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  GAY GUYS AND UNCONSCIOUS CONDITIONING
Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-05-2017, 01:29 PM - Forum: Gay guys - No Replies

This post aims to identify the weight of unconscious influences on the lives of gay guys. I refer in particular to Italian environment.

I often talk with gay guys and many times I recognize in their attitudes, as well as in mine, the result of an unconscious environmental conditioning strongly internalized.

I start with a seemingly trivial observation. Education, from an early age, is strictly differentiated by sex and is totally oriented toward heterosexuality.

Couples who appear among the Disney characters are all heterosexual. In the school textbooks references to homosexuality are minimal if not completely omitted, at best are formal but usually the context pushes to consider homosexuality in terms of defect or disease.

Despite repeated calls by the Council of Europe to put aside any form of sex discrimination and ensure equality of homosexual unions to marriage, there are still strong resistances in these areas because these resistances, more or less instrumental, are important elements to search for consensus.

The Supreme Court considered, in many respects dutifully, that calling someone “gay” is injury to a person, this judgment confirms that homosexuality is considered a negative value.

The very invisibility of the vast majority of gay people is another obvious sign of the fact that those people feel at risk or at least marginalized by the social context.

For a straight guy who begins to feel the first growing sexual feelings and the first forms of falling in love, sexuality is a reality to talk about freely in the peer group. For a gay guy the same age his sexuality is not only an absolute taboo, in the sense that it is understood as something about which you must be very wary of talking about with others, but also in the sense that it is something that must be suppressed to try to achieve a heterosexual orientation that is seen as the only legitimate one.

The Catholic Church and also many other religious groups condemn homosexuality as “grave depravity”, “sad consequence of rejecting God”, “lack of normal sexual development”, “pathological constitution”, “intrinsically evil behavior from moral point of view”. These expressions are the sign of a dogmatic assumption on homosexuality and then the sign of a rejection of any serious debate on this subject. I emphasize that a comparison to be serious, must also include the ability to change positions.

I would add that the media, practically all, with rare exceptions, show radically false images of homosexuality that are used to do the show and gratify the majority of the public in confirming their prejudices.

There are also serious films on the subject of homosexuality, but unfortunately they are in fact seen only by homosexual people and by the heterosexual world are considered just oddities and no one takes them seriously.

In such a climate, a guy who grows up and faces his own homosexuality is left to mature in a hurry and build his own morality, since the common morality is not compatible with his homosexuality. Among gays it is easy to find guys who have a strong independence of judgment and who cannot be influenced easily, but the journey that brought these guys to build their own world of values is often twisted and very tiring.

Homosexuality is not a choice but something to accept. The verb in this sentence does not mean accepting suffering as a condemnation, nor simply endure, accept means considering homosexuality as an essential part of one’s person, which is essential in the sense that you cannot put it aside, which means that “I” if I was not “gay” I would not be me.

It happens often enough to meet guys who feel wrong, who live their homosexuality as a part of themselves to repress, to delete, guys who to preserve the affection of their parents say they are willing even to deny their sexuality, guys that being aware of the condemnation of homosexuality by their religion say they are willing to deny themselves in the name of the accession to conceptions which consider them as deniers of God just because they are gay, and therefore also without normal sexual development, pathological cases, people that can be realized in faith only radically denying their sexuality.

In some cases, these guys end up opening their eyes, but frequently deep conditioning remain. It is almost unbelievable how the idea of doing something intrinsically evil and not sharable can poison sexuality with feelings of guilt and can destabilize the life of a guy.

What, in the end, leads many guys to Gay Project? The answer is simple: it is the fact that they can deal with other guys in a non-ruling, in a non-ideological climate, in a comparison not of ideas but of experiences.

It is difficult to escape from the unconscious constraints following reasoning to which we are accustomed to respond with other arguments in an infinite series.
There are not theoretical arguments that allow us to overcome the constraints and prejudices, I learned from experience, that you need to see how others live, what choices they do in practice.

To understand that a gay guy is not a green Martian but a guy like everyone else there’s only one way and it is to get in touch with gay guys, first in chat and then, why not, even in person. But to know a gay guy with which to compare seriously you cannot go looking for him in a sex chat or a dating site.
What people in general associate with the word gay has nothing to do with the reality of the vast majority of gay guys.

For a gay guy two things are essential:

1) find a way to put aside his prejudices and conditioning.
2) maintain a dimension of strong realism, which hold firmly down to earth, in other words: caution!

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  GAY SEXUAL MODELS AND PORNOGRAPHY
Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-05-2017, 01:22 PM - Forum: Gays and sex - No Replies

In social contexts in which dominates the moralism and where sex is the more widespread and deeply rooted educational taboo, there isn’t any concrete form of sex education not even at the minimum level, therefore guys looking for information about the issues related  to sexuality, particularly after the uptake of the Internet, end up inevitably to get in contact with the only available source, i.e. pornography. Since pornography was given in fact a so delicate educational task, we must ask whether pornography itself is really able to fulfill that task, representing sexuality as it is really lived, and in particular, if gay pornography portrays gay sexuality properly and how can influence that sexuality.

HETERO-GAY MODEL

To search for an answer to these questions it is necessary to take into account that, in the past, the distinction between straight and gay was much less marked than it is today and many heterosexual men had sometimes, and not infrequently, relationships with gay guys who, finding no possibility of creating a gay-gay relationship, contented themselves with a relationship with straight man. These relationships (hetero-gay) were totally modeled on heterosexual sexuality and allowed only that the masculine role was prerogative of the dominant male, that is the straight male. The masculine role refers to the role of one who is active in anal sex and gives his sex to the attentions of the other guy in oral sex. Obviously gay guys were entitled only to the complementary “feminine” roles. In hetero-gay relationships, which were a common occurrence until the 60s of the last century and beyond, the roles are fixed. The straight male is active and the gay is passive. But I add another observation, in this conception of sexuality, sexual intercourse is finalized at anal penetration  which appears as the most important and final element, everything else is only considered as a preparation. Often the dominant male in a hetero-gay relationship was not only dominant from the sexual point of view but also from the social point of view, emphasizing the fundamental asymmetry of the relationship, often experienced by both sides as a relationship of domination/submission. These  aspects (of power) could even more legitimize in the eyes of the dominant heterosexual male the sexual intercourse with a gay guy. We have to keep in mind that often the high social class male married only for reasons of capital or caste with women that he had not chosen, lived his matrimonial life in a way sexually frustrating. For this reason, prostitution was a widespread phenomenon and prostitutes, usually lower class people, allowed middle or high-class male to vent his desire to dominate, rather than his sexuality. Mechanisms of this kind can also be found in the hetero-gay relationships in which usually the dominant male compensated the gay guy for his passive role with money or other gifts, noting this way the role of subordination of the gay guy.

THE AUDIENCE OF PORNOGRAPHY

In the past, at least until the 50s of the last century, the pornographic publications were expensive and not easy to find, and were primarily directed to middle-class heterosexuals who lived hetero-gay relationships with  lower class young men at the level of transgression. In fact, this kind of “gay” pornography was actually aimed at heterosexual males and tended to emphasize the patterns of sexual behavior of the hetero-gay relationship. In this way, between the years 30 and 40 of the XX century was credited the typical model hetero-gay as a model of homosexual relationships. That model, the only one sponsored by pornography because it was required by the high-class people who had money and identified themselves with the dominant male of the hetero-gay relationship, came to prevail and to be considered by gays themselves as their model of sexual behavior.

GAY-GAY SEXUALITY

Only since the late 60s of last century gays began to have some visibility and, in some cases at least, had the opportunity to experience not only of the hetero-gay relationships in which they were inevitably destined to the passive role, but for the first time, also the gay-gay relationships. In the first phase, which is currently not fully completed, the hetero-gay model imposed by the pornography has continued to dominate  importing in the gay-gay relationships the active-passive binomial. In this case, however, also the active role is played by a gay, but in gay-gay relationships began to appear a novelty that marked a strong difference with respect to the hetero-gay relationship. In gay-gay relationships, while there are still the categories of active and passive, roles were no more fixed, or at least were not so definitely fixed, although anal penetration continued to be considered the true purpose of the intercourse.

THE EVOLUTION OF GAY-GAY SEXUAULITY

In recent years, starting from the 90s and beginning of the XXI century, after the advent of the internet, for many gay men the opportunity to get in contact with other gays has become a reality and this has fostered dialogue and discussion between gays and has slowly but surely eroded the strength of the model of sexuality among gays inherited from the old hetero-gay model. Talking in chat with gay guys of different ages I feel that as we move towards the younger age classes gay-gay sexuality is seen and lived less and less according to the old models. I add one more observation: sexuality according to the hetero-gay model resists especially among young people who have been heavily influenced by pornography and who have not had the opportunity to compare their own sexuality with that of other gay guys, on the contrary among guys who have had a freer sex education and have been able to talk about their sexuality with other gay guys, real sex life is in fact almost entirely detached from the hetero-gay model and is geared basically towards a gay-gay model of sexuality based on the “principle of equality”.

EQUALITY IN GAY-GAY RELATIONSHIP

I will try to outline how many young gay guys see the sexuality, I refer to guys under the age of thirty, with the caveat that over the age of thirty exceptions are not rare, and on the contrary exceptions are almost rare among the very young guys, 20 year old and less.

A straight guy sees the development of his sexuality as an essential element to be considered socially adult, the development of his sexuality is realized within a climate of strong sharing with peers and is strongly linked to the assimilation of the most common and accepted patterns of behavior, in other words the development of hetero sexuality occurs predominantly “through imitation”. On the contrary, a gay guy sees his being gay as a cause of exclusion especially with respect to peers and, beyond pornography, he totally lacks in models of sexual reference, this means that “spontaneous” gay sexuality grows in a way completely independent, starting from the  masturbation and without any reference to the models of hetero sexuality. I note in passing that in the masturbatory fantasies of all gay guys there is always the idea of masturbating a mate and practicing oral sex on him while, fantasies about the penetration are much less common. The “spontaneous” sexuality of gay young people, especially guys not openly gay and unrelated to gay social life and to gay pornography, and therefore not influenced by models of gay sexual behavior, tends to be a sexuality that is independent of the penetration, which is perceived indeed, in the vast majority of cases, as something imported from the straight world and not originally gay. This fact, coupled with the fact that anal penetration is by far the most at-risk sexual behavior for HIV transmission, encourages young gay people not to consider the penetration as a desirable sexual behavior.

And where penetration is practiced, however, the roles are not fixed or they are not fixed in an absolute way, what, in spite of the permanence of the penetration, is a sign of the equality or of the tendency to equality within the couple.

That said, and with all the necessary caveats, I try to summarize the sense of equality within a gay-gay relationship.

A straight couple is characterized by complementarity of gender roles that are anatomically and biologically defined, roles that characterize substantially that kind of relationship. Heterosexuality is to love the “other than himself/herself.”

A gay couple is characterized by the identity of the roles of the two partners. A gay guy falls in love with another guy certainly not because he considers him a substitute for a woman, but just because he is a guy, that is, for his male identity. The interest of a gay guy in the penis of his partner is particularly strong and the sense of identity and almost of reciprocal melting you feel during the sexual contact is related to the fact that each of the partners knows exactly the physiological responses of the other, just because they are two guys.

In these circumstances it is easy to understand that a relationship based on the concept of equality is difficult to reconcile with the assumption of gender roles into a gay-gay intercourse and absolutely incompatible with the idea of fixed gender roles.

The sexuality of young gay couples tends not to be an imitation of pornography but to realize the “independent” masturbatory fantasies of the guys and is realized through sexual behaviors diluted consisting of several elements mainly related to physical intimacy not immediately sexual and so-called “pampering “.

1) Get used to mutual nudity, being naked together, hugging bare naked and remain embraced for several minutes.
2) Fondling, kissing, exchanging tenderness.
3) Touching each other intimately, without immediate sexual purposes.
4) Postpone the orgasm phase.
5) Speak a lot while embracing.
6) Extend affectionate behavior even in the post-orgasmic phase, falling asleep in each other’s arms.

As we understand, this model of gay-gay sexuality has nothing to do with the models inherited from pornography. In the most recent times pornography is trying to adapt to new models of emerging sexuality, but these models are not compatible with the classical standard of porn. Despite these attempts to conform, the pornography in the classic sense of the term is slowly losing ground among gays for the benefit of the spontaneity in sexual behavior.

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  GAY SEXUAL SATISFACTION AND SEXUAL COUPLE COMPATIBILITY
Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-05-2017, 01:17 PM - Forum: Gay couples - No Replies

This post is dedicated to a reflection on two important concepts in the sexual life of both heterosexual and gay people:

1) The sexual satisfaction

2) The couple compatibility

Obviously I’ll treat the arguments in relation to gay reality on the basis of the  experience gained in chat with gay guys. Some premises are essential. Guys arrive at the couple sexuality after a run of years in which sexuality is defined and stabilized and after a period, longer or shorter, of psicological investigation about the potential partener prior to sexual contact. Very schematically, we can speak of

1) ORIGINAL STRUCTURATION OF PERSONAL SEXUALITY
When a guy comes to live a couple sexuality his sexuality is usually well structured from many years and has a well-defined and well-established structure built on the basis of masturbation and fantasies connected.

2) PREFIGURATION OF COULPE SEXUALITY
Already before reaching sexual contact with his partner, in the phase of falling in love, the guy prefigures sexual intercourse with his partner through masturbation or through patterns consistent with his sexuality that sometimes may not end up in masturbation because of the so-called sublimation of falling in love. Somehow he prefigures the sexual couple relationship, in other words tends to interpret unilaterally the future sexual intercourse with his partner as ideal completion of his masturbatory fantasies.

3) COUPLE SEXUALITY
After a longer or shorter period of emotional contact, not explicitly sexual, the two guys arrive at the couple sexuality after living, usually through masturbation, a prefiguration of the couple sexuality built on the basis of the individual sexuality. All that precedes this phase belongs to the world of individual sexuality, depends on the individual experiences and is completely independent of the actual interaction with the other guy. Everything that happens in the couple sexuality is instead highly dependent on the mode of interaction of the two prefigurations of couple sexuality and on the two individual sexualities.

4) THE SEXUAL SATISFACTION
The sexual satisfaction in a couple relationship is derived from the greater or lesser correspondence of the actual couple sexuality with its individuale prefiguration, so that the greater or lesser satisfation in couple sexuality depends on how much the real couple sexuality matches the individual contents of the masturbatory fantasies.

5) SEXUAL COUPLE COMPATIBILITY
Sexual couple compatibility depends mainly on the degree of correspondence between the two prefigurations of that relationship by the two partners. If the two guys have very similar or complementary sexual expectations, couple compatibility will be good. If the two guys are expecting sexual behaviors significantly different, the compatibility will be low and the couple’s sex life can be a component of discomfort also very strong, to the point that it can lead to disintegration of the couple.

In the couple sexuality can emerge typical issues of sexuality of individuals but also problems entirely new related to the couple’s incompatibility. Let us consider three particular cases.

1) A (gay) falls in love with B (hetero). It is obvious that reciprocity is completely lacking: B is in the masturbatory fantasies of A but A is not in the fantasies of B. Not only that, the sexual fantasies of the two guys are totally different and do not have common features. The two individual sexualities are structured in a different way. The guy A prefigures a sexual relationship with B or at least thinks that B is gay; B clearly does not even thinks of any sexual contact with A. In this case the sexual couple’s incompatibility is very evident. I add as a corollary that in such situations often A tends to project its affective-sexual world on B and reads the behavior of B in a gay key or is looking forward  to a possible evolution of B towards being gay, something totally meaningless, because B already has a sexuality that has been structured over the years.

2) A (gay) falls in love with B (bisexual with intermediate bisexuality). Here the situation is very delicate. We have to remember first of all that there are two different types of bisexuality:
a) Alternating bisexuality, in which a person during the life goes through 2, 3 or even 4 different periods, lasting several years, where he lives alternately a strictly hetero sexuality or a strictly gay sexuality. When an alternating bisexual is in gay phase he is a 100% gay and his masturbation fantasies are 100% gay, in a similar way when he is in straight phase he is straight 100% and his masturbatory fantasies are exclusively heterosexual. Alternating bisexuals have to face real problems when they undergo a transition from one phase to another, because often these situations can destroy marriages that seemed extremely solid with many serious conflicts within the family.

b) Intermediate bisexuality, in which a person is sexually attracted to people of both sexes and has masturbatory fantasies not elusively gay or not exclusively straight.

Transient phases of intermediate bisexuality occur sometimes among gay men who after a straight imprinting (first sexual contact) in a very young age, lived a hetero phase and start to realize definitely that they are gay. In these cases it is not a true bisexuality but an evolutionary phase that accompanies the emergence of true sexual gay identity. Typically in these situations, the polarization of sexuality toward the gay sexuality is completed at age around 20/21years. If this does not happen and sexuality is not polarized, i. e. if masturbatory fantasies do not become exclusively gay or exclusively heterosexual but remain present in both orientations maintaining more or less the same proportion over time, then it makes sense to speak of intermediate bisexuality.

So an intermediate bisexual has masturbatory fantasies both straight and gay. If his patterns are more markedly hetero type, his homosexual fantasies will be quite different from those typical of a guy 100% gay, just because an intermediate bisexual markedly straight will live the relationship with a guy with categories influenced by his prevailing straight orientation. Despite all the reservations, due to the low (not very small) number of such situations taken into account, I find that a bisexual intermediate:

A) tends to consider the anal penetration fundamental reserving for himself the active role in a homosexual relationship.

B) He likes the partner do oral sex on him but tends not to take similar initiatives towards his partner.

C) In the mutual masturbation tends to be masturbated avoiding to masturbate his partner.

When a gay guy falls in love with an intermediate bisexual must always understand that his partner is not really a gay and that the couple’s compatibility can be low, even if a bisexual is interested in a sexual relationship with a gay, the symmetry between the prefiguration of the relationship of a gay guy and that of the intermediate bisexual is usually is very relative. A characteristic symptom of sexual discomfort is called “forcing”, that is the attitude that tends to impose or expect from the partner behaviors that he does not want spontaneously, a common occurrence is in relation to anal penetration. In general, the forcing is accompanied by expressions such as “you will see that you will like it.” This sentence reveals a tendency to impose his own vision of sexuality.

Keep in mind that often the situation of unease in the couple sexuality does not emerge in a conscious way but manifests as true sexual dysfunction through problems of loss of erection or ejaculation. When these things happen the couple’s compatibility is low, the partner is surprised, he cannot find a reason and tends to attribute the failure in responding of his partner to sexual individual problems of wich his partner is probably unaware. It is not uncommon that guys who haven’t the slightest erectile deficit during the masturbation instead manifest an evident erection deficit during sexual activity in conditions of low couple’s compatibility. In this case, the erectile dysfunction is attributable to the couple relationship that the guy feels as substantially unsatisfactory. It is not unusual for gay guys who tend to form a couple with an intermediate bisexual, completely underestimate the fact that there may be a reduced sexual compatibility, and then, after some time, they realize that this relationship is not exactly what they would have wished, and that sexual behavior and fantasies of a gay and those of an intermediate bisexual are only vaguely similar. In many cases, as a result of the emergence of the sexual incompatibility after a while the gay-bisexual couple breaks.

3) A (gay) falls in love with B (gay). This is probably the situation that in principle should create less compatibility problems, but even here couple’s sex problems, although less weight, are not uncommon. Many factors can lead to different structuring of sexuality of both partners. In a purely indicative way, I quote a few:

a) The sexual imprinting, or the first conscious contact with the sexuality (often but not always the first sexual intercourse) that may have been straight or gay.
b) Any sexual abuse.
c) The presence or absence of a phase of couple’s heterosexuality in one or both partners and the presence or absence of a concomitant masturbation with gay fantasies.
d) The dependence of masturbatory fantasies on models of pornography.
e) The education they have received and especially the religious education.
f) The previous sexual experiences.

It is clear that also between gay guys the couple’s sex compatibility is not so frequent and obvious, the problems can be very different and from what I’ve seen it is not infrequent to find forms of non-sexual incompatibilities that interact in different ways with the sexual incompatibilities. I am referring to incompatibilities related to relationships between openly gay guys and hidden gay guys, related to have and to strive to maintain each one a large autonomy of behavior both in the general affective life and sometimes in sexual matters, but often incompatibilities have absolutely nothing to do with sexuality, as in the case of incompatibilities due to the radical difference in social origins or cultural level.

Only one thing seems absolutely essential to underline. First of all, for two gay guys, before reaching sexual contact, it is essential to understand whether or not it’s really possible to build a serious relationship, and of course it’s extremely useful talking seriously about sexuality.
Then, in the couple’s life in general, emotional and social, as in the actual exercise of sexuality, it should be always kept in mind that the couple’s logic in very different from the individual one. In a gay couple’ life roles are normally equal and the sexual initiative, that is the timing, is not assigned to one of the partners exclusively.

A fundamental concept must be kept in mind, namely that gay sexuality is a form of love, and that’s why in that field, the forcing is not absolutely eligible because it radically damages the relationship. The couple sexuality must be explored as a couple and without running too much as individuals into strictly individual directions. It is useful to talk, discuss and ensure full respect to the other to his time and to his sexuality. At this point I emphasize that there is nothing more unpleasant for a guy than receive a negative comment or, worse, an ironic comment about his sexual performance by his partner. A similar behavior is the classic sign of a serious incompatibility. Consider your partner complexed, clumsy, childish in his approach to sexuality, immature, is like to explicitly declare a serious couple’s sexual incompatibility.

Another fundamental concept: sexuality in a relationship between two gay guys is important and is a way of loving, but it is not always the most important thing, you build a relationship establishing a real community of life with a common design about the future, with a couple’s vision at 360 degrees. When sexuality is substantially integrated into a real emotional life, many problems of partial couple’s sexual incompatibility can be overcome in view of a deeply satisfying balance at the global level, and a choice made consciously and shared in this direction is not a waiver but it is just the sign of a couple’s life lived with a sense of responsibility and love.

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  GAY INTERGENERATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS
Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-05-2017, 01:09 PM - Forum: Gay orientation - No Replies

This post is dedicated to gay intergenerational relationships. By this term I refer not to the relationship between gays of different ages within the limits of 10/15 years, but just to the relationship between gays who could be father and son, that is with age differences of the order of 25/30 years and over. The issue is very serious and not marginal and is often addressed on the basis of prejudice.
 
If a father finds out that his twenty years old son is gay and has a companion more or less the same age, even today, needs to make a great effort to accept the situation, but if a father finds out that his twenty years old son is gay and has a and has a “boyfriend” fifty five years old the reaction is very different and the interpretation of the relationship between a guy twenty years old and a man fifty five years old is conducted entirely on parameters arising from prejudice, this is excusable because the father lacks experience and all of the categories necessary for evaluating such a situation “from within”.
 
The interpretation usually follows this pattern:
“My son is a weakling, it is true, he is gay, but he might find at least a guy his age, but this man deceived him and took advantage of him and my son is now no longer able to get out of this situation. I do not know how can a grown man take advantage of a boy who could be his son, such things are pathological. That man ruined my son. “
 
All the reading of the facts is centered on the idea that the older man “takes advantage” of the younger for sexual purposes and that the youngest cannot resist and ends up “to collapse”.
 
This interpretive scheme is widespread, even among gays, who tend to read intergenerational relationships in this way because (as the parent in the quoted example) they completely lack of realistic categories to interpret them correctly.
 
 But let’s go to what emerges from interviews with gay guys. It is obviously easier to meet in chat the youngest members of the intergenerational couples, but when I am contacted by guys who live intergenerational relationships I’m never asked for help and I never hear expressions of discomfort. It never happened. I find on the contrary a desire of the guy to be accepted and to be understood without prejudices for what he is. In practice, in almost all cases, the guys realize that they could very easily get out of the intergenerational relationship, that perhaps that relationship creates more problems to their older partners than to them and that their being “a couple” is a deep disvalue in the eyes of society and also of the gays themselves.
 
 These guys don’t feel at all haunted by their partners who often tend rather to let them go because of fear of affecting their lives so heavily. In these relationships, if you look at them closely, there is no plagiarism, there is no taking advantage of the possible weakness on the part of the younger guys, who anyway know very well that entering into relationships of this type they are going sharply against the current way of seeing sexuality.
 
 These guys do not “collapse” but are rather looking for a relationship with older people, relationship that is consciously wanted and above all has for them a profound significance not only generally affective but explicitly sexual.
 
A gay guy, in general, takes for granted that you can be gay, and doesn’t understand why this thing seems unnatural to a hetero guy and is inclined to think that straight people are dominated by prejudices which can be summarized in a simple reasoning: ” I have my own sexuality which is the right one, who has a sexuality different from mine is a degenerate”, but the same gay guy unconsciously uses the same reasoning to evaluate gay intergenerational relationships.
 
I often hear comments like this: “But it happens because he doesn’t know guys his age, if he knew gay guys his age he would come out easily of this situation.” In this view of things intergenerational relationships are a symptom of a disorder of sexuality (homosexuality, in particular) and the attendance of young guys is medicine. But these arguments don't take into account the fact that these guys have deliberately chosen the more difficult path and they did not because they didn’t know guys their age but because their sexual orientation is really another.
 
 I try to explain. These guys have lived like all other gay guys many moments of social nudity (changing rooms, showers, gyms, swimming pools), but their reactions, in those situations, were not those of other gay guys in analogous situations. A gay guy usually in such situations is sexually excited but to these guys it doesn’t happen because for them the peers don’t constitute a sexual interest. 
 
These guys usually are not labeled at all as gay because, in a completely spontaneous way and without any forcing, they do not objectively show any behavior that others can somehow reconnect to homosexuality, apart from not being interested in girls, but also from a subjective point of view, their behavior towards their peers is very similar to that of a straight guy, but they feel sexual arousal in situations where usually a gay guy is totally indifferent.
 
A classic example: a gay guy in a school environment, finds a cause for excitement and sexual fantasies in his mates, but there are gay guys who make their sexual fantasies about their teachers and not about the younger ones.
 
A category of pornography, the pornography so-called “mature”, is not addressed to mature men who want to get aroused using images of other mature men but mostly to young guys who are interested in mature men. I emphasize that it is a true primary sexual interest, that is not an attempt to resolve a difficult sexuality with the peers. The guys interested in older men have developed this interest from the beginning and have not noticed any change in their sexuality over time. Debate about the reason of this sexual orientation is essentially like asking why there are gays and this is the battleground of a thousand possible theories all apparently rational.
 
From what I can see, guys interested in older men are very often guys who don’t have friends, who live in a very intolerant family environment and have therefore a strong emotional hunger. I have often heard comment intergenerational relationships in a way that seems realistic in the abstract, that is, as a kind of sacrifice of one’s sexuality to deep emotional needs. 
 
Basically a very lonely guy, finds an adult partner who gratifies him at the emotional level and would sacrifice his sexuality to the affective need, in practice “accepting” a relationship with someone much older, up to the sharing of sexuality .
  
This reasoning, however, is radically denied by the evidence of the facts: these guys are really sexually satisfied in relationships with older men and have no desire to change anything, rather they want to build with their partners long-term relationships and generally it is here that they encounter the first major problems both socially and at the level of very hesitant psychological reactions by their partners, reactions of which they can’t even find any reason. The guys involved in gay intergenerational relationships often feel misunderstood and are really considered in terms of perversion and often, though aware of their sexuality, they live with great suffering their relationships 
 
When a gay guy sexually interested in older men makes his declaration of love to a gay adult, he knows to be exposed to dangers and bad experiences, but the sense of loneliness and alienation that he experiences is such that makes him able to overcome the hesitations. They have probably to face a negative response, that in these cases is almost the rule, because an old gay man, even though he may be sexually interested in a young man has a thousand impediments that keep him back, not least the sense of fatherhood that almost automatically takes over and that is experienced in conflict with sexual involvement.
 
In any case, it only makes sense to tell the truth by putting aside any preconceptions and keep in mind that say no in such a situation means deeply hurt a guy and send him back in his substantial emotional loneliness.
 
Let’s now analyze the point of view of mature man who says “no”. Usually, a mature man who says “no” tries, at least in front of himself, to give moral value to his saying "no", justifying his refusal in various ways for example like this: “I say “no” because I’m not a pervert like that guy” or “I say “no” because even though I’d like to be with him I don’t want to ruin his life.” In fact, saying “no” is dictated by much more trivial motives. In essence, the older man says “no” because he’s afraid that the young guy would sooner or later find his own way or because, even more brutally, such relationships are not socially accepted. In general, those who say “no” avoid getting involved at any level, in other words they escape trying to cut ties and “save themselves” because in reality they consider the situation essentially pathological or too much risky and therefore unmanageable with the normal rules of prudence.
 
For a senior or a mature man, to feel involved in the affective level in an intergenerational relationship can be an opportunity for an experience similar to that of fatherhood and can have, even putting aside all sexuality, important aspects of gratification. And it’s possible to love each other deeply even without mutual sexual involvement or setting deliberately limits, if the sincerity and mutual acceptance is total.
 
To love is to first understand and accept.
 
But for a mature man, in general, it is objectively difficult to manage a relationship with a young guy that also implies a true couple sexuality, scruples can be very strong brakes and the strongest brake is not even the different way of considering sexuality but the predictable evolution of the relationship over time, because the young man goes towards the mature age but the old one inevitably goes towards the decadence of old age and towards death.
 
Speaking with young people who live intergenerational relationships, I have often seen in them the fear of the future and the appearance of the idea of a widowhood that they will be called to face in the very central part of their lives. Despite all this, I have often seen profound intergenerational relationships in which mutual acceptance was truly unreserved and which were true and profound stories of love.
 
What we have just said about intergenerational relationships can leave the impression that, beyond the common prejudices on the subject, such relationships are always and in any case true stories of love destined to last and indefinitely preserve their positive value but it is not always the case. Precisely because both the young guys and the mature men involved in intergenerational relationships are immersed in environments that are certainly not favorable to this type of relationship, both the ones and the others are subject to very violent tensions that can radically condition spontaneity and can undermine the relationship.
 
A young guy will inevitably be pushed to create relationships with other young guys and when this happens He can be induced to revisit the meaning of the intergenerational relationship and to interpret it according to the most common criteria as a form of exploitation by the elder man towards the young guy, on the other hand, the elder man may feel upset by this attitude of the younger, or even more simply, by the fact that the younger can also seek other emotional and sexual contacts, and so the older man may be induced to abandon the relationship by strengthening in the young guy the feeling of having been used.
 
But the elder could also, quite independently of the behavior of the youngest, get caught up in the fear of negative social judgment on that type of relationship and could, precisely for this reason, behave in an undecided and hesitant way, putting in deep crisis the younger who would like from his partner much more courage and much more ability to react.
 
Precisely on the basis of these mechanisms that provoke mutual disappointments, an intergenerational relationship can weaken up to going into crisis and when this happens the consequences can be heavy on both sides with the sharp fall of self-esteem on the part of the younger and with the emersion of heavy feelings of guilt on the part of the elder. It is precisely for this reason that intergenerational relationships must be considered with the utmost prudence.
 
Social prejudice is not only an external issue but ends up being internalized and becoming an obstacle very difficult and sometimes impossible to overcome. But I would like to insist on one point, namely the risk of confusing a momentary reaction, sometimes exasperated by the circumstances, with the substance of a feeling that is often not destroyed even by moments of crisis.
 
What one says is not always the exact representation of what one carries within and words can go far beyond what one actually feels. I mean that in an important affective relationship, and therefore also in an intergenerational relationship, and I would say a fortiori in an intergenerational relationship, there can be misunderstandings, moments of discouragement and disappointment, in a word there may be phases of crisis in the relationship, but the underlying sense of an emotional relationship is not necessarily destroyed by moments of crisis. Even when at first sight we arrive at the irreparable and at the moment when we say "goodbye", we must keep in mind that in every "goodbye" there is always at least in power the seed of return.
 
Affective relationships are not governed by words but by feelings and feelings don’t change quickly. If there has been a true emotional relationship between two people for years it is not easy to believe that this relationship can be easily change its meaning or can be trivially forgotten.
 
This means that even behind a "goodbye" there can be a feeling of love that continues, which needs to find its place, which needs space to grow but which is not necessarily finished.
 
In an intergenerational relationship it happens quite often that moments of crisis come when the relationship between the two partners risks becoming a form of mutual dependence, that is, risks becoming a hug so tight that can suffocate. In these situations it is physiological that both partners feel the need for greater autonomy, which doesn’t mean the loss of intergenerational relationship but simply the need to feel it as a form of love without obligations and dependencies.
 
I conclude even here with a quote from James Baldwin: “There’s nothing here to decide, there’s everything to accept.”

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  INTERNATIONAL GAY PROJECT CHAT
Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-05-2017, 12:36 PM - Forum: Announcements and Services - No Replies

International Gay Project Chat is devoted to dialogue among gay people from different countries - THIS IS NOT A SEX/MEETINGS CHAT -
Using the Chat out accept its rules that are listed here:
GAY PROJECT CHAT RULES:
 
The use of the Gay Project Chat is subject to the following indispensable rules, which are added to the rules provided by the Law and the Regulations governing the chats.
 
1) This Chat does not allow pedophile content, either directly or indirectly or through external references. Gay project is radically incompatible with pedophilia.
2) In this Chat it’s not allowed to talk about politics or religion, in an aggressive, polemical or improper manner, either directly or indirectly through external references.
3) No commercial reference is allowed in this Chat, either directly or indirectly through external references such as links to commercial websites.
4) No pornographic references are allowed in this Chat, either directly or indirectly through external references such as links to pornographic sites.
5) In this Chat, no defamatory, discriminatory, offensive or illegal content of any kind is allowed, either directly or indirectly through external references.
 
6) This Chat is not allowed to enter specific and sensitive personal data, such as contacts or addresses of any kind.
 
The Violation of the Rules, by means of messages, links or any other means, entails action by the Administration.
Chat rules are an extension and integration of the Forum Rules. The use of Gay Project Chat implies acceptance of the rules in all its parts.
Please note that the protection of individual privacy is the responsibility of each one who uses the chat. Privacy protection must be entirely omissive and under no circumstances should be based on false statements. Gay Project Management declines any responsibility for the protection of the privacy of users, which is entirely entrusted to them. The Gay Project Administration also declines any responsibility for the safety of the environment and the reliability of the users.
 
Please note that it is possible to report incorrect behavior and breach of the Rules to the Administration by contacting Managers privately, for greater serenity in the chat environment.
 
With reference to the above, it is to be recalled that some chat behaviors may have criminal implications., such as:
 
a) Replacement of a person
b) Illegal data processing
c) Defamation
d) Child pornography                                                     
e) Offenses against Religious Confessions
 
The violations with criminal implications will be reported to the Judicial Authority, which will conduct the investigations and trace back to the perpetrator of the violation with the help of the Postal Police.
The chat has moderators who can intervene excluding a user if needed.
 
GAY PROJECT CHANNEL
 
You can enter the chat here:


The chat IRC channel is:
irc: //irc.esper.net: 5555/gayproject  
 
Reference Mail: [email protected]
 
Gay project has internationalized its chat. Which means that the chat has been transferred to an international server and is therefore accessible from anywhere in the world (chat remains mainly in Italian but English is also spoken).
 
Some details are required:
 
Those who use Firefox as a browser can add to Firefox its ChatZilla as an add-on to Firefox, which is very easy (https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/16/).
 
From ChatZilla you can access without difficulty the channel #gayproject
After having downloaded and installed the ChatZilla, you just have to click on this link irc://irc.esper.net:5555/  
which is not a common web link but an IRC link that will find your installed ChatZilla and will open it to the esper.net server page, from there with a simple /join #gayproject you will be able to chat.
By clicking on this link: irc://irc.esper.net:5555/gayproject you can enter directly into the Gay Project Channel.
 
The commonly used interface is Mibbit, that integrates the multilingual online translator but the user can choose to access the EsperNet (our chat provider) interface as well.
 
All the technical information (in Italian) on using chat, commands, and nick registration is available at: http://progettogayforum.altervista.org/viewforum.php?f=53

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  GAY GUYS ESCAPING HOMOSEXUALITY AND HETEROSEXUAL MARRIAGE CAGE
Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-04-2017, 08:10 PM - Forum: Gay orientation - No Replies

JUST A FEW GAY THOUGHTS

In the life of many guys there is at some point something new and unexpected that arouses curiosity and sometimes disturbance. These are small things that can occur in different ways depending on age of the guy and his previous sexual experiences, but it’s essential to understand the scope and meaning of these things. I’ll list here only for some examples the most typical situations:

1) LOVING FRIENDSHIP – “I know instinctively that I need the physical presence of this friend of mine, I am happy when he’s close to me and I’m sad when he’s not, I wait to review him, his voice is printed in my brain, between us there is a total confidence, we say all to each other, for him I would do anything, when he’s not close to me I need him, when he calls me on the phone my heart beats very strong and I’m anxious, I would spend with him all time, when I see him with a girl I’m jealous, and even when I see him speaking with another guy.” These expressions commonly interpreted as forms of simple friendship show the establishment of a veiled form of love that apparently has no outside of sexual connotation and very often doesn’t present any conscious sexual connotations even for the guy who lives the loving friendship. This is a highly emotional involvement, which should not be underestimated by the mere fact that it doesn’t show immediately any sexual connotation. It should be borne in mind that the experience of a starting dip love by a gay guy is based on continuity between emotions and sexuality.

2) INVOLUNTARY SEXUAL REACTIONS. Some examples:

a) A beautiful boy just walked by, I turned my head to watch and I was feeling horny but I kept it under control.
b) I spend a lot of time in the locker room to watch a friend of mine who gets undressed and I’m curious to see his dick.
c) I was sitting in the car to talk to a guy, we were alone, and at some point I felt horny.
d) Hour hands just touched for a moment and I felt like a thrill, a kind of electric shock and wanted it to happen again. e) I saw on the street two guys hand in hand and I felt a shiver. f) I saw on the ground a gay porno magazine and I felt horny.

3) VOLUNTARY SEXUAL BEHAVIOURS. Some examples:

a) When we went into school trip I have done everything to get settled in a room with him because I wanted to see him at least in his briefs.
b) In the gym I learned by heart its timetable because I don’t want to miss the moment when he strips.
c) I tried to talk him sexually to see him horny.
d) I deliberately fondled his hair.
e) During the match I felt on him and for a moment I put my hand there. f) I’m always thinking about him and whatever I’d do to him. So at least in the imagination I do very much sex with him. I like him because when I think about him this way I feel horny and I like it when it happens.
g) I jerk off thinking about him; in practice I’m addicted to that.

These things often happen to guys who have a girl and even to guys that have a regular sex life with their girlfriends. The underestimation of the indicative elements that we just reported is extremely common among boys, who are led by environmental pressures, family and religion to credit in themselves the idea of being heterosexual. This way the gay thoughts, that could be outcrop, are removed or more often devalued with attitudes that can be roughly summed up in phrases like:

a) It only happens when she isn’t close to me.
b) It happens only sometimes.
c) I take such thoughts easily under control.
d) Yes, it happens, but I don’t feel conditioned at all.
e) It’s a kind of game, basically for me those things are not very important.
f) Well, it happened, but I’m not gay, I feel I’m not!
g) Well, but it doesn’t matter!

The devaluation of gay content corroborates the guy in his presumption of heterosexuality and starts another mechanism to procure additional confirmation through the exercise of heterosexual sexuality. The boy who is trying to submerge his emerging homosexuality tries to exorcize it in various ways:

1) He starts or intensifies heterosexual involvement focused mainly on sexual dimension. “I got a girl and we do everything.”

2) He gives his heterosexual involvement, as it’s possible, a public dimension to show widely his heterosexual live: you see him around with the girl, he takes pictures with her and put the photos on the net, he speaks often about her with his friends.

3) He systematically fails to mention to her his homosexual fantasies.

4) He begins to live his sexuality on two different levels: one, heterosexual, based on external heterosexual relationships and social life and another much more private, homosexual, based on masturbation. Clearly the guy who flees from his gay identity tends to validate the meaning of his heterosexual relationships and to devalue masturbation as something absolutely marginal, precisely because characterized by gay masturbation fantasies.

A gay who behaves as we just described is not heterosexual because he doesn’t love a girl looking to her good and her future but he only uses her, more or less consciously, in order to cover his own homosexuality.

The discovery of their own homosexuality for many guys is something traumatic for cultural reasons and following assimilation of prohibitions and preconceptions of various kinds. These prohibitions and these preconceptions are absolutely senseless; nevertheless such things make the boy who discovers he’s gay, feel like breaking a taboo. The reactions sometimes can also be heavily negative, if the demonization of homosexuality is not only due to social origin but comes from some personal traumatic or unpleasant experience. I’ll try to summarize below some expressions identifying the shock of a guy facing the need to be aware of being gay:

1) I am gay! No! My God! I dislike it at all, I always had a girl, I always liked women, and I’d never be gay!

2) Where I live people are stupid and bad, how can I be gay here? It’s impossible!

3) I’m gay like that bastard guy I told you before? No! Better I kill me!

GAY GUYS AND ETHEROSEXUAL TRAP

The gay guys, to escape their homosexuality take refuge in the heterosexuality that is not their true sexual orientation, starting from the premise that heterosexual relationships in which they board are a kind of experiment from which you can exit how and when you want. The assumption is nonetheless very far from reality and the gay guy realizes easily that he entered a situation much more complicated than he thought which involves not only the girl, but her parents and the entire surrounding social environment. In a socially backward, in which the emotional problems of daughters are experienced as a family affair whose natural outlet is marriage, a gay guy who was hiding himself in heterosexuality feels that he is in a sort of golden cage from which it’s very difficult to escape due to a complex interplay of projections and expectations also by the family of the gay guy himself. When a gay guy feels that the golden cage is closing on him, he realizes that he’s going to face two alternative options:

1) Break the engagement, causing many and serious reactions from the girl, her parents and gay guys family itself (if parents are unaware that their son is gay or they are unable to understand).

2) Go ahead despite everything, with the inevitable prospect of marriage. This helps avoids short term problems nevertheless leads to situations without exit, where the gay guy in expected to pretend being heterosexual for a lifetime, accepting the marriage sex life that for a gay guy is certainly unnatural. This way the homosexuality will emerge after marriage with unpredictable and traumatic outcomes.

OPERATIONAL ADVICE

In conclusion what can I advise guys who experience indicative elements of their homosexuality? The answer can be summarized as follows:

1) Do not underestimate the elements that make you think you are gay. 

2) Remember that beyond the prejudices and ignorance, being gay is something high and noble and should be lived with dignity, without ever lowering his head in front of anyone. Homosexuality is one of the ways of living human sexuality and for gay people happiness is a possible condition. For that condition of happiness you have to fight strenuously.


3) If you don’t feel really heterosexual do not commit in heterosexual relationships that will be for you only a trap.

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  MASTURBATION GAY SEXUALITY AND SEXUAL ORIENTATION
Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-04-2017, 08:07 PM - Forum: Gays and sex - No Replies

I was asked repeatedly to speak in the most simple and at the same time most explicit way about psychological problems related to the various stages of sexual development of a gay boy. I’ll try to do so taking into account only two topics: sex identity and masturbation, with the premise that I am not a doctor or a psychologist, although I spend my days talking and chatting with gay guys of all ages and often we talk about issues related to sexuality, then I will appeal only to my experience in this activity.

THE DISCOVERY OF MASTURBATION

The masturbation is the voluntary act of touching yourself in order to give you pleasure and reach orgasm.

The age of first fully aware masturbation in the vast majority of cases is between 10 and 15 y. o.. Although in many cases the boy knows of masturbation by the stories of fellow schoolmates and friends, many boys still discover masturbation incidentally, that is quite random. The boy starts getting comfortable with his genital organ in several ways: he observes the erections, and touches it, initially just to wash or to pee. With the habit of manipulating his penis he finds that he can easily give himself pleasure. The manipulation of the penis, which is pleasant, proceeds automatically until the discovery of orgasm.

At 15 y. o. almost all the boys practice masturbation. Between 13 and 17 boys masturbate more than once a day. The frequency of masturbation falls slightly with age, for kids who do not have a sexual partner, and rarely falls below 20 times per month.

There is no difference in masturbation technique between heterosexual and gay boys. There is instead a profound difference between heterosexual and gay boys regarding the sexual fantasies that help to maintain the erection during masturbation. Heterosexual guys think intensely to girls, gay guys think intensely to another boy. It is precisely for this reason that masturbation leads gradually to gay boys awareness of being gay.

Generally boys feel masturbation as something very pleasant and at the same time forbidden, to be done with the utmost secrecy and of which they can’t talk at all. For a boy, be caught by his parents while masturbates is one of the most terrible humiliations. These attitudes, often complicated by moral formalism and religious influences, contribute, unfortunately, to spread negative ideas about masturbation. But masturbation is an important manifestation of sexuality that will accompany a boy for life and will not be set aside, however, when other kinds of sexual intercourse will appear, but will interact with them. Learning to know your body and its reactions can give you many ideas to live better the couple sex.

The condemnation of masturbation as a grave sin by the Catholic Church deserves a particular reflection [Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2396 “Among the sins gravely contrary to chastity, should be cited masturbation, fornication, pornography and homosexual practices.”] The formula used by the Catechism is without appeal. The boys who attend church regularly tell the priest in confession that they masturbate, using usual formulas, one classic: “I have sinned against purity.” The priest proceeds (often in a very mechanical way, to ask how many times, whether alone or with others, then repeats the usual formulas of condemnation of masturbation and requires the penitent (or alleged such) a commitment in order to avoid it. Penitent proves repentant and is acquitted. In reality this is a false repentance, the boy will quickly return to the masturbation and will do it as much as possible before the next confession (because “now purity is lost”). Then the boy goes back to confession and the cycle restarts. The result is a strong push toward the hypocrisy from the church who knows how things are, that repentance is not repentance and that the mechanism aims only to surreptitiously induce feelings of guilt that keep the boy in a state of subjection. Many priests do not even consider masturbation a sin and thus get the result to keep the boys linked to the Church. Other priests fight real crusades and so create for the most sensitive boys situations of enormous stress, feelings of guilt deep conditioning and inhibitions against sexuality. For many boys the Church’s position regarding masturbation is a cause of deep suffering.

What we described above has quite different contours when the boy is gay.
Because the Church not only condemns masturbation but directly and without appeal homosexuality [Catechism of the Catholic Church, Art. 2357 Homosexuality designate relations between men or women who experience sexual attractive, exclusive or predominant, towards people of the same sex. It is manifested in very different forms over the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Building on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘acts of homosexuality are intrinsically disordered “. They are contrary to natural law. Prevent the sexual act from the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances they can be approved.] (A more complete collection of condemnations of homosexuality by the Catholic Church can be found in the post

A gay boy in confessional has two problems, one is the masturbation (common toheterosexual boys) and the other is homosexuality. The vast majority of gay boys consider his homosexuality as something natural that so simply and sincerely not consider it as sin and continues to admit only “impure acts” without any specification. When randomly, in confessional emerges in the theme of homosexuality, responses on the part of priests, although in theory all convictions, are actually variously flexible. Even here, probably the idea that a drastic attitude would definitively detach gay boys from the Church, has a not negligible signification.

The real moment of crisis between a gay boy and the Church occurs when the boy comes to discover that the Church expects from him total chastity [art. 2359 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church]. That means that a homosexual to remain in the church must radically deny himself because the Church considers homosexuality “serious depravity”, “baleful consequence of a refusal of God”, “lack of normal sexual development”, “pathological constitution”, “conduct intrinsically bad from the moral point of view “(see the post above). What options are possible for a gay guy? He may or try to fully repress himself to comply with what the Church calls, with destructive results in the long term, or play on an endless series of false repentance and relapses as in the case of masturbation, or he could avoid at all reconciling what by definition and irreconcilable. Often boys try the first way, feel it unrealistic, reject the hypocrisy of the second way and finally come to the third, with the definitive separation from the Church and the final storage of the senses of guilt.

You can’t talk about masturbation without mentioning two important issues that are closely linked to it: pornography and masturbation fantasies.

Often masturbation is linked to search for pictures or video content explicitly sexual. The thing itself is not negative, if the guys that make use of pictures or videos for masturbating do so with the knowledge that it’s a fiction, not reality. See video porn generally doesn’t upset boys, but when the thing is loaded with too many valences in replacement for a real poor affectivity, pornography can be experienced as a model of sexuality. Of course these things will not happen if kids who use pornography for masturbating are ripe in emotional terms, but when it comes to very young or not ripe boys, pornographic model is likely to be internalized as a model of real life, which can produce many influences of which it’s difficult to get rid, the first of which the idea of sexuality as “performance”.

The sexual arousal that leads to masturbation in most cases is not derived from pornography but by the so-called masturbation fantasies. Masturbation fantasies are fantastic reconstructions of situations considered to be particularly exciting in sexual terms. In the vast majority of cases the masturbation fantasies doesn’t come from pornography but from images of real erotic situations also very distant in time well imprinted in the mind. The masturbatory fantasies usually change very little during life and are the archetypes and units of measurement of sexuality in the sense that a sexual content of real life is often considered more or less sexually exciting according to the compliance with the model represented by masturbatory fantasies. Masturbatory fantasy being a manifestation of absolutely free sexuality of a boy, is strongly indicative of dip sexual orientation of that boy. In some cases the masturbatory fantasies doesn’t keep stable all lifelong but instead change their content more or less rapidly. Approximately one quarter of guys who end up considered definitively gay have lived in advance stages of heterosexuality, which lasted years, with a true heterosexual sexuality. These guys experienced the first elements of emerging gay sexuality from the drifting in gay direction of masturbatory fantasies. However, there are guys that, at least for some periods of their lives, masturbate with both heterosexual and homosexual erotic fantasies. Normally these things are transitory and sexuality ends to go spontaneously toward gay or hetero orientation. [I can’t to masturbate any more thinking of a girl]. Sometimes masturbatory fantasies may be upset as a result of traumatic sex events. When masturbatory fantasies change over the years, usually start as heterosexual fantasies and become gay fantasies (the opposite is in fact very rare, I have personally seen only one example) and represent the emerging of deep sexuality repressed from education, from environmental situations or negative experiences. The repression of masturbatory fantasies by a boy is a sign of discomfort, low self-esteem and psychological dependence.

GAY OR NOT GAY

As it’s obvious, the successive stages of sexual development involve a complex psychological development that leads to adulthood. But let’s go step by step.
During pre-adolescence, sexual curiosity of boys is very strong. The period from sixth to eighth grades. (11-13 y. o.) represents a delicate moment of psycho-sexual development of a boy. At about 13 y. o., and sometimes 12, the interest of the boys for the male sexual organ increases significantly in relation to their sexual development. It is the age of the comparisons, they want to see the penis of other boys, both same age and older. It is the age of “if you show me yours I’ll show you mine”.

All this has nothing to do with homosexuality. Comparisons help boys to assess their sexual development over time and help them feel in a category of normality. However, there are gay boys who experience for the first time their sexual orientation in these occasions because they realize that they live it differently from other boys, that for them it’s not only a moment of confrontation but a true satisfaction of sexual desire.

For boys gay sexuality becomes so often embarrassing, at 14/15/16 y. o. the erection becomes a problem not easy to manage. In situations where other kids do not have an erection, a gay boy not only has but he cannot control it. His excitement is visible in situations where the other boys do not stir. The masturbation of a gay boy, as I said earlier, is done using typically gay fantasies, sexual content linked to the nakedness of other boys that deeply imprints in the memory of a gay boy, what heterosexual boys is not the case, a gay boy realizes that talking about girls stirs the other boys and doesn’t stir him at all.

I won’t touch here the problem of boys who have at this age their first heterosexual relationships and then discover themselves to be gay at distance of years, I will stop instead on boys living in this age, very early , their first sexual gay contact and this is not a small minority.

The first concept to keep in mind to consider adult sexual behavior is linked to the “performance”. Let me explain better, often, even among fully adult people the idea of performance ends up dominating the sexual relationship. Performance means to show that you are up to the situation and you are able to do something that is valued only like performance. In the language of adolescents, performance means “being adult” or better “demonstrate that you are adult.” Who cares to prove to be adult obviously is not and needs a very elementary vision of sexuality, such as “technical”, which is much easier to confront. Older guys 18/19 y. o. and over, usually have a clear idea of sexuality as a emotional contact and not as performance, they fall in love in the truest sense of the word and seeking essentially a deep emotional contact with guys they love, because they really love them. Younger boys, or are already on this line and then are emotionally already adults, or tend to move across sexuality in terms of performance.

I often talk to young boys, aged 16 years or less, which literally “boast” of their sexual performances and are self-considered adults for that sexual performances. I listen often in chat to young guys, even very serious guys, that over the idea of performance know nothing else, boys who consider only “what they do” at sexual level and not with whom or why. In some cases boys who consider themselves gay because they assume their sexual behavior as a typical gay behavior, even if they are completely wrong, reveal incredible inconsistencies. For example: a very young boy, who dealt with a very cavalier attitude every type of sexual practice, refused to kiss the boy with whom he had sexual intercourse, and reacted aggressively to forms of attention from his companion, considered by him not virile things coming substantially from a weak person. These behaviors are obviously immature. Guys (usually older) that are involved with these young boys in a sexual relationship, at the beginning feel satisfied because for them the path to sexual intercourse is facilitated and it’s even possible to get there in the same day in which they know each other, but then, slowly, older guys realize that something isn’t working well and that the center of the relationship consists of the sexual performance, of doing this or that. In other words a older boy realizes the emotional immaturity of his companion and suffers greatly, feels finally unpleasantly the same strong sexual character of the relationship that had initially seemed very gratifying and, even worse, understands the unreliability of his companion who is looking for experiences more than for a person.

It should be borne in mind that he real sex education is essentially affective education and that a boy will live well if his sexuality has reached a generally satisfactory emotional condition. To promote the emotional growth of gay boys we can do many things:

1) Demythologize sexuality avoiding representing it as something intended to shock and prohibited but talking about it as a reality of ordinary life of all persons.

2) Speaking of sexuality in the easiest and most direct possible way, with sincerity and without taking roles in order to help boys understand really what this is all about and grow from the emotional point of view.

3) AVOID EVERY SEX DOGMATHIC namely avoid creating false categories and defining a rigid sexual behavior, in this sense should bear in mind that you must:

a) point out that gay, bisexual and heterosexual are exclusively models of sexual behavior that make sense only if they are seen as elastic ideas and general guidance in the sense that many people cannot be classified in any of these categories because in the sexuality individual variability is very strong and fundamental;

b) set aside the most absolute way the catalogues of sexual behavior, that is avoid to define in the most absolute way which conduct is heterosexual and which gay, both in terms of sexual behavior and in terms of more general affectivity;c) avoid to underline problems and aim mainly to clear up false problems that generate unnecessary anxiety, insisting on the idea that real sex life of gay people has in the vast majority of cases very little standards. Experience shows that in many cases the boys are taken from anxiety basically for non-existent problems or small problems, common to many boys, and that vanish with the psycho-sexual development.

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  GAY LOVE AND COMING OUT
Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-04-2017, 08:00 PM - Forum: Coming out - No Replies

Hello Project, 

I wanted to tell you my story and I would like to know what you think, bellow there’s my contact, if you like chatting with me just a little. 

Call me Mark, it’s not my real name, but everybody calls me this way, because I don’t like my real name, I’m 21 y. o., live in a big city, and study physical education sciences, I study subjects related to sports because I practice sports and I’m an athlete at competitive level and also with excellent results. That is, even though I know that the career of a player and in particular specialties that I practice ends very soon, I’d like to remain in the world of sports because it is my real world and because I really feel at ease there. I sport since I was a young boy; the gym is my second home or even the first, because I spend more time in the gym than at home. 

But I come to the point. Until last year I have not thought much about sex. I had to attend school, then university and had mainly competitions that for me were very important. In practice until last year, but I would say all last year if not beyond, even in January, February 2008, for me sport was only sporting activity. I never felt embarrassment in the locker room or showering with other guys and I did also some sexual joke and sometimes I was also the victim of such jokes but absolutely no problem, indeed I always liked a lot the free locker room environment because we play a little there and I like well such things, but from the beginning of March, that is from a very short time, things have really changed. Don’t ask me why and if there is a good reason, I thought so but I have not been able to discover one.

You have understood! I started to realize that in the locker room there were other naked guys and I began to worry about. I had never noticed that my mates where naked in the locker room or in the shower for me all that was always absolutely normal, but, let’s say, by March I started to notice them. For them nothing had changed at all but for me it was very different, I was aware of that, I was interested, in short, I was studying my mates and beginning to think how would have been nice if those guys were in love with me. Outside, I continued to behave more or less as before even if I was beginning to have problems controlling the erection, which in the locker room and showers is not a little taboo, so that it’s the hallmark that you are gay. You do everything to avoid erection and you are worried because you don’t understand how other guys could take such things. The result of all this: I spend in the locker room just a minute and I try to be dressed as much as possible, but then the moment of truth arrives and then anxiety comes. 

Virtually I’m at ease with my being gay, I had virtually no problem, and although I had never had a girl in the truest sense of the word, but just little stories, that I have never taken seriously, in practice I have only taken note of what I knew already. But when you’re gay and live in places like those where I live, that is in the midst of athletes that are not as beautiful as people think even if among them there are really those very sexy, well, inside, you feel a certain agitation. I read that many young men seek meeting sites or gay chats, I never did such things, for me the gym is everything also from this point of view, I would have practically no need to seek sex photos on the net because I’m among guys when and how I like. 

My real problem is another, that is to understand if among the guys I like there are gay guys because I’d never fall in love with a straight guy making a poor showing and being teased. I’m also having problems about sport performances, my trainer says it often and asks me why, but I can’t tell him how things really are. 

Another thing. Do not laugh: I never had any gay experience; I’ve never had sex with anyone. Now I think I’m not really in love, because as Project says: to fall in love it’s necessary to be two, and then I’m not missing sex in the true meaning of the word, when it happens I do what everybody does, but I don’t like to get involved in troubles to make sex with a guy that I don’t know and don’t even know if he’s healthy, I don’t really feel like it. Now, I can say, I’m alone just in the sense that I don’t have a boyfriend. 

I premise I don’t even have gay friends, I found the Project’s gay blog on Google and I was amazed by the monstrous amount of material that it contains. I built my little knowledge on gay issues on that blog but not only by reading the posts (I can read Italian) but also the comments, then I discovered the forum, first I didn’t notice it, but it’s also a mine. And I read a lot of very interesting posts, but I have not had the courage to enroll. 

Now, speaking honest, I think that sooner or later I will make some big poppycock in the gym, to tell the truth there is a guy who attracts me very much there. I’m now his coach, he is in a group entrusted to me, 19 y. o., he’s younger than me, but I’m 21, not 50. He’s really beautiful and then we shower together every day, in short, you understand, I like everything of him. With him I behave in a casual and friendly manner, as I do with the other guys, but with others I am spontaneous, with him no, we talk so much, both before and after the shower, he trusts me completely and considers me just like a brother. 

He has to graduate in days, just a couple of weeks ago he was very sad, we waited to talk and he told me that the mathematics teacher called him unexpectedly and graded him badly and said that he could never pass the examination. He had studied a lot but that the teacher was just a piece of shit that would have done everything to put him in trouble, because he had it in for him, at some point his eyes became red and he was going to cry. I wanted to embrace him, I wanted to keep close to tell him that I loved him but I felt frozen and I didn’t move at all, I saw in his eyes just two tears that torn my soul, he was ashamed and dried tears with hands. I told him that last year I lost a very important medal for two hundredths of a second and later, when no one saw me, I started crying like a fountain. 

Then there has been training and I cuddled him a lot and he was happy for all this attention, then in the shower I had the impression that he almost looked for my eyes, that is he was trying to understand if I observed him and I think he understood, when we left he waited to talk to me but in another way, at least I had the impression that it was in another way, he looked into my eyes more directly and smiled, I thought that he wanted an encouragement but I didn’t anything. 

It is true that with me he has talked about girls but this does not mean anything. My anxiety is now only about is being gay or not? To tell the truth it’s as if I had the premonition to be on the verge of being involved in some ugly mess and that’s why I try to treat him well, but without going beyond friendship and indeed I take care also of other guys, but I should say rather I pretend to take care of those guys trying to get reed of his image that is always in front of me. 

I study all the ways to stay with him as long as possible, without looking too much interested and when it’s possible, I do whatever I can, to avoid to meet him, in practice now we talk only when it is he who calls me but I never take the initiative. But when he asks me, I show me very excited. 

Today in the shower I looked and noticed he had an erection, but most likely one sees what he wants to see. Shit! I can’t stand this no more! But why should I fall in love with a guy and not have the courage to speak openly! What could happen? I don’t know. In practice I think that he never got the suspicion that I’m gay, or perhaps yes, I don’t know what to think, but it is an unbearable stress. 

You want to laugh? Well I think he is heterosexual and that is fine with me because for him there are no implications of any kind regarding sex and he thinks that this is the case even for me. So I’m condemned to this eternal torment of not knowing how to behave. If things go on like that and he doesn’t freeze me with something extraordinary, like seeing him kissing a girl or joking stupidly on gays, well, I believe that I will make the madness, I tried many times to prepare the speech but I think that at the end I would be trivial and very direct, such as: ”I’m gay and you?” And at this point he jabs me in the face or he looks upset at me. Sometimes in the locker room I feel like a sex maniac and sometimes I even feel guilty over the guy whom I like best because in fact I am cheating him and I hate to cheat him, and that could well be one of the fundamental reasons for making the big step and tell him how things really are. 

A hug. 
Mark 
P. S. if you publish this mail, we’ll see what guys think.

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  GAY GUYS AND GAY SEX
Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-04-2017, 07:58 PM - Forum: Gays and sex - No Replies

As usual the analysis of access keys to my websites gives me concrete arguments for reflection. I have chose some fairly typical. Among the access keys used by parents probably some are worthy of attention, alongside the classics “Parents of gay children” “Accept gay children” I find also: “Discover the child who masturbates” “My son masturbates what do I do?” The use of these keys for access, far from awaken a smile, should be taken very seriously. In this case a parent worries not about the homosexuality of his son but that the boy masturbates. The use of the verb “discover” is indicative of the sense of surprise of the writer, but beyond the discovery one wonders how to behave. Speaking about boys (son), a key access like those mentioned, used by a father, would seem absolutely incredible, because I do not think that an adult man might wonder about the idea that his son masturbates. If, as I think, these access keys are used from mothers, I can only infer that these ladies have not the slightest knowledge of male sexuality. In this sense, their attitude may be entirely ruling and not informed and can produce not small trauma for children. Let me note that the wonder of the parent who is surprised that his son masturbates is exactly symmetrical to that of the son who discovers that parents have a sex life, but while everybody can understand the dismay of a very young boy we cannot justify the puzzled attitude of the parent. The sexuality of a guy, especially if young, finds the most obvious achievements in masturbation. The privacy of a guy who masturbates must never be disturbed for any reason, much less by a parent. For a boy, being surprised in the act of masturbating is a terrible, traumatic experience, especially if the discovery by the parent is accompanied by signs of concern. A guy, now adult, told me that he was surprised by his father while masturbating and that wasn’t particularly traumatic for him, but the scene was designed more or less like this: the father comes in the room while the child is masturbating, apologizes, closes the door and leaves and, later, makes no reference to the fact, when the father sees his son embarrassed tells him: “look everybody does masturbate!” and the story ends there. No parent can seriously expect to meddle in these things that are absolutely private affairs of children. Very different, and much more delicate is the question of the relationship of parents with gay children, especially when it gay children made their coming out outside the family. I must underline that a group, usually fed, of readers comes to my sites with keys like this: “Tell parents to be gay” “Tell parents to be homosexual” “Coming out homosexuality parents” or even “Gay boys worked over by parents” Yesterday evening it happened to me to chat with a guy 21 y. o ., a serious guy, not chasing easy sex but friendship through chat (which is certainly not the best place to find gay friends). He said that friends know nothing about his sexual orientation, if they knew they would drop him immediately. He hasn’t the courage to tell his parents that he’s gay, because his father would react violently, and every time you talk about gay he manifests a terrible aggressive attitude. Even at 21 y. o., therefore, gay guys are afraid to come out with their parents. This is not exceptional … it’s the rule. But a boy becomes aware of being gay much earlier than 21 y. o.. A group of access keys, probably coming from very young boys, indicates the uncertainty about being gay and understanding exactly what being gay means. ” What age boys discover to be gay? ” “How can I understand if I’m gay” “How understand if a guy is gay” Another group still indicates the need to find a comparison on the first gay experiences and the possibility of a heterosexual love. “I discovered to be gay” “Stories of boys who discover to be gay” “Stories of first gay experiences” “Friend’s love of the same sex” “Homosexuality in schools” “Why am I in love with a heterosexual?” “Love between a boy and a heterosexual guy” “I gay, he heterosexual” Another group of access keys is about finding “not dangerous” contacts with other gay guys. “Chat for gay boys” “How to trust gay sex meetings in chat” Very often the loneliness of younger gay children takes them to the gay chats and here the speech is very delicate, not only because the soliciting of non legal boys through chat is criminally sanctioned, but even apart from this aspect, chats are a very special world . In the chats I found even very young boys (if they were really) so immediate with obscene proposals that I think very clearly that it was prostitution. As you do, this things will remain anyway. I would rather consider the guys (almost all legal) who seek sex on the net. Some of them have certainly nothing to do with prostitution but clearly aim to sexual activity usually without a direct meeting, but via webcam, in a way that is very risky, because movies can be recorded, and I think that they really are in many cases. Consequences can range from the publication on porn sites to real forms of blackmailing, when you meet people so naive to be recognizable. So I advise in the most absolute anyone sailing in the chats not to use webcam … that are dangerous especially with unknown people. In chat you usually receive a call that begins with the question “got a webcam ?”… Caution! Obviously the same goes for the exchange of photos. But let’s come to the only written chats, which are those that I care about most. Many proposals for sexual contacts, that can be obtained on these chats, are not aggressive, are colloquials, there is a little dialogue and even not so stupid sometimes. Indeed I meet in chat guys in search of sex that aren’t surely typical good guys. Usually they aren’t very young boys, but between 20 and 24 y. o. … they are polite, educated, before closing a brief conversation with me, that declare my age immediately, they feel obliged to chat a little with formulas such as “hello, was a pleasure to meet you.” With some of these guys I was able to make a serious conversation even a quarter of an hour. I wonder why these guys go to seek sex on a chat. In theory it could be more adequate to seek emotional contacts with guys known in real life …. but evidently it is so difficult that the option of chatting is the only practicable. All this dismays me. Essentially all good things these guys could find in real life, in fact, are utopia, while a little chatting or a little sex online are concrete realities. Generally guys seeking gay sex in a moderate chatting hare no more than 25/26 y. o., when you meet older guys (few, but there are) the conversation becomes more serious, more personal and adult contact, you may experience a true dialogue also not very short and you can also find a real will of not superficial comparison. Typically, around 25 y. o. a gay guy has found his balance, more or less precarious but it has found it, and the search for sex chatting becomes marginal. The image of the gay planet that comes out of the chats is quite varied and, in any case, refers to very young age groups, accustomed to the use of Internet and to a more uninhibited interpersonal contact. For now I will stop here.

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  HOW I UNDERSTOOD TO BE GAY
Posted by: gayprojectforum - 09-04-2017, 07:52 PM - Forum: Understand to be gay - No Replies

Understanding of being gay … My real problem for at least three years was just that. Until 17 I felt straight, not very enthusiastic in chasing after girls, I had to stand them more than anything else, but there I was and I didn’t refuse girls, and girls sunned after me sometimes, I believe I’m a nice boy and some girl always wanted to be my friend.

At school all my classmates wanted badly to go to dance, especially on Saturday evenings to a disco. Sometimes I went too, between 17 and 18, but going to dance for me meant only going to dance and nothing else, for other guys things were different, they went there to be able to hide somewhere with girls, even without doing anything wrong, or perhaps no, who knows, perhaps I’m naive. I went there and didn’t dance, almost never. When I had to embrace some girl I tried also to keep her distant from “there”.

All these things could make me understand how things were, but nothing like that happened and I understood later why. A that time I went to Church a lot (and now I’m in crisis from this point of view but then everything was different), at that time I didn’t even think I was gay, that is, is not that I was thinking about the problem deducing I was straight, It wasn’t a problem at all for me. It was obvious that I was heterosexual. I didn’t feel gay temptations at all, I know that it seems absurd, but didn’t happen at all. I have read on this forum about getting hard and masturbating for a friend.

Today I know what it means but then such things never happened to me. That little amount of sexual fantasies that I was doing where only about girls, because everybody used to do such things about girls. So to say, then I sublimated everything, more or less, I masturbated but thinking about girls even if it wasn’t an exciting thing. But look. At that time, even showering with my friends in the pool was nothing at all for me. It was a pride for me having my sexuality reduced to a minimum.

When I went to confess, sometimes at least, I hadn’t even to tell that I masturbated because I wasn’t addicted to that and I felt very proud. You can say: “Then how did you live?” Practically all sports, school, volunteering … In short I was a swimmer almost for national selections, not exactly but very close to it and for me those things were important, I spent entire afternoons in the pool and my coach considered realistic the idea of sending me to the Italian championships and this thing was very gratifying for me. .. Do you know what a training level for swimmers like me is? …. Then I added the study, because I was also very good at school and such things made me feel perfect. Teachers at school told me that I was great, the coach told me that I could go to national games, priests told me I was doing very well avoiding masturbation … you understand, I could feel the perfect guy model.

Only my father, sometimes, I think, was a little perplexed, but not that I was gay, that I simply had set aside my sexuality to devote myself to other things. Dad tried to tell me that in life there are other things, certainly he meant girls, but not even nominated, I answered I had many other things to do and that I was thinking a lot about girls. And I was really convinced of thinking girls.
In short, things went on like this up to 19 y. o… Then I signed up for engineering and at engineering department I met Stephen and there our story began. After the first days of class I see that there is a serious guy, a little like me, always taking notes, who does not go out during the intervals and is always there studying his book, a guy who doesn’t use to get acquainted with other guys or to lose time … I notice him, yes, but just notice… then something unpredictable happens, the analysis teacher explains Heine-Cantor theorem doing this premise: “I’ll explain it but you won’t understand anything at all!” For me, like I was at that time, such things ware like a glove challenge.

I had to understand the Heine-Cantor theorem. I work the utmost commitment; approximately, I can also understand the general meaning but did not understand precisely why it was something important and could have a practical utility. The day after, Stephen approaches me (blessed be the Heine-Cantor theorem!) And tells me: “But did you understand the theorem that the teacher explained yesterday?” Look, for me that question had not in any way flavor of a personal approach; it was only a request for explanations about a theorem of analysis. I have tried to master to him from what I understood but Stephen replied objections to which I did not know how to answer and I ended up smiling and enlarging my arms as to say: “Well … perhaps I didn’t understand anything at all!”

When next lesson begins he remains seating next to me, but I don’t even notice. Then at the end of the lesson he tells me: “Do we try to understand how it works?” I say yes and we spend the whole afternoon on the Heine-Cantor theorem, slowly the issue clarifies and at the end we feel the thing pretty simple. In the evening when we say bye we tell each other that next day we were going to ask the teacher whether or not what we understood was right. In the evening, at home, I newly studied the theorem and next morning after class we asked the teacher and he told us that the meaning was exactly what we had understood. I felt radiant … but only for the Heine-Cantor theorem.

In the following days, Stephen thought that we could study together because we were serious guys who don’t like waste time and we began to study together. I would like to underline that we only studied, not even a word about other subjects, we were too taken with the idea of passing all examinations at the first session, and for us that was the first goal. In practice we have only studied until the end of examinations and we passed all exams and all with 30/30 and it wasn’t easy at all. We felt in ecstasy, but next day I missed a lot the study with Stephen … and I think the same happened to him.

He called and told me … what do you do today? My answer: nothing! so we met in the early afternoon but we had nothing to do, we talked all the afternoon, I fully Catholic, he just the opposite but respectful, political ideas were not very different, then we talked about books, cinema, songs, teachers, high school and many other subjects, but never about girls or sex. I then didn’t notice at all such things but later I understood … When we are going to say bye I ask him about his plans for the next day, he offers me an exhibition on Impressionists and I agree.

Next morning, after the exhibition, about which he knew everything more than an art history teacher, we go to eat something at fast food restaurant and then we walk around the city. Together we are good. We are two friends walking in a beautiful July afternoon. In short, things went so for about half a summer.

My parents in August go to the mountains for three weeks; I use to go with them. I ask Stephen what he’s going to do in August, he asks me: “And you?” I say, instinctively: “I’ll stay here …” and he tells me: “I too!” I feel happy. When I go back home I say to my parents that I have to stay at home. My father tells me only: “But don’t’ be mad with books!” At that moment for the first time I realize that I have skipped three weeks in the mountains to stay with Stephen. Several days after he told me he did exactly the same to stay with me.
When my parent were away, Stephen used to come to my house, sex was miles from us, either to him or to me, we were happy to be together, talking, cooking, relaxing and telling each other prudently about our lives. In those afternoons we began to talk about sex: two heterosexual friends who talk about sex, he tells me at the beginning of his two girls and I tell him of my adventures, so to say.

Then our confidence became slowly more and more and he told me that, however, he was not enthusiastic about sex, I told him that for me was just the same and then we discussed with a greater freedom. For me, but I think even for him, it was an incredible sense of liberation talking freely about sex, although in fact we spoke nevertheless much more trough allusions than directly, but substantially our talking was serious. Neither he nor thought to be gay, we were two straight not enthusiastic guys, that was all.

Then Stephen was entirely blocked, the fluency of the previous days seemed to disappear, he came to my house but didn’t like to stay at home but wanted to leave the house to go around the city, not talking about us but just about books and exhibitions. … I had had enough of it … but I did not say anything.

One evening, when he left, he tried not to give me an appointment for the following day; he was formal, and never happened before. I put him on the spot, I saw that he was embarrassed and he told me: “Come on, I’m not going to talk about it … don’t worry, I’m not down on you … “and he left. I was there in all my discomfort, I didn’t know what to think, I called him on the phone, he replied very short messages, then closed the phone but I didn’t let him go, at the end he told me: “Okay, I’ll come tomorrow, you’re right you have to know … “

The next day came, he was stressed, asked me not to interrupt and in very few words told me that he thought he was in love with me but the situation seemed absurd to him because he never fell in love with a boy, what instead was happening . I then still thought I was heterosexual and I replied as I thought a good heterosexual boy should reply to a gay friend of his in such a situation: “I am sorry but I cannot agree because I am heterosexual … I like you but… “He didn’t even let me end my phrase and he left saying that he was tired and didn’t even bear to stay there …

When he left I felt a violent feeling of emptiness, I was a few minutes shocked … then I went racing at the bus stop where he had to take his bus, I saw him get in but didn’t join him in time … I felt death … I said to myself: “But I love this boy … I don’t know about sex factor, but I can’t live without him … “I sent a text message:” I love you … now I understand!”He called me and told me: “Is it true?”I said:” I went racing to reach the stop I saw you get in and leave but I was not able to reach you in time and I was going to break down and cry … I can’t do without you, without you I die … don’t put me down this way … I love you, Stephen … I love you …”, and he said, stay there at the bus stop I’ll arrive in minutes. And he closed the phone …

Ten minutes later I saw him arrive racing and panting … We embraced crying in the middle of the road. Do not think that we went home to have sex, to get there; it took more than a month. He wanted us, both, to do test for AIDS and then our relationship was characterized by a form of mutual shyness, hesitation, a little as Project says.

Now we are together for a year, we passed all examinations also of the second year … I think that without Stephen I would never have understood to be gay. Now we have our whole sexuality but it’s too private and I’ll keep it private. I just wanted to say that there are many ways to feel gay and perhaps there are so many ways of being gay that it is difficult to understand them completely. Thanks to all and to Project in particular.

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