Du Temps Perdu

This story involves masturbation between two guys. If you are offended by that, you're too young, or you live where stories like this aren't allowed, please move on.

This story takes place in the 1950's, long before anyone had heard of HIV/AIDS. These days, anybody who doesn't practice safe sex is a menace to himself and society. Don't be a menace.

It's okay to print this story out or save it to a disc, but don't transfer it to another website or archive without my permission, please.

Copyright 2003 Tim Mead. All Rights Reserved.

In his beautiful story, "Billy and Danny: Freshman Year" (College), Mickey is showing us what it was like to be gay in college in 1969-70. The story below is about being gay in college in the early fifties -- a different time, a different world. I am posting it for a reticent friend of mine, John H. He says the story is true but that he has changed the names somewhat, for obvious reasons.

Timmead88@yahoo.com

Hi. I'm John. Both my grandfathers were named John, so I suppose it was inevitable. My parents, to avoid confusion, never called me John. Instead, starting from my middle name, they called me a popular nickname that is also a common synonym for penis. I'd rather be John, or almost anything except that name I wound up with. So when I got to college I told everyone my name was John. Period.

I was short and fat in high school. I was in the band, the chorus, the National Honor Society, the National Thespian Society, and on the student council. Well, it was a small high school. I wasn't a jock. Those of us who lived on farms were bused into town to school. If you didn't have car, and I didn't, you didn't do much dating. I did, however, always manage to have jack-off buddies, a total of three guys, consecutively, through junior high and high school. I didn't think of myself as a homosexual (we didn't have the word "gay" then). Instead, I just figured when I finally got the chance, I'd be as delirious over sex with a girl as some of my friends were.

Because I was my class valedictorian, I was accepted into Oberlin College, which is about 30 miles west and a little south of Cleveland, Ohio. Prior to admission, I was required to have a physical examination. My doctor, who hadn't seen me in several years, gave me hell for all the weight I was carrying and told me I should lose 40 pounds. I wasn't so much concerned about my health, I was 17 and would live forever, but for reasons of vanity, I managed to lose 30 pounds before I got to Oberlin that fall. I also got rid of the longish hair which I had kept parted and combed with the aid of a hair tonic called Vitalis, and got some less geeky looking glasses. (I wore them for reading, mostly, at that time.)

I arrived at college with a collection of bow ties, only to find that no one was wearing bow ties. I also remember during freshman orientation another physical exam. This time, all 250 freshman men were in the gymnasium in their undershorts. 249 of them were wearing white briefs, and there I was in my red plaid boxers. As you might imagine, I went shopping at Powers and Dawley, the only men's store in town, that afternoon to get some four-in-hand ties and a supply of white jockeys.

I began to smoke almost as soon as I got to college, and I maintained a pack-a-day habit for fifteen years. That, along with three years of phys. ed., helped me keep my weight down. Most of the time I was in college I weighed exactly what those charts say a guy my height should weigh.

Now I need to tell you a little about Oberlin. My high school friends thought it seemed like a strange place, but I loved it. I chose to go there in part because of its academic reputation, but also because it had no fraternities or sororities. Social life revolved around the 40 or so extracurricular activities or interest groups and the women's dorms. There were political groups from the Young Republicans to the Young Socialists and the United World Federalists. I belonged for a while to the Forensic Union, which was the debate team. There was even a Mahler-Bruckner Circle, and, though I hadn't yet learned to appreciate their music, I thought it was cool that there was such a group on our campus.

Each of the women's dorms had a dining hall. If there were 30 women in a dorm, 30 men ate there. Meals were served at round tables seating eight, and they were served family style, by waiters (always men) who were working to help pay their college expenses. Men were expected to wear a jacket and tie to dinner each evening and the mid-day meal on Sunday. Some guys wore the same jacket and tie every day for year, I think, but I thought it was a civilized custom and never complained about it. Besides, I liked having nice clothes. Sometimes if I was depressed I'd buy myself a new tie. They cost about $2.50 in those days.

Each of the dorms, men's and women's had a formal dance each year, and there were "All-College Dances" once a month in the Men's Gym. Because of Oberlin's excellent Conservatory of Music, there were always great bands at those dances.

Some of my high school friends would ask me, "But, without a Greek system, what in hell do you DO?" My answer was usually that we sat around and talked a lot, and I do remember many fabulous bull sessions in the parlors of the women's dorms, in guys' rooms, or even at the snack bar at the student union.

Another thing about Oberlin. All students were expected to live in dorms on campus. Since no student was allowed to have a car, we all rode bikes.

So, between the phys. ed., going out for the fencing team sophomore year, and riding my bike everywhere, I stayed in decent if not spectacular shape. But my mental image of myself was still that of the fat nerd I was in high school.

I dated from time to time, taking a girl, as we called them then, to a movie or to a dance. Sometimes we had study dates, where we went to the main reading room at the library and studied or pretended to study, after which we'd stop by the snack bar for a coke, a milk shake, or, if we had to study more when we returned to our rooms, coffee.

In those days we were told by our elders not to get "fresh" with a girl because that would mean you didn't respect her. We all were told that premarital sex was absolutely immoral, but I think most of us would have jumped at the chance to have sex. I carried the same condom in my wallet for four years.

I learned two things early on. My first roommate taught me some basic dance steps, and one of the first women I dated, who was a wonderful dancer herself, helped me improve my dancing. Another woman that first year initiated me into the art of "French kissing."

So, that was my sex life. I dated someone about once a week, kissed the girl goodnight at the door of the dorm, and went home and jacked off.

I met a guy I liked a lot freshman year. His name was Bill, and he lived down the hall from me in Federal Hall, one of the freshman housing units. He was not a lot taller than me, probably weighed the same as I did or a little less, and was wiry and strong. He had blue eyes and a shock of brown hair. He wasn't by any means handsome, but I thought he was cute, and he was a lot of fun to be with. I knew from the beginning that Bill was really into women. He dated a different girl every week, and, when asked, he'd talk about their "petting" sessions, as we called them. Freshman year he was always looking for some girl who'd "put out," to use a popular expression of the time. But he seemed to like me. In the evenings, after we had finished our studying, we'd sit in one or the other of our rooms and talk until the early hours about anything that crossed our minds. Oh, and we got pantsed together right off.

A tradition which I presume has died at Oberlin was that from the start of the fall term until homecoming game, freshmen and sophomores tried to pants each other. We tried to travel in groups to be safe, but that wasn't always possible. One night, Bill and I were on our way back to our dorm after taking a couple of women back to theirs. We were accosted by a half a dozen or so sophs. We tried to run for it, but they caught us and took our jeans off of us. At homecoming each class took all of the pants it had collected, tied the legs together into a long chain, and displayed it on the football field at half time. Then the owners of the pants were allowed, midst jeers and catcalls, to go onto the field, find their pants, untie them from the others, and take them. Some guys left the field with two or three pairs of pants, and they were usually applauded in an ironic way.

One day in the fall of sophomore year, Bill said to me, "Be careful when you're around that guy Ralph."

"What do you mean? What's wrong with him?"

"Never mind. Just watch out for him, that's all." He wouldn't say more than that, and I was puzzled.

One afternoon a day or so later, I was studying in my room when there was a knock on the door. I opened it, and there was Ralph. I knew who he was. I think he may have been in one of my classes. I also had seen him in the showers at the gym. He was about 5' 9", blond, blue-eyed, very nicely built, with a substantial cut dick. He looked Scandinavian, but his last name was French. Although he was one of the homeliest guys I knew, he had a very sexy body and seemed very friendly. But I had no idea why he had come to see me.

I motioned him to the one comfortable chair in my single room at Noah Hall, and I sat again in the desk chair. We talked a while about the course we were both taking and then about other things, trivial stuff. I was beginning to wonder when he would get to the point of his visit.

Finally, he said something to the effect that he liked me and he'd like us to be friends. I started to say that was okay with me when he stopped me.

"John, there's something about me that you'd better know before you agree to be my friend."

"Yeah, what's that?"

"I, um, well . . .." He was clearly uncomfortable.

"Yeah?"

"I could never work for the State Department."

"So?"

"Well, you know what I mean, don't you?"

"No, Ralph, I'm not sure what you're talking about."

"Oh, come on, you read the papers, don't you?"

The light bulb clicked on. At that time, a great many men were being forced to resign from the Department of State because they were homosexual. This was in the early days of that shameful period in American history called "The McCarthy Era."

I said "Oh!" or something equally suave. When I jacked off with any of my friends in high school, I always used the "any port in a storm" rationale: I was just like everybody else, and if a woman had presented herself I would have taken advantage of her being there, but since no women were present, I'd beat off with my friend.

Here, however, was a guy with a sexy body who had just told me, however obliquely, that he was a homo.

"Look, John, you obviously need to think about this." He stood. He stuck out his hand for a handshake, and I shook it. "I'll go now. Let me know if you'd like to be my friend."

"Um, er, yeah, Ralph, sure."

He grinned at me and left.

Now, I'd like to say that I told Ralph the next time I saw him and that, of course, it didn't matter to me that he was what he was. I'd like even more to say that we became lovers and fucked like bunnies for three years. That's not what happened.

I thought immediately that if Ralph had come out to me (though I didn't know that expression at the time), he probably had to others as well. So, if he and I were seen together on campus, everyone would think (or know) that I was just like him. And I was pretty sure, however attracted I was to him, that I didn't want to risk that. I knew I'd certainly lose my friendship with Bill.

That evening Bill came in just as I was finishing studying. He sat on the edge of my bed and asked the 1950's equivalent of "Whassup," which may have been something like "so what's up with you, Johnny?"

"Ralph was here this afternoon."

"Oh, shit, he didn't come on to you or anything, did he?"

"No, not at all. He merely said he'd like to be my friend."

"What did you tell him?"

"Before I could tell him anything, he just asked me to think about it, shook hands, and left."

"Well, if he ever comes after you, use your knee in his groin, and then run. He's bigger and stronger than you are."

I didn't tell Bill that I couldn't visualize Ralph doing that. I just laughed and said something like, "Yeah, and he can probably run faster, too."

Bill laughed and said, "Well, just don't let yourself be caught alone with him, and you'll be okay."

One day not long after that, I bumped into Ralph at the snack bar. He sat at my table and asked if I had thought about what he'd said.

"Yeah, I have, Ralph, and look, I'm sorry, but --"

His face fell. He stood up. Then he smiled at me and said, "It's okay, John, I understand." Then he walked away.

Whenever I saw Ralph after that, and at a small college like Oberlin that was fairly often, he always smiled and said hello. I smiled and returned his greeting. I read in the alumni magazine a few years ago that Ralph had retired from a successful business or profession, don't remember exactly what, had bought a farm in Pennsylvania, and had recently died there. I noted that he had no survivors. And I regretted being such a coward back then in sophomore year. He might have been a great friend if I had had the courage to risk censure or contempt from my other friends. I guess at the time it was a question of giving up a known friend like Bill for whatever unknown qualities Ralph had.

But Bill flunked out at the end of the first semester of that year. He moved out of the dormitory and took a job somewhere in Elyria or Lorain, I think. He had a car, and continued dating Jackie, the girl he would eventually marry.

I was pretty lonely during the first few weeks of the spring semester that year. I really missed my nightly talks with Bill. But life sometimes has its compensations, and one of those appeared in my life about that time.

I had taken a "bell job" to earn a little extra cash. In Noah Hall, as in all the other dorms, there were no telephones in the student rooms. There was a phone on each floor which we could use to take incoming calls or from which we could make local calls. All calls coming into the building came to the phone on the reception desk in the dormitory lobby. The person "on bells" answered the phone or greeted visitors. If a resident had a phone call, our job was to press a button which would ring a buzzer (not a bell) in his room. One buzz for a phone call, two for a visitor. I worked a couple of hours each weekday afternoon that term, as I recall, from 1:00 until 3:00, perhaps.

I hadn't been doing that very long when this great-looking guy in my intro to lit class began stopping by. He'd be coming back from a 1:00 class, I think, and he'd just lay his books on the desk and stand there and chat with me. He was very friendly.

This is the place, I suppose to describe Rick. He was about average height, with wavy light brown hair. He wore glasses, but I still thought he was very good looking. He had a square face with a cleft in his chin and beautiful blue eyes. Like all of the guys at that time, he wore jeans to class, and he often had on a baggy sweater or a loose-fitting flannel or wool shirt. His face was usually ruddy from being on his bike in the cold northern Ohio winter. I got a hard-on every time he came in that door, which was every day for a week, I think.

I couldn't imagine why he was being so friendly. It never occurred to me that I was being cruised. That might happen to someone else, but not to short, dull, uninteresting me.

After a few days of chatting with me for a half hour or so at the reception desk, he asked me to stop by his room later. I think it may have been a Friday.

When I got off bells at 3:00, I went up to his room. We both had singles, mine on the first floor, his on the third. We sat and talked until time for both of us to go to dinner at our respective places at 6:00. I had to leave in time to change into the jacket and tie required. Rick was eating at a co-op dorm where the students did all the shopping and cooking to save money, so he didn't need to dress up.

He asked me if we might go to a movie together the next night, and since I didn't have a date, I said yes.

I practically fell in love with Rick that spring. Oh, I told myself it was all platonic. And I did have a tremendous crush on him. He was smart, funny, gentle, great looking, and he had, after all, gone out of his way to make a friend of me.

We weren't exactly inseparable. We had other friends. I continued to date regularly, and he did occasionally, though he was involved more often with a group of his friends at the co-op dorm. But we were together at some point every day.

The first thing that happened was that we began to sit together in Mr. Roellinger's lit class. (At Oberlin, no faculty member was ever called "Dr." or "Professor.") I remember it was Rick who introduced me to wax earplugs. I had been complaining that the guys in my section were noisy and keeping me awake. It took a little getting used to, but I learned to sleep with them for the rest of the term. Oh, and I began sleeping naked for the first time in my life because Rick said it was much more comfortable than pajamas, which tended to bunch up, or jockeys, which bound your crotch. He was right, and I've slept "his" way ever since. We also discovered that we shared a passion for classical music (but then nearly everyone at Oberlin in those days did).

One evening as we were sitting in his room, talking (we were there more often than in mine, though I don't know why), the conversation got around to hair, and we both confessed that we had always wished we were blonds. Both of us had light brown hair. So, we more or less dared each other to bleach our hair. We found a product called "Light and Bright" that we applied with a toothbrush to our crew cuts. The stuff supposedly lightened the hair just a little bit with each application, and it did indeed work gradually. It took so many applications that we finally we just gave up. Our hair had turned a very brassy blond, certainly nothing that looked natural. Mr. Roellinger called us over one day after class and asked if we had lost a bet. We laughed and told him it was more like a dare, and he laughed along with us.

I suppose some people took a look at the two of us and decided right then that we were both queer, but no one ever said anything to me, and I don't think they did to Rick, either. Well, we had done it once, and that was enough. Both of us allowed our hair to grow out, got it cut close, and never tried changing our hair color again.

After Rick and I became friends, I still saw Bill occasionally when he was on campus to pick up his girl. The first time we bumped into each other, he said he had heard I was running around (his term) with Rick. I said that he and I had gotten to be pretty good friends. Bill got a pained look on his face and said, "I don't know why you'd want to have anything to do with HIM!" After that, Bill's and my friendship seemed to wane for a while.

When the first hints of warm weather came to northern Ohio, windows were flung open, and sunbathers appeared all over campus, Rick and I among them. Federal, Noah, and Burton Halls, all men's dorms, formed a sort of a quadrangle, and on any sunny spring day the whole grassy area was covered by guys in bathing trunks on towels. The pretense was that we studied, but some guy in Noah that year always put his huge bass reflex hi-fi speaker (we didn't have such a thing as stereo yet), in his window and played classical music of some kind at a volume which made sure everyone in the quad heard it -- and which discouraged conversation.

One afternoon when I got back from a class, there was a note on my door from Rick asking me to come up right away. When I got there, he was in his jockeys. He explained that he'd gotten pretty badly sunburned a day or two earlier, but that now it was healing, and it was itching like crazy. He had put some sort of lotion all over everything he could reach, but he asked if I would do his back.

I said I guessed I could do that for a friend. He surprised me by dropping his briefs and lying face-down on his bed. The lotion was on his desk, so I grabbed it, poured some in my hands, and began to rub. I did it gently because, though he was itching, I was afraid I might hurt the sunburn. He asked me to rub it harder, so I did.

I don't know when I sprang wood, but by the time his back was done, I was hard. Rick asked me if I'd do the backs of his legs. I wondered why he hadn't done that himself, but I wasn't averse to rubbing lotion on those great calves and thighs. And my bone got harder.

When I got to his butt, though, I stopped and put the bottle back on his desk. Rick had been quiet throughout most of the process, grunting his appreciation only occasionally.

"Johnny, that feels great. Won't you do the rest?"

There was a line I was invited to cross, and I think deep down I knew it. But I was so conditioned to respond conventionally, I said, "I don't think so. You can do your own ass."

He got up, grinned, and shrugged. Then he poured some lotion in his hand, rubbed his hands together, and then rubbed them all around his ass. And I was mentally kicking myself because I hadn't done it. I would have loved having my hands on those buns. I can still seem them. Sort of a rosy color, with a light sprinkling of golden hair all over them. It would have been an act of friendship, and God knows I loved this guy -- more than I had ever loved anybody to that point in my life. But I just couldn't do it. The homosexual implications were too clear, and I just wasn't ready to admit to myself, much less Rick, that I was queer.

A few weeks later, Rick suggested that we not sunbathe in the quad, so we took our beach towels and walked to the northern edge of campus, beyond the football stadium, where there were open practice fields on which intramural field hockey and varsity lacrosse and soccer teams played or practiced.

When we were pretty far from anything, we threw down our towels. Rick stripped off his trunks and lay down on his stomach. I was appalled. Yeah, I know, always the chicken. "Rick, what if someone sees you? Cover up, man! Anybody could come by."

He laughed and pointed out there wasn't a living soul within 200 yards of us, and that by the time anybody got close enough to see he was naked he could pull on his trunks. He gently needled me until I took off my trunks, too. It was a fantastic feeling. I was still nervous about being naked in public. I felt so exposed. The sun and the breeze on my butt felt fantastic, and I was eventually able to relax and enjoy lying there with Rick.

We put suntan lotion on each other, though this time there was no suggestion of touching each others' asses. After about an hour, Rick reached into a bag he'd brought with a book and I don't know what else in it and produced a camera.

"Show time," he said. He took several pictures of me on my stomach, then sitting with a leg or a hand strategically placed.

"Now," he grinned, "you take some of me."

Just as I was standing up, he took one of me, full-front.

I sputtered at him, but he just grinned and handed me the camera. I was determined to get him back by taking at least one shot of him fully exposed, but he always managed to turn, or grab a book, or do something to hide his genitals. "There's no point in making any more of these unprintable," he explained. I was annoyed with him, but I trusted that he wasn't going to let the pictures get into the wrong hands.

One evening late in that spring semester, he and I were sitting in his room with the lights out. The window was open, and we could see lightning and hear thunder. He had rearranged his room so that the bed was under the window, as I recall. We were sitting on the bed, watching the approaching storm.

The conversation turned to an area we had never discussed before. He told me about some junior high friends of his he had jacked off with, and asked if I had had any friends like that. I said I had, and told him a little about j.o. experiences I had had with a couple of band buddies. I thought I knew where this conversation was leading, and I was practically paralyzed with ambivalence. If I did what he suggested (and what I desperately wanted to do), I could no longer rationalize that I was going through some sort of phase. I had never had a moral problem with homosexuality -- my own latent tendencies or others' full-blown acceptance of it. But I also knew that society condemned it and that anybody who had a choice in the matter would be foolish to be publicly known as a homo.

Well, Rick was there, looking sexy as hell and almost pleading with me to jack off with him. I said, I don't know whether mentally or out loud, "What the hell," and began to take off my clothes. Soon we were standing there, naked, throbbingly erect, and grinning at each other. He reached over and grabbed my cock, pulling me toward him. He pressed the undersides of our cocks together, holding them both in his hand. His was a good inch longer than mine, but about the same thickness. I had seen it often enough, but never erect before, and it was beautiful! I had never thought of a penis as being beautiful. They -- mine and others' -- felt good to touch, but this was the first time I had ever actually realized how aroused I could be just looking at it. Besides, I had also seen some ugly cocks on guys.

Then each of us held the other's dick with one hand while exploring his body with the other, looking at each other and smiling as we did. I had expected when he asked me about jacking off that we' drop our pants and sit side by side on his bed as we pumped our tools. This was so much sexier. And it meant more because I loved Rick. I had liked my junior high and high school friends a lot, but what I felt for Rick was, as I've said, totally special. I had already begun wondering how I was going to make it through the coming summer without him. So this physical expression of what I still hope was our lover for each other, however fumbling and basic it may have been, was a crisis of a sort for me.

I came first. Rick looked into my hand to inspect what I had deposited there and handed me a tissue. As I was wiping my hand with the Kleenex, he finished stroking himself off. He held out his hand to show me, and I was pleased that, despite the disparity in our dick sizes, he hadn't produced any more cum than I had. After we were both cleaned up and had our briefs on again, we sat back on his bed, he put his arms around me, and said, "See, getting your picture taken in the nude wasn't so shocking, now was it?"

I think that's the moment when I realized that all of this had been planned. Later, I asked him, and he admitted that he had been attracted to me from the moment we first saw each other in Roellinger's class. My becoming his friend and the eventual masturbation session were things he wanted but was willing to achieve as slowly as necessary so as not to spook me. I was overwhelmed. I couldn't believe that anybody would ever be that attracted to me, would work to win my friendship and affection, would actually plot to "seduce" me. And that it was this special guy was just more than I could fathom. I didn't know whether to cry tears of joy or weep because we would soon be apart for three whole months. Actually, I didn't do either, because guys didn't cry in those days.

I mentioned that I recognized this experience as a crisis. It was then, I believe now, that I finally admitted to myself that I liked men. I wasn't sure what that meant, and I still hadn't had any sexual experiences with women beyond kissing and a little groping. I had heard about "cornholing," but I couldn't believe anybody actually did that. I knew that I loved to look at guys' asses. That went all the way back to when I was ten and had a "Classic Comics" version of the novel, "The Corsican Brothers." At one point, the twins run across a skunk in the woods, are sprayed, and have to take off and discard their clothes. One of the frames in the comic book showed the two boys, about my age, naked. It was a rear view. I hadn't started masturbating yet, but the sight of those two cute boy butts made my dick hard and made me ache inside. I've loved guy's rears ever since.

Anyway, I knew I was one of THOSE people. I still told myself that I would enjoy straight sex even more, once I had managed to get some. Meanwhile, I said, you have a wonderful friend in Rick, and you and he have discovered how much fun you can have together. I began, I think, at that point, to look forward to the time when I could suck him off.

It was not to be that spring. In fact, we didn't see much of each other after that. We had to study for and then take finals, and then we went home. Rick went to Washington, where he had a summer job keeping the trails open in Mount Rainier National Park. Apparently he had been doing that since he was in high school. When he told me that, I understood where that great body came from.

I had to go back home to the farm. My dad, who was paying my college costs, had a full-time job, so he wanted me on the farm all day during the summer to repair fences, mow and help take in hay, keep the pasture fields clipped off, move our purebred shorthorn breeding stock from one pasture to the next as necessary.

It was a boring summer. My friends were either in one of the armed services or had summer jobs during their college breaks. I hardly saw anyone I knew except at church. But I got a good tan and managed to keep myself in decent shape throwing hay bales around and digging postholes. And I had lots of time to read in the evenings.

When Rick wrote and told me he was coming back across the country on a Greyhound bus, we decided that he would come to our place and ride on to Oberlin with my dad and me. I was at the Greyhound stop, also the drug store in our little town, when his bus from Cincinnati was to arrive. It arrived fifteen minutes or so late, and Rick wasn't on it. I didn't know what to do. I asked the druggist, who was also the Greyhound agent, when the next bus arrived from Cincinnati. He said there'd be another one through from that direction about midnight, but, of course, the drug store would be closed by then.

Not knowing what to do, I went home, hoping Rick had called. When I got there, five miles from the town, I was told Rick hadn't called. My folks and I waited up until eleven o'clock, when my dad, reminding me that he and I had to start for Oberlin the next morning whether Rick showed up or not, said he was going to bed and suggested I do the same.

I was still lying there awake wondering what had happened to Rick when I heard someone calling my name softly. I looked out the window, and there, in the moonlight, was that great and very welcome face looking up at me.

I pulled on a shirt and some pants and hurried down to him. By that time, the folks were awake, too, and they pulled on robes long enough to greet Rick and see if he needed anything to eat. He politely refused food, and the folks went back to bed. He and I sat on the porch with our arms around each other. We had to swat mosquitoes constantly, but we couldn't talk inside without disturbing the folks. He explained that his bus had been late getting into Cincinnati, so he had missed his connection. He had somehow misplaced our phone number. When he got to our little town, he found someone who knew our family and where we lived. The guy actually brought Rick in his truck to our farm. That's the way rural/small town life was in those days. Anyway, Rick and I sat there and talked about our summers and how much we had missed each other.

The drive from home to Oberlin took about seven hours back then, before there were any interstates. My dad drove all the way, while Rick and I dozed.

That was the beginning of our junior year, and we had a beautiful big double corner room in the newest of the men's dormitories, Burton Hall.

That year is a happy blur in my memory. Rick and I were both English majors, but he had aspirations to write screen plays, and he spent a lot of his time writing. He also had joined the college modern dance group. They were glad to get him not so much because he had any real talent as a dancer as because he was one of the very few men who were interested in dance. He did look fine in a black leotard, though.

As I had the previous year, I took my meals at La Maison Francaise, where only French was spoken. I occasionally dated one of two or three women at La Maison who were usually available to go to a movie or a dance. It was a good arrangement because they understood I wasn't looking to get involved with any one person, but we had fun when we were together.

Although Rick and I became better and better friends, the sex thing never really got off the ground. Oh, we'd jack off together occasionally, and it was nice, but that seemed to satisfy him. And he was always the leader, so I never pushed to do more, much as I might have wanted to get his dick in my mouth or get him to suck me. I had never heard of rimming, and I think then the thought would have shocked me, but I did practically salivate whenever I saw his butt,-- naked, in a leotard, or in the tight Lee Riders he always wore -- though I don't know what I would have done if I'd had access to it.

Part of the problem may have been that, since we lived together, we both knew we could beat off together whenever we wanted to, so there was no urgency to do so.

I took what I could get, the occasional j.o. sessions and the company of the guy that still made me happy just because I got to see and be with him every day.

And so junior year passed.

We decided to sign up for single rooms the following year. I was disappointed, but he thought he might be able to graduate early, at the end of the first semester, and that would leave me with anybody the college wanted to shove into our double if we were rooming together.

Late in the summer, I got a letter that may have changed my life forever. Rick wrote that a girl from the co-op dorm had come to Mt. Rainier to work, that they had had sex, that she was pregnant, and that they would be married before school started. Rick was always too much the gentleman to say so, but I had the impression that Trish, who became his wife, had followed him out there to do exactly what she did.

At that time Oberlin had a regulation which said any student who married without prior approval of the College authorities was automatically expelled. Rick and Trish appealed to the Dean of Students, who ruled that Rick could finish college, but that Trish was indeed expelled. (How's that for the old double standard?) So, they got an apartment near campus and Trish's dad bought them an old car (which was permissible because Rick lived off campus). They invited me over for dinner once, but I think Trish didn't like me, and I didn't see much of Rick that year. Once in a while we'd bump into each other on campus or in a local store, but not often. He had his new life, and an important change had taken place in mine.

On the first day of the fall semester of senior year I discovered that Marilyn, whom I had always like a lot but who had been engaged all of junior year, was living in Harkness Hall, where I was assigned to eat. We began talking that afternoon, hit it off beautifully, and, as we liked to say, the conversation continued for many years. We were going steady by late October, and, as we began thinking of graduation, were talking about the possibility of marriage. I knew I wanted to go to grad school and get a Ph.D. and that I owed the army two years, so marriage seemed like a remote possibility, but at least we were talking about it. Oh, and Marilyn and I double dated some that fall with Bill and his steady, Jackie.

I saw Marilyn at meals every day, we got together in the evening after we finished our studying, and we became as inseparable as two people could be who lived in college dormitories.

Rick didn't graduate at the end of the first semester, so he was still around when second term started. Trish, as she got bigger and bigger, started spending a lot of time at her parents' home in a small town about 60 miles west of Oberlin.

One Saturday morning I bumped into Rick someplace downtown. We were glad to see each other, as always, and chatted a while. Then he asked if I was free that evening. I told him I was, since Marilyn had gone to Avon Lake to spend the weekend with her roommate, who lived there. He said there was something he'd been wanting to try. He had a hi-fi with a big bass-reflex cabinet. He suggested that we get my speaker cabinet, throw it in his car, and take it to his place, where we'd hook it up and spend the day listening to how his system sounded with both big speakers.

That sounded good to me, and I looked forward to being with my old friend for a while.

It was late afternoon when he picked me and my speaker up at the dorm and drove the short distance to his apartment. We hooked it up, he poured us some wine, and we zoned out listening to lp's.

We went out somewhere to get something to eat, and that's when we really had our first chance to talk. I asked what he was going to do when he graduated. He told me his father in law had a large business in that town where they lived, and that he was going to work in the family business. He hoped he'd have time, between his job and being a dad, to get some writing done. All that made me sad. Rick never said anything unkind or uncomplimentary about Trish or her family, but I could tell that wasn't what he had wanted out of life. He was merely doing what was expected of him.

We listened to music again, chatting between records, for the rest of the evening, and I was enjoying it greatly, especially, with Marilyn being away, since I would have been alone in my dorm room otherwise.

But then came what I think, looking back on it, was a defining moment in my life.

It had begun to rain during the evening, and Rick suggested that I stay over.

"We don't want to get your speakers wet," he'd logically pointed out. "Why not just stay here tonight, and I'll take you home in the morning?"

That sounded okay to me.

Eventually, we went to bed. The only bed was a double. This mind you, was the first time I had ever slept in the same bed with Rick, though we had shared a room for nine months. I notice he kept on his whities, and so did I.

I was keenly aware that I was sleeping where his wife normally slept.

I've never slept well in strange beds, and having Rick next to me was an added reason why I had trouble getting to sleep. Just as I was getting drowsy, and after he had, I thought, gone to sleep, he muttered, "Damn, this is the first erection I couldn't control in months."

I KNEW that was an invitation. But what was I to do? He was married. I loved Marilyn and was hoping to marry her as soon as circumstances permitted. I wanted in the worst way to put my arm around him and ask if he'd like me to "control" his boner. But I didn't. I pretended to be asleep.

I heard from a mutual friend that Trish had delivered a healthy baby boy just about when she was supposed to. Six weeks or so later, I got a phone call from Rick. He said he and Trish wanted me and her best friend on campus, Judith, to be the godparents of the little boy. So, not long before the end of the term, Judith and I took a bus out to the town that was to become Rick's home for the christening of little P.C. We returned to campus later that same Sunday.

Rick didn't attend commencement, so I didn't see him again for two years. Marilyn and I decided we'd get married after I finished my M.A. and before I went into the army. So, two years after we graduated, I was in Cleveland getting the blood test required for us to be married in Ohio. I had flown up from home, and we drove out to see Rick, Trish, and the now two-year-old P.C. That was the last time I ever saw my friend.

We exchanged occasional letters. I sensed that he was very unhappy working for Trish's father, and he found living in that small town smothering. One of his letters told me that they had had a daughter, though I can't remember her name.

When I had done my two years for Uncle Sam and Marilyn and I were living in Morgantown, WV, where I was teaching English at WVU, I got a letter from Rick. It was brief. He said he was leaving Trish and the kids and that he wouldn't be writing any more. I've never heard from him again.

My inquiries produced the response that maybe he had gone to New York, but no one was sure. I haven't been able to find out anything about him through web searches.

I was luckier than Rick. I loved Marilyn very much, and we lived happily together for many years until she died. Obviously Rick and Trish couldn't make each other happy.

But we all did what society expected of us at that time.

["Rick," If by some stroke of fate you're reading this, get in touch with me, and I'll put you in touch with John. Timmead88@yahoo.com ]