No Speed Bumps

Gradual Understanding of Sexuality

It seems to me that it's not often in life you find some whole new way of thinking about things.

One of these moments for me was when I first read E M Forster's 'Maurice'.

What struck me in the novel was the idea that you could move unconsciously and imperceptibly in a series of tiny shifts towards an understanding of something. Like the thing very slowly coming into focus. You are perhaps aware of strange stirrings below the surface but are not at all clear about their meanings. Or the meanings are working away at a sub-conscious level and it's only a series of events that edges them ever gradually into consciousness.

I guess up to this point in my life I imagined new ideas came in instantaneous illuminations.

In 'Maurice', this new-to-me process was in the central protagonist's gradual coming to awareness of his sexuality through a couple of friendships at college. With this process made more credible by the novelist having the character stolidly conventional and though at university not of the first rank of intelligence.

Something of the complexity here was scouted by Forster with respect to his own experience in his 'Terminal Note' to 'Maurice':

'George Merrill (Edward Carpenter's companion) also touched my backside—gently and just above the buttocks. . . . The sensation was unusual and I still remember it. . . . It was as much psychological as physical. It seemed to go straight through the small of my back into my ideas, without involving my thoughts'.

Well after the event and when I read 'Maurice', I used Forster's insight to understand an experience I'd had at school when I was 11 or 12.

I'd finished playing football and was back in the locker-room showering and the guy under the next faucet said his water had gone cold. He moved to get under my shower but I shoved him away, and quite violently.

At home and over the next days, I experienced ever-growing sensations of uncomfortable regret - things had begun working away at a level still not accessible to open thought.

Perhaps a week later, I contrived to offer to show Martin some underground storm water tunnels near where I lived - still not aware of what could happen.

We stood face-to-face in the semi-darkness, making awkward conversation. While I tried to imagine what could be next. Or what I wanted.

After a while it seemed it had to do with his dick.

I still recall the incalculably intense experience of first touching it through his trousers. The universe was suddenly reduced to just the sensation in my head and his hard-on.

I undid his belt and pulled his trousers down - feeling his fleshy muscular legs as I did. I held his dick - thick, small head, sweaty, and very hard. And then his balls - all tightened up in their furry sack against the base of his dick. A thick bush for our age.

He was passive throughout.

After about half an hour, I needed to be home for dinner.

At the table, I wondered if the experience with Martin showed on my face. And re-ran the whole thing in my mind. Over and over. And wondered if and when I'd be able to do it again.

We got together for about 10 years - occasionally for casual sex between and round relationships

Just sharing!