The experiences related are all true and accurate to the best of my memory, but the names have been changed to protect the innocent and shield the guilty. I've related a story of a painful but important and enriching time in my life. The judgment of how right or wrong I was is not in the hands of society at large, but rather in the eyes of those who today understand the desire of some men for a place at the table when discussing the genuineness of their feelings for one another and the expression of that affection through a sexual activity that is not only life affirming but mindful of both participants' shared mutual enjoyment.

The website I mentioned in the story is Heroic Homosex, an affiliate of The Man2Man Alliance. The impact this site had upon my life and the assistance it gave me in reconciling my impression of myself and my sexuality cannot be overstated. The site was not only the genesis of the story being told, but in my own recognition that there are many men, gay and straight, who share the same feelings and desires I do. The gentleman who owns this site, Bill Weintraub, has been an invaluable aide and mentor in affirming to me the fact that what Phillip and I engaged in was nothing more than genuine love, respectful of one another, pure in its intent and practice. In one conversation, he called it heroic, and in truth, Phillip was my boyhood hero and I hope I was his.

The site is an advocacy site, dedicated to the proposal that men are capable of physical relationships without having to sacrifice their masculinity. This flies in the face of both the dominant heterosexual and homosexual cultures. Straight culture defines men within the confines of a narrow and sterile ideal of how men should relate to one another, both emotionally and physically. Any physical bonding that involves sex automatically brands you as something less than a man; at least that is how I was taught. Perhaps society has made some progress in the recognition that this is a natural part of masculine biology and psychology, but I don't think we have made enough strides down the road to understanding. Gay culture, mistakenly I think, has determined that anal sex is the penultimate expression of sexual contact between men. I reject this, primarily because in the wake of the AIDS epidemic it is an inherently dangerous act. Also I think it subjugates one of the participants to the other, emasculating him, turning him into a proxy for heterosexual contact. Another man has never penetrated me, nor have I penetrated another man, I have absolutely no desire to be initiated into this behavior. To me it is an unequal act, unmindful of the basic human need for a shared experience without pain and with dignity. More to the point I think that frottage, or rather dick to dick contact, is the acme of sexual activity between men because it is focused on that which makes men masculine, namely their genitals, rather than their excretory system. To draw a parallel with heterosexual sex, men and women connect to one another genitally. They are made that way, like counterweights or puzzle pieces, complimentary of one another. In the same way, in dick to dick sexual activity, men are related to one another as they should be, in that part of the body that fits together sensually. For men and women sex is a naturally penetrative act. For men and men the natural experience, to my mind, is that which stimulates them phallically, not anally. The anus is not genitalia, period. I am not trying to be confrontational here, but rather affirmative of a natural affinity the majority of men feel for one another. To be able to have a healthy, fulfilling, safe act that is cooperative in the achievement of gratification should be hailed as a boon to both cultures but instead it has been met with skepticism in straight society and derision in the gay community.

The website also gives in detail the historical and cultural context of the recognition of homosexual contact between men. This is relevant to both men who are either primarily heterosexual or homosexual. One may have desires for both sexes and be considered totally within the realm of normalcy. In fact, this may be our most basic biology, that we are not only capable of giving and receiving pleasure with each other as men, but that we are hard wired to enjoy it. Recognizing it as a part of the natural sexual interplay among men will go a long to removing the prohibitions still in place in our society against the physical sexual expression between men of their bond and friendship. That's not to say every friendship between men should involve sex, but rather that if it evolves into a sexual sharing it is not an aberrant or immoral behavior, but a natural and imminently uplifting experience.

I know the things that happened to Phillip and me were the products of a society that placed severe restrictions and penalties upon the activity we undertook. As a result, our fathers feared that their sons were queer, irreparably broken or morally weak. We, as boys, suffered the consequences of judgments that were severe and unfortunate, to say the least. At worst I suffered heartbreak I almost could not bear. I don't know how or if Phillip suffered, but I fear he did and that makes the pain sharper somehow. In the bigger picture I know we were normal kids doing normal things that made us feel alive, made us feel pleasure and created a bond between us that even today I feel. To say my love for Phillip has changed would be a lie. I love him still, perhaps because we were separated before the relationship took its natural course whatever that might have been. Or maybe, even if nature had taken its course, the love would have strengthened and grown into more, not less. I will never know and I still feel I was robbed of something precious because of that. Life is never fair and the endings of stories are always a mixture of bitter and sweet. Without the furrows that pain digs into the landscape of our souls, no seeds of joy would find shelter to bloom. I think our culture owes it to us to recognize, with open minds, the simple fact that human beings often seek to relate to one another on that most basic skin to skin level and the activity undertaken is inherently an act of compassion, of relating heart to heart our essential need for contact.