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Coming out is not only the first time when a guy has sex with another man. It is also the psychological, social, and even the public stance that someone takes toward his homosexuality. In the past, few people were lucky enough to have come out in a relaxed way. Perhaps today fantasy and reality seem to be a little closer. You’ve gone to the far end of the beach (where you know men in pairs and groups hang out) just because...well, just for fun. You don’t really give it much thought, wanting to sun with these guys, but you do notice your mounting excitement. They all seem to be having fun. In the water two slender fellows are sitting on the shoulders of beefier guys and playing war. Near you, another group, all well built and methodically tanned, are playing cards on a blanket and listening to a radio. Right next to you is a man who appears, like you, to be alone. The sun is so glaring you turn on your stomach and rest your head on your arm. You close your eyes and listen to the waves, the war cries, the transistor radio—and your own pulse throbbing in the ear pressed against your biceps.
When you open your eyes, you let them travel up and down your neighbor’s body. His oiled flank has picked up orange dye from his beach towel. His profile glows in the bright, white light. His chest is almost hairless except for a wisp of hair around each nipple. His legs, however, are luxuriously furred and powerful. In a rush, that forbidden desire to touch his body comes over you.Your neighbor has now turned on his side. The sun is so bright and strong you’re not certain if his eyes are trained on you. Now you can see how broad his shoulders are, and how narrow his hips, from which his muscular thighs project like arrows from a quiver, bristling with golden feathering. He is looking at you. He comes to your towel and asks you to oil his back. He’s staying at the hotel down the beach, and after you’ve sunned for hours and jumped into the breakers and laughed and looked at each other and applied still more lotion to each other’s body, he asks you up to his room for a coffee or beer.
You feel you should tell him you’re not...not what? Not attracted to him? Then how do you explain the embarrassing mound swelling your swim trunks? Sure, you’ll come up for a drink. He’s very casual as you stroll through the lobby and ride up the elevator, and you wonder whether you’ve been mistaken about him. After all, he is from out of town. He may just have stumbled by accident on the "wrong" end of the beach. You realize he’s not feeling guilty—a realization that makes you recognize that you are. No matter. He’s a really good conversationalist, knows a lot about movies and music, has a great smile, a great...body. Even in his room, once he’s closed the door (at last!), he’s still casual; never more so than when he steps naked out of his swimsuit and announces he’s going to take a shower. "Want to take one, too?" he asks. "Sure," you say with a nonchalant shrug and a throat dry enough to grow cactus in. "Well then, come on." He leads the way. You follow impatiently, reluctantly, gracefully, clumsily, happily, fearfully, as his brown body, with its band of white around the center, shimmers in and out of focus.
Once you’re both in the shower, nothing could seem more natural than scrubbing his back and, as he slowly revolves, his chest. Some nagging little martinet in your brain keeps shaking his finger at you and gasping in shock, but you ignore the reprimands and move smoothly into his arms. His body is still hot from all the solar energy absorbed that day, glassy from the thundering water. Now his hair is wet and pressed against his skull, which turns out to be surprisingly delicate and finely shaped. He pulls you still closer, kisses you, and you’re not certain whether you’re drowning or in something very much like ecstasy. No man has ever kissed you before, and you feel that bristly day’s growth of beard above the smooth lips. He backs off a second and says, "You’re okay?" All you can manage to do is nod and hope he knows the nod means "Yes." In bed you’re so happy and so relieved—relieved of a cumbersome burden of yearning you’ve been shouldering too long—that you run your hands through your damp hair and just sigh. "What’s wrong?" he asks.
"Nothing," you tell him. "Everything’s right. But I should tell you something. This is my first time with a guy." "You could have fooled me. Do you want to stop?" "In about two days." He does think you should take a breather. Then you talk about your past. You remember the years you jerked off to porn magazines and videos; lest you be ostracized by your peers for being a fag, you never showed too much attention to a friend in school. Your new friend has lots of interesting things to say, and his story is not too different from yours. That nagging in your brain is less insistent. The talk is great, but what you really want is to get back into bed. At last you just say so and he says, "Sounds good to me." He takes the lead in sex, and you don’t explode, nor does the devil rise up out of the mattress to claim you. In fact, it feels good, but what feels best is this freedom to be next to another man.
You can’t believe you are finally free to touch him everywhere, to lie under him and on top of him, to kiss that sandpaper beard. Will it leave a beard burn? you wonder in panic. Will people be able to tell? The panic gives way to a surge of pleasure, the pleasure of inhaling another man’s aroma, for surely that’s what you’re doing, that’s what this freedom is, the freedom to breathe in the smell, the touch, the reality of an affectionate and sensitive man who seems to like you. His jacket and slacks fit you, and after you’re both dressed, you go down to the dining room (no, the people can’t tell, but, oddly, you wish they could). You feel a little formal and tired and relaxed after the sun and the sex—and the drama, taking place mainly in your head.
Not much gets said over dinner, but looks are exchanged, and during coffee he squeezes your hands under the table. "I never thought," he says, "I’d be the one to bring someone out." "To do what?" you ask. "I just brought you out. Coming out. That means having your first gay experience." The label sounds strange to you. You thought the word should be freedom or maybe graduation. But of course that is what they—no, we, you suppose—yes, we gay guys call it: coming out. |
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