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In your youth, have you ever been caught experimenting with peers and what were the consequences?

alexvent Last Activity 2 years ago 200 views 1 comments Post Comment

I'm writing this preface having already written what's below, so apologies for the wordiness. I'm not sure why I'm writing this. The truth is, if anyone decides to comment or answer, I'm not sure I'm going to answer or comment in return. Maybe I just want to see if anyone else has felt this way, if there are similarities between my experience and yours. If you do write anything: thank you. So I have little memory of the various encounters, but when I was five my eight year old neighbor taught me how to masturbate. I know we would hide under a bed, or in a bathroom or toolshed and do it to each other. It felt good, like the pleasure I mean, so I never thought it was a wrong thing to do, but he always insisted to keep it hidden - understandably so since I was so little and could've just told everyone, I guess. He always initiated and I never refused but he never forced the thing. I think we did it very frequently, over a period of months. So we used to live in an apartment complex, where each apartment shared a wall with the next. The one I lived in was at the beginning of the complex, the first apartment; the second apartment was occupied by an elderly couple; my friend lived in the third one. Each apartment had its own back porch and balcony right above it. He set this little tent under his porch a summer, in which we played some times; the tent was made of cheap, shear fabric, held up by plastic tubing; it was in the shape of a cube, no more than four cubic feet in size, with a "door" made of the same material that could be rolled up or down and held closed by velcro and a little window on the side that worked in the same way. We both were in it and playing one day, me with my pants down showing him mine, even though some of his family and the elderly couple next door were outside chatting. As he stuck his head out of the little window to talk to his mother or sister, he pulled his shorts down exposing his butt to me and spread his cheeks and as I started to touch him, me spreading his cheeks now, I don't remember why exactly, I all of a sudden stopped. We stopped all together, probably because we sensed the moment and place weren't right, I guess. I later learned that if the sunlight hit the shear fabric of the tent just right, it would render its walls basically transparent, giving us away to the elderly lady, our neighbor, who some time later told our respective parents what she saw. I don't remember what I was told, the words that were used to condemn our behavior are completely lost in time now; I don't remember my mother saying much but my father was pissed off beyond belief. There was no violence or anything of course, but I can remember being kind of terrified and today it feels like a scarring moment in my youth. I was yelled at for what seemed like hours and the punishment at the end of it was that I couldn't go outside to play for the rest of the summer and once the punishment's duration elapsed, I could never interact with my friend again. From what the elderly lady told me later on, my friend didn't get away with it as lightly as I did. I don't know if she was telling the truth or not, but other than getting my same punishment basically, my friend's father punched him on the head so hard that he couldn't stand up after the blow. After hearing this, I wasn't just afraid of my father, but of my friend's father too. I thought, with the mind of kid, they both hated me in their respective ways. I know now that wasn't true, but it's how I felt at the time. I need to make something clear now. Both my parents are loving people; they always did everything and anything, sacrifice after sacrifice to be able to give me what I needed and wanted and my father, especially compared to other kids', was probably one of the most loving men I've ever met. So I think he was just trying to protect me, because I was so young, protect me from what others might do to me, protect through the use of fear. He learned from my grandfather that fear was a good teacher. As an adult, I highly doubt that fear is a good way of teaching people how to be, and my dad might've gone through the same shit in his youth as well. I have no way of knowing. I was and still am so embarrassed about the whole event: my friend and I getting caught, the screaming, all our neighbors knowing, my grandparents knowing; I could never bring myself to talk about it. I don't know why, even in recent times, I still think that's what they think about when they see me. I think that summer in punishment let's say, contributed to me becoming a reserved kind of person. I'd rather stay in than go and play outside. I became quiet, shy, for some reason afraid offending others if I talked to them. My friend and I eventually would sometimes play, just normal kids' games, but goes without saying, we never did it again. I can't say we were really close back then, but we definitely grew apart, so much so that we stopped interacting with each other all together. The age difference probably had something to do with it, naturally. In my teen years, I would get crushes on girls in my classes all the time, but the curiosity of playing with other guys was there too, only I'd push it back, like in the back of my mind telling myself it was something I shouldn't think about. But if playing with guys was bad, I couldn't imagine how anyone would've reacted if they knew I'd play with my female classmates. Mind you, I never did anything with a woman until I was in my twenties. In some way I think I related that moment of being caught with whatever might result from any interaction with my peers, as I was growing up. The sense of embarrassment was pervasive in almost all aspects of my growing-up years let's call them, now that I think of it, both in negative or positive. Hiding, always not being myself, all of myself, like having a different personality that I never should show, or that I should keep quiet in my mind.I still can't put my finger on it, but I think everyone else knew something about me and tried to keep it down, and I was doing the most of it to myself. Like a learned mechanisms, subtle, invisible, just there with no conscious thought to it. I had several girlfriends, through the years. Four, not several. My last relationship ended last February. I decided then to let myself be me, let's say. I'm in my late thirties now. I can't begin to describe how good it feels, even just in my mind, to let myself think how cute a guy is. Where there used to be a "no, don't look, don't think about it, push it back", now there's a "why the fuck not?". Only thing is, not trying to pull pity party here, I feel like it's too late now. Like I got cheated out of it or something. Again, most of the pushing back was done by me to me. But sometimes other people could just keep their fucking mouths shut, know what I mean?