Chapter One
Growing up in a sleepy small Ontario town in the nineteen sixties, a boy soon learned to find erotic stimulation where he could. The availability of such things was questionable - in my case, as with many boys of my time, it generally took the form of masturbating to sexy lingerie-clad women in racy advertisements in magazines, or the occasional actual dirty picture obtained from adults or stores through chance or theft. This state of affairs persisted once I had graduated high school. What had been thrilling when a lad became somewhat pathetic when I grew into a young man of nineteen, who at that time and place was expected to be on his way to a job and a wife, or at least a girlfriend. I was supposed to be no longer interested in such childish pleasures, but rather having at least the possibility of actual, socially-approved sex.
Yet in a roundabout way my preoccupation with such women on paper led to my first real sexual experience. The necessarily furtive and guilty use of dirty pictures on the one hand and erotic satisfaction on the other left me open to pains and joys I could never have dreamed of. Shame and pleasure got entwined in my mind: the more shame, the greater the pleasure. That summer of nineteen sixty seven, I was to experience plenty of both.
I should explain about myself: I was at that time a socially-awkward young man, standing at around five foot six. My friends, such as they were, had mostly moved away to the big city, scattered to the winds after high school had ended. Although people said I was handsome in a slightly built and fine-boned way, I was far too shy to have met a girlfriend; plus, I was self-conscious of my relatively puny physique. I lived with my parents and lacked steady employment, and my dead-end existence wasn't conducive to meeting people, or enticing to young women. Moreover, I was an introvert by nature. For all these reasons, I spent much of my time alone.
Fortunately, though I lived with my parents in the family home out of necessity, our house had a feature that provided for some privacy: a detached garage outbuilding in the backyard. This was a large building, large enough to have stored two or three cars, and with a generous second story loft as well. My parents never considered using it for cars, my brothers were all long since moved out, so it was half-filled with old junk no one cared about, like old tyres for cars long sold. When I moved that stuff aside there was plenty of room in the other half of the place which I used as my studio, for following my hobby of painting. This was my refuge, where I could really live.
There was only one fly in my ointment: ours was not the only garage under one roof. A peculiarity of this neighbourhood was that each garage attached to the neighbour's garage, as a sort of garage duplex. There was a thin wooden wall between our garage and theirs; meaning if the neighbour was in the garage, I could hear them.
This was a bit of an issue, as our neighbour also found an alternate use for his garage. Our neighbour was a very handy guy (his job was as some sort of engineer working on local development projects for the government) and he had fixed up his garage as a home gym. He even managed to run water out to his garage, and had a shower and toilet installed in one corner. All this meant as far as I was concerned was that he was sometimes in there, lifting weights, when I wanted silence for painting.
I should explain that I did not know our neighbours all that well - I mean, I knew them to say "hi" to, but I didn't hang out with them. The husband was a tall (over six feet), muscular man, who I knew (to my cost) worked out a lot, on a regular schedule; the wife had some sort of mobility issues, and spent much of her time watching TV. She never visited the garage. The pair were neither old nor young - maybe around forty or so, he looking good with it, she not so much, and they had no kids. Other than that, I knew little about them.
One day, in the middle of a hot hazy summer Saturday afternoon, I was engaged in a particularly tricky bit of painting when I heard the neighbour coming in to his garage at his usual time. In a couple of minutes, the thumping from his gym equipment began. That was that, as far as painting went - my table was vibrating with each crash of the weights. I washed out my brushes, it was obvious I could not work with this going on.
With time on my hands and nothing better to do, I grew curious to see what exactly the neighbour was up to with his exercises. The wooden partition between the garages had some cracks between the boards - I quietly sidled up to one, and took a peek.
To my surprise, the neighbour was exercising without any clothes on. Well, on second thought, it was hot, and there was of course no air conditioning; and the windows of his garage had blinds down - so why not exercise in the nude?
To my further astonishment, the act of spying on him was furtively exciting to me. I could see his naked body as he sweated and strained under the barbell on the squat rack. He was far more muscular than I thought ... and I could not help but notice the size and heft of his cock. Even completely flaccid, it was far longer and thicker than mine was when hard.
My heart was pounding and I was confused. Why on earth was I looking at a man's body, let alone at his cock? Was I some sort of pervert? In that time and place, the notion that being gay was just a different orientation no better and no worse than being straight was still far into the future, at least in my neck of the woods, and such erotic thoughts were very much disapproved of ... so I backed away from the crack in the boards, and quickly exited the garage.
However, that night I could not stop thinking about what I had seen. I was half-heartedly wanking in my room, using old lingerie ads in magazines for inspiration as I always did, when I started to think of that thick cock I had seen - instantly I was rock-hard. The thought of those sweaty muscular thighs flexing as he screwed one of those lingerie models ... I came almost instantly. This was shameful. I knew, from church half-heartedly attended, but more importantly from prejudice commonly and openly expressed at this time, that being a man and thinking of other men in a sexual way was very much a perversion. Yet it was exciting to me. Maybe it excited me precisely because it was wrong?
Confused or not, I resolved to spy again the next day.
The neighbour came in at much the same time as he usually did; this time, I was already watching. I left the lights out on my side, was sitting quietly by the crack. I watched as he stripped off his clothes, and went through his exercise routine. This time, I was deliberately and consciously looking at his body, including his cock - which seemed even larger than I had remembered.
After he worked out, he took a brief shower; then, carrying his towel, he climbed naked into the loft on his side. This was odd. What was he doing up there?
I had to find out.
Quietly as I could, I climbed into the loft on my side. Our loft was completely unused, containing nothing but dusty piles of boxes with old books and papers in them, stacked irregularly here and there. It was accessed by the ladder I had just climbed and a trapdoor that was always left open. I had never thought about what the neighbours' loft contained, just assuming it was more or less the same. Why was he climbing naked into a storage loft?
