I come from a small country town in New South Wales where my parents have a cattle and grain farming operation. My family is a close knit one and I am the middle of three children, with an older brother and a younger sister.
I went to boarding school in the city from high school and enjoyed holidays back at the farm. It was the best of both worlds – school with my elder brother and my friends and home with my family and a different group of friends (the children of other farming families in and around our township). My younger sister also went to boarding school in the city, so amongst the three of us, we had a wide circle of friends at school and at home.
I loved school. My mates and I played rugby every chance we got – in our lunch hour and after school. We copied the stars of Australian rugby. We wanted to be like them, look like them and develop the same skills. We were lucky enough to have scouts on behalf of the State and National team come and watch us play for our school. I first saw this happen, the scouts in the stands with notepads and handheld dictation machines as well as cameras, when I was 14.
A few scouts spoke personally to our teams as we trained and left behind a "mud map" of drills and training techniques, including gym workouts. These started with body weight exercises and as our bodies developed and we had the capacity for it, our workouts included weight training.
I remember my brother and sister and later my family commenting on the changes they were seeing in me after the training. Whilst I didn't notice it so much myself, looking back, it was true that I grew quickly and that this was the result of having tried to do every workout with gusto and achieving personal bests with my lifting. My team mates were very competitive and several of us were selected for representative rugby and honoured at school for our achievements.
Being bigger and fitter than my peers made me feel a bit goofy. I didn't have anything to compare my experiences to, so I stayed just as polite and friendly as ever and didn't think of myself as special. My parents told me to be a good mate to everyone and this is what I still try to do today.
As school progressed, I threw myself into training and studying. My parents were working hard on the farm to afford a private school education, so it was the least I could do. I got good marks and was able to get into university in the city to study physiotherapy.
While boarding school was a same sex situation, university was a different story. There were plenty of pretty girls and women on campus. I still felt goofy and I was painfully shy around girls. I think this frustrated my father who pumped me for stories about girls and wondered why I had none, but secretly made my mother worry less about how I was coping with the demands of sport and studying through university. Playing rugby in the city gave rise to player fees which certainly helped with tuition and books. The rugby club arranged work for its players and I quickly secured work experience at a private physiotherapy clinic which was attached to the city's high performance sports centre.
I worked in treatment rooms with a mentor and absorbed everything I could, learned how to relate to patients, understand billing and appointment setting.
I think I must have been a unique kid who people couldn't figure out. I copped plenty of ribbing from my rugby team mates about the lack of a steady girlfriend, but it was easy to deflect because of my work, the physiotherapy clinic mentor program and my studies.
The more they ribbed me, the more I wondered what I was missing. I was a healthy kid with a hard on every morning and a tingling crotch throughout every day. The Aussie way is to call masturbating, "meeting Mrs Palmer and her five lovely daughters" and I knew them intimately several times a day.
The change for me came in the year I graduated. It was a year of big things. Not only did I graduate, but my rugby team made it all the way to the premiership finals but lost our final game. I copped a head knock in that game and developed a concussion. A professor from the university recommended that I not resume playing, which was a crippling upset for a few weeks, but as I graduated, there were a couple of good job offers from not only physiotherapy practices, but also the state rugby organization.
This meant that I could have steady work as well as tour with the team, some of whom I had played in junior ranks and retained great friendships with. I was being told that people trusted me as knowing the game and being able to apply that knowledge with my skills as a physiotherapist, to keep the team in top form and properly deal with any injuries throughout the season.
It felt good to be wanted.
At the same time, I kept fit by taking up Crossfit at my local box. I loved it...it was competitive and I just took to it like a duck to water.
I looked lustily at the muscled females around me. I probably had my tongue hanging out half the time. I had a hard on when I arrived at the gym until I left, with it only subsiding during the most arduous of workouts. I often worried my right arm was over developed compared to the left as a result of wanking morning, noon and five times a night. What can I say? I was horny as hell.
I'd spent a few weeks at home after graduation before coming back to the city to start my role as a physiotherapist. My mentor welcomed me back and took me into his office for a chat. He talked to me about how he thought my career might play out and offered me great advice. He thought I was the sort of kid who would draw a good following as a physiotherapist from so many sources, that my bookings would be full from the start. He took a risk on me and started me on a great salary and gave me awesome resources and a budget for marketing myself to ensure a full book of work.
He was right, I quickly got rugby mates and Crossfit athletes through the door. I had school kids from my old school as well as friends of everyone. At my peer work review, I was told I was personable and approachable and people loved having me work on them because they felt like I was relatable to their specific circumstances because my life had been of a similar path.
Well, the whole point of this story, is my sexual awakening. The shy kid with the big life, but labeled as completely unassuming and humble. I was to learn that this sort of presentation made girls weak and to want to nurture you – something that remains with me today.
I remember it plainly. It was a Tuesday appointment falling at 10am. My Crossfit connections had sent me a client whose name was emailed to me by the appointment setter at the practice. I didn't recognize it as someone from my home Crossfit gym. Clancy. I thought it was a male athlete.
'He' had completed and emailed the questionnaire by saying that he was visiting Australia and was walking out of the Crossfit gym and slipped on the stairs. He'd fallen and landed on his back.
My mentor and I had conferred and determined that we should do some pool-based therapy and exercises. This involves both patient and physiotherapist in the water so as the patient can be stretched, complete exercises whilst supported by the water's buoyancy and be stretched again.
I took my swimming kit and included both speedos and boardshorts. I reasoned that whatever the client wore, I would do the same so as he was comfortable.
I got to the pool and started setting up. I saw an absolutely stunning woman come into the pool complex and took her in from the corner of my eye as I was setting up. She had a beautiful tan, awesome calves shaping into thin knees and sitting on top her knees were the tight thigh muscles typical of an athlete. She had shorty sports shorts on with a logo I couldn't make out.
This wasn't at all unusual given that the pool was used by a variety of sporting teams for training and recovery.
