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HIGH GEAR

MY FANTASIES

By Rudolf Haaken

In gay philosophical circles, it has become almost cliche to say, "I cannot remember not being gay." My youngest conscious years were filled with proto-sexual fantasies. At about the age of five my mind began to record its perceptions and conceptions with consistency and clarity. It is clear to me now that the playful fantasies I created then were the precursors of mature sexual fantasies. My recollection of sexual scenarios prior to puberty include my first primitive reproductions of television cowboy episodes. Needless to say, the dramatic tension of western adventures fascinated me as it did other boys, but certain sequences gradually predominated and became essential to every one of my fantasies.

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These involved which the hero and another male character made physical contact. acquired a sizeable collection of circumstances in which a hero and anti-hero achieved explicit intimacy. For example I liked to imagine I was wounded and had to be carried away from the scene of conflict draped over the strong shoulder of my sidekick. He would secure me in the saddle of his horse and then mount in back or in front of me. I enjoyed lying on the grass as my handsome partner repaired my injuries or extracted a bullet. (My friends and I would often act out such rescues in play, unaware of their sexual implications.)

My daydreams progressed to involve wrestling scenes in which I and an attractive villain would toss and tumble, locked in each other's sweaty, competitive embrace. Wrestling was often spread over an elaborate

series of events. The goodlooking bad-guy would capture me and for lack of rope, would find it necessary to keep me in close check, subduing me repeatedly. I would escape, my strength would revive and I would do the same to him. An athletic comrade and I, fleeing some agent of evil, would often be compelled to squeeze into a

niche together to avoid detection or even be forced to sleep next to each other in a tight frosty crevass until danger passed.

My heroes were drawn chiefly from television and comic books. My favorites were selected according to their muscular form-fitted figures. I ravished the Lone Ranger's snug pants and square jaw as I did Robin Hood's. Sir Lancelot's chain mail clung so sensuously to his

thighs and, of course, Superman's stretch-knit covered brawn and Tarzan's pale lower buttocks afforded considerable inspiration..

The themes, plots and general structure of my sequences derived largely from comic books, probably because the action in these epics could be easily consulted and replayed. From time to time I tangled with all the members of the Justice League except Supergirl and Wonderwoman. Printed Tarzan surpassed televised Tarzan for looks and the exploits of the Brothers of the Spear always tempted my participation. However, my best buddy by far was Prince Valiant and I imagine I will always be in love with Val.

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While tube and pulp excitement served as the basis for my reveries, I did not hesitate to substitute real people in character roles. Many of my more comely school chums and neighborhood cronies companied me on imaginary expeditions. With the gradual addition of real people came creativity. My secret adventures expanded beyond the bounds of prewritten scripts and variations of the same. The personalities of people knew compelled my fantasies to conform more with reality (and vice versa).

Since I was still unaware that my conceptual intimacies were sexual, steered away from of nudity out sheer embarrassment. Nevertheless nudity asserted itself at rare and brief moments in my homemade visions. It was as if some mundane aspect of my psyche knew what was actually transpiring and flashed nude forms on my cerebral screen against my will. Although my inmature genitalia made no overt responses to my imagery, pleasure centers in my brain encouraged and

directed my boyish idealizations from their very inception at an early age. As puberty approached, I began to experience what could best be described as "hit-and-run" orgasmic sensations without the participation of my as yet undeveloped sex organs. My most vivid protoorgasmic happening occurred during a fantasy based on the famous American painting "Stag at Sharkey's." I had seen the painting in a book from my family's library. It depicts two boxers engaged in a grueling struggle. They wear narrow, lowrise briefs instead of standard," baggy boxer shorts. In fact, the public region of one of the combatants is generously exposed. For a few fleeting seconds I dared to envision the fighters completely naked except for their gloves. In an instant I felt that tingling hormonal implosion with which I am now too familiar. My reaction was one of exhilaration, embarrassment and panicked uncertainty.

With puberty well underway, modified true-to-life situations outweighed media formulations in my imagination with the notable exception that T.V. wrestling made a considerable contribution to the texture of my thoughts. Nudity became ever more common, but not necessarily accompanied by proto-climaxes. It was as if my mind kept moving the goal farther and farther ahead to broaden and define the sexual content of my man-made apparitions. The threshhold of pleasure was constantly raised beyond my reach so that my mental exploits became quite orgiastic.

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My first genuine orgasm took place in the midst of imaginary wrestling match which pitted me against a gorgeous older boy I had seen in the shower at our junior high school. When my pajamas filled with slimy seminal warmth, all the implications of my fantastic lore struck me with the impact of a star-spangled Ali hook. There was no mistaking it. All the innocent adventurous comraderie and grappling had been a big biological conspiracy! Father Nature had seduced me! Zeus had raped me! My psychological virginity seeped into my mattress and was gone forever. Before this I had thought that my fantasies were common to all men and that once the deepening of my voice and the forestation of my crotch were completed, I would inherit a separate, as yet unknown attraction to

November, 1975

women. Apparently this was not to be. I recognized at once that ! was homosexual.

The be sure, my family had never mentioned nor discussed homosexuality, but I knew of its unpopularity from my exposure to anti-gay sentiments at school. I immediately initiated a poorlyequipped, idiotic and doomed campaign to subjugate my renegade eroticism. My strategies incorporated propaganda supplied mainly by Playboy and Penthouse. Attempts to starve my faculties of homosexual eroticism were powerless against inevitable and involuntary wet dreams. I tried to gay pray the away, and supplicated every god and goddess in the east-west pantheon including the Virgin Mary and the plains Indian buffalo god. Wakan Tanka. Punishments, discipline, selfimposed scaretactics and folk remedies were of no use. I initiated a private crash reeducation program in which I composed heterosexual fantasies of every possible heterosexual situation. None of them was even mildly successful.

My personal Dien Bien Phi finally arrived when I attempted intercourse with some cooperative newly-obtained girlfriends. As one might guess, each try was a grotesque flop. These heterosexual forays were repaid with guilt, not because I was gay, but because my girlfriends (both of them) assumed that my lack of sexual response was their faulty. Since their sexual experience was as limited as my own, they interpreted my failure. as their own inadequacy. I was unable to console or reasssure them without exposing my tru predicament (which I dod not). That point marked my embarkation on an illiad laden with trials and tempests which finally spewed me out of my moonwindowed closet.

My record lends weighty support to Freud's contention that sexual fantasies begin in early childhood, as well as the contemporary notion that sexual orientation is fixed by the age of five or six. I must confess I am very fortunate to have been reared in a family which did not repress sexuality. Sexual development in a liberal atmosphere is admittedly bewildering but it is also a cosmos of fun. For those whose sexual growth did not parallel mine (and there may be many) let me just say, "you should have been there when we stopped the Persians at the Peloponnesus."