IGNORANCE IS BLISS
The three years commencing early in 1985 were some of the happiest in my life. It began when I met a boy I shall call Rey, because that is his name. He was 19, I was 49, 30 years his senior. We met through a local group called Pacific Friends, the ostensible purpose of which was to promote mixing and cultural exchange of pacific-islanders, asiatics and the like with local “white-bread Merkins”. Regular meetings were held for “social interaction”, and occasional outings were held to places of interest. Judging from its web-site, the group appears to be defunct now. I was drawn to the group because I’d become very fond of the Asian somatotype while traveling in Vietnam, Southeast Asia and the Philippines.
Rey was Filipino. Physically, he was everything I could have asked for in a mate: small, cuddly, glabrous, gorgeous: a man in a boy’s body. He seemed to genuinely like me, and it was not long before we were “an item”, and he moved into the Mansion. I was in seventh heaven, and if Rey was not, there was no indication of it.
Mine – for a while
Of course, problems arose. The first was that I had to take a job in faraway Omaha, Nebraska, in order to get some income and keep the house going. I hated to leave Rey behind, but he seemed willing to make the best of it, and we had sex by telephone. I hated Omaha: it was cold and miserable, but the job lasted only three months and I managed to survive it.
I thought he was gorgeous; so did others!
I remember my home-coming with great fondness, Rey waiting to throw me into bed in the flesh instead at the end of a telephone cord. Now that my bank account was replenished, we could afford to live together comfortably. We took a two-week “honeymoon” in Hawaii and returned to San Francisco. Then, unexpectedly, there came another job opportunity that was too good to pass up: several weeks in Sri Lanka, working with USAID. The pay was fabulous, and the only down-side was having to leave Rey once again. No phone-sex this time, but soon enough I was back and our lives together resumed. Before long I landed a job locally with the firm for which I had worked in Egypt. This was an eight-to-five job, which included some brief travels here and there in the states, but we seemed to have weathered absences without difficulty. Time sped up incredibly! Life was good! Money was plentiful! Work on the house progressed, and best of all, I was in love with someone who called me his lover. In our third year, Rey enrolled at City College: I drove him to classes after dinner each week-night, and he returned by bus after class. Our third Anniversary was a “blow-out” celebration, enjoyed by a large clutch of Rey’s friends, a few of mine and a huge dinner of whole roast pig at the Mansion.
I have not looked at these picture in 20 years, and they still make me feel sad. Rey is now 43, if he is still alive.
The next day my world collapsed: Rey announced he was “moving on” to bigger and better things: not only that, he had taken up with someone I knew professionally. It was not long before I learned the affair had been going on behind my back practically from day one, and that almost everyone in our group knew what was going on — except me! If I had ever gone around the block after dropping Rey at school, for example, I would have seen a car pull up and whisk him away: he was not enrolled at City College at all! But, in my blissful state of ignorance, the notion Rey might be cheating on me had never crossed my mind. Nothing he ever did made me suspect him: yes, he danced long hours at the “Endup”, but he came home to me. He took a lot of care to see that I remained “in the dark”, and so I did. That I’d been a cuckold practically from day one was a terrible blow to my ego!
To make matters worse, following a dismal Christmas alone and sad, my Father died in early 1987.
Looking back, I wonder how I ever managed to get through the remainder of 1987. I returned to the shrink I had seen many years before, a total wreck, usually unable to do any more than sit and cry and feel sorry for myself. I had pinned such hopes on Rey, and he let me down—boo-hoo (repeat ad nauseam).
Time, of course, was on my side: little by little the shrink managed to help me see that it had not been I who destroyed the relationship, and that the reality was, there hadn’t been a “relationship” at all! I certainly was not the first guy to entrap myself in the wiles of an unscrupulous (if comely) young lad, nor (I have come to see since) would I be the last! He also helped me see that when in Manila, I was the minority, and in some demand by filipinos who liked foreigners: in San Francisco, the asians were the minority and they could be fickle and choosy generally in search of a “Sugar Daddy”. I hadn’t minded being Rey’s sugar daddy, in part because he did get a job for a while so he was not entirely dependent on me. But the whole experience left me very wary, of filipinos especially, and although I tried to meet some when I had recovered from Rey, there was simply no magic left. Besides, the old bod was slowing down, sex was becoming less important, and satisfaction from lots of wonderful images from the internet was coming to be a satisfactory substitute for the real thing.
Sri Lanka
The most colorful thing in Sri Lanka then was the currency! The bills are unusual in having the reverse sides printed vertically. I managed to bring back a number of them. My stay there will be the subject of my next page.
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