If you've read any of my other contributions to this collection, you'll know something of my forthright sexuality and my preferences. I've been thinking for a good while that it was high time that I set down the circumstances in which that mind set began to develop.
I don't read "first experience" stories and had no intention of writing my own as they rarely inspire me, like so much confessional material, they are often written for the relief they give to the writer rather than the excitement they stimulate in the reader. So, this is not a first experience confession but certainly a formative one and if it makes you as horny as it does me when I recall it, then it was well worth setting down.
As always, names which occur are changed to avoid possible mis-understandings or potential embarrassment.
I got into my mid twenties before I had my first truly fulfilling sexual encounter. I had been well aware, for years, that it was men I wanted. Not just any men, I was attracted only by the most outstandingly masculine. Images of stocky, muscular men, body and facial hair, had an impact with me. I'd had no idea why I felt this kinship, nor really any kind of clear idea what that attraction meant and what I would do if I encountered such a man or why he would respond to me.
I wasn't shy, perhaps I was preoccupied with other interests but in spite of some almost unbearable frustration at times, the years rolled by.
Like a lot of young men, far more now I believe, I was self conscious about my frail, flabby body, comparing it unfavourably to those I saw in the media that I admired and so I joined a gym and began to learn about weight training. It was a whole, new education system for me and much of my input here has been based on real life experiences derived from the many and varied opportunities I've had with like minded men I met in such situations.
However, it was not the gym, the physical transformation of my puny body into something unmistakably masculine which gave me the identity I later owned. It was a psychological and chemical change that was provoked in me. I lacked confidence, I was certainly sexually repressed and once I realised that my longing for that super masculinity was sexual in nature, I was ashamed and tried to suppress that link between aesthetic pleasure and sexual desire. I wanted to extinguish all signs of weakness, what I perceived as feminine softness.
I'd worked very hard in the gym and the results were undeniable, my face was maturing, I have described my cock here many times and, for a man of my (less than average) height, I knew it was, to say the least, a 'plus' in my assessment of my own attributes but could any of this ever be good enough, would I ever overcome this sense of inadequacy?
I knew it was a problem in my head. Perhaps, if I sought some help from a professional? It's not the kind of question you'd instinctively take to a doctor. I had no relationship with a family doctor, I 'd rarely consulted a doctor for any reason and never saw the same practitioner twice but it bothered me and I booked an appointment almost at random one day.
With no expectations other than getting an opportunity to discuss my concerns, I was seated in the waiting room with a varied group of patients, most of whom had some kind of obvious ailment, all of whom made me feel totally fraudulent and I feared that my condition would be dismissed out of hand when it was my turn for a consultation.
Eventually, I was summoned, I knocked, was invited in and then to sit by a male doctor, dressed in a white lab coat, hunched over his desk, his half lens glasses at the end of his nose, transfixed by the data on his computer screen as he typed with sufficient proficiency that he had no need to look down. He didn't turn towards me, his greeting seemed automated, even dis-interested. I sagged. There was a brief pause and in the same blandly mechanical fashion, I was asked to describe the circumstances for my visit.
It was with some reluctance that I began with the history, more or less as I have outlined above, while he sat impassive, at right angles to me. Every so often I would turn my head towards him as he occasionally tapped his keyboard but as I related my situation and my understanding of it as it stood, he never once took his eyes off the screen, and his only responses were the minimal acknowledgements that information was being received, the occasion "I see.", "Yes.", "Right.", "I understand.".
Odd though it seems, I felt that just intoning my circumstances was somehow helping, even if I was perturbed that there was not a more demonstrative show of interest in what I was saying.
I reached the end of my stream of consciousness and a disconcerting silence followed. It was as if something had been switched off and the vacuum between he and I was impenetrable for a long moment.
Then he said, in this calm and business-like but distracted manner "You are a homosexual."
It was both astonishing to hear and blindingly obvious, given my introduction. My response was both shock and relief. Both nervous and somehow elated by these four words spoken in a matter of fact way without emotion. I accepted the truth of it and understood that my unease and my dissatisfaction centred on this undeniable fact and my suppression of it.
Whether I made some physical sign of my surprise, some sharp intake of breath, I cannot say but moving his right hand way from the keyboard, he opened his top drawer and reached inside, pulling out a small business card, He reached across the computer keyboard and his left hand still working on the keys to put the card on the desk at my side.
"I'm referring you for an initial consultation next week." He told me in his flat manner. "Telephone this number and arrange an appointment. The address, as you can see, is only a few blocks from here. Good afternoon."
The finality of his utterance was followed by the return of the sterile silence. I picked up the card he'd placed at my side and stared at his transfixed profile, glued to the screen. I thanked him and stood to leave, glancing once more, now down and to my left to see if there was a flicker of recognition but there was none. I closed the door quietly on the trickle of sound emanating from his busy fingers. His words "You are a homosexual." throbbing in my ears.
I looked down at the card between my thumbs. No graphic, no colour, just bold, black type. The address to which I was summoned, the telephone number to call and the name, Mr. Edward Hyde. A string of professional abbreviations that I didn't recognise followed his name and the title "Consultant Psychiatrist.". I was being referred to a shrink. Was I mad? I thought I was just unfulfilled, not crazy.
My head was so full of questions, I almost stepped off the kerb without looking and it would be a long week from deciding to make that call to the appointed hour.
An entry buzzer admitted me into the rather anonymous stairwell of a modern office building down the block. On the first floor landing, another electronic gate keeper at another unlettered entrance led me to a charming woman, suited, perfect hair and make-up, presumably Mr.Hyde's receptionist, sat at a desk, in a spacious lobby where windows showed the dusky, early evening city outside. She rose, shook my hand and I was ushered into a small waiting room through a partition and I was asked to sit, the only chair there being next to an aquarium with some fancy goldfish. and facing a substantial looking door, opposite my seat. I was just taking an interest in them when the voice of the receptionist called through an intercom "Mr. Hyde will see you now."
I was shaking with nerves when I stood. What was I to expect from this meeting? I knocked at the forbidding door which had a kind of dead sound and from beyond my muffled knuckles I barely heard a voice call out "Come!"
Turning the handle, the thick structure before me opened to reveal not an office or consulting room as I'd expected but a laboratory. A desk and chair, a medical screen, a couch or chaise-longe which was rather more plush than expected, contrasting the scientific and mainly sterile, white environment. All of these might have occurred to my imagination in the intervening week. Then, cabinets all down one wall wall, some glass and stainless steel laboratory equipment on an island worktable and in one corner a lighted doorway, through which a sonorous and thickly warm baritone voice called "I'll be right with you!" I hesitated in the doorway, clutching the handle, as if I were keeping an escape route clear, when the owner of the voice emerged into the room. If I'd been questioning my sanity during the past week, I was now really troubled.
The eminent consultant, broad and handsome of face, likewise broad in the shoulders with a fine head of glossy black curls, wore half lens glasses on the end of his nose and peered at me over them. A spontaneous smile cut his chiseled features. His fine, white teeth showed sufficiently to see a gap between upper incisors under a bristling moustache and his dense, closely cropped beard revealed a deeply dimpled chin and muscular cheeks.
"Come in, come in!" He called "No need to hold onto the door," He chuckled "it won't blow away. That's 150 lbs of sound-proofing!"
As he turned to his right and leaned over his desk to scrutinise his laptop, I recognised in an instant the very same profile I'd seen in the doctor's surgery a week before. I blanched. Could this get any more confusing.