I'd always been straight as a die. Still am. But a friend from university and I have an interesting history together. When we were both about 20, he came out as gay and I was one of the last to know. He told me that he had been worried about my reaction, since he knew I was quite conservative and had recently gone through a bit of an Evangelical Christian phase. I think I surprised him with my positive and supportive reaction. In fact, I was one of the few who offered to accompany him to gay bars and events as he explored this new reality.
Sometime later - perhaps a year or two - we were having a text-message conversation about our lives and how we were doing. He had moved to another part of town and our group of friends had dispersed a little. He hadn't had much luck finding any serious partners, and the subject of our sex lives inevitably surfaced. He asked me whether I had ever had any leanings towards same-sex encounters and I said, in honesty, no I had not but said jokingly that if I ever did he would be the first to know. James asked if maybe we could try it sometimes, and I was surprised at how intrigued I was. I was young, it was a time of new things, experimentation, and putting aside old taboos, so I thought maybe I should throw caution to the wind and I got a bus to his home.
At first I was understandably nervous. We had some drinks and talked for quite a while. I can also say, I was never 'attracted' to him in a conventional sense. I was intrigued by the sexual side of things and we were close friends. I was curious. We took off our clothes. Now, when writing these things one is never sure whether one story will be taken and read by itself, or placed in sequence in series of essays, so it may or not be the first or only place I will mention that I am not a badly-endowed man. I am not overly large in but carry in proportion to my overall build, which is large, and measure over average in all areas. What most of my girlfriends have remarked on, however, is the size of my underhanging package.