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intro note from bill
On a site filled with potent true-life stories, this one from Bradley, in its evocation of a complex, love-hate relationship between two brothers who aren't quite sure where aggression ends and sex begins, remains one of the most powerful.
I speak frequently in our club of natural male sex aggression, and without question many of us in this club feel a connection between fighting and sex that makes outsiders, who prefer the controlled form of rape called anal, uncomfortable.
But the affair between Brad and his brother, which starts in a wrestling match and ends with bashings and loneliness, remains for me a conundrum. Was there anyway these guys could have been friends? Was his brother truly str8? And how str8 can you be if you're having an affair with your brother?
Ultimately I think the biggest problem was and is homophobia, homophobia among Brad and his brother and the larger society.
For if, after all, Brad had been free, as a teen, to find another lover, what happened between him and his brother would have been a one time occurrence, and they would have moved on - in whatever direction was right for each of them.
But they couldn't. And Brad still can't.
Brad wrote me recently that he was joining a gay men's therapy group. And I said, presumptuously, I don't think that's what you need.
You see, I think Brad needs a frot support group - a group of peers who understand what cockrub and dick2dick and cock combat mean, and who can be there for him while he finishes his life work, his heroic quest for his heroic friend.
Read Bradley's post.
Warrior grindonme2 AKA GentleWarrior
posted 4/9/01
I guess I was one of the very first men to join Bill's Cock Rub Warriors site. It happened at a crucial time for me, when I'd begun questioning seriously why my life had become so isolated. As successful, liked and respected as I felt in my professional life, my personal life was seriously lacking: no real gay friends, no dates, no lover. Never mind that I considered myself reasonably good-looking, smart, and funny. Never mind that I am openly gay with the blessings of my family and colleagues. I have all but shunned the gay community here in San Francisco. I've let bad experiences with men color my choices: the awful sexual experiences, the inability and/or unwillingness to follow a particular "model" of life - no daily gym, no pocket handkerchiefs, no political activism, no dancing at the clubs, no "camp" sensibility . . . only a daily sense of not fitting in.
Finally, I went back into therapy, this time for the long haul! In trying to delineate why I felt apart from the other men in my community, one of the first things I mentioned was my love of frottage. My therapist, who knows that a healthy life includes friends, sex and love, encouraged me to look for what I want. On a whim, I entered the word "frottage" into a search engine and began finding other men who loved doing what I had always considered to be the most romantic and most exciting sexual act. I even got answers to ads I placed, but, with one exception, I didn't follow through on these responses. Along the way, however, I met Bill, whose words have constantly touched a chord deep within me. I've shared many things with him that I've only told my therapist!!! I joined this site as soon as he started it, and like many of you, I come here often to read what others have written. (I've even contributed a story or experience myself.) Usually, I get incredibly excited and jerk off to these tales of frottage. Lately, though, I've come here just as much to find some sense of community that I've been missing in the "real" world. Words that some of you have spoken have given me the courage to share some painful things with you. I realize that this means that this particular posting won't be a place to jerk off to. Ah, well. You don't have to read it. But thanks to those who choose to stay. This is about my brother and me.
My brother and I were close in age but not much else. We shared a room throughout our childhood which held our beds, desks and dresseres but could barely contain the anger and competitiveness we felt for each other. He was the jock, and I was the brain. You'd think we could have lived with that, even celebrated each other's victories and supported each other in our failures. But brotherhood doesn't usually work out that way. Instead, we fought and fought, sometimes physically (which my brother, younger than me but bigger and stronger, excelled at) but most often with my weapon of choice, hurtful words.
All this happened on top of my lifelong journey toward understanding that I was different. When I was six (what a magic number that seems to be on this site), I remember dreaming repeatedly about being the beloved sidekick of a superhero, of flying through the air and battling a supervillain (who was just as hot-looking as my comrade and who wanted me to be HIS friend.) Feeling physically close to these men made me feel so . . . right! I got the name for this condition when I was ten and we moved. Instead of having lots of friends in my new school as before, now I was universally despised for being short and smart and bad at sports. I was a "homo." I remember a beautiful boy with deep green eyes who tackled me to the ground after lunch one day. He shouted awful things in my face while he restrained me with his body. I was humiliated and, at the same time, incredibly excited. I couldn't understand why I didn't WANT him to get up off of me. I wished he was holding me out of love instead of hate.
I remember masturbating for the first time when I was around twelve or so. I was watching TV with a pillow under my hips and I started to rock and hump the pillow. Suddenly, I felt the delicious surge you get as you ride the crest of a wet dream. I kept rubbing the pillow and was rewarded with that sensation you all remember, my first conscious ejaculation! I wanted to do this all day, every day. Of course, this couldn't be managed in my brother's room, so I took to locking myself in the bathroom several times a day and rubbing my cock against the soft rug on the floor.
At some point, I began to realize that my brother was also making frequent trips to the bathroom. I knew these visits were for the same reason as mine, and my life - and our relationship - took on a new dimension. As angry as we would still get with each other, I understood that we now shared something primal and wonderful. One day, I found a porn book in his dresser drawer - straight porn, of course - but the thought of him getting off just like I did was exciting and somehow validating for me. More amazing, it turned out that my brother sensed this of me as well. One morning, alone in the house, we were wrestling together in our robes when his erection came into view. I knew that he couldn't miss mine; hell, I wanted him to see it. We stripped naked and he crawled into my bed. I lay on top of him and began to rub my cock against his. He put his arms around me and we ground our cocks together until we shot all over each other. I spent the rest of the week convincing myself that I had hated it, that my revulsion and guilt proved I wasn't gay. By the following week, we were doing it again. We kept it up for six years.
Our sexual relationship mirrored our relationship as brothers. Sometimes we jerked and rubbed together in a sort of partnership, but when we were mad at each other we would withhold sex from the other. We would even let the other one know how horny we were, flashing our erections, and then lock ourselves away to jerk off in private, denying the other the pleasure that could be had if only the offending brother had been reasonable. It must have been tough for my brother, who is I believe essentially straight (married with two kids now) to rely on another boy as his major source of sexual relief. His friends were tough guys and, as I later learned through some writings of his that I found, gay bashers. This led to some relatively abusive moments between my brother and me, when he wanted me to suck him off or be fucked by him. He never forced me all the way; he took no for an answer and then sulked and pouted and withheld the type of sex I wanted from me. Nothing oral or anal seemed to work for us, as it seemed to reduce our sex life to a give/recieve basis. If my brother came because I had sucked him, he wouldn't be in the mood to give back as good as he was given. Frottage became the one act in our lives where we shared ourselves with each other completely. For a few minutes, we were equals, not rivals...even friends.
I suppose what we did as kids goes in the books as incest, to be reviled or dismissed. I look back on it and don't get particularly turned on or angry about it, just sad. Somehow, my adult life has become limited by it. I've never found the intimacy that I shared with my brother then, not even with him! We're not particularly close today, and we never discuss our sexual past. The men I met in college and afterward mostly wanted to fuck and suck, or they were so full of self-hatred that they anesthetized themselves with drink or drugs. I could never follow these routes, and while it may have saved me in one sense, it has left me with a sense of loneliness that pervades my life.
Bill speaks of those of us who don't follow the pack as survivors, and in a way I agree and am thankful. I didn't get AIDS or feel the need to enter any sort of rehab. I'm not openly self-destructive, but I'm not progressing either. Something essential is missing from my life, and I know that a great part of it is delineated in the entries on this site. The men in here write words that resonate deeply within me. Whenever I read them, I feel as if I'm not alone. I get turned on, yes, but I also feel a sense of community that's not here at home for me, even a vague feeling of hope that I could make real connections with others out there. I think that frottage has become a sort of symbol for me of what it means to be gay. It's not about choosing roles - no "tops" or "bottoms" - but truly sharing an experience, a way of life, with each other. It's about soaring through the air with your partner, two superheroes doing battle together against a crazy world. God I want that so badly in my life, even as I admittedly push it away on a daily basis.
Keep writing, guys. Keep this site alive and growing. Your words reach out to me and give me the hope that change is possible
reply from bill
This a brave but somber post by a brave warrior, and I want to address it on the personal level and the cultural level as well.
Speaking personally, I had a sister, 7 years older, with whom I was rivals also - and we too had sexual urges towards each other. We didn't act on them other than in a very minor way because we slept in different rooms, and because she was a lot older.
Still, when I started humping the sheets, I got a discarded terrycloth bathrobe of my sister's, which was both soft and rough, and put it under my crotch to simulate having another boy there. I didn't fantasize about my sister - but I was aware that it was odd, at best, that I was using an article of her clothing to jerk off on.
So these sexual urges between siblings aren't rare or unusual.
But part of what happened to Brad, it seems to me, has to do both with sibling sexuality and rivalry, and pervasive cultural homophobia, and it's the latter I want to address, in a little essay I wrote for Brad, called
dedicated to
GentleWarrior Brad
Reading Brad's post reminded me of the absence of cultural supports for people like ourselves.
As a young child, Brad, like myself, wanted an heroic friend, a superhero. When he entered puberty, that desire became sexual as well.
Living in an intensely homophobic society, he wasn't able to cast far and wide for such a companion, and instead found only his brother. And although in frottage they could have a friendly relationship, the rest of the time they couldn't put their familial rivalry behind them, and remained, essentially, enemies.
That of course is very sad, and a large part of the problem clearly was societal homophobia. For although Brad describes his brother as essentially straight, they had a homosexual relationship for six years. So the reality I would think is more complex, as is suggested by his brother's friendship with bashers when he himself was involved in m2m sex - as we know now, it's common for bashers to have a secret sexual life with men - and it's possible that Brad's brother did with his friends, and, perhaps, still does.
But what a difference it would have made if Brad, and the rest of us, had been living in a culture that wasn't simply tolerant of homosex, but had myths and stories that supported it as well.
There have been such cultures, and there are such myths.
The greatest, I believe, is an epic called Gilgamesh, which was created in Sumeria, the world's first civilization, almost 5,000 years ago.
In Gilgamesh, two superheroes are brought together by the gods and, after a titanic wrestling match, become lovers. Their relationship is acknowledged and recognized by their society. They have a series of epic adventures together, in which their rallying cry is "Two people, companions, they can prevail!"
Eventually, the power of their love upsets the gods, and they send a sickness to Enkidu which kills him. Gilgamesh, devastated by grief, abandons his kingship of their great city and goes on a quest, unsuccessful, for immortality.
Gilgamesh presents a model for a same-sex erotically-bonded pair that's monogamous, heroic and noble - the exact opposite of our own culture's model for homosexuality, which is promiscuous, cowardly, and base.
And because of the importance of Sumerian culture, which spread throughout the Middle East and into Greece, that uplifting "Gilgamesh model" of homosex prevailed for thousands of years. Kids growing up with that model were not ridiculed for seeking an heroic friend - rather they were supported.
We can see that in the Iliad, which was written down about 2,000 years after Gilgamesh had first been recorded on cuneiform tablets. In the Iliad, Achilles and Patroclus are boyhood companions and lovers who go to war together. After Patroclus is killed, there's a brilliant but agonizing scene when his ghost comes to Achilles in a dream, asking that their ashes be mixed together after Achilles' own death, an act of great intimacy. Achilles readily agrees, and then attempts to hold Patroclus, saying, "Let us, if only for a little, embrace, and take full satisfaction from the dirge of sorrow."
But when he tries to touch Patroclus, Patroclus vanishes - he is just a ghost after all - and Achilles awakes in a torment of grief.
The gods then give Achilles a choice: he can leave the war, go home, and live to a ripe old age, or he can stay and avenge Patroclus' death - in which case, he'll be killed himself.
Achilles of course chooses to avenge his heroic friend's death, in so doing killing another warrior, Hector, who is himself a noble and great man.
We know that these sorts of mythic stories influenced behavior, because we can see that influence in the real lives of people like Harmodius and Aristogeiton, Athenian lovers who chose to die fighting tyranny rather than submit to it. Or of Alexander the Great and Hephaestion, boyhood friends and lovers and inseparable companions. The grief Alexander felt at Hephaestion's death - he lay atop the corpse for more than a day and had to be dragged off it by his men - without a doubt brought on his own, just three months later.
And so it continued all the way down to the Roman emperor Hadrian and his lover Antinous - about 3,000 years.
So culture - and cultural, that is mythic, models - really matter, and clearly all of our lives would have been better had we lived in a culture which supported us.
That's why in my writing I try to present an image of homosex which is noble, phallic, and heroic - because that's what cockrub and homosex are to me, and because I think that model is far preferable to the effeminate, cowardly, and anally promiscuous one of mainstream gay male culture.
So as best I can, I want to support Bradley in his continuing search for his hero. As I do everyone in the club.
American culture - both gay and straight - belittles that quest. But that culture is dead wrong.
American culture is intensely materialistic and so worships death. It's a culture that is unconscionably destructive to the young - it eats its children, the way it ate Brad and his brother.
Heroic Homosex
Athenian Warriors and Lovers
Who Died in Battle and Were Buried Together
This Athenian stele or grave marker presents a striking image from a culture of heroic homosex.
These men are lovers and soldiers who were killed during the Peloponnesian War and buried together. They're a pretty typical same-sex couple of the period. One has a beard, which indicates he's older, but clearly the difference in their ages is not great.
Athens was a pretty brutal place. It was a major slave society - one of the things that destroyed Greek democracy was the expansion of slavery - and it was almost constantly at war with other city states.
But it was also intensely creative. And who can compare the life of an American homosexual - surrounded by material luxury and hate - to that of an ancient Greek - barefoot and, by our standards, poor, but part of a great and ennobling culture, which admired and celebrated same-sex love.
bill
reply from Andrew64
Dear cockrub friend,
I find your story very moving and I wish to tell you that you shouldn't feel any kind of shame for what you shared with your brother. Consensual incest, especially between brothers or twins, can be one of the most beautiful and deepest male bond, full of love and affection. I wish I had a brother who could share with me my first sexual discoveries and frottage experiences! I really do hope you'll be able to find a partner with whom you can live again a fully satisfying frottage bond... and don't feel any regrets for your past. Best wishes!
Andrew
reply from bill
the dioscuri, mythic Spartan brothers, had that sort of bond
to learn more about the mythic and historical supports for Heroic Homosex, ck out Heroes
also, GentleWarrior Brad contributed a fictional story to the club about teen frot love, Bunkbed Buddies, with a happy ending, the sort of ending and beginning many of us hoped for as teenagers. Much of the fiction on the site, including my own THE FIGHT, is of that nature, and for that reason to me it's almost as important as the truelife stories in Warriors Speak. For while of course we must have a good grasp of reality, we musn't surrender our dreams either.
I hope Bradley's dreams come true.
AND
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