Please note that the story contains language that some viewers may find offensive. Names have not been changed to protect the innocent. There are no innocents.
jrm_gwm84
I met my first boyfriends on the
internet. Others I’d known in ‘real life’, whatever that is. On the train from
Leeds to Manchester I should have been sanguine about the person who would be
waiting for me. Instead my leg danced a jig, my imagination tabbed through the
possibilities, and my eyes failed to focus on the article about Britney’s
prerogative.
I’d come back
late from my glamorous holiday job stacking wine on shelves at Tesco a year
ago. The odd hours the position imposed meant I started work around midday and
didn’t get home until gone 11pm. Once I had downed a carton of orange juice and
maybe heated up some tear ‘n’ share cheesy bread (hulking boxes of alcohol
around was hungry work for a growing 19 year old), it had become my habit to
push the magic button that brought my desktop to life and connected me to the
world.
Living on a farm
a mile or two out of a village where nothing
happened and a good 10 minute drive away from a town big enough to support a
Tesco’s, the internet had become a lifeline to an isolated teen missing the
excitement of university living. When we made the jump from a green-text on
black background Pong-machine to a real PC it made sense to install it in my
bedroom, since my parents would struggle to find the on switch and my sister was
more interested in Barbie to care.
Discarding my
hideous blue-checked shirt and unflattering navy trousers the moment I crossed
the threshold of my room, I would throw on a tried-and-tested jeans ‘n’ t-shirt
ensemble, or strip down to socks ‘n’ boxers with a white towelled dressing
gown. Then I’d settle down to see who was signed in to MSN Messenger. Key
milestones of my short life had been enacted on the simple programme that
connected me to school and university friends as well as complete strangers. I
came out on it for the very first time to my friend Mo, who then proceeded to
try and steal my thunder by confessing his bisexuality. My momentous,
earth-shattering revelation was torpedoed by someone else’s issues, which
showed me how much of a big deal my sexuality really was to other folk.
I found it much
easier to speak to people through the emotional barrier of a computer screen.
It was safe and I could be honest without seeing disappointment or hurt written
across a face. I could sit and chat in comfort in my bedroom, surrounded by the
shelves my Dad had built at the foot of my double bed. Where once they had been
filled with Lego castles and Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, they now housed books
and DVDs galore – worlds into which I could escape from reality.
On a warm summer
evening I would have my window slung open, the steady hum of the milking
parlour over the road interspersed with the odd lowing cow – the soundtrack of
my youth. I always knew it had gotten late when the drone stopped and the
silence that filled the outside world seeped into mine along with the heady
aroma of hops, stored in large mounds as fodder fo’ d’ cattle. When I smell the
same nutty wafts that often permeate the air around our brewery-abutting flat today
it takes me right back to the bedroom I inhabited for 22 years.
I first met
magic_treehouse in a Freeserve chatroom for gay men, which goes to show a) how
long ago this happened in ISP terms, and b) that I was looking for a little
company from someone of my own persuasion that summer night. Gay chatrooms
might invite salacious conclusions about my behaviour. I cannot deny that my
webcam had seen a lot of my naked body, as had several acquaintances at the other
end of the modem. However, I had never been one of those creeps who lurk in
online meat markets with usernames like ‘BigCock7inch’ or ‘CumLover79’ trolling
for instant cam sex with complete strangers. I had to get to know a person a
little before I was willing to bare my wares, because jrm_gwm84 was a good
boy...
Putting out a
plea for someone to just, you know, talk to, I was happy to discover
magic_treehouse was not only willing to chat; he was engaging, funny and
relatable. After that first night private messaging in the chatroom we
exchanged email addresses and added each other on Messenger. Once we were
signing out to hit our respective beds ‘Adam’ admitted he was actually Andrew.
I was pleased that he was savvy enough not to give away his real name up-front,
yet concerned about that first contact being a lie. It made me wonder about how
naive and honest I often was – I didn’t like to embellish the truth online, I
had enough of that in my daily life.
That summer I
came home knackered most nights, particularly when I had to walk from town to
farm along ill-lit country roads. I would sing Spice Girls songs at high volume
to drown out the darkness and to ward off ne’r-do-wells. The trek was always
worth it when I signed on to find Andrew online and we would chat away for hours
about Buffy, music and the state of the world. The words always flowed free from
my fingertips and we rarely found ourselves stuck for topics – a novelty among
people I’d met online, with whom conversation either fizzled out beyond the
initial contact or they wanted to turn the cams on and dispense with talking.
After talking
online all summer we went off to university for our second years, him to
Sheffield, me to Keele (the only university affiliated with a village, fact
fans). As my home county was North Yorkshire and his Cheshire we had never
really expected to meet up; what we had was enough for both of us. His lack of
internet access at uni led to our communication through the old fashioned
medium of hand-written correspondence, which was sporadic at best.
A year after we
first ‘met’, I found myself on my way to meet
Andrew. My second year had been a bit of an emotional tea cup ride. I had got
back together with my first love – the one who broke my heart and had me sobbing
onto my mum’s shoulder at one in the morning – only for it to go tits-up when I
realised I didn’t want the cheating bastard after all. Then there were a few liaisons
with members of the LGBT society that I’d rather pretend didn’t happen. After
that Dawson’s Creek style trauma I was actually in a place where being single wasn’t
the end of the world; I didn’t need another boyfriend to be happy.
And yet... I
found myself falling back into semi-flirtatious camaraderie with Andrew with surprising
ease. Even apprised of the sordid details he’d missed in our months apart, he
still wanted to know me and, even better, wanted to meet me.
As the train
pulled into Manchester Piccadilly I retrieved my ticket for inspection and
checked my phone to confirm that yes, Andrew’s text said he was waiting for me
outside HMV. We had never spoken on the phone, and other than me giving him a
quick wave on webcam once (and not with my cock I might add), we only knew each
other through written messages, letters, texts. What if we couldn’t communicate
verbally, without the distraction and distance provided by a computer screen?
What if I didn’t recognise him from the two snaps he’d shared, taken the year
before in his dorm room?
I wasn’t going
to meet Andrew with the expectation of us being anything more than friends, but
I felt such a connection from the meeting of minds that had already occurred I
couldn’t silence the tiny, hopeful voice of optimism buried under the neuroses.
When I met my first boyfriend the event was clouded by hormonal excitement
about meeting not just another gay boy in the flesh but one who was interested
in me. It wasn’t until too late I realised he wasn’t attractive either
physically or emotionally. Still, it blew the training wheels off for future
purposes, giving me the confidence to share the bed of my second boyfriend the
first night we met. I was experienced with men by now, sure, but the nervous
energy and the excitement made the occasion feel like coming out for the first
time.
As I marched through
the Saturday melee in the station, I checked myself out in shop window
reflections to confirm that the hair gel was doing its job, my bag sat just so
across my t-shirt, that my ripped jeans still looked cool. I cradled the phone
in my pocket, ready to whip it out to check the text message again, to make
sure I was heading to the right place. I focussed on the prearranged bench
where a young man was sitting completing a crossword. Unsure what to say or how
to begin despite experience with such situations, I steeled myself and strode
towards him with more confidence than I felt, hoping he’d notice and recognise
me first. Moving through the cacophony of commuters, customer announcements and
the blood pounding in my ears, I walked up to his side, saw him look up and
opened my mouth to speak –
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