This story is completely true and accurate, or at least as best as I can remember it almost 25 years later...
I'd always been a small kid, more brains than brawn. From junior high through early high school I was very insecure, awkward, out of place. But midway through high school I was introduced to drugs -- pot, acid, coke -- and suddenly I didn't feel so uncomfortable all of the time. I felt hip and cool and less like an outsider. But it turns out I have an addictive personality, and pretty soon I was high all the time. I was smart enough and had enough structure at home to coast through high school. But when I moved away to college, living in the dorms, with no restrictions on my behavior, I really lost it...getting high pretty much 24/7, going weeks without showing up to class. It is not surprising at all that the year ended with me back at my parents' house, having flunked out of school.
Of course, I hadn't learned my lesson yet and was still getting high all the time. Eventually my parents, in an act of tough love, kicked me out of the house.
The next couple of weeks were spent couch surfing with friends (or, more accurately, drug buddies), but eventually their goodwill was all used up and I was on my own. Having no money and not knowing what to do, I asked one of my drug buddies what he had done when he'd been homeless a few months prior. He said that the state had converted on of the old prison buildings into a homeless shelter at night, where they would give you a sandwich for dinner and a cot to sleep on. That sounded like a pretty shitty option, but being it was my only option, I walked the 6 miles there and arrived that night, too late for supper, but just in time for bed.
Even though I was 19, I was still very small. And despite having spent a few years in the drug culture, I was a relatively sheltered, naïve, innocent kid, with lots of book smarts but very little in the way of street smarts. I was a smart kid from a pretty nice middle-class family; I'd never had to fend for myself before. So being in this old prison building at lights out, laying in a tiny cot in a cold dark room surrounded by about 10 or 15 rough, dirty, homeless men, I was feeling extremely vulnerable and scared. I really felt like I was in prison, that I was the "fresh meat" at the mercy of these big, rough strangers.
My fear must have been extremely obvious to the guy who was in the bed next me. After it had been lights out for about 30 minutes, and most everyone seemed to have fallen asleep, he whispered over to me "hey, are you ok?" I told him I was fine, but we both knew that wasn't the case. The first thing he said to me after that was "don't worry, you're going to be ok" and for some reason I felt instantly better. I didn't know him from the guy on the other side of me, but just the way he said it, and the warm look in his eye when I got up the courage to look him in the face made me feel a lot calmer, like I was safe, like he would protect me.
Even though we were in the middle of a crowded room, we were able to talk quietly while everyone else slept. We talked for a long time about ourselves and how we had gotten to where we were tonight. His name was Dan; he was 52 years old, a Vietnam Vet who had been an electrician. He'd always been a drinker, but when his wife passed away a couple of years earlier, he basically became a full-blown alcoholic and cokehead. His drinking and coke habit had driven away his family and cost him his savings and his house. He'd been homeless and staying at the shelter for about 2 months.
We talked for hours, with him telling me what the routine was like there (they would bus us out to the city every morning, and then bus us back to the shelter only at night), how he spent his days, stuff about our pasts, and so forth. At one point we started talking about sex. When talking about sex with people back then I would usually lie and tell them about the girlfriends I'd had in high school who I'd had sex with. But the reality was that I was still a virgin. And it wasn't like I'd just not had sex; I had only made out with a couple of girls, and had never even gotten to second base or had anyone ever rub my dick through my pants, let alone touch it bare. I was of course very embarrassed about my lack of experience, which is why I always would lie about it, but with Dan I felt so safe that I had no problem at all being completely truthful. When I told him that no one had ever touched my dick before, let alone sucked it or had it inside of me, he told me he was bisexual, that he thought I was attractive, and that if I wanted he would stroke my dick and even suck it.
