He loved a boy with a mind of his own
» Sodomitical Polity
Emptiness and a boy desroyed
But a cell 12 by 8
Made it all so very real
Everybody likes a pretty boy (OK, not everybody and those of you who liked them bigger and hairier have my eternal gratitude.)
Ever watch an old Busby Berkeley musical where all the pretty women form odd patterns alternating with their faces flashing past? One of the sweetest depictions of love of girls, dames if you will I know of. Replace those faces with equally vapid young boys in tinseled togs and you'd have my young sexuality. As a boy growing into young manhood there was nothing better in life than a pretty boy.
A young pretty boy. At eighteen I hankered after younger guys. A taste that persisted into my early twenties. Not that I ever pushed myself on a young fellow. A sane gay guy in his teens won't leave you with any doubts.
I outgrew it. But as you age it is likely to become pathetic, isn't likely to lead to an enduring life with another gay man (nb: Charles is twenty years my junior) and may put you under the jail for a long, long time.
They kicked in the door
Acting like there was
Some kind of murder going on
Made there love seem dirty
Called him sick called him queer
The law was against him
Back when I was editing an early gay newspaper I remember the story we ran on an eighteen year old gay man who'd been found with his younger, consenting lover. The former wouldn't see the free side of iron bars until late middle age. Not that I took it as a word to the wise. The fifteen year old who introduced me to frotting and the sixteen year old Sunday school teacher who licked my Army boots would follow. It did chill me.
They locked him away
Because he dared to love
A boy with a mind of his own
Prompted by The Tin Man's essay on the Kansas youth who'll be spending the next seventeen years in jail because he had sex with a younger gay boy.
Lyrics quoted from Jimmy Somerville's Dare to Love .
Comments
That Kansas case is outrageous!! It makes me so mad. Not just for the injustice of it, but for the fact that prisons more often than not do no good, but breed criminals instead. You go in for something minor and graduate to more serious crime. Especially since most prisons aren’t all that great about deviding people into proper categories. Now this kid goes to jail for seventeen years (it seems surreal just to write it) for a blowjob. At thirty four, what is he going to be like? The next few years of his life are very important in the shaping of his character and they are going to make him spend them and more in prison! sputters
Posted by: twi | February 6, 2004 9:24 PM
Paranoia, disgusting overaction are typical responses to sexual behavior in this country. When I discovered how low age of consent is in some European countries I was shocked by the comparative sanity.
Posted by: Richard | February 7, 2004 5:19 AM
Very useful comments - good to read
steven
Posted by: steven | May 24, 2004 8:38 AM
True love of this kind is nearly always destroyed by the state. How sad that society still can’t bear love outside of the normal [whatever that is]. Provided people are consenting and old enough to know what they are doing[ah!-the test]why should anyone object.There’s not enough love in the world so don’t stamp out what little there is.* and the test? have fun and devise your own-call it market research-then write a book on it-become an expert-don’t publish it until your dead though
Posted by: zonda | March 21, 2005 12:39 PM