Friday, September 14, 2007

Into Bondage

At the time, I had no idea what was going to happen. I was thirteen, just trying to figure out this new body I was acquiring. It was changing so rapidly...most if it I think I enjoyed, but it was still confusing. I started to feel things physically and emotionally that were all new to me. It seems like I spent a lot of time exploring this new body of mine. It was amazing the sensations that a simple or prolonged touch could bring to me.

How it actually happened isn't really that important, although it is an event that I am not likely to ever forget, as I doubt anyone does. I'm talking of course about my first experience with masturbation and ecstasy that comes with the release. Like a first kiss, there is probably nothing that compares to the first orgasm. And that became my problem...trying to get it right again.

I've never used drugs, so I don't know what it's like to be high. I don't know what it's like to be addicted to a chemical substance...or even an organic one. But there are times now that I wonder if I would have been better off if it had been pot or something else that put its hooks in me. Because with that first time, I surrendered a part of me. To whom or what, I don't have the answer. I think many of us would probably describe him as someone with a pitchfork and horns and long tail with a point on the end of it. I really don't know. But I do know that with that one simple act as a thirteen year old, I came into a bondage I can't completely describe. A friend asked me recently what my worst habit was. I didn't answer him completely, but only that it was one that began when I was thirteen. I think you can easily guess what it is, as I'm sure he did as well.

The "problem" has plagued me my life every since that moment. Until the age of nineteen, there probably wasn't more than three days ever pass without my seeking the pleasure and the release. At nineteen, I was able to go six weeks, and that seemed almost unbearable. But I was in the Navy at the time, and there wasn't much privacy nor opportunity or I probably wouldn't have lasted that long. As I look back on my life from this end, it's easy to see that I've been a slave to the act and have used it much like I used books before that first time. It has been my method of escape...an entry into a fantasy world. It was one way that I could control some aspect of my life, even if only for a few moments. It has been my crutch when I've been angry, or depressed. Stressed or frustrated. At times, even when I was happy...or at least it seemed I was. But the fantasy continued to call me.

The fantasies pulled me into a different world though...my dark closet. At first, the thoughts were what you might expect from any young teenage boy. I thought of the girls I had crushes on, or the images I would see in the pornography I would steal from my dad. But they soon drifted to something more real, something I could grasp to at least a minor degree. My fantasies started to revolve around the only sexual contact I had really had, and that was with other boys. The guilt of the act was bad enough...the guilt of the thoughts that I was having was nearly unbearable. So I hid them, deep in my mind and my heart. I would only bring them out when I would go to that secret place, that dark closet when I would seek the pleasure and the release. And then, the thoughts, the memories (at least the pleasant ones), the fantasies would return. The boys in the fantasy rarely ever had a face to it. It was the thought of what we would be doing together. It was a feeling that was comfortable....it was a feeling of being cared for by someone. And it was attractive to me, very attractive.

But in my mind, and in my heart, I knew the feelings were wrong. They were sinful. They were condemning. And so, I began my life of self-condemnation. A life lived in two places. One, in the world with everyone else...seemingly normal. The other in the dark recesses of my mind where I wouldn't let anyone else enter. It was my secret. At times I felt like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings...like I was Smeagle at times and at other times like Gollum himself...self destructive. I wanted to give up the "ring", to give up the secret fantasies and desires, but it kept calling me back. Everytime I would seem to break away from the desire and the draw, some event would wind its way into my life to restore the feelings or the thoughts. As I got older, as I entered high school, the bondage was reinforced as I discovered a new way of escape. But it wasn't an escape from the bondage I was in, it was just another chain that connected with the dark secret that I was living in my mind.

1 comment:

Deb Shucka said...

One of the saddest things about this is that your only source of pleasure became your biggest source of shame. And it was your only pleasure because of the lack of love.

I'm so sorry for your pain. So sorry that I was so desparately trying to find my own love that I had no idea of your suffering.

I'm also so grateful that you're finally getting to tell your story. I know it will help you heal, and eventually help others as well. It's helping me to feel less alone.