I was the baby of the family and my father died when I was nine. My brothers and sisters were all getting married and having children while I was still at school and living with my mam, and when I left school at sixteen I got a job locally in a big factory. I’m still there after 27 years, only my mam died when I was 20, leaving me on my own but not far from my elder brothers and sisters.
After mam died I had my job and my brothers and sisters to keep me going and I had affairs with lots of local girls. They were always willing to come back for more. I saved up to buy my own house and the girls came and went but I never stopped wanking. In fact, if I’m honest, I’d have to admit I often preferred wanking to having sex with girls. During the week I would wank most nights when I went to bed (or sometimes in the bath before I went to bed) and then I’d have sex with the girl friend at the weekend. I was always careful to take precautions because I’d seen how my brother had come to grief when his girlfriend got pregnant and he had to marry her. It was not a happy marriage. She told me once that she had caught my brother wanking and she thought it was disgusting. I didn’t tell her I still did it too.
Anyway, time went on and by the time I was approaching forty, my family and friends were teasing me about not getting married and one of them said “You’re not queer, are you ?” This set me thinking. I had only ever wanted to marry one of my girlfriends and she had turned me down for a mate of mine. After that I did even more wanking and I wondered how much others did it too, married men as well as single.
One day at work my mates were laughing at the personal ads in a local paper so I discovered for the first time the Men Seeking Men columns. There were lots of ads and there were two that caught my eye because they were for the right age (35 – 45) and mentioned “inexperience”. You had to phone a Voicebox number and hear a recorded message. Well I listened to these messages, which asked me to leave my phone number so that the guy could phone me. To begin with, I just put the phone down. But the idea wouldn’t go away. I had a girlfriend who came round at weekends. She was 35 (three years younger than me) and wanted a baby. She wanted to marry me too, but I didn’t feel ready for that and I decided that I wanted to try out sex with a man first – just to see what I might be missing. So I dialled the Voicebox number of the guy who had advertised himself as “ Bi, sincere & caring” and listened again to his message. He had a nice voice. He said he was self-employed, couldn’t accommodate but could travel, especially in the afternoons.” This was ideal for me as I work the early shift and am home by 2.30 pm, so I gave him my number and prepared to wait quite a long time for him to reply.