Bill,

I stumbled across your website about six weeks ago, a fortuitous event for me. I have studied your site, read some of the personal stories and I have sat down to write to you about a half dozen times about experiences I had with a friend of mine almost thirty years ago. Each time I have started writing I have been overwhelmed by memories, both joyous and painful, but this time I think I will just go ahead and write. I am 47 years old and have been married for 21 years. I am 6'4", 225 lbs., blonde hair, blue eyes and in relatively good shape.

I grew up in a small (population 1,300) town in a big Southern state. When I was 17, in 1971, a boy moved to town from my state's biggest city. I am sure this was quite a culture shock for him. He was 16 years old, a freshman and his name was Stephen. I was a sophomore and I played football. Stephen came to tryouts and made the varsity team as a freshman. He was a pretty good athlete. He and I became friends pretty quickly after he came to town, since we shared a love of football and hunting, primarily bird hunting.

My grandfather owned about 750 acres of land outside of town which had been a working cattle ranch until the mid 60's. The ranch had a small hunting cabin on it, which we kids used when we were camping out and hunting. Dove hunting season began in late September. I invited Stephen one day to go hunting the following Friday afternoon. The first weekend of dove season was the last free Friday we would have because the first Friday football game would be played the following week. I explained we could hunt on my grandfather's land and, if we wanted, stay at the hunting house overnight. He thought that was a great idea and since I was 17 and had my driver's license, I could drive us. Friday came and after school and football practice, we loaded up and drove the 20 miles outside of town to my grandfather's old place. We walked the fields for about 2 hours and both of us managed to kill our limit. We then went back up to the cabin, cleaned the birds and packed them in ice in a cooler. Afterwards we cleaned up in a creek that ran behind the cabin (no indoor plumbing, outhouse only). It was a hot September evening and we both stripped down to bathe in the cool water. After we cleaned up, we dressed and went back to the cabin and made a quick dinner of some of the dove wrapped in bacon and cooked over an open fire. I had done this a hundred times.

After dinner, we sat around, shooting the breeze, looking at the stars, talking about girls, football, school and life in general. I had gotten my older brother to get us a six pack of beer and we had iced that down earlier in the afternoon. We drank the six pack and prepared to go to bed around 11:00 p.m. or midnight. The cabin had a small camp bed and we both had sleeping bags as well as our knapsacks. We got ready for bed, which consisted of stripping to our briefs. We decided after some discussion that it would be alright for both of us to sleep in the same bed, since it would be more comfortable than sleeping on the floor in sleeping bags. We continued to talk and the conversation turned to sex, specifically Stephen asked me if I masturbated. I answered yes I did. To say that I was sexually naive would be a gross understatement. My experience with girls had been limited and I was not what you would call sexually bold. That said, Stephen then asked if I had ever jacked off with another guy. Well, no, I hadn't. It was at this point he said he wanted to show me something that he and a buddy of his from the big city used to do. There were a couple of pillows on the camp bed and he stacked them one on top of the other and told me to lie back on them. I leaned back on them, not fully reclining and he knelt on the bed in front of me. Then he said I would need to get rid of my underwear. I hesitated and he reached up and hooked his fingers around the waistband and stripped them off of me in a single motion. My penis was tumescent, but not fully erect. Stephen reached out and gently, but firmly began to fondle me. My dick instantly sprang to attention like a good little soldier. Stephen stood up and I could see he had a hard on already and he slid his own briefs to the floor and stepped out of them. Stephen was pretty well built, about 6'2", 180 lbs. with brown hair and brown eyes and, man, was he a handsome kid. His body was smooth except for a little trail of hair that went from just under his belly button to his crotch. He then knelt on the bed again and scooted his body up to mine until our balls were touching. At this point, my heart was pounding so hard in my chest I was sure he could hear it, the blood was thrumming loudly in my ears and I was practically hyperventilating. Stephen gently told me to calm down, that I was going to like this. I took a deep breath and that helped marginally. Stephen then reached down beside the bed, into his knapsack, and produced a small jar of Vaseline. He opened it, got out a dollop and rubbed it into the palms of his hands. It was at this point that I realized he had planned this out ahead of time. Then with his left hand he grasped both of our dicks together at the base and with his right hand stroked upward from the bases to the heads of our dicks. It was like I had been electrified. I could not believe the indescribable feeling of his hand on our cocks together, He stroked once, twice and I came as powerfully as I ever had. The first ejaculate hit me directly under the chin; the second landed splat on my chest. My head was literally spinning because I had never felt this kind of pleasure solo.

Stephen smiled and said the first time he and his buddy had done this; he had done the same thing and had come almost instantaneously. He told me we would give it a few minutes and then we could really have some fun. He hadn't come when I had and he was still erect. He held our cocks together and began to stroke them again. It didn't take long before I was hard again. As he stroked us together, he leaned his head forward and began to nibble and lick at my nipples. As his rhythm increased, he began to lean into me more until finally his hands went around my hips and we were thrusting against each other, greasy with the Vaseline. The friction increased and then I put my hand between us to touch his cock. He groaned and thrust hard into my hand and I reached over and grasped my own penis to hold against his. He bucked and he began to gasp little breaths and I could literally feel his dick prepare to come. I put my free hand on his ass and as he pushed hard into my hand, he came noisily. The feeling of his ejaculation and his little yelps of ecstasy set me off just a little behind him and, once again, I thought I would go crazy with the pleasure. We were pretty well wet with semen from our chests to our bellies and he relaxed onto my chest and I held him closely for a long time. After a while, he pushed up slightly and looked at me. So, he said, did you like that little game? I told him it was, without a doubt, the best thing I had ever felt. In fact, I said, my heart was still pounding. We got up and washed ourselves from a bucket of water we had brought up from the creek. We got back into bed and Stephen asked if I would like to get on top and we could go at it again. This sounded to me like a wonderful idea, so I got the Vaseline and painted both of our cocks with it and then, holding him close to me we began again. This time we played it for all we could, wrestling closely together, then moving apart and fondling one another, moving closer together with our legs entwined, both of our hands grasping and stroking our dicks until finally we came, almost simultaneously while sitting facing one another. I collapsed into Stephen and then I kissed him full on the lips, my tongue curious for his and he returned the kiss, urgent and hot.

We cleaned up again and lay down beside each other and I quickly fell into a deep sleep. I woke up the next morning and Stephen had spooned against my back with his hand over my hip lying lightly on my penis. I could feel, against my back, that he had an erection. When we were both fully awake, we went outside and both took that delicious first piss of the morning and went back inside to tale care of our morning erections. Later that morning, as we prepared to go back home, Stephen told me he had been planning something like this for a while and was happy I had been willing to do this with him.

The trips out to my grandfather's hunting cabin became a weekend tradition for us from that September until about March the next year. We spent our weeks going to school, practicing football in the afternoons, playing football on Friday nights and spending Saturdays out "hunting".

One time I brought with us a big bottle of baby oil and we slid and slipped against one another like a couple of crazy otters. All of our experiences were with frottage, as you call it, because I don't think either of us had even heard of anal sex. Sometimes we had little wrestling matches, sometimes we were gentler and sometimes we were extremely physical. It was all good and I never tired at looking at Stephen's face, as he was about to come. He would get the most beatific look; his eyelids fluttering slightly as he gasped and made little noises. That, in and of itself, was enough to get me off, big time. Sometime, around Thanksgiving, as I recall, I told Stephen I thought that I loved him. He admitted that he thought he loved me too. I have to admit, although I was conflicted about the nature of our relationship, I was over the moon.

In the spring of 1972, early March, in spring practice Stephen sprained his ankle badly and had to convalesce at home for a couple of days. I remember him telling me the orthopedist had told him it would have been better had he broken it. He was going to have to miss a couple days of school until the worst of the swelling had diminished and then he would be able to use crutches. I volunteered to bring him his schoolwork for the missed days. I took the assignments over to him on a Saturday. His parents were out and we sat around talking and marveling at the size of his ankle under the bandage. Stephen said it felt much better and he thought he would be able to make it back to school on Monday. Then he told me I could do something for him that would make him feel a whole lot better, although it would not do much for his ankle. I knew just what he meant. He pointed out that both his parents were out, his dad at work and his mom shopping and he didn't expect them home anytime soon. His dad was a retired Air Force Colonel who owned a small business and he often worked Saturdays. I helped back to his bedroom, closed and locked the door and assisted him with sitting on the bed. I slowly removed his clothes; careful when I pulled his pants leg over his injured ankle. After he was naked I took off my clothes. He was sitting on the edge of the bed and I slowly laid him down. I started out by kissing him, then moved slowly down his neck, to his chest and nipples, down his belly and then to his cock. He was hard as a rock and I took him fully into my mouth and he pushed up slightly on his elbows while I worked on his dick. After several minutes, he reached down and grasped my head and pulled me up to him and kissed me. I slid slowly back fully up his body and we began to wrestle gently against each other. Suddenly, someone burst through the locked door. I looked up and saw that it was Stephen's father. I jumped up and the Colonel began yelling at Stephen, calling him a little faggot and how he should kick his ass and how could he do this, etc. etc. I was embarrassed by my nakedness and a bit intimidated by the Colonel. He was a pretty big guy and he had definitely blown a gasket. After a minute, I jumped in and said I didn't think that this was Stephen's fault and I told him we hadn't done anything wrong. At this point, the Colonel backhanded me. I had never believed in the old saying "seeing stars" when you've been hit hard, but I did, literally, see stars and the next thing to hit the floor was my ass. I wasn't knocked out or anything, and at this juncture, I was ready to fight. I leapt to my feet to confront this crazy bastard and, just as quickly, Stephen stumbled up between us, begging his father not to hit me. His father began berating him again and then turned to me and said, "It's not like this is the first time Stevie's been involved in something like this." He grabbed my shirt and jeans off the bed, threw them into my chest and told me to take my shit and get out of his house. I told him I was worried about Stephen and he told me that Stephen would be fine and, if I didn't get my ass out of his house, he would call the police. I looked at Stephen and he asked me to go. I dressed quickly and left, realizing about halfway home I didn't have any underwear on. My head was spinning and I noticed in the rearview mirror my mouth was bleeding and the teeth in the left side of my mouth felt loose. I ended up having a pretty good bruise on my face, too. I went home in a panic.

The next day, I called Stephen, but his mother answered and told me he did not need to talk to me and not to call again. But I did, the next day, after school when he didn't show up. Again, his mom said Stephen did not need to talk to me and if I called again, she would talk to my parents. Long story short, Stephen and his mom moved back to the big city they'd come from. He never returned to school at all. And everyone wondered why he had moved back. It began to dawn on me that the reason they had moved to my hometown was because something similar had happened before with Stephen. Worst of all, I didn't know what to do. I felt like someone had kicked me in the stomach, and the feeling wouldn't go away.

The kicker to this whole deal was that the Colonel did tell my father about what he had seen sometime later. My father confronted me with this and asked me if it was true. I admitted that it was and my dad told me how disappointed he was in me. I have to admit, at that time, I didn't get it and I told my father so. Here I was, feeling like someone had killed my best friend, and my dad was disappointed in me!! What about poor Stephen? If his dad had been willing to belt me like he had, how could I hope that he would spare Stephen? I was almost frantic with grief. My dad never told my mom and he never brought it up to me again. Although, until the day he died, I thought it was something neither of us ever got over.

I have to tell you for the next 3 -- 4 years, I was bereft. It truly felt like someone had dredged my heart out of my chest. I never heard from Stephen again and that was thirty years ago. I played one more year of football my junior year, but not my senior year. I thought it had lost its appeal to me, but the truth of the matter was I was adrift and deeply sad and I couldn't tell anyone why. I never again had a relationship with a guy like the one I had with Stephen. I was never as bold as he was, especially around other guys. Early in my sophomore year in college, I finally decided I was going to have to get on with my life or this thing would drive my crazy. In the second half of my sophomore year, I met the young woman I would marry and I fell in love with her. However, there has always been a different quality to the love I feel for her and the love I felt for Stephen. Not better or worse, just different. Perhaps it's because at one time I was obsessed with getting another chance, or perhaps it's unrequited lust, or perhaps it's because I just felt cheated out of something special and I was never able to get it back. Whatever it was, I finally did reach a compromise with myself about it twenty five years ago and since that time, while the gaping hole never filled up, the edges healed.

No one has ever known this story, except for Stephen, our fathers, and me. I have never talked about it with another living person and in looking back over this whole letter, I should say thanks, in case you read it, for listening to my long and boring story. It honestly feels good to have finally had my say about it. I have to say I am glad there are men out there who aren't afraid to step up to the plate and say they enjoy this special kind of physical relationship, whether they are straight, gay or whatever. I know sometimes that I wish I had taken a different course, but no regret, my life is good and full. Thanks for listening.

---

Howdy Bill,

God, what a surfeit of memories, emotions and thoughts surfaced telling you about Stephen and me. You know, I had pretty much closed and locked the door on that part of my life history. I think it might have killed me at the time if I hadn't. I have a little more perspective as a 47 year old than I did when I was a 17 year old who felt abandoned and grieved that loss or a 19 year old college student still heartbroken and desperate for a little peace in my life. I don't know if I can verbalize the raw, aching physical need I felt in that period in my life. Foolish as it sounds, and this is memory talking, I think I felt committed to Stephen for life, mainly because I had never had felt that connected to someone. Also I felt adrift because Stephen never tried to contact me after the confrontation with his father. Perhaps he couldn't, I do not know.

Last night I was thinking about the vagaries of memory and how since I had opened up to you about this, how certain things had been coming back to me. For example, the songs we liked; the rocking rambunctiousness of Rod Stewart's "Every Picture Tells a Story" and the jazzy, trippy sensuality of Traffic's "Low Spark of High Heeled Boys". Man, I haven't even listened to those songs since and whenever they used to come on the radio, I would turn them off. I also remembered the smell of Stephen, his odor and essence. That boys locker room, bleachy aroma when we were intimate. I think I honestly could make myself more than a little crazy going down this path. The saving grace is that I've got a little more maturity and I'm more able to reconcile the emotional and the rational today.

The more I have thought about the story, it may be more Stephen's story than mine. At least I am confident that I survived, physically and emotionally, what happened. I don't know if Stephen ever felt as deeply committed to me as I felt to him or if he wanted any further contact after what had occurred. I just know that I did. My mind has always closed off the possibilities when I considered what might have happened to him. I hope he's alive, well and happy.

Oh well, enough obsessing with the old and past. Life does, happily, go on.

---

Howdy Bill,

I sent you a couple of short e-mails yesterday. Sometimes it is difficult to get time alone with the computer to put thoughts together when you have a wife and kids. As I mentioned previously, the little story I related to you had opened a chapter of my life I had studiously avoided. It's funny how when I removed a couple of the keystones to the dam I had built around this part of my life, the torrent of memories, emotions and thoughts have almost overwhelmed me. I've been, for the most part, a very buttoned up person, a loner, when it comes to a whole lot of things. I hope you won't mind this follow up information about my life and myself. I guess I've appointed you my sounding board or my metaphorical "shoulder to cry on". I'm going to give you a little background and a little of the history, I think, of how I reacted to what happened. Don't ask my why. I think it's because I've never been able to tell anyone about it. I never told my wife, or anyone for that matter, about any of this. Primarily I wasn't sure she would understand and I didn't want to hurt her. The other motivating factor is a dream I had this week that I had not had in a long, long time. But more about that later. I'll try not to be tedious or boring, as I fear I was in my original e-mail. I'll also try to avoid being maudlin or morose.

First of all, when I used the word fortuitous in my first e-mail to describe how I discovered your website, I used it in the classic definition of "happening by a fortunate accident or chance". My wife used the term one day in passing (in late October, I think) to describe a technique she wanted to use for the finish on the walls of our dining room. It was a word I did not know, so I decided to google it. That was the fortuitous part. I saw several references to your website and, curious, I went to it. Well, I know now that was when the first crack in the dam appeared.

You see, when I told you if I hadn't locked this away I wouldn't have survived, I wasn't just spinning out some kind of trite bullshit. After the shit hit the fan at Stephen's, I retreated into myself. There were a lot of self remonstrations for not standing up to his father, for not going back to help him and for not trying, somehow, to do the right thing. Not long after I realized he wasn't coming back to school, I began to have a recurring dream. Again I'm not being maudlin, just being truthful. This dream happened almost nightly for at least the first six months after Stephen was gone, and somewhat less frequently for the next three years. This is the same dream I had just the other night. This dream is based in the reality that when Stephen and I used to spend time at the hunting cabin, sometimes I would wake in the night and watch him as he slept. He was a notorious back sleeper, no covers unless it was cold, and I would look at him and marvel. He looked for all the world like one of those Greek statues that had fallen from it's pedestal. I would take him in from the top of his head to his feet. I remember the slight definition of his pectoral muscles, the musculature of his ribcage, the flat inverted comma of his navel. He was everything I thought I wasn't; handsome, bright, and funny. The Saturday after Thanksgiving of 1971, he woke up and saw me and asked me what I was doing. I stammered that I enjoyed watching him sleep and strange as it seemed, that I thought I loved him. He said that was okay, because he thought he had loved me for quite a while. Well, that was how the dream would go and then I would wake up and realize it was nothing but a dream and I would be inconsolable, crying and unable to go back to sleep. This sort of had a devastating effect on me, physically and emotionally.

As I said before, I played football my junior year. At the beginning of the season, I was 6'4", weighed 200 lbs. even, had a thirty inch waist and was in pretty good condition considering what was going on in my head. Since our high school was small (1-A at the time) most of the boys on the team had to play both ways, offense and defense. Defensively, I was a linebacker and on offense, I played halfback/tight end. My junior year, at the beginning of the season, I started on both offense and defense. By the middle of the season, I had lost ten lbs., had lost my desire to play and my starting positions. I know now this was happening because I felt worthless for not doing something about what had happened. I thought I had abandoned Stephen and I felt abandoned by him. Plus, those fucking dreams wouldn't go away. My appetite diminished and I started running a couple of miles in the morning and evenings. By the middle of my senior year in high school (the year I did not play football) I weighed 165 lbs. I didn't do anything but attend school, study and run. I did not hang out with friends, or date; I was alone unto myself. Now I realize how destructive and self-pitying I was being, at the time though I did not care. My parents became so concerned with my weight loss that they took me to several doctors. All pronounced me well and fit, however one doctor asked me if I was depressed or if anything traumatic had happened to me recently. I told him I was fine as frog's hair, thank you very much.

I felt isolated in my hometown. Although I didn't think anyone knew about what had happened, you see, I knew what had happened and I felt sort of like I had some kind of scarlet letter tattooed on my chest. Again, self pity gone completely amok.

Fortunately, I kept my grades up and I went off to college in the fall of 1973. I threw myself into schoolwork and little else. I was still having my little nightly reminders of things lost, but not as frequent, only once or twice a week by this time. My freshman year was not one of the highlights of my life, however. I went home only twice the whole year; at Christmas and for a couple of days at Spring Break. There was nothing there for me. I've never been a big visitor to my hometown in the intervening years. I am the youngest of my siblings and they all would visit back home much more than I would. In fact, I can probably count the trips back home since college on two hands, with two of those trips being the funerals for my father in 1995 and for my mother in 1997. In my sophomore year at college, early in the first semester, I became quite ill with mononucleosis. I finally had to take a trip back home to my family doctor. He examined me and made the diagnosis. My throat was practically closed, bacterial excreta on my tonsils, my liver and spleen were swollen and I was jaundiced. My doctor asked me if I was drinking heavily or involved with drugs. Well, truth be told, I wasn't. He then told me if I was being truthful about the drugs and alcohol, whatever I was doing wasn't working and I needed to change. He said I was undernourished and suggested I take a few months off school to recuperate. I told him I could not do that, but that I would change and begin taking better care of myself. Since I wasn't actually ready to shuffle off this mortal coil just yet, I came to the conclusion I was going to have to put the past behind me. I wasn't quite sure how, but I decided to start eating better, make some friends and get on with life. All of this was about as fun as a prostate exam, at first, but the more effort I put into it, the better it got and the healthier I got. I met my future wife at a friend's party, we started dating and the rest, as they say, is history.

I made reference in my follow up e-mail to a song Stephen and I used to really love; Rod Stewart's "Every Picture Tells a Story". I've got a remembrance that goes along with that little song. Stephen and I out at the hunting cabin, listening to a portable radio, with that song blasting and us, shirtless, belting out at the top of our lungs (probably obnoxiously off key, but we thought we were great) "Spent some time feelin' inferior, standing in front of my mirror; Combed my hair in a thousand ways, but I came out looking just the same". Then I have to fast forward to about 1977 or 1978, the first time I heard Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill" and the lines in that song that said; ""To keepin' silence I resigned, My friends would think I was a nut. Turning water into wine Open doors would soon be shut. So I went from day to day, though my life was in a rut, 'till I thought of what I'd say, which connection I should cut, I was feeling part of the scenery, walked right out of the machinery, My heart going boom boom boom, "Hey," he said, "grab your things, I've come to take you home."" I realized that was, in a nutshell, the bargain I had made with myself, resigned to silence, open doors shut and that connection I had cherished, cut, in order to survive. I guess now, at age 47, I can look back, almost without anger, and actually grieve that loss of innocence.

Believe me when I tell you I realize I'm not the only one who has ever lost something dear to them in life, perhaps it's just that I've never articulated that loss to anyone. I guess that would make this more of an ode than an elegy. Whatever it is, you probably won't want to post it on your site. After trying my damndest, I think I still ended up sounding maudlin, but what the hell, who cares?

I apologize for droning on and on, but as I said earlier, I have really stirred up the echoes my ears quit hearing years and years ago. Some of them are not so bad.

Thanks again, Bill

---

"he was my hero"

one more note from bill

after posting Luke and Stephen's story, i had occasion to speak with Luke on the phone a number of times

this email was one of his follow-ups to our conversations

Luke is a superb writer, and in this email his take on what happened between and to him and Stephen is excellent

---

Dear Bill,

If I tried to tell you what our conversations the past weeks have meant to me and my peace of mind, words would fail me. Suffice to say this whole experience has been illuminating and life changing. Allow me to try to distill just where I am right now.

I know now that what Stephen and I did was an intuitive, innate act. Of course, I think to begin with, it was a purely physical attraction, at least on my part, and I can only assume he was also attracted to me. The whole truth, though, is that from the sharing of the physicality of the sexual act I grew to love him more than life itself, more than my own life. And I think he felt the same way about me. Why? Because when I professed my love for him he told me, without hesitation, that he loved me. Also because of the way he acted toward me and the tenderness of the words and actions between us when we were alone. To downplay what we felt for each other as the exploration and experimentation of two boys would be to denigrate the depth of affection and commitment I know we felt for one another. However, when we were found out by our fathers, they reacted in the way that our culture demanded they react. These two men were afraid their boys were queers, to hammer home a point. And they probably felt devastated. And angry. In that day and time, it was almost impossible for them to react any other way. Does this make what they did to a couple of boys any less hideous? Nope. They could not understand, in fact I did not understand until recently, that what Stephen and I were doing was, in it's way, sacramental to us. There is only one other person in this whole wide world with whom I have had sex with that has made me feel that same way, and that is my wife. There is a unique feeling of wholeness and completeness that comes with the sharing of the most elemental, physical and emotional release with someone who is a total equal and whom you adore unequivocally. To reiterate, I have had that feeling only with two people in my entire life; Stephen and my wife. They made me/make me feel like I am someone who is completely worthy of love and consideration beyond my rather limited ability of comprehension. That is rare gift of untold value. What more can be said?

I say all this to get to other points. The first is I have lived my life as ostensibly a straight man. In fact I still see myself that way. But I understand more fully now that I do have a normal attraction, but I am still at heart a monogamous man. Despite the fact I had sex with other women before I was married, the one woman that was and is unique is my wife. I think it was the same way with Stephen.

And that is why I would have had a hard time identifying with the predominant homosexual community. I can't think of any of the icons of the homosexual community I find attractive. One of the things I found most appealing about Stephen was his masculinity. He was a boy who was all boy, and totally without guile. The other thing is, as I said, is I am at heart a monogamist. The gay culture appears to celebrate promiscuity. Even in the wake of a horrendous plague like AIDS, there is no outcry against the overriding message that promiscuity is okay, especially if you are gay. And there does not seem to an alternative offered to the viewpoint that anal sex is the ultimate act of sex between two men. The final point is that I find the concept of anal sex as the exemplar of sex between men more than a little offensive. In the context of the relationship I had with Stephen I understand we were both young and inexperienced but the point of our contact, both initially and subsequently, was physical closeness, dick to dick. This, of course, transformed into a kind of an affiliation of souls, but the physical never changed from a mutual sharing of our gratification, in other words, Stephen's satisfaction with the sexual act was as important to me as my own. And I think, by his actions, he showed me he had the same priorities. It was a cooperative effort, not a dominant and submissive one. I know you have pointed out to me that what we shared was pure and innocent, and I think it was. I also think there was a mutual respect there that I do not see lifted up as a paragon in the gay community. Of course I am speaking as someone outside of that community. If Stephen was or is, in fact, gay I hope he was never initiated into the anal archetype, but I fear that I may be hoping for too much.

All that is to say, again, I think I may be compelled to seek Stephen out, at least to see how he is. I guess I was the fortunate one because the recriminations, as harsh and hurtful as they were, for what we did came from my father only once. I shudder to think what Stephen must have had to endure at the hands of his father and mother. I know I still love him with the same intensity I did when we were boys. I've told you he was my hero, and he was. He epitomized in my young mind all the things that I aspired to. Maybe that is just a romanticized notion of what Stephen was, but, still in all, I hope I was his hero also.

Many thanks to you for listening.

My love to you and Patrick.

Luke

AND