{"id":176,"date":"2010-01-23T00:42:02","date_gmt":"2010-01-23T00:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucebramson.com\/2010\/01\/23\/coming-out-at-m-y-o-b\/"},"modified":"2010-01-23T00:42:02","modified_gmt":"2010-01-23T00:42:02","slug":"coming-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/?p=176","title":{"rendered":"Coming Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

February 22, 2009<\/strong><\/p>\n

MJC<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, I must tell you that my college days were nothing like the story I wrote years later called College Daze! That was written with the benefit of hind-sight, looking back on how it might have been If I had been \u201cout\u201d.<\/p>\n

But, I was not out. This, despite the Creative Writing teacher who certainly was! I enjoyed his class and learned much, but as a person he had a couple of drawbacks: he was \u201cnellie\u201d, and he was too old for my already developing taste for peers and younger.<\/p>\n

I was befriended by two older girls, who did show up in the story: these were the first lesbians I encountered in my life, even though I heard the term \u201clesbian\u201d much later. One of these gals was a sort of \u201cplain Jane\u201d, far from ugly and feminine in her own way. Her mate was one of the ugliest women I had ever met! She was the butch one. Still, it was clear they both adored each other, and I\u2019ve often wondered what became of them. I thought vaguely that guys might have similar relationships, and given the chance I would have related in any way he chose with the pole-vaulter that year! But my on-going infatuation with Jim and (and his nice dick), his camera, (and his nice dick) and his old cars (and his nice dick) took care of my libido.<\/p>\n

So, I sailed through two years at Junior College with fair grades despite almost no studying. I had a knack for figuring out what the teachers wanted, and I fed it back to them. All except the \u201cinstructor\u201d for my American History course. The man was a fervent Republican which led to many diversions from the topic, and the class occurred directly after lunch. I slept through most of his dreary lectures, and flunked the course cold. This meant I did not graduate from JC (American History was a requirement, and I had to repeat\u2014and pass\u2014it several years later). No doubt my Dad was disappointed, but I didn\u2019t really care.<\/p>\n

In an off moment somewhere along the JC years I submitted a poem to a competition sponsored by a small private college in southern California. The work garnered an honorable mention, so I decided to leave home for the remaining two years of college. I was in for something of a shock!<\/p>\n

UR<\/strong><\/p>\n

Set, in those days, among a few surviving orange groves, the University of Redlands was said to be the \u201cbest Methodist school the Baptists have\u201d. I got in on decent grades, my honorably-mentioned poem, and not much else. (Dad\u2019s money helped!) Rather unexpectedly, I gravitated to the Music Department because of the large pipe organ in the chapel: I had always loved pipe organ music, and so to my Dad\u2019s dismay I jumped from Science to Music. I quickly deduced that I could no longer give the instructors \u201cwhat they wanted\u201d, because what the organ professor wanted was that I could read music and play the damn thing, which of course I could not do. I struggled along, but had no real musical performance talent.<\/p>\n

The organ department then had about 30 students, the music school perhaps a hundred. Of the organ students, I was to learn, all were queer, and of the other musicians, many were. Unfortunately, I learned all this just as was leaving Redlands! Throughout the academic year I was there, when I needed \u201crelief\u201d I drove my battered old Nash out into the hills and flung my seed upon the ground, for want of any better place.<\/p>\n

Most of those wank sessions were enlivened by fantasies about an absolutely gorgeous boy living in Cortner Hall one floor below.<\/p>\n

However, not one soul ever approached me, tried to being me out, or even mentioned what was going on right under my own nose: wild parties (off campus) which I expect I would have enjoyed immensely.<\/p>\n

I did learn one important lesson at Redlands. The catalogue said it was \u201calcohol free\u201d, and having been raised by my tee-totaling parents, I thought I\u2019d fit in well. Yet, within a week or two of arriving and settling into Cortner, someone suggested we have a party in my room one Saturday night. Vodka and orange juice materialized: vodka was thought to be undetectable by smell, so we would be \u201csafe\u201d having a simple party. Unfortunately, the group assigned ME the job of bar-tender, so I was making \u201cscrewdrivers\u201d with a ratio of 4 to 1. That\u2019s four parts vodka to 1 part OJ! Things went along OK for a while, but suddenly the other fellows in the group disappeared! About the same time, I realized I was drunk, never having been so before. We had all consumed far more than we should, and too rapidly: the others fertilized the bushes in the quad, but I managed to stagger to the terlet before becoming very, very sick. Repeatedly! It took me a week to recover, and I have never been anywhere near that drunk since. I reasoned that if that\u2019s what alcohol does to you, I want no part of it!<\/p>\n

About a week before departing Redlands for summer vacation,\u00a0 one of the organ grad students who lived off-campus asked me to dine at his apartment, and suddenly, all was revealed. He told me about homosexuals (first time I\u2019d heard the word), lesbians (ditto), and many, many other enlightening things about \u201cbeing gay\u201d et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The revelation for me was that there were other people just like me, who preferred to look at and (hopefully) interact sexually with other boys. My informant regaled me with tales of his own activities, played old Ray Bourbon records, explained the rudiments of cruising and made it clear I could relax and begin to think in terms of being queer without worrying much about it. He did not \u201cbring me out\u201d in the sense of having sex with me: like most everyone I\u2019ve ever met, he was not attracted to me. I had simply triggered his GayDar, and he assumed I was out!<\/p>\n

I left the University of Redlands intending to return, even though I sensed it was not the right place for me. It was something of a \u201crich-kids\u201d school, and it was costing my Dad a lot of money for me to be there. It was super-abundantly clear I would never be another Virgil Fox, even though I had at least one prerequisite: I was queer. I was, however, not yet willing to let other people know it.<\/p>\n

I had gotten a summer job in Santa Clara, California, where my life took another turn.<\/p>\n

To be continued:\u00a0 I find the way to San Jose.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MYOB@brucebramson.com<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

BEFORE I BEGIN\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2026 to describe the next events in my life\u2019s record, I have a few words about the current scene. As I mentioned in my last page, I read a whole lot of blogs: these have displaced downloading freebies from commercial websites. Still, I find myself saving far fewer images than I used to pull down from Usenet. One reason is that the blogs seem to favor what I would call more \u201cmanly men\u201d: well developed, if not overly so, and really not in the genre I prefer, which is toy-boys. Another reason is that more and more men these days are covering vast areas of their bodies in tattoos. It really puts me off, given that the unadorned male body is so beautiful in and of itself. At the same time, more and more men are sporting assorted metallic devices: piercing of the ears and other parts too fierce to mention, some approaching and occasionally passing the level of mutilation. These images, too, put me off, though I guess there are some who enjoy that sort of thing. Even with these caveats, I retain and sort on average 1500 images a week! The number of available images is staggering! In general, I do not put on my hard drive:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Photos of\u00a0 butts. For my taste, this is the least appealing portion of the male body.<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u201cHead-shots\u201d, faces.\u00a0 If they don\u2019t show dick, I don\u2019t save!<\/p>\n

\u2022 Photos of guys screwing. For reasons that I hope to make clear, fucking has never been my forte!<\/p>\n

\u2022 With few exceptions, photos of men over 25. I told you I was a retired chicken queen!<\/p>\n

\u2022 Photos of violence, rape, bondage, torture and the like. Definitely turn me off!<\/p>\n

\u2022 Photos of guys in leather drag. Likewise, not my thing.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Photos of guys in female drag. I rate a guy with a dick dressed as a girl as bizarre!<\/p>\n

OK: YMMV!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even leaving out these categories, my collection of images swells ever larger, leading to ever-larger hard-drives for storage. While I have plans to eventually improve these images by de-logoing and so forth, I\u2019ll probably croak before getting around to that. My executor has instructions to wipe and destroy all the drives when the time comes.<\/p>\n

So, geting on with the story, here is the next installment of my life.<\/p>\n

MAKING A LIVING<\/strong><\/p>\n

The job at the repair shop finally petered out: the owner simply mismanaged it so thoroughly that he lost his clients. So the first order of business once college was out of the way was to find a job. It was a long and arduous task. Silicon Valley was years in the future, and jobs for a fellow with a Chemistry minor were not easy to find.<\/p>\n

But, I eventually landed a job in a small independent testing lab. The Director (and owner) was a nice fellow, willing to train me. I was chagrinned to find that I had actually learned very little of practical value in college, but Howard was patient and before long I was pretty much running the place. Money was sufficient for my needs. Life was good, though I felt it could be better in ways I found hard to discern.<\/p>\n

I BEGIN TO COME OUT<\/strong><\/p>\n

Following college, I decided it was time to get a \u201cplace of my own\u201d: the room I\u2019d occupied for a year and a half close to SJS did not allow me to cook, and some sort of domesticity thing was developing. I moved to a wretched apartment in Santa Clara, near my work. It was cheaply built, and was placed on a huge ant-hill, apparently: I was plagued by ants the whole time I was there. But it did have a (small) kitchen, a living-room, a private bed-room and a bath with shower. It was all I needed, and I could bring tricks there without worry. My recollection now is, though, that I had very few visitors there.<\/p>\n

My new job was actually quite fun, and the pay was decent and regular. I settled into a routine. Except, at about the time I moved out of San Jose, I discovered the one gay bar then in San Jose: the Crystal. It was owned by well known brothers who owned a couple of other bars and were reputed to be Mafia family members. It was only gay at night: by day it was a lunchroom and watering-hole for nearby office tenants. It was also right across the street from a Catholic retirement seminary.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t dress like this to go to the Crystal, but this IS me about that time. \u2014\u2014-><\/p>\n

So, after work, I would take a nap, then get dressed for a \u201cnight out\u201d and drive into San Jose to hang out in the Crystal. By 9 pm or so, it had switched to gay, the bar-tenders had switched as well, and the place got to be quite a lot of fun. Over time, I came to know some great guys more-or-less my age, but there were not many to whom I was particularly attracted. Still, it was comforting to discover, at last, that there were other guys with many of the same predilections as myself. [In my era, it was entirely possible to reach majority without ever hearing about “homos, queers, or fruits”. I don’t think this is the case today!]<\/p>\n

Apparently, few at the Crystal were attracted to me: I worked as unofficial bar-maid for a while to keep from having to just stand around trying to look pretty, or at least not bored to death. I drank only beer, because I found soon enough that I could not drink enough of it to get really drunk before I was so filled up there was no room for more. However, I did drive back to Santa Clara many a night when I was probably DUI, but for some reason\u00a0 never got caught.<\/p>\n

There was one fellow, a regular at the Crystal, who was exceptionally attractive: a wispy blond with (as far as I could assess with him dressed) a nice bod and a beautiful face. Despite repeated tries, I could never get him to give me so much as the time of day. He was, in many respects, the first example of \u201ceye candy\u201d I had encountered. Needless to say, he was popular with most of the patrons, and I watched him trot off with various tricks, always wishing I could be one of them. His name was Hugh, better known as Jeff, derived from his last name. I certainly was not celibate by any means: impromptu parties were common on weekends, and I generally found myself going to one or another of them; since I had a car, kids without one could get a ride with me. I generally would up in bed with someone cute enough to turn me on and get me off. Week-nights I often went home alone. It was a time of wild abandon in some respects, though it left me unsatisfied for the most part.<\/p>\n

There came the time when I did go home with a fellow I was not particularly attracted to, but I was lonely and didn\u2019t want to go home alone yet again. We were both slightly drunk, he somewhat more than I, but the promise of a romp in the hay led me to go with him to his place. Once there, and with few preliminaries, we found ourselves in his bed and he wanted to fuck. What he didn\u2019t know, and I failed to tell him, was that up to that time I had not been screwed. I suppose I wanted him to think I was more \u201cout\u201d\u2014or more popular\u2014or more experienced than I really was. Whatever: it turned out to be a night that may well have saved my life, for he fucked me brutally and my protestations of pain fell on deaf ears. It put me quite off the idea of getting fucked ever again, and while there have been a few occasions when I got fucked (and on fewer occasions enjoyed it), my relatively unspoiled bum may be one reason I never developed AIDS.<\/p>\n

Then one fateful night, to my astonishment, my idol Jeff hit on me as the Crystal was closing for the night. We walked to his place, not far from the bar, and I got to see what he looked like desnudo. He was spectacular! Tight body, not overly muscular, utterly glabrous and very fair. He looked very British, though in truth he was born out of wedlock in a whorehouse (I was to discover, years later). Like myself, he was totally front-oriented, and we had a marvelous romp. Indeed, over the next week or so, we had numerous romps and sleep-overs. Within a week, I was in love<\/strong>. I fell for this guy in a way I had never suspected possible: I wanted to be near him every moment. I wanted to eat him every few hours. I wanted to wait on him hand and foot. I wanted to wash him everywhere every day. I wanted to move in with him, and I wanted to call him my lover.<\/p>\n

It was not to be: Jeff thrived on conquest, and as soon as he conquered someone, he moved on. I\u2019ve found over the years this is one of the greatest failings of gay guys in general: the conquest is everything, and the variety which results is their chief delight. Poor me! I had this stupid notion of settling down and living happily ever after in some sort of domestic bliss. It has been my pattern: I\u2019ve tried it a few times since, but it has never worked, for one reason or another.<\/p>\n

I did, however, move into the same building in San Jose occupied by Jeff, a set of four ancient flats at 79 Devine Street (we called it, \u201cten doors away from Heaven\u201d). Once I got over Jeff\u2019s rejection of me (it wasn\u2019t really rejection: he just moved on to another trick. And another, and another\u2026) I returned to my regular cruising at the Crystal. Jeff and I remained friends until we both moved to San Francisco and lost contact.<\/p>\n

I remember one night well: I came into the place around 9 pm and noticed a stranger standing by\u00a0 himself near the juke-box. He was pretty, hispanic and looked very young. As I went down the bar greeting the guys there, most of whom I knew as friends, I asked who pretty-boy was: no one knew. So, when I reached the end of the bar, I went over to the juke-box and dropped in a quarter.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnything you\u2019d like to hear?\u201d I asked the boy.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWould you like a blow-job?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFollow me.\u201d<\/p>\n

We waltzed out of the Crystal. The fellow had a car, I directed him to 79 Devine, we repaired to my bedroom. I found out only that he was \u00a0enrolled in one of the several Catholic boys\u2019 schools in the area, had gone \u201cover the hill\u201d and had to be back by ten o\u2019clock. He was hot to trot!<\/em> I sucked him off in a trice, and he departed, never to be seen again. I\u2019d done my first piece of trade. I was back at the Crystal by ten, where my upstaged friends greeted me: \u201cYou brazen hussy! Cradle-robber! You whore!\u201d They were all envious, none having had the balls to proposition the kid.<\/p>\n

About this time, rapidly getting bored with the Crystal and having to live down my new-found reputation , I overheard someone talking about the \u201cmilk run\u201d. Once I got the details, I realized it might be something I would enjoy. I had a car, I had an apartment near First Street, and I had my evenings free. Whoooieeee!<\/p>\n

In the late 1950\u2019s, Moffatt Field north of San Jose was an active air base. Guys on leave would come to San Jose to take in movies, drinks, or girls if they could find any. They often hitch-hiked back to the base, using First Street, which headed north to the Freeway\u00a0 up to the base. I (and several other queens) would pick up guys and proposition them, very often getting them home and getting them off. We all knew that a guy hitch-hiking alone could be had: guys who did not want to fool around usually hiked in groups of two or three. There followed a period of a year or so when I rarely went back to the Crystal, opting instead to service as many \u201cfly-boys\u201d and \u201cair-dales\u201d as I could. I could get a thirteen-button fly open faster than you can say Jack-off Jack Robinson!<\/p>\n

Several of the boys became regulars: they would drop in, change into civilian clothes and leave. They\u2019d come back, often a trifle drunk, and I would sober them up with coffee and get them back into their uniforms after getting their load. One or two would occasionally reciprocate, not that I demanded it, but they evidently were comfortable enough with themselves to allow it. And several of the fellows introduced me to buddies they knew would appreciate my services. In time, I worried because there were so many sailors coming and going to my apartment, and I began to drop some of my clients. Then one night, my favorite of the bunch announced that he was shipping out in a few days. He cried, telling me this: he would be going to Korea. He took me to dinner. Back at my place I did him and he did me. Then I took him back to the base, and never saw him again. It seemed to be a sign: my clientele dropped to almost none, and I went back to the Crystal.<\/p>\n

There, on a fateful night, I went to the john to take a leak, where I met Johnny. My life took a new turn!<\/p>\n

My days \u201cdoing trade\u201d turned up later in several of my stories, now all available on the Nifty Archive.<\/p>\n

Through these years I spent little time with family. My brothers were all some distance away, and my folks were wrapped up in their own activities. As far as I was aware, none of them knew I was gay. Of course, I was dead wrong, but that\u2019s a tale for the next page.<\/p>\n

Coming up: Out for good!<\/strong><\/p>\n

MYOB@brucebramson.com<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

February 22, 2009 MJC First, I must tell you that my college days were nothing like the story I wrote years later called College Daze! That was written with the benefit of hind-sight, looking back on how it might have been If I had been \u201cout\u201d. But, I was not out. This, despite the Creative […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}