Uncle Tim's Condo

Chapter 12 – Heterosexuality, Self Esteem, Avon Fashion

What aroused my own suspicions of my heterosexuality was what people often described as me always smiling. In a macho world where brooding and anger seemed to be the defining characteristics of male power and sexuality, this child like innocence that I assumed everything would be okay and that there is good in everyone, and people just need a chance to be understood, did not seem to play into what defined an ideally heterosexual man. This overarching goody two shoes identity seemed to and often in still continues to shoot in the foot opportunities to be dangerously sexy, to be mean and rude and a bad boy that so many women seem to prefer and want to tame. It’s difficult to turn into a bad boy, and be dangerous, when acting submissive, overly gracious and ultra kind to a waiter while ordering food on a date or a cashier ringing up an order. It’s hard to be self-centered when you are conditioned to try to make other people with lower status than you at every moment feel comfortable.

I suppose one of the reasons I have this subconscious habit to make everyone feel comfortable, especially those who I am aware have less privilege than me in any situation, is because I am too aware of that feeling of being the underdog and have often wished someone would share some power with me. Feeling for most of my life primarily as a social underdog, I have grown a feeling of wanting to help and reach out to all kinds of underdogs. And in many ways this is only for selfish reasons because I hope that by accommodating all underdogs, I in turn will be accommodated when I most need it. I even find that in some karmic transcendental way that I am already accommodating myself because of how much I see myself in the underdogs I try to be extra nice to. This almost desperate neediness to please (which indeed has played into my favor as an entertainer) paired with the presence of two strong female presences in my life, my mother and sister, who I have admired and internalized within my own personality, and my already mentioned charming kind and giving father, have made me feel too feminine to take seriously any attempt at being a macho male. It was these presences and forces that would make me forget the very hyper-masculine, competitive, rage, and heterosexual side of myself.

It’s like a kid in class who is conditioned to always raise his hand and wait his turn to get that gold star. That same kid has a difficult time breaking out of those habits outside of the context of the classroom, when the methods to gain self esteem change in the gym and on the playground. I was that kid. My childlike innocence, which stays with me to this day, to always do a good job and fulfilling the task at hand, often has made me overlook and dismiss any potential social cues at being a rascal, or having some social fun outside of completing the work tasks in front of me. It has always been the work that I have found the most consistent form of finding my self esteem. The heterosexual and social outlets have always seemed to be more flippant and unreliable, so I suppose the childlike innocence while I did my work has also been used as a defense mechanism and an excuse for not participating socially.

But in missing these potential hookups, especially the heterosexual ones I often craved, I have questioned that maybe simply I did not want it enough, that I was not masculine enough to be the extreme heterosexual that defined being the man that society dictated as being ideal. And perhaps the most challenging and potentially rewarding task, I hoped to fulfill, aside from all of the school work, projects, karate, dancing, sports, and trombone, was the task of becoming the ideal man, so that I could have high status and be perceived as successful and accepted and wanted within my environment. And since I was not the extreme heterosexual, the nerdy childlike happy innocent busy bee, who was needy for any social contact among my male peers, or any peers, I thought maybe I was not heterosexual at all, that I must be the complete opposite. However, as much as I doubted my heterosexuality, social sexual functionality, and self esteem, I realized that at the end of the day I would always masturbate and orgasm thinking about women. It just was not proof enough for me until I had the real thing, sexual intercourse with a woman, and was figuratively crowned heterosexual king of the world.

Aside from the different puppy love crushes I had growing up, I also remember when I had my first orgasm. It was in November of 1988 a couple of months before my 13th birthday. Funny enough since then, I believe I have averaged at least one orgasm a day since then. I only say this because I have noticed looking back at various points of my life that when I had missed a day of masturbation, I end up treating myself twice the next day. Miss a week, end up getting at least seven extra times out over the next week. Overall, it has been very difficult to go a week without it and usually that only happened when I’m deeply immersed in a project, or at sleep-away camp or when I have been depressed about something, usually relationship wise.

However, in hindsight my first orgasm was a bit awkward. Mind you once again, I was looking forward to adolescence ever since I was little kid, looking towards it as a rebirth of status, that I could become a cool kid and no longer the nerd I was previously once those hormones kicked in. I was already warm to the idea of liking girls. I was ahead of the curve. I couldn’t wait for all my forsight and preparation in my head to pay off. I had images from the book “Where Did I Come From”, which my Dad read to me when I was seven or so in the picnic table that used to be in the backyard.

As I approached 11 and 12 I became more aware of the effects and allure of physical beauty of women and girls. The summer before 7th grade I remember excitedly telling Ethan about the first “side-boob” I had ever seen from the side of this girl’s loose tank top. She was also a 7th grader but for me at that time as a 7th grader, she might has well have been a full grown woman. I should clarify that I was not looking for side boob but rather came across it by accident as a bunch of us soon to be 7th graders were leaning against the lockers in a line waiting to get into lunch in the cafeteria at the summer camp program, and my eyes just happened to glance at the right angle, and I briefly saw 12 year old heavenly bliss through the side of this girl’s loose white tank top. Just as quickly the clothing disappeared and like a young perv I tried to nonchalantly lean an innocently see if her shirt would move to give me another look.

Then later that year, I realized how much more I enjoyed running into a coworker of my father’s on the floor of his office at Presbyterian. She was this Latin woman in her 40’s named Gladys. She would wear these dresses that hugged her curves, and this one image was burned in my mind of her wearing this red dress. She also had this big gummy but sexy smile. At some of the times I played video games at my Dad’s office during a school holiday, or earned some money from him, tearing up the perforated printouts of data and putting them in file cabinets, Gladys would call me over and ask me how I was and want to catch up with me. She would harmlessly flirt with me the way older women often do with boys, asking if I had any potential girlfriends, etc. I remember this one time during Thanksgiving break, when she called me over, I sat in her seat when she got up and then she bent over away from me to pick up some hospital files in that red office dress giving me a beautiful view of her rear.

Needless to say this last image stuck in my head. The next night while I was watching television on my parents’ bed, Gladys was on my mind. I ignored the television and turned over face down on the bed. I imagined the softness of the pillow being her face. I was just playing pretend. I know this was a new kind of pretend but my body just seemed to be into it. Fully clothed, I started hip thrusting my erection against the bed while imagining the pillow as Glady’s face and breasts.  I was lost in my sexual fantasy and then all of a sudden I felt my penis tingle and vibrate and then something come out. It didn’t feel like urinating. It felt thicker. I knew this moment was coming, and so as I started coming down from this new high, I thought “Oh my, this is what they were talking about”. The front of my underwear was wet and a little slimy and smelled funny. I took off my underwear, threw it into the hamper, put on some clean ones, and then put on the same pants since nothing seeped into them. I don’t think I told my parents because I think we all knew this day was coming.

In hindsight, I remember reading about kids who were freaked out if they woke up from a wet dream. But for me, I felt like a kid who knew the answer to the test. I wasn’t worried. I felt like I found the answer to the next stage of my life. For the next couple of years almost every day I pretty much humped any bed, bunk, or any mattress I had access to. I found it to be the most fun and relieving outlet. I was drawn to it, even if I was scared of the social ramifications if I got caught in the act. And on top of that I felt like the more practice I had the better I would be by the time I would actually have sex with a real woman.

After turning thirteen, my next exciting adolescent discovery was my sister’s Avon Fashion magazines that she got through the mail. I was drawn to the Avon magazine after seeing an issue on the table with a model on the cover featuring its swimwear season. While I was enamored with the swimsuit models, I felt like I discovered gold when I came across the same models in even more revealing lingerie deeper in the catalogue. When next month’s catalogue came through the mail, I was delighted to find that even though swimwear was not featured, lingerie was. Every month I would intercept the Avon fashion magazine from the mailbox as I came from school before my sister got home from her job. Then after I spending some time looking at them lying on my elbows on the bed, I snuck them back on the table with the rest of the mail for my sister to find. I was a little embarrassed but also kind of turned on by the danger of being caught. There were two models I was particularly smitten with, a tall busty blonde who was a little cross-eyed, and a shorter busty curly haired brunette.

A little bit after my newfound awareness of the value of my sister’s fashion magazines, my sister did a spring cleaning, throwing out a lot of stuff from her room into big black Glad trash bags. Before asking me to help out by taking out one of those garbage bags, my mom threw some coffee grinds and food into it. I went outside to throw it into our big plastic trashcans on the side of our house. As the bag landed in the can, top of the bag opened up wide with the contents near the top spilling out. My eyes instantly widened. There I saw covered in coffee grinds were STACKS of old Avon Fashion magazines. They called out to me to be saved, even the swimsuit one covered in grinds in the top. So I absconded with them to the basement to look at them, and wiped off the grinds and food from them, and enjoy the pictures of the models in the lingerie and swimsuits. For the next couple of months I would hide old Avon fashion magazines in the back of my bed.

My string of adolescent magazine lust luck continued when I noticed one day in the mailbox instead of Avon, there was a Victoria’s Secret magazine and then within a couple of months later a Frederick’s of Hollywood magazine. I suppose my sister (or mom) ordered from Avon and their information was bounced to these other potential feminine fashion retail suitors. I started hoarding them, until I realized I had too many magazines folded up between the side of my bed and the wall of my bedroom. So to consolidate my secret stash, while my parents and sister were out of the house or downstairs busy with something else, with some scissors I cut out my favorite models from each of magazine in my collection. I even put on a model show as I cut each model out, each one turning me on in a different way, their pose, a body shape, a look in their eyes, or the expression in their face flirting with me and put a number on them rating how hot I thought they were. Talk about the ultimate in adolescent objectifying of the female form. Instead of a tall stack of magazines, I small and medium size “shrinky-dink” sized cutouts of each of my favorite models.

Because my mom often cleaned my room when it got out of hand dirty and I seemed incapable of cleaning it on my own, I was inspired to find a better hiding place for my magazine cutout models away from the embarrassment of my mother discovering them and my new private indulgence. So instead of keeping the secret stash behind my bed or in my bed frame’s drawers, I thought that the pillowcase of my pillow would be a good hiding place, in addition to being a convenient location for my private time. Sure I would sleep on them but if I folded them neatly I could always put them back. One day when I came home I heard my mom cleaning in my room and ran upstairs. I tried to nonchalantly get to my pillowcase before my mom did. Feeling guilty that my mom thought it was bad enough to make her clean, I started to pick dirty clothes up from the floor as I tried to make my way to the pillowcase. I was too slow. Within seemingly milliseconds of stripping the bed sheets off, my mom took my pillow and shook it by the end to take the case off. Cut out magazine pieces spewed everywhere, as I cautiously screamed, “Mom!” I was embarrassed, afraid she’d be mad and think I was weird but was also mad at her for violating my privacy. She said “Oh, honey I’m sorry” and said something about leaving to give so some privacy.

Because my cover was now blown, from then on I stopped cutting out models from the magazines. Instead I merely continued to horde magazines that my sister seemed to be done with and put them behind my bed along with my salvaged cutouts that were salvageable from my mother’s raid.

The funny thing about imagining sexual scenarios with these Avon, Victoria’s Secret, and Fredericks of Hollywood models was that I did not really know exactly how things were arranged underneath the panty area of their underwear/swimsuits. I was pretty sure of what breasts looked like, from glances I saw on television here and there, and the outlines of nipples through sheer bras in the magazines, but the “cameltoe” imprint below the panty area did little to alter my somewhat warped sense of how the vagina was positioned on a woman. I had this image that the vagina was positioned more in front like my penis. The cartoon pictures I saw when I was seven from “Where Did I Come From?” made the vagina look like it was much closer to the bell button. Even the scientific internal profiles in biology books in 7th grade did little to make it click in my head. I just figured where there was hair there must be a hole. I imagined intercourse as being much more of a horizontal latitudinal action.

As a result, I was kind of shocked when I saw my first vagina in a Playboy magazine at Ethan’s house in 8th grade. It was positioned a lot lower closer to the “booty hole”. And it was really pink, when this model had her “lips” spread out. Being very empathetic, and sensitive, it was so pink and internal looking I imagined it must hurt to have one. After all, the only other time I saw something so pink and internal looking was when I got a bad cut on my leg or arm and played with the indent when a scab came off. I was thrown off and did not know what to think when I thought too much of the vagina. I was still turned on by looking at my magazine pictures. After all it wasn’t just the body. For years, I was turned on by the cuteness, the feminine energy and attention from girls. But still, for years, the strange very vulnerable look of the internal pinkness of the vagina threw me off if I thought about it too much.

Table of Contents

Part I – My Material (Physically Having) History
Part II – My Sensual (Feeling) History
Part III – My Ideological (Believing) History