Testimony: Adult Male with Minor Male

• Minor report by David Tuller in Salon.com, July 22, 2002.
  • An aircraft maintenance worker describes his first experience at thirteen with a man of about 30 who had hired him to do yard work. After inviting him inside and showing him pictures of men wrestling, the man “started rubbing my crotch, and I was both nervous and really excited by it.” He went on to seek out other significantly older men. “I never felt used. I really wanted it, and except for the first time I always felt like the aggressor”
  • Noted gay novelist Edmund White (Wiki) talks about picking up men at Chicago beaches and public restrooms from the age of 13 or 14. “I was very oversexed, absolutely driven wild by desire. ... The first one was a handsome architect, who actually had children older than me. I was absolutely fascinated by him, and I seduced him. I followed him to his car, walked right up to him and started talking to him. My mother was away and I said, ‘Come back to my apartment.’ And it was terrific.”
  • In an essay about sex between adolescents and adults, David Tuller relates his own desire as a 15-year-old "tormented homosexual wannabe." Upon seeing the movie Summer of '42, in which a young widow "pulls Hermie into her arms and, in her grief, into her bed," he says, "I cried while I watched, ... because I so yearned for the tender moments that Hermie found."
  • A gay healthcare professional in his 50s discusses how the relationship he pursued with a family friend in his early 20s helped him learn at the age of fifteen that men could care for each other. "It was clear that it certainly felt good to both of us. ... In some way it was a real lifesaver, because it made me feel that love and affection and closeness and sex would be possible in my life. ... when we were together, it was like a little oasis where we could be ourselves."
  • A businessman in Denver recounts his two-year relationship, from age fifteen, with his 29-year-old boss at the restaurant where he worked. "It was frightening and invigorating and I felt clumsy and awkward. But he was playful and fun and very gentle. I never felt coerced. As foreign as it was to me I was very open to it. Afterwards, I felt good, like I'd experienced something I'd wanted to for a long time." Speaking of how it affected his life at the time, he says, "I wasn't an awkward, out-of-place kid anymore. I felt appreciated for being gay, instead of being an outcast and made fun of. Suddenly I had this new self-confidence. I didn't have to hate myself for being gay."
• A long and varied career by Ambar on BoyChat, July 2005.

  A man recounts his earliest sexual experiences, including with his best friend’s father at eight years old: “He became my second very, very, very best friend and so began a wonderful, loving relationship. I still adore that man :-)”

• Letter from John in HFP Mailbag and Sexual Abuse from a Victim by John Tate, December 7, 2004.

  A 17-year-old reports on the anguish in his life stemming from sexual activity with his grandfather from age seven and attributes the worst aspects to society’s attitudes about it: “I think if this sort of thing was tolerated I would not have felt so fucking alienated, so hated, as a child, I would have not been an outcast.”

• count me IN !!! :)) by siao on BoyChat, July 2005.

  A man recounts his first experience of sex with an adult at seven years old: “suddenly fun was "in" … gosh, what was that twirling feeling which went all thru me ???” He also speaks of such encounters with many other men, saying, “NOT A SINGLE ONE EVER ABUSED ME ! I was free to say 'YES!!!!' and also knew how to say 'no' if there were ever anything I might not want.”

• Boy Crazy in Boston Magazine, May 2001
  • Famous poet Allen Ginsberg commented on the 1977 pedophilia scandal in Revere, Massachusetts, "I had sex when I was 8 with a man in the back of my grandfather’s candy store in Revere, and I turned out okay."
  • Best-selling Canadian author James Dubro was 14 in 1961 when he started having sex with a 22-year-old college student who remains his friend 40 years later.
• My Story: A story of a boy by Elf on BoyChat, October 1998.

  A man in his mid-20s tells his story. When he was nine or ten years old, he responded willingly to the seduction of a 16- or 17-year-old neighbor boy. They had a passionate love affair for over a year until they were discovered and his father beat him savagely. The older boy’s family disappeared from town. This man wrote of that affair as the best thing that ever happened to him and attributed his deep problems at the time of writing to the brutal way it was torn away from him.

• "Spike" on his website

  A 15-year-old boy writes about his adult lover: “When I was 10, I found myself a mentor, a wonderful old man that needed me as much as I needed him. … J has been the best thing that could ever have happened to me. Everything I am today I owe to J. He and Mom are both educated people who believe that I must prepare myself for adulthood by learning how to learn, how to think for myself, and how to believe in myself … Mom sees the results of my association with J, and she could not be more pleased.”

• Hoby on his website

  A boy proclaims his interest in adult men and says, “You should be able to love whoever you want when you want and as long as you both happy it dont matter what anyone else thinks.”

• My Complaints by David Alejandro, December 1996, on his website.

  A 13-year-old boy makes an impassioned plea for sexual freedom: “I want to love and be loved by whom I want. For the last two years I have an older friend. I am not gay, I like girls. He doesn’t, but we understand each other very well. It is nobody’s business what we do or don’t do. … Stop protecting me, please!” (Note: His site history page indicated that he was 13 when he posted this page and 15½ in June 1999. The English index pages said that he lived in the “Land of the Incas.”)

• Voor Een Verloren Soldaat (For A Lost Soldier), autobiographical novel by Rudi van Dantzig, 1986 and 1992 movie made from it

  Acclaimed ballet dancer and choreographer Rudi van Dantzig tells the story of his brief romance at twelve with a Canadian soldier at the end of World War II.

• Stefan on his webpage

  A 12-year-old in Holland says, “I will tell you about my BEST friend. He’s 28 and works at home. I love him the most in the world and he loves me. He says I’m the cutest boy in the world.”

• Scott O'Hara, quoted in his obituary at the Spirit of Stonewall Press Conference, New York City, June 24, 1994.

  The publisher of Steam magazine says, “When I was 12 and 13 years old I would have joined NAMBLA in a minute, because I knew I was gay and I wanted to go out and get laid, not just read The Gay Mystique all my life; I needed personal contact.”

• Ik Wilde Meer! (“I Want More!”) in Martijn (PDF, 6 Mb), December 1980, page 16-18, in Dutch.

  A married man reports on his 6-year-long relationship with a man who showed him erotic art and masturbated him. The relationship later turned platonic and the younger man was at the older’s deathbed 37 years later.

• tribute to frank by mick15 on BoyLover.net, December 7, 2005.

  A teenaged boy describes his loving, sexual relationship with his soccer mentor, who had recently died.

• I want to speak out!!!!!!!! by “15 yr old boy” on BoyChat, September 2000.

  A 15-year-old boy writes about his adult lover: “He is the best thing that has ever happened to me. … I wish this world would just open its eyes and see that relationships like this are healthy and good for boys my age—but yes only if the boy wants the relationship.”

• There is Magic Out There by Joshua Adam on his website.

  A 13-year-old in the 10th grade writes about the emotional support he gets from his older friend, Angel, who is helping him overcome the hatred cast upon him by his family and school for liking other boys. Angel and Adam have never met in person and do not plan to do so. Their relationship is entirely nonsexual, although it is definitely one of love and mentorship.

• Author Kirk Read

  In his 2001 book, How I Learned to Snap, Kirk Read tells of his sexual experiences with adults starting at age 13, which he says saved his life. Reviewed by NAMbLA.

• Shane on his website

  A 14-year-old gay boy in Australia says, “I have one really good adult friend that knows about my sexuality, … Steve has never tried anything sexual with me, although I often wish he would.”

• Under My House . Tent Sleeping . Neighbors Bedroom by Linca on BoyChat, July 2005.

  A man recounts his first experiences of sex, including with an adult neighbor at 14: “[He] did with me … what he had been wanting to do with me since I was 8 years old. We are friends to this day.”

• Two posts by hyacinth on BoyChat: May 2002 [1] and July 2005 [2]

  A man describes his childhood sexual experiences with adults. The first was anal sex with a benedictine monk at 14 years old: “I was't stupid, at 14 I knew my way around … He was very nice and very gentle, and I liked him alot.” [1] Next was a relationship that lasted for a year and a half with a man and his two sons. [2]

• Letters of a Loving Boy--Excerpted letters and diaries of boys, edited by Jarod Benjamin, 1997.

  A 14-year-old boy wrote a series of love letters, unsuccessfully courting an adult friend for a more intimate relationship.

• Just Like Greece? — Gay Teen Dates Septuagenarian, an interview of “:John ”: by Brandon K. Thorp in Mogenic, June 2006.

  A 22-year-old man talks about the 67-year-old man he met at the museum where they were both volunteering when he was 13. A friendship emerged based on unusually common interests for such a pair. The relationship evolved into mentoring and eventually romance, which became sexual two years later. They remained occassionally intimate for five years while the teenager also began to explore relationships with his age peers. Looking back on the man’s death when he was 20, he says, “He enhanced the quality of my youth, and his influence will likely enhance the quality of my entire adult life. And I enhanced his old age. We both got something out of it.”

• Aaron, on his website

  A 15-year-old boy talks about his adult lover on his website.

• Boys Speak Out on Man/Boy Love, NAMBLA, 1981.

  NAMBLA published a book with first-person accounts of 29 boys about their relationships with older men. Titles include The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me by Greg, 16, It Shouldn’t Be a Crime to Make Love by Bryan, 12, If It Wasn’t for Mark I’d Probably Be Dead Today by Carl, 14, I Need My Lovers by Tyrone, 16, and It Was Me Who Started It by Frank, 15.

• The perspective of a loving boy in On Boys and Boylovers by Jarod Benjamin, 1997.

  Jarod Benjamin’s 1997 study of male-male pedophilia includes a section that reports on pedophile relationships from the point of view of boys in them. Reference is also made to 620 quotes of boys in Edward Brongersma’s Loving Boys.