My Boyfriend, the Doctor
By 1980 I was getting restless with my ultra-conservative life, and lack of complete sexual fulfillment. I decided to advertise in the Village Voice to discreetly meet someone of like needs. Today there are all kinds of ways to make contact when advertising for a sex partner, including coded voice mail and email. But then you had to publish a phone number or address, so in my ad I used the number of a public telephone in the hallway where I worked. Responders were instructed to call that number at a specified time. There were few takers, and no one suitable. A few months later I tried again, this time using a post office box address. The ad, using language similar to my first ad, described me briefly , emphasizing that I was "non-promisc." This time, I had an interesting response from a guy named Peter. I wrote back and we arranged to meet.
Our first meeting was at a restaurant in the midtown area of Manhattan, and went well. Peter turned out to be a Chinese-American physician. A psychiatrist, no less. Although unmarried, Peter was even more closeted than I. I had always been extremely cautious, almost paranoid, but it developed that Peter could match me easily in that regard. In fact, he used some protective strategies that even I had not resorted to. Peter had virtually no gay experience at all. He had never had sex with a man, nor had he been to any gay bars or other gathering places. When he told me that he had never seen a gay porno film, I suggested that we go to one on our next date. We did, and it was a dismal failure. During the film, we held hands and I put his hand on my hardening cock. He accepted this without protest, but when I groped him I noticed that he was not erect. Peter kept looking around him and could not relax. After about twenty minutes he asked if we could leave. We did and walked quietly to Grand Central Terminal where Peter was to take a train to his home in Westchester.
After a while, Peter broke the silence by explaining that he was too nervous to enjoy the film experience. He expressed surprise that the film was simply a suck-fuck fest; he had imagined that there would be more of a story with just some sex scenes. He apologized for his discomfort and told me that he had experienced some pressure. I didn't know what to make of this. I asked him to repeat it. "I want you to know that I had some PRESS-URE." After a few moments I figured out that what he was saying was not pressure but "pleasure." We laughed at the misunderstanding, and it broke the earlier strained post-film communication.