY

My upbringing on the farm led to my writing Animal Crackers, (1993) (it’s on Nifty), and a neighbor’s old Fordson tractor, like this one

Old Fordson Tractor 1942

is mentioned in Heartbreak Motel (2002), except that Ted’s Fordson, once new like this, had long since become a massive pile of rust. Still, the first harbinger of Spring for me was always finding Ted grinding the valves, getting it ready for spring discing, as I dropped in to beg for cookies from his wife.

BULLS:

A neighbor had a bull that he kept for breeding purposes. When there was a cow in heat around, he acted as all bulls do, but the rest of the time he was as docile as a lamb.

Dad used to have students from the city out to the farm now and then: city-slickers, we called them, and we had a series of tricks to pull, besides the raw olives mentioned earlier. One of these was to visit the American River that flowed not far from us. There were any number of ways to get there, but our favorite was through our neighbor’s paddock. As we walked along the fence to a stile, we would explain that the bull was ferocious, and if he moved towards us, we had to run as fast as we could back to the stile.

The bull was curious, of course, about anyone who came into his territory, so inevitably he’d start moving toward our little group: “RUN FOR YOUR LIVES” we’d shout and watch our friends run helter-skelter back to and over the fence. When they stopped and looked back, we’d be hanging all over that bull; I was usually up on his back.

ANIMALS:

We didn’t have any horses ourselves, but many people in the community did, so learning about horses came naturally. One of the girls I’ll call Betty at our school lived on a spread with quite a few horses, and she was as “horsey” a person as I’ve ever known. Her “doodling” in the margins of papers and so forth was always sketches of horses. She was a tall, lanky blond, and with my interest already turning away from females, I was not much interested in her. But I was interested in the horses, particularly in the huge dongs the stallions had.

I never knew why, but whenever I visited Betty’s place and she showed me her horses, the stallions always dropped for her. It was probably a matter of pheromones, but of course she might have been diddling those beasts herself, something I really wanted to try but was too ashamed to admit and afraid to ask.

That pleasure – jerking off a real horse – was provided by a guy in my 5th-grade class I’ll call Carl. He had this ancient old beast, near dead, that could still “get it up” when Carl went to work under his belly, and once or twice he let me “get a grip”. These events found their way into two of my stories. Likewise, the old black dog that we called “Bouncer” and several others through the years provided a bit of kinky entertainment for me, as well as “entertainment value” in some of my stories.

VACATIONS:

While Dad was teaching, he had summers free. He loved to drive, but during the war, with gasoline rationed, our excursions were somewhat curtailed. Nevertheless, most summers we managed to get to Bliss Park at the south-west end of Lake Tahoe, where we spent the entire season. In those war years, we might see one or two other families camping there in the course of a whole summer! Nowadays, you have to make reservations in advance! As a closely knit family, the lack of other folks around didn’t bother us a bit!

SAN FRANCISCO:

From time to time, we would drive to San Francisco, mostly I think to let Mom do a bit of shopping. I don’t recall what my brothers did, but Dad would give me a pocket-full of nickels and I would ride cable-cars and iron monsters all morning, all by my self. I had to be at Compton’s Cafeteria for lunch, then I could get a few more hours of riding before we set off for home. Those old streetcars were fabulous machines, very basic but built to last. Hurtling through the dark tunnels was exciting, but the cable-cars on the hills were great fun as well. In those days a little kid like me could ride the running-board just like the “big folks” and no one said boo about it!

We occasionally went out to Ocean Beach, since the ocean was something we did not see every day:

That’s little me at Ocean Beach, oblivious to the rip-tides.

Although the Oakland Bay Bridge was in place, Dad loved the ferries, and we usually got to San Francisco on the Vallejo or Benicia auto ferry. Once the car was secured, the rest of my folks would go topside to enjoy the views and freshets. Not me! I made a bee-line for the nearest opening through which I could watch the huge steam engines at work down in the hold. Even then I was already a size-queen! I never saw the San Francisco sky-line: when the whole ferry shuddered as the engines reversed, I knew the folks would soon be by to collect me to continue the trip.

SCHOOL PAGEANT:

I no longer know what the pageant was about, but it seems I was “Uncle Sam”, and I could very well have “wanted” George, there on my left: he was very handsome and liked to toss me over his shoulders for rides around the house.

George was one of Dad’s students who had been to our home often, and who was home on leave

Me and George

from the US Army: this was 1942. My folks were absolutely color-blind: we had all sorts of students out to the farm as the years rolled by, which probably accounts for my own eclectic preferences later on. About those, much more will be said in due time.

UNDERWEAR:

Toward the end of my sixth year in Elementary School, Dad began dickering on a pair of cabins near Lake Tahoe: there were two cabins on a single lot, one just for sleeping. The owner let us use the cabins one weekend, hoping to seal the deal no doubt, but for other reasons that did not happen. I remember the occasion well, however for ONE event that remains seared in my memory, and which likewise explains some of my later, and current, preferences.

A college classmate of my Dad was passing through the weekend we spent in that cabin, so they went along with us. These folks had several kids, including one fellow they had adopted while working in India. He was about 16 at the time, quite tall and very brown. As I lay half-awake one morning on my cot in the sleeping room of the cabin, Presad walked through the room on his way to the toilet, clad only in a pair of bright white Y-fronts pushed out to their limit by his morning piss-hard. What a splendid sight!

I thought it one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen, even though I did not fully understand what was going on beneath that sparkling fabric. I’ve since learned, of course, and I thank the internet daily for the thousands of similar images of hunky guys clad in shorts that I have on my hard-drive. I actually have more pictures of guys dressed (well, more or less) than of them nude.

SUMMER OF ‘46:

Dad taught at UC Berkeley that summer: we exchanged homes with a Cal Prof, so we lived in El Cerrito. I quickly found the “F” end-of-the-line station for the Key-System trains that ran to San Francisco, and spent whole days riding back and forth: if I did not de-train at either end, I could ride paying only once. Usually I was right up front, and now and then the motorman would put up the shade that covered the window into his cab, so I could watch his operation. I was in hog-heaven! Naturally, I wanted to be a Motorman ”when I grew up”.

The key-System trains were massive affairs, built like the proverbial brick latrines, and they ran for years and years. Just three sets remain: two at the Railway Museum in Rio Vista, CA, and one badly deteriorated one in the Orange County Railway Museum, Perris, CA:

The Key-System Trains

Key-Systems Train detail

Superficially, these resembled the Boeing-Vertol train-sets now used by MUNI, but they were more massively built. Most were scrapped when the system was shut down in 1958. In its place we have BART, train-sets of which are now being replaced after less than 20 years of use. We once knew how to build things to last, but not any more!

The summer of 46 was also noteworthy, because while living in El Cerrito, we learned Mom had cancer, which proved fatal five years later.

To be continued …

PeeYes: I’ll try to add to this blog most Fridays, that being a day off for me.

I INTERRUPT MY NARRATIVE …

… to discuss a matter of some importance to several large segments of our population: pornography.

I’m old enough to remember vividly the days when there was NO commercial porn. What porn there was consisted mostly of typewritten material, often second-and third- carbon-copies, occasionally with crude drawings included. A friend of mine had a HUGE collection of this stuff. Later, when the firm for which we both worked got a dry copier, he made Xerox copies in large quantities. Since he was the “key operator” for the machine, he got away with it for many months, until he left an “original” on the platen which someone else found. There was a bit of a dust-up, of course, but only a very few knew he was the perp, so he went on with it, being more careful! But I digress…

As I completed college, I found there were some magazines available here and there: these were not really pornographic in today’s sense of the word. There were no “dirty-book stores”: only a few magazine-stands would carry these off-color rags. One of these was a tiny (like, 5″ X 7″) black and white booklet called Tomorrow’s Man. It was mainly devoted to body-builders, posing (often oiled) in miniscule thongs and jock-straps. Penises were generally stuffed out of the way, which gave rise to the notion that most body-builders are not well hung. (The porn revolution has busted that myth!) Fizeek was another of these magazines, very similar in design and scope and there were several others.

Then there was AMG (Athletic Model Guild), in a slightly larger format, also black and white. This was produced in Southern California and appeared to contain mostly navy guys (”seafood”) earning a little extra cash (to buy booze and girls, of course). I suppose a collection of these magazines would be worth some money nowadays. In the early issues the boys were mostly dressed, usually shirtless, and showing some basket (sometimes enormous ones—I often suspected salamis had been substituted for the real thing). The intent of these photos was certainly to provoke a salacious reaction in the reader, and I suppose it was successful for some: but the other intent was to “push the envelope” and get porn main-streamed. As time went on, the guys wore less and less and various symbols (often scratched on the negatives) were used to indicate sexual preferences, physical statistics and so forth. It is difficult, now, to believe that to state (or even suggest) that someone was “gay” or -gasp- homosekshull, was forbidden! [When someone implied Liberace was homosexual, he sued (libel), and WON!] The cute stuff in AMG was all designed to avoid prosecution for distributing “obscene” material under a whole bunch of court rulings generally lumped together and called “obscenity laws”

TM eventually disappeared (a copy from 1954 was available recently for $95.00), but AMG pushed on pushing, their material becoming more prurient and occasionally in color. Then, in 1973, came “Miller v. California”, which, while not opening the flood-gates exactly, did make it obvious the definition of obscene was not an easy task. It gradually dawned on people in general and on the courts, that obscenity was as much “in the eye of the beholder” as in the producer: by this time, AMG was definitely obscene, and was to become far more-so before it folded.

However, from the 70’s on, pornography “took off”. Large-format magazines that had kept the air-brushes busy removing “lumps” began including explicit (and occasionally real) hard-ons: the air-brushes went to work enhancing rather that deleting! With the useful addition of “adult” bookstores where all this stuff could be displayed and sold, the pornography market exploded. Specialty-subject mags appeared, including kiddie-porn, which as quickly as it appeared was legislated out of existence. My favorite title of the “niche rags” was Stump, and I leave it to my readers to imagine its contents!

Professional pornographers were quick to exploit technology: even amateurs quickly saw the possibilities of the Polaroid camera! I had a neighbor in the early 50’s who took photos of every hard-on he could find (he’s immortalized in Piece on Earth at Nifty). Prior to that, all porno had been produced on conventional film, an expensive and laborious process given that one had to find places to develop film that would NOT call the cops if they found a hard-on (or worse). The advent of the electronic camera for production (professional and otherwise), and the internet (for distribution) has radically changed the whole “porno” scene. Kids growing up today have this phenomenal wealth of porn available if they want it, and the ready means to produce and distribute it themselves if so inclined: and they do, as I’m sure my readers know.

It’s all pretty amazing stuff for old farts like me who have watched it all unfold. For a walk through memory lane, there’s a website that sells the old magazines here. My own career, such as it is, writing “fuck stories” began in 1987 with First and Second Cousins: it has been on Nifty practically from its inception.

PeeYes: I’m also old enough to remember that the Nifty (gay) Archive was originally accumulated by someone at Cornell University: whether student or faculty I’ve never known. Its original URL ended in cornell.edu! I suppose someone eventually discovered it and forced it off-site! But it still exists here and contains thousands of original gay stories; many are fine examples of “one-handed-reading”.