For the long summer vacation at the end of my second year at College I invited my friend, Des, to go camping with me in Brittany. We had lived near to each other when we were kids and always got on well. So when he phoned to say he would very much like to go I was delighted. He also made a suggestion which intrigued me – that we should invite Trevor, who was a friend of his and who had never been to France. This gave me a further idea. At first I had thought of back-packing, but as three was an odd number I remembered that another old friend of mine from home, Graham, had a car and that if he could get a week off work in August we might all be able to go together.
To cut a long story short it was finally agreed between the four of us that we would go during the second week of August and that Graham, who had a trailer and a tent, would bring his car and we would share the expenses equally.
I need to tell you about Graham. He is five years older than me and his father and mine were friends who had season tickets at the local football club so I had always looked up to him like a big brother. When he was 18 he had moved out of his parents' home into a bed-sit near the city centre. I believe there had been some sort of difference with his parents but I didn't discover what it was until later. He had left school at 16, being no scholar, but he is a friendly, considerate kind of guy and he got a job with a firm which specializes in tyres, wheel-balancing and tracking. He was a good employee and quickly achieved promotion but he kept himself to himself and his football matches in my company seemed to be his main interest in life. I was wrong, of course, and I discovered it in the following way.
We had been to a Saturday match together and for the first time he invited me round to his bed-sit for toast and tea. When we got to his room I was amazed to see how many paperback books he had, lining the shelves of his bookcase. Idly, while he was in the kitchen filling the kettle to make tea, I took one of his books off the shelf to look at it and was stunned to see that the book fell open at a place where he had marked it with a piece of paper. It was a novel by James Baldwin called "Go Tell It On The Mountain" and the page gave a graphic and explicit account of two young men going to bed with each other for the first time . "Do me as I do you" was the phrase that still rings in my mind, even now… While I was reading this erotic account, Graham entered the room and saw what I was looking at. For a moment he looked embarrassed, but he said nothing and bent down to plug in the kettle. I said naively "Hey, Graham, what's this?" and he looked up and said "Nothing." Well it was obviously not nothing and I was intrigued so I said "Have you read this?"
He blushed – and I knew he had.
Well this got me fired up. I had never really considered whether Graham was a wanker or not or whether he went to bed with other guys, and the idea that he might be interested in male sex excited me. He was not especially good-looking and was slightly overweight, with a pleasant round face and he carried himself in a bouncy, cheerful kind of way. When I got to know him REALLY well I discovered that he had no hang-ups save that he resented the fact that he was gay. Whatever had made him like that, whether it was in his genes or to do with his birth or upbringing – or a combination of those things – he hated it. That is why he had moved away from his parents into a bed-sit and though they suspected his sexual orientation they were never sure.
He was honest and a good friend, so when I asked if he had similar books, he said "A few."
"Do you read them when you get back from work?" I asked, and he nodded, adding that he read them in bed, too, before he went to sleep. I wasn't sure how to put my next question, so I blurted out "Do you wank while reading them, or just after?" and again he looked a little embarrassed and nodded – ever so slightly. I was getting the picture. "Lend it to me" I said; and when he shook his head, I said "Go on … I would like to read it. I know more about this subject than you might think."
Since then I've often thought how pushy, insensitive and thoughtless I was when I said this. It put him in a quandary : either he had to lend me the book; or he had to engage in a conversation he would find difficult; or he had to appear to be rude. The easiest way out was to give me the book. "OK, but promise to tell no-one I gave it to you," he said.
I took it home with me and read it from cover to cover. Then I took it back to Graham and asked if I could read "Giovanni's Room" (also by James Baldwin) – if he had it. He had! And soon we were talking about male sex and I told him about some of the experiences I had had. He listened in amazement and during a brief pause in my confession I looked up at Graham to see that he was covering a bulge in his trousers with his hand. He noticed the direction of my gaze and said "You're getting me all excited," his hand still resting on his crotch. "How often do you do it?" I asked. "What, wank?" he said. He considered this for a moment (our tea quite forgotten) and then said "About five times a week – and sometimes twice on Sundays."
"Would you do it with me, now?
