A Boy’s Wrestling Match Turns Sexual
Chapter 19: Mike’s Polaroid
My high school fraternity brothers Mike Kerlec and Don Caspary are leaning on Mike’s mom’s new car, a 1966 candy-apple-red Ford Fairlane 390 that’s scary fast even with the A/C on. I know because sometimes he takes us joyriding while we swill quarts of beer.
We gave up sniffing glue when we heard it’s bad for your lungs. I really want some pot, but for all the news stories about it, no one has any or knows how to get it. We’re always looking for “kicks,” and the popular song of the same name by Paul Revere and The Raiders has become our anthem.
None of us has a girlfriend at the moment. My first love Bonnie dumped me for a square-jawed Adonis. We’d been on-again-off-again since the fourth grade. When I turned 17, I loved her so bad it hurt. She moved on, but we’re still best friends and hang out a lot.
Her parents are pretty strict, so unless she has one of her many extracurricular activities she goes straight home to look after her younger sister and brothers. She is whip-smart, funny, irreverent, and sexy. I’m not quite over her and still think about our late afternoons in City Park when she’d lie to her parents about where she was and we’d make out in the back seat of my car. She comes from a strict Catholic family with judge for a father, but she’s a risk-taker, always getting grounded.
I sure miss her as a girlfriend, but having her as my best friend will do. We spend a lot of time on the phone and I visit her at her house regularly where I am liked by all, which is nice. Today she has a yearbook meeting. She’s a joiner; I’m not, so I’m hanging out with the guys.
Mike’s parents are divorced like mine. His mom takes the bus to work, so he gets the car for school. Don, also from a broken, financially stretched household, lives on the way, so Mike often gives him a ride. We talk a bit and Mike says, “Let’s go to my house and listen to records.”
We go in the side door to the kitchen. The living room with its plastic-covered furniture is off-limits, but the kitchen is open on the other side to the den where Mike sleeps on a daybed in a cozy alcove.
He puts on The Lovin Spoonful and we sing along to Summer in the City, way out of tune. Mike goes over to his mother’s reducing machine, puts the wide fabric belt around his hips, and flips the chrome toggle switch to “On.” He laughs over a rhythmic thump.
“Can you believe this shit? She spent a bunch of money on this thing and hasn’t lost a pound. I like it because it makes my dick hard, especially if you turn backwards like this.” He turns so the belt jiggles his front. “Anybody wanna try it?”
We snicker and shake our heads no.
Mike’s hilarious, grinning wildly with his tongue hanging out. His blue eyes shine under floppy blonde bangs like The Beach Boys, kind of like most of us wear our hair. We’d prefer a longer Beatles look but our school won’t allow it.
Mike is a little shorter than me, good-looking and built like a superhero. I notice, not for the first time, the deep V shape from his broad shoulders down to muscular hips that pull open the pockets of his snug chinos. He was on a wrestling team before he changed schools. We don’t have one, but he’s still working out and it shows.
I grab a Penthouse magazine from his desk and lie down on his day bed. Don and Mike fiddle with his mom’s new Polaroid camera. They snap a couple of practice shots then decide not to waste precious film.
I flip through the pages to find a photo set with both a guy and a girl. You never see that in Playboy and rarely in Penthouse, but I’m obsessed and try not to think about why. I tell myself I want to see how I measure up. I am so absorbed, I pay no attention to the guys.
Out of nowhere, Mike pounces and pins me down to his bed. “Let’s wrestle!”
I’m at a disadvantage with his full weight bearing down, but I’m no match for him anyway and he knows it.
I strain and struggle as a matter of pride, but no sooner do I slip one limb free, than he changes his hold and pins me again. I’m groaning and sweating, pinned down on my stomach, and can’t even get a hand on him. I muster all my strength to try to throw him off, but I can’t move a muscle.
Don watches s and laughs. I know this is my battle, but I keep hoping he will say, “Mike, ease up. He’s no wrestler.” He doesn’t, even though I know he has a good heart. I remember he let a dog lick him on the mouth at a party, which touched me, though I would never allow such a thing from a dog myself.
They think this is just horseplay, fun, something to do. Maybe to them, it is. To me, it’s a breach of trust and slow humiliation. I will not whine or beg and will not be forced to.
I don’t know what Mike wants. I’ve never been good at understanding guys. Girls and I seem to be on the same wavelength. The girls I’m friends with seem to operate on The Golden Rule. The boys are a different story, one I can’t figure out.
I rarely feel any true connection with the guys, even beyond what we do not have in common like physicality, sports, and motors, fishing, and competitiveness. So I’m mystified as I struggle under Mike’s weight.
I finally gasp, seeing no dignified alternative. “Okay. You win. Now let me up.”
He tightens his hold.
“Come on! Let me up!”
Instead, and worse yet, he grinds his pelvis into mine, pumping away as he yells, “This is great... Hey Don, take a picture!”
I’m stunned, embarrassed, and starting to panic. If they take a picture of this it will find its way all over school. Devastating humiliation awaits me! I jerk my face away just before the flash goes off.
I hear the photo buzz out of the camera and know Don is waiting for it to develop. Mike still holds me securely, but I figure with my head turned in the photo, nobody can be certain who he’s humiliating.
But he’s not done. He grabs my left wrist and pins it against the bed so tight I feel like I’m caught in an unyielding leather strap. I marvel at his strength and power while I hate myself for being such a pussy, a name I’m all too used to.
He puts me in a headlock, his contracted bicep at my throat. He flexes and I can scarcely breathe, but my right hand is now free.
“Undo your belt,” he commands and rocks us over so I can reach it.
I’m exhausted and confused. I have no understanding of what is going on other than subjugation and disgrace. I manage only a muffled “Huh?”
He responds softly in my ear. “Come on, I just want to see what it feels like.”
This means nothing to me. I have no idea what he wants. He tries other pins looking for a way to unbuckle my belt and hold me down at the same time. But he can’t grasp both my wrists with one hand.
I realize he wants to pull my pants down to heighten my humiliation in the next Polaroid. “Oh no!” I say. “Then you’ll want my underwear off too.” He says nothing so I think I am right. “Not gonna happen!” I promise him.
All I can think is that whatever happens, Don is going to take pictures that will ruin my life. Mike can suffocate me if he wants, but I will not help him destroy me. I’ve been called sissy, fruit, fairy, and queer enough in my life not to let pictures confirm suspicions.
My thoughts take a turn I don’t like. Without the camera, without witnesses, this might not be so bad. I think about how if nobody was watching, maybe we could even play around with the reducing machine.
Then Mike tightens his grip. Don remains wordless.
My mind reels. “What did I ever do to deserve this?” I think.
Finally, after a long pause and without a word, Mike releases his grip and lets go of me. He saunters over to Don who starts talking about something else like nothing just happened. I catch my breath and rub my sore wrist, thinking I just dodged a terrible bullet.
Then Don whirls around and shouts. “I have an idea!” He thrusts the camera into Mike’s hand. “Shoot when I say to.” He drops to his knees, unbuckles his belt, and pulls down his jeans and underwear as he lowers his head to the floor and pushes his ass up in the air. He reaches back and spreads his hairy ass cheeks.
I am aghast.
I have never seen an anus before, not even my own in a mirror; never even thought to look. Why would anyone want to see such a thing? I hold my breath fearing I might even smell it. We are almost that close.
“Now! Take a picture!” Don says.
Mike squats down and leans in for a close-up. “Wow!”
I have no what to make of this. I’m confused but relieved to no longer be the center of attention. Don pulls up his pants and turns to see the result, a huge smile on his face. I realize with dismay I’m disappointed he didn’t reveal his front side first. “Stop it!” I silently snap at myself.
The photo is clear and disgusting. There is no discussion of what will be done with either of the two Polaroids. I worried, but I never again saw the one of me struggling under Mike.
At a fraternity meeting weeks later, pledges being hazed and paddled were forced to kneel and kiss the picture of Don’s asshole. I felt appalled but relieved that the photo of Mike dry-humping me didn’t get passed around.
With that wrestling incident, though, as with each of too many humiliations, I learn to trust men less. I learn to think all this stuff about fraternal bonds is bullshit. But I want very badly to belong, to be like everybody else, to survive and be part of the world. I will do just about anything to achieve that.
Years later, I graduated from college and married my high school sweetheart Julie Guten. I still remember her attractive hips swaying under a plaid skirt as she was walked up to the blackboard in French III. We went to my senior prom together and she looked gorgeous in a starkly and simply cut white evening gown.
After a champagne party before the prom, we drove to dinner at Elmwood Plantation in my brother George’s new 1967 Plymouth Sport Fury. It was a very special night for both of us except she struggled through, smiling with a throat infection and fever. She did not admit she was ill until after the champagne party. Even then she assured me she was fine.
She was kind, smart, sexy, and elegant. She had great taste and something I could not name that other girls just did not have. Even her Wisconsin accent charmed me.
I liked her best friend Robert Morton who lived in her apartment complex. He drove a sharp MG convertible but had no friends at school other than Julie. He was exceptionally good-looking with vivid blue eyes and a heavy beard shadow even in the morning. I thought he could have any girl he wanted. But he seemed withdrawn and did not date.
When Julie moved back to Wisconsin with her family that summer, she left with my silver ID bracelet as a sign of our love. We kept in touch and renewed our relationship in 1970, marrying just before I started law school the following year.
A few years later in Houston, Julie and I went to visit Robert and his very pretty wife. Later still, Julie heard from his family that he had driven his sports car off a cliff in an apparent suicide. We both agreed, without much discussion, that it had to have been because he was gay.
When I finally admitted I was gay after twenty years of marriage, Julie and I tearfully parted. I just couldn’t go on like that. She said maybe she should have known. Back in the spring of 1967, Don Caspary told her not to waste her time on “a fairy” like me.
“I did not believe him,” Julie told me with a tear-stained face and a broken heart. Of course, back in 1967, I didn’t believe it either. The mystery was that Don knew even though we did not.
After I came out and began to live an authentic and openly gay life, I began to think more and more about sexual milestones in my past, including that day at Mike’s house. I played them over and over, obsessing. It finally dawned on me that when Mike whispered in my ear that he just “wanted to know what it felt like,” he meant he wanted to fuck me.
I have wondered ever since how I could have missed that very clear intent. At 17, the truth was I had never fantasized about having sex with men, let alone about passive anal sex, which was unthinkable.
So Mike was interested in something that had never occurred to the budding but repressed gay teen I was then. Mike, as it turned out, never married or had children. I learned many years later that he always seemed to have a girlfriend or two but never committed to one. He died of a massive heart attack a few years ago.
For me, Mike has become a fantasy of attraction. I relive those moments wishing Don had not been there, imagining Mike’s strong embrace and hot breath in my ear. I wish I had undone my belt buckle as he asked. I might have done it if we’d been alone, just to fool around. I think I was right to expect my underwear would go next and who knew what then? Maybe I would have recognized my love for men and never married.
I often think that even one experience, which I carefully and diligently never allowed, could have changed my life.
But I would have missed twenty very special years with Julie and the ultimate gift of our children and grandchildren. That, I cannot wish for.
