Your story is very different to mine, x-man, even though (or despite) being just a few years younger, I turn 70 on Monday.
At the age of 14 I had no idea of homosexuality. It was not until I studied psychology at university that I learned what it was and that it applied to me. I know I was having wet dreams and that I had electric currents go down my body if a fellow student put his arm around me but did not realise that made me different. My group did not discuss sex. We were more into bible study.
I did make friends with some of the wilder boys (but as it was a selective high IQ school they were not really very wild
). I vividly remember one of these boys masturbating another in the back of the classroom one day ( a very unobservant teacher
). I said "Why don't you do that to me?" and he replied "Because you are religious" to which I had no reply.
In my first year at high school I made friends with a very effeminate boy, Trevor, and we were dragged down the back of the oval and "married" then grassed but at least I was the groom. Trevor came from a broken home (very unusual in those days, he did not tell us until we were at university over 6 years later). Many years later he told me he use to frequent the beats below the school and I was flabbergasted. Sadly Trevor, although brilliant he has a Phd in both Chemistry and English, has never been able to hold a job. He is unemployed, living in a state house and about 10 years ago I met him for lunch and had to buy the wine to take to the BYO restaurant as he is banned from all his local liquor outlets. He told me has bipolar and uses marijuana to treat it. I do not know. We went to a 2nd hand shop to buy a small TV so I could take it home for him in my car. He became very aggressive while haggling over the price which I found very embarrassing and have not contacted him since.
When I was at university, I worked in the vacation as a bus conductor and one day I was propositioned by an old drunk while in the staff toliets at the city terminus. I told some older drivers and they went in and forcibly removed him. They laughed about the 'poofter" and it horrified me as it was the first time I had been confronted with someone like me.
I now know that I had friends who were gay at university, 2 committed suicide, but we were suffering in silence.
I saw a psychiatrist who warned me I would be in great danger as a high school teacher. This has always angered me as I have never done anything improper in over 45 years teaching.
I did fall in love with some senior students. I have carefully analysed my feelings and they were not on the radar sexually until they were about 16 or 17. I took them on surfing holidays and of course loved any physical contact, sleeping in tents, rough housing on the sand etc. Eventually they moved on as they found steady girlfriends. At least I can meet them at reunions without any shame. I was the one who was broken hearted. Some have maintained contact over the years.
The best one is Graham. His mother was the school canteen manageress and she asked me to take him on a camping trip with 3 other boys right across Australia.
Later she and her husband asked me to stay with him while they went on vacation. We shared a bedroom. I regularly went to their holiday home for weekends.
But Graham already had met the love of his life to whom he has now been married for over 30 years and still loves dearly, 4 kids, several grandkids. I was best man at his wedding, I wanted to be the bride. A few years after the wedding I came out to him. His reply was "I have known that for years, Mate"
He calls me "Big Brother", insists on giving me a hug when we meet but says he draws the line at a kiss
. We shared a hotel room for 2 nights at a reunion of his class last November. Of course he is now 58.
Another boy in the same year, Chris. He left school before the senior years but drank at the same hotel as me. It is a long story but he returned to Wales to find his mother just before I was leaving on my big overseas trip at age 30 in 1974. I visited his mother and met up with Chris, back finishing high school. 3 years later I again visited him now at teachers' College in Oxford but madly in love with Avril. 4 years later again I visited him now employed (not as a teacher) in London and married to Avril. To my surprise he took me to a pub which had a gay bar upstairs although I told him I wanted to lunch with him not go seeking strange men. I was touched that he used that way to show he knew and accepted. Sadly he died in an accident so I still remember him as a guy in his mid 20's and have his college sweater( far too big for me) that he gave me in Oxford.
I did not have any sexual activity with someone else until age 27 when I broke the engagement to the lovely young woman and realised that no treatment was going to change me. The psychiatrists had advised me to find a nice young woman. However I began to realise I would put off going to her place if I was chatting with a young guy and she told me I kissed he as if I was her sister. It was only about 6 years later when I had my first and only long term relationship that I knew what she meant.
Of course, looking back, I know I wasted my younger years falling madly in love with young straight guys. I did provide the wheels for the holidays and the parents often only allowed them to go on surfing trips because there was a responsible adult with them. Unlike Liberace, I did not throw them over when they got too old. They grew away from me as they developed steady girl friends. But I can unashamedly meet any of them today.
Mostly they now (if not then) understand my motivation but in some cases, as with Graham, it has not prevented a long lasting friendship. He embarrasses me by telling everyone that his 2 older real brothers went into drugs and crime while he is a respectable primary school principal and he puts the difference down to my influence.
So my feelings as to whether those years were really a waste or not are very mixed.