every single word of this is true

[text]
one of the things i often tell people who ask is, "i never touched a guy until i was 34."

and it's almost true (which makes it far truer than any other "true" thing you're likely to hear in this goddam town).

and god knows it's true i waited until i was 34--until i was grown up and safely sixteen hundred miles away from texas--before i ever allowed myself the freedom to truly be myself with another guy.

but to be honest, 34 wasn't the first time i ever touched a guy; for better or worse, that happened long before.

rewind back to my fifteenth summer: i'm working as a busboy/dishwasher in a sizzler steak house. it's all glass, and as i'm busing my tables one day i look out a window and see a baby-blue sedan de ville driven by a gorgeous blonde (her name is jenny, i find out later) pull up to the front entrance. she rolls to a stop and this equally gorgeous blond boy gets outta the passenger side, slams the door and walks into the restaurant; i avert my eyes as he passes and heads to the back.

a few minutes later, i'm back at my busing station with my little cart, scraping the food off the plates and sorting out the silverware, and my boss comes outta his office with his arm around the blond boy's shoulders. "mike, this is david," he says, "he's new--show him the ropes."

david, turns out, was almost exactly a year older than me--about to enter his junior year. his family had just moved to town from wyoming, and he knew no one.

seriously, has any horny, lonely gay teenager ever been given a greater gift/curse from god?

because of course we immediately became best friends--working together in enforced proximity, we had the whole summer to become inseparable before (a) school started; and (b) he got fired (among his other sterling attributes, david was not only a smartass, he was--in the words of our boss--a goddam yankee smartass).

and even when school started, the fact that i was a sophomore and he was a junior didn't matter because this particular high school was new to both of us--we were equally alienated--and our pattern was set for the next two years.

and it didn't matter that our stations in life were different: i lived in a middle-class neighborhood befitting the family of a dead oilman, while david's dad had just moved his family into a grand five-bedroom neo-colonial manse in an upper-class neighborhood suitable to a prosperous still-living oilman. it didn't matter--he fell into my family, and i fell into his. if he wasn't over at my house, i was over there--i immediately loved his mother and his brother and sisters (jenny included), and even his big, strong oft-absent dad (who, turns out later, had a whole 'nother life up in oklahoma city--but that's another post for another day).

point is, david and i became very close--close in a way that only adolescent boys can become. and while i saw nothing unusual about it at the time, i remember david's little brother saying something like, "so i guess you're the new 'joe.'" and when i asked him what he meant, he said, somewhat resentfully, "david used to be all mushy about his friend joe back in wyoming the same way he's all mushy about you now."

and, all these years later, i still remember the thrill that went up and down my spine as i scornfully replied, "you're so full of shit."

we settled into a routine, david and i--thing was, without dads around (mine was dead; his was usually in oklahoma city (not only on business but also, as it turned out, with his mistress)), our moms were occupied with their households and their younger kids. as a result, david and i were pretty much free to do whatever we wanted--which in those days consisted mostly of hanging out on whatever nights we weren't working, and cruising up and down broadway (usually in whatever new cadillac david's guilty dad had just given his mom) every friday and saturday night with all the other kids and then crashing at either his house or mine whenever we got tired.

and usually it was at my place--not only because we could smoke in my house (david's mom didn't smoke; mine did), but because it was generally looser and easier at my house than it was at his--we could come in at any hour we wished. whatever, most friday and saturday nights, we'd end up at my house, listen to music in my room until 3 or 4 a.m. and then pile into my bed and sleep until noon.

my twin bed.

yeah--as unbelievable as it might seem, for two goddam years of my adolescence i slept almost every weekend pretty much on top of a guy i was totally in love with in a tiny little bed--and nothing ever happened.

and not because i didn't want it to--god knows all the nights i laid intertwined with him, my hard-on pulsing with my heartbeat, dying to slide my hand from my dick over to his. it's just that, all the nights he slept with me in my little bed, my desire never overrode my fear.

like so many other things in my life, that took alcohol.

it happened like this: midway through his senior (and my junior) year, his parents are on vacation in hawaii or somewhere, and we're at his house, responsible for his younger brother and sister. and, like any responsible high school kids with the run of the house, we break into the liquor cabinet and get shitfaced, fall into his bed (a double, btw--much bigger than mine), and pass out talking about girls we'd like to fuck, only to wake up in the middle of the night rolling around in each other's arms.

and what happens next, you ask?

simple: soon as i realize what's happening, i pull away, he rolls away, we pass out.

next day, nothing is said, life goes on.

within a month or so, he's dating christy, i'm working more and we see each other less and less--until he shows up at my window one night at four in the morning with an armful of bloody sheets, asking "mike, how can i get these clean? my mother's gonna kill me!"

because, see, there were virgins back then.