My first worst sexual experience

One hardly knows whether to thank or blame JoeMyGod for encouraging one to cast a backward glance and consider what was one's worst sexual experience.

One of the first things it brought to mind was a friend of mine called A, who kept an encyclopaedia on STDs on her bedside locker, to eliminate the risk of failing to practice safer sex (an effective device for those who find it difficult to change unhealthy behaviour and discuss putting on a condom) For if there is anything more unpleasant than contemplation of a photograph of someone with genital warts or syphillis, it is one's worst sexual experience... quite guaranteed to kill the mood. One does reccommend this tactic whenever someone finds oneself on a date that is going nowhere.

But you want to hear about one's own worst sexual experience, one expects? Very well.

On 1st January 1992, aged 20, shit together in many respects- completing a University degree; good grades; working to support oneself; sociable, likeable, devastatingly handsome, but acutely aware that one had not accepted one’s homosexuality- one made a resolution to change one's life... for the better, obviously.

Despite living in the Republic of Ireland's third largest city, there was no place where gay gentlemen and lesbian ladies gathered to socialize, so one’s options were limited.

Answering an advertisement of a personal nature in Hot Press (to anyone fortunate enough not to be familiar with Ireland, that is a music magazine; the only publication in the country that carried such advertisements, at the time) one corresponded with a gay gentleman who was resident in the capital city. His name was Paul, a gay gentleman in his early 30s which I considered positively over the hill.

One remembers little about our correspondence, except that I didn't like his tiny spindly hand-writing, and yet one still looked forward to receiving each letter.

Paul sounded sane, so I considered him to be a rare find among those with homosexual tendancies, and so I (insanely) agreed to travel to meet him, making arrangements which inevitably involved spending the night.

No photo had been exchanged, there had been no discussion of what could or could not happen... nothing!

One lied to all friends and family about where one was going on Friday February 13th (ominous date, I know) and arrived outside Connolly train station on a typically dark grim night, the city smelling as miserable as it always does and always will, with rain spitting down... as you would expect. Arriving early, one was not yet nervous, although one certainly wasn't excited, sexually or otherwise. Already, call it a sixth sense preminition if you will, one had a sense of being on the verge of doing something that one had to get out of the way and move on from.

Paul arrived wearing a green bomber jacket. He was short, balding and had a mangy beard. Suffice to say, we recognised one another at once.

After we spoke for a few minutes (he had a slight and effeminate voice that one didn't like at all) one realised that if attraction could be measured on a numerical scale, mine registered in the minus figures.

Gentle reader, do not expect this anecdote to explain what possessed me: that comes with an understanding of twenty years of past-life, not to mention hundreds of years of gay repression in my country.

One cannot altogether blame Paul, for although he had plenty of experience before that miserable night and he knew my own circumstances, he had also grown up in the same fucked-over country, and he had a problem of his own, so one makes allowances for him on the basis that he didn't twist my arm much.

Yet in his shoes, it must be said that things would have been different: one would have sensed reticence in the other, younger, more vulnerable person and not allowed things to go any further.

Which they did, sadly.

Few first sexual experiences are pleasant, from what I've been told. In my own case, it was nothing more than clumsy half-hearted mutual masturbation, so it could have been more scarring and unpleasant than it was.

When Paul undressed, it was the first time one had ever seen another man naked. Erect, his penis measured smaller than one’s thumb, perhaps the size of a champagne cork; one genuinely didn’t know quite how abnormal it was. One felt like a freak of nature by comparison.

At that stage in my development, one had never fantasised about kissing a man; it wasn't a simple question of "that's something you can't do with another gentleman", it was something so far beyond the realms of possibility that it wasn't even possible for me to imagine. So one never kissed him, or any part of his body. Masturbating with another man's naked body was the full extent of my fantasy, so that's what we did together. Suffice to say, that it wasn't a fantasy fulfilled.

One could tell you so much more... if only you didn't want to know.

But to end upon a positive note, one spent the remainder of that night, and all of the following morning, happier than one can ever describe.

For the next morning, not only was it liberating to be out of that room, not only had one proved to oneself (yet again) that one could suffer just about any pain or degradation without letting else anyone know how I felt... one was happy to find oneself in the safe and loving arms of a bittersweet delusion.

For you see, at some point that dreadful night- for which one was responsible- one had convinced oneself that this all meant one had been mistaken. For in my understanding, a gay gentleman was a sexual creature capable of enjoying any sexual contact with another gentleman, while I'd hated every excruciating moment of my experience, therefore one couldn't possibly be what one most dreaded that one was.

How fucked up is all of that, gentle reader?

Beyond a doubt, that was my worst sexual experience... and however unpleasant things get in the future, one believes it will never be surpassed.