The Good Boy (19 page)

I have nothing but happy memories of my time in the monastery, my one regret being the shock and unpleasantness for the other monks resulting from my outburst. I went back a couple of weeks later, apologised and parted on good terms with the monks. In retrospect now I consider the time spent with them to have been not just one of the happiest parts of my life but also one of the most useful and fruitful. That is when I finally grasped what my parents and others had been trying to teach me, that the most important thing in life is love. That is when I learned that the fundamental teaching of the church is to love God, not to fear Him. The monk is taught that in loving God, the Creator and Father, in believing that the acceptance of His will is the true recipe for happiness, each monk must, on entering the monastery, leave behind him his own will and his own plans for his own happiness. The lesson of the monastery is to simplify things, to get back to basics, to love one another. Although I did not last very long as a monk and although my doubts about the value of organised religion and indeed about the very existence of God soon began to grow, I continued, and still continue, to think that simple is better than complex, that love is a better motivator than fear … and that threats of eternal punishment, Hell and so on, are not a sound basis for any sort of moral code.

To my surprise, giving up masturbation had proved no problem at all in the monastery but once outside I soon fell back into my old habits. The twin problems of what to do with my life and how to have a satisfactory sex life were back with a vengeance. The most eminent psychiatrist in the city happened to live next door to my mother and she mentioned that, recently retired and a devout Catholic, he had begun giving free consultations to religious and ex-religious in need of counselling. I classified myself as one of the latter and made an appointment to see him professionally. Taking a big breath I told him the whole story and, just like the elderly canon in Bordeaux, he never batted an eyelid. I concluded by saying that I just didn't know whether I was homosexual or heterosexual or something in between. He laughed and said, in a nutshell, ‘Well, John, what do you
want
to be?'

I replied that I would like to be like most people, i.e. heterosexual, and to be able to get married and have children, and he replied, ‘Well, you can! You can
choose
which way you want to go, and if that is indeed what you want, then go and find yourself a wife, have your children and everything will be fine.' Even all those years ago I sensed that this was fairly avant-garde advice, as many psychiatrists were at that time treating homosexuality (then still listed as a crime in many countries) as a sickness which could often be ‘cured' by medication and even by electric shock treatment. It had been the possibility of such a course of treatment being proposed that had made me so nervous about making the appointment in the first place. So with a much jauntier step I returned home (next door) and started making general plans for a heterosexual future. In retrospect, I now believe that while he was avant-garde and liberal in his attitude towards homosexuality, the good doctor was wrong in thinking that my lifestyle was still, at that stage of life, simply a matter of choice. I think now that the die was already cast and that a heterosexual life was no longer, in fact, a possibility for me.

In the following year I went back to the university to continue my studies while teaching at the junior secondary level. In the first part of the year I spent a few months ‘going steady' with a very nice girl (yes, she was the daughter of family friends) but by mutual agreement the friendship ended without us ever going beyond some pleasantly passionate kissing one weekend on a picnic at Hanging Rock.

To keep fit (or was there some ulterior motive such as a predilection for the ‘eye candy' available in a gym?) I had enrolled at a popular all-male gym in the city and began training there on one or two evenings a week. After a while I discovered that the gym's sauna was at times used for ‘cruising', i.e. for picking up playmates for sexual activity once one had left the gym. I did not resist the temptation for very long and my weekly workout was often followed by a casual encounter of this sort. One evening I went off with a middle-aged but fit and good-looking chap who took me to a flat in an inner suburb which he used as a studio. He was an enthusiastic but not very skilled painter and his tactic had been to say that he wanted to sketch me (I was then around 27 and in good shape … and was ready to believe any story, I suppose.) The sketch did not progress very far before we abandoned it for straight sex. The sex didn't really work for me and I left as soon as I politely could … and politely said ‘no thanks' when subsequent invitations were issued at the gym in the following weeks. Imagine my surprise when a few months later the same man, dressed this time in a black clerical suit, turned up in the staff room of the Catholic school in which I was teaching. I was presented to him as a new staff member and he was introduced to me as the Director of one of the archdiocese's welfare offices. My face must have shown my surprise and shock and he smoothly said that he felt we had already met at some diocesan function in the past.

I left the room as quickly as I could and that evening began a difficult bout of soul-searching. What should I do? I was not worried that he would reveal my secret homosexuality or that he might try to use the threat of doing so to persuade me to go to his studio again. I really had the upper hand, as I could do far more damage to him than he could to me. Should I reveal to the church authorities that the priest they had put in charge of their counselling bureau was a practising homosexual? Would they believe me? Did it matter? Would his homosexuality necessarily affect his counselling or administrative abilities (he had a number of male and female staff members helping run the office).

After a few days I decided that I just had to get priestly advice, and to avoid going to a diocesan priest (who might automatically defend another diocesan priest) I went to the Franciscan monastery in Kew. There, in the anonymity and secrecy of confession, I explained my problem: I had committed a sin of homosexuality with a priest who was in charge of an important diocesan counselling service – should I tell someone or should I suggest to the priest that he himself speak up? The elderly friar to whom I spoke hesitated for a while and then suggested that I do nothing. ‘Leave it to God,' he said, ‘and try not to sin again yourself. That man may be particularly able to help people like you.' Although not quite sure what he had meant by ‘help people like you', I accepted the advice to be cautious; I didn't tell anyone, and I did try not to sin again myself … but I was far from comfortable with the old friar's final comment and wondered how on earth my partner in sin could help others when he himself was in such strife. Within the year, however, the other sinner was transferred to other duties and not long thereafter death itself had claimed him. I was left to wonder whether the old Franciscan knew more about contacts and pulling strings than I had realised.

At the end of the year I spent the summer holidays with four other male teacher colleagues on a six-week trip by ship to Tahiti and other Pacific islands.
⁴⁴
They were all very ‘straight', and apart from a few jokes about our need of bromide tablets or of some other treatment to lower frustrated libido, there was no sex and no talk of sex. The following year I spent the summer holidays in New Caledonia, attending a course for Australian and New Zealand language teachers given by a team of university lecturers sent to Noumea from the Sorbonne in Paris. Although it was a co-ed course and there were teachers from all over Australasia there, I didn't succeed in finding romance.

At the end of the year, with the Diploma of Education completed and with my appetite for French studies truly whetted, I decided to go to Europe again and to really work on my French so that I could aspire to become a truly competent French teacher on my return.

The P&O Line offered a sailing on the day the term ended in December, so accepting convenience as more important than cuisine (there were Italian and French sailings available but not until later in the month) I boarded the brand new
Canberra
and sailed away. After a few days of stop-over in Egypt so that I could visit Luxor and the Valley of the Kings, I then boarded the Orient Line's
Orsova
at Port Said for the last leg of the trip, arriving in Marseille in early January. I tried to find work as a teacher (of English) both there and a few days later in Paris but was unsuccessful, as the school year and indeed the winter term were already well under way in France. I did, however, manage to register as an applicant for any position as an English teacher becoming available in the next school year, i.e. in the following September, and decided to retreat to England where I felt confident that I would be able to pick up work as a relief teacher at junior secondary level even though the term had commenced.

While in Paris I bought a copy of a Danish gay magazine printed in Danish, French and English. After enjoying the stories and pictures, I decided to answer an advertisement for a male model. Yes, again! This time the photographer turned out to be a 30-something rather handsome Moroccan, who had a studio on the slightly seedy Boulevard de Sebastopol. He wanted to do some erotic studies beginning with two men wrestling. Eric, his regular in-house model, a fair-haired Norman of about my own age and build, was there on stand-by and I was invited to strip off for a few test shots, in which I simply stood still, looked at the camera and felt a bit foolish. I passed the tests and was offered the job and a few thousand francs for three hours work. The money would be useful and the work seemed likely to be easy, so I agreed.

The setting was simply a black backdrop, a black rubber mat on the floor and a couple of fake Greek or Roman pillars on each side. The front of the stage/scene was a mass of lights, cameras, heaters (it was winter) and cables – I wondered whether it would be possible to feel sexy in such unromantic and prosaic surroundings. But the photographer knew his job and kept up a friendly and mildly erotic banter while, at his instruction, we carefully oiled each other's body from top to toe before stepping on to the wrestling mat for our first shots. Neither of us really knew anything about wrestling and the first few clinches served merely to warm us up, spread oil everywhere … and see us both with fine erections. We were then carefully posed for a number of different shots taken from various angles and showing everything but the erections. This was so time-consuming that eventually there were no erections to conceal, so several full frontal but flaccid shots were taken.

After the break we were invited to get together again for some ‘69' shots, and these went off pretty satisfactorily with both of us being careful not to get too carried away. Then we were asked to do a few more wrestling shots, the ‘winner' to pin the ‘loser' to the mat. To my surprise I found myself pinning Eric to the mat after a bit of grappling … whether as a result of my strength/skill or of the photographer's secret instructions to Eric I will never know.

My prize was that the loser was rolled over on to his stomach and I was invited to fuck him. Under the floodlights and with the camera clicking. I was surprised and a bit stunned, having expected nothing more than mutual masturbation to have come at the end. How on earth did one fuck a man? Could I fuck a man? My hesitation was apparently not taken as anything more than a pause for more oil to be applied and for Eric to push his backside up so that I could see and reach my target … his arse. Applying the oil to my cock soon had it ready for action and taking that as a sign that I could do what was expected of me, I climbed on board. But then I learned that this was not going to be a quick ‘WWW', ‘whip it in, whip it out and wipe it' job. My employer was there on the floor beside me with his camera, directing every movement, instructing me where to put my legs, my hands and my cock to such an extent that I feared I would lose my head of steam and be unable to perform. But again, he knew his job and judged very nicely just how long he could click away on ‘approach shots' before giving me the go ahead. This was clearly not a first time for Eric. I had expected some resistance from his sphincter muscles and feared that I would hurt him and that he might yell out in pain. Nothing of the sort happened. Eric put one hand around behind him to guide me in, my cock slid in like a loose cork into a bottle, and Eric gave a little grunt of
oui, c'est bon
! Then of course our employer took over again. There were shots of going in and of coming out, half way, two thirds way and so on, and then Eric was turned over onto his back, his legs placed on my shoulders, and the whole procedure was shot all over again. That both Eric and I remained hard for all that time amazed me, as did the fact that I was able to enjoy the fucking without exploding into inappropriately early orgasm.

Eventually enough shots had been taken, the three hours were up and the session was over. Eric and I lay on the floor and quickly masturbated; I had been terrified that I might shoot my load while fucking him and although this all happened long before the AIDS crisis, I had a serious aversion to any contact with bodily excretions. We then got up, cleaned up as best we could, and I was paid and ready to leave. I lingered a bit hoping, I think, that Eric would say something about seeing me again … but he did not. Nor did the photographer. I was just a stranger who had served the purpose and was no longer needed. So I set off back to my hotel, a bit richer but not much wiser.

I was still far from understanding my own sexuality. Why had I done that? Did I enjoy that more than my experience of sex with women? What path in life was I really choosing?

I think I took the job partly for the money and partly for the anticipated sexual contact. I was unemployed and was looking for work, in France if possible. There were no teaching positions available at the time and so the only real alternative was unskilled work such as the job of
plongeur
(washing dishes in a restaurant kitchen) or the ‘modelling' one I took. I had already come to the view that modelling or posing, clad or unclad, was not inherently wicked. Indeed my whole mindset of what was good and bad, harmful and helpful, my moral code, was under revision and I was far from sure at that stage whether I was a theist, atheist, Christian, Catholic, humanist or plain hedonist.