Words

He wrote back and said three words that landed deep in my heart: I love you.

I struggled to accept the sincerity of those words.  It's not his issue, it's mine.  Years of rejection and abuse from intimate male figures--fathers, brothers--taught me that love does not come from men.  The place in my heart reserved for receiving love from men had been filled in and painted over.

Lies.  All lies.  He said he loves you and he is excited to see you.  This is what you need to hear, and you have no reason to doubt him.

And so I wrote back, "thank you."  Only two words, but they allowed me to taste the possibility at the very core of boy-soul that I am indeed lovable and acceptable as a man, by another man.

Three words uttered; two words uttered back.  The impact?

I was able to help 3 different people with their personal problems today, and still feel that I have more love to give.

I have never felt so full in my heart.

One Picture Can Say So Much

This blog is now open to the world.

Feeling Down

I'm very low on energy.  I don't sleep much at night, and when I am up during the day, I am tired and sleepy all day.

I have work to do, and I am doing it, but slowly.  There is a sense of fear in approaching this work.  So many ghosts.  Can I do this?  Am I man enough?

Had I not installed the accountability software, I would have gone to porn to get my dopamine fix.  Feel-good chemicals for the deprived brain.  But I can't now.  My friend would find out.

I am feeling needy.  Very needy.  And I hate feeling this way.

I am writing this post, hoping that someone will read it.  But will anyone?  I fear that in my need to "let loose and test my change," in my abandon to porn, I might have driven you away.  In my raw honesty, I have disgusted your holy sensibilities.

I don't blame you.  I know that I tend to judge others when things are going well for me.  So, let me not judge you for your silence.  Let me not depend on you for my salvation.

I can depend only on Jesus, who loves me through and through, from the inside out.

Update

It had been almost a month since I last wrote. Where am I?

I had to make some changes to my computer more than week a ago and I discovered that I could look at porn without alerting my accountability partner. And so I have been doing that frequently, at first, as an experiment to figure out my software, and then because I wanted to engage in it.

Over the past month, I have been isolating myself emotionally from other men. I have not met up with my accountability partners, have not had open, connected conversations. I suppose this means that I am struggling. Yes, I am. Busyness is a convenient excuse, but the core of the issue is the will. Let me explain.

I am discovering the importance of "choice" in my growth into manhood. My decision to "let loose" on internet pornography (to test my change, so to speak) revealed to me that although I have started to change, the change will not proceed without further effort/will on my part. I need to choose to change.

So, more recently, I have found myself looking at porn of men having sex with each other--something that I had never really enjoyed looking at. With extra time on my hands to surf, I have been able to find ones where there is a semblance of emotional intimacy between the actors, not just the raw act of sex. One could say that I have "gotten worse," but I am not sure if that is the case.

The new feeling of "being one of the guys" has come in genuinely. This has not been fabricated, I am glad to discover. I miss talking with my straight friend. It feels so good to experience his openness and acceptance of me with holy love. Talking with him about sex stuff while having him know the details of my same-sex struggles is one of the most healing aspects of my journey thus far. He loves me where it matters to me most. I miss interacting with him so much more than I want to masturbate to pornography. With him, the longings in my boy-soul is met; porn does not meet the deeper needs of my boy-soul.

I have wanted to write this post for a couple of weeks now, but busyness--and shame of needing to confess my recent porn habit--had kept me from doing so. But I am glad to have forced myself to write this. It is healing. Stops the isolation, so that I can proceed in my journey into manhood.

Once I publish this post, I will go and take care of my software vulnerability. Put a fence around the porn so that I don't tempt myself with awful, unhealthy candy that will rot my boy-soul and stop him from growing.

Experimentation & Accountability

Over the last week, I have allowed myself to look at porn several times. I wanted to let myself "loose" so that I could find out, without any shred of doubt, if I am truly changing.

This is what I've discovered.  5 points.

1. I *am* less attracted to men sexually.

I can see men having all kinds of sexual acts either alone or together, but I see it not so much with a sense of deprivation within me. I don't feel like I want or need the same. I see it as a little comical that the men should want to do something like that with each other rather than with women.

I used to find the right look in a man, and then fantasize having sexual relations with him.  No more.  Even the most perfect looking guy is just another guy to me -- a buddy.  Not a person who can really give me something by having sex with me.

This is a huge change. And I'm not pretending it.  It really is just happening.  And I am not sure exactly what has led to this change.  I have some ideas.

2. I am still able to get aroused by seeing men engage in sexual acts.

I can get aroused. Not quite as immediately as before, but I can. It's no longer an arousal that draws me to participate. It's more an arousal of plain sexual excitement. It's more... pure.  Innocent. Like a young kid would get an erection at the sight of another boy doing something sexual, but neither understanding what is happening to them except that natural feeling of sexual excitement. There is no need to masturbate in this kind of arousal.

3. I feel a strong need to have my male sexual-ness be affirmed by another man.

I don't mean just being affirmed as a guy. I mean specifically having a man--a straight man, by the way--directly approve me of my male sexual-ness. At the most "homosexual" end, it would be having the two of us masturbate together, but not needing to touch each other.  At the most "heterosexual" end would be having a coach-like figure scrutinize me masturbating or even having sex with a woman, and then give me a good score for it, and a pat on the back.  Somewhere in the middle would be for us to have sex together with a girl.

I want affirmation that I am male, at the very physiologically sexual level, and have other guys respect and like me because of my ability to carry out the sex act as a man.  That we like each other and affirm each other's sexual-ness.  The epitome of this experience is to have another man affirm me and even join me in orgasm (but not join me by having sex with me).  In other words, I don't want the other man's manhood, I want his brotherhood to affirm me where I feel least affirmed -- in my sexuality.

I think to the straight guy, this sounds gay. But in my mind, there is a world of difference. It's more like I am a young teenage boy who is just maturing sexually, and having some friends gather around to connect, affirm, and learn from each other by experimentation and comparison.  Very different from wanting to have sex with other guys.  This kind of activity leads the boys towards feeling good about themselves and then branching off into learning about girls.

4. I don't like most of the girls in porn.

I cannot objectify women. To see a woman go "ooh" and "ahh" while pretending to enjoy giving oral sex is simply fake.  Women want to be loved, to be cherished, to be held and told that they are beautiful.  The stuff in porn is for stupid guys (sorry, but it is).  Guys whose understanding of women don't go further than the length of their boner.  A girl who is begging a guy to give it to her for the sheer physicality... does any half-witted educated man really want that in a woman to love?

I suppose this is why I find myself most attracted to pictures of a man and a woman having sex that is in a close physical embrace, rather than the mere pounding of genitals.

5. Porn is still dangerous, no matter my orientation.

If I am not careful, I can get stuck in same-sex attraction by allowing myself to keep looking at porn, even if what I am looking for is more affirmation than attraction.

What I am afraid of is that if I stop looking at porn, will my same-sex attraction (as opposed to same-sex affirmation) come back?

I think I need to remain accountable to stopping porn.

Father Figures: Real and Imagined

In my last post, I talked about Charles Ingalls. How he was my hero of a father-figure and how he became the source of my many objects of fantasy. 

What made the fantasy more attractive was that Michael Landon, the actor, was such a hunk of a man and portrayed that role so well. He was handsome, strong, fatherly, manly, and sensitive all at the same time.

What I didn't realize was, his son, Michael Landon, Jr., who is about my age, was having the exact same perceptions of him--not in front of the TV, but on the set itself. I found this out from a Christianity Today article. [link]

"He was my everything as I was growing up," says Michael. "I had a certain vision of my father, a vision I think was perpetuated by the role he was playing [i.e. Charles Ingalls] at the time and by the way the public perceived him. He was the perfect dad." 

The Christianity Today article continued:

But that perfect image was shattered one afternoon when Michael came home from high school. He was met at the door by an uncle, who had clearly been crying. The uncle sat Michael and his sister Leslie down on the couch and broke the news.

"Your dad has left," he said. "Your mother is upstairs. She's a wreck, and she needs you to comfort her."

Today, Landon says he was blindsided by the news. He later learned that his father had been having an affair with someone who worked behind the scenes of Little House, and that unfaithfulness led to his parents' divorce.

The unimaginable had happened: Pa Ingalls, a promise keeper long before Promise Keepers was cool, had had a tryst and split from his wife. A Hollywood scandal indeed.

"My world was completely shattered," says Landon, who was 15 at the time.

That led to Michael Jr.'s foray into the world of rebellion and drugs, until his mother brought him to church where he met God and gave his life over to Jesus.

So, the real man behind the character was just as flawed as my father, and crushed the spirit of his little boy just like my father crushed mine.

I don't really know what to say about this little finding of mine today.  Something about hope. 

• Hope that I am not the only broken one -- even the real son of "Charles Ingalls" himself was badly broken by the same man who fueled so much of my fantasies.  
  
• Hope that such a high level of perfection in manhood is just a fantasy, and thus, I can let go of trying to find it, either in other men or in myself.
  

I don't know how this relates to my own embrace of manhood. I know it's related at some level, but I can't quite pinpoint how.

Pubic Hair, Papa Charles, and a Big Fat Wedgie

The bottle on the bureau winked at me and whispered, "restore your hair and look great again!"

Making sure no one was around, I pulled down my pants, poured some of the lotion onto my palm, and rubbed it on my pubic area.

Then I waited. And waited. I checked everyday to see if any little hairs had sprouted.

Nothing.

I was 9.

-----

Fast forward a couple of years.

I noticed a little something on my pubic area one day. If I stood at just the right angle, it almost looked like hair.

Sidetrack: You know Charles Ingalls? Yeah, that incredibly loving and wonderful father on Little House on the Prairie? Well, I had a crush on him. Or so I thought. I don't think I ever masturbated to thoughts of him, but I know that I wanted to be near him and follow him wherever he went. He talked to his children, listened to them, he even hugged and cried with them.

Anyway, on one fateful fishing trip day, I thought that maybe if I tried, I could have my own Charles Ingalls in dad.

"Guess what, dad?"

"What?" he mumbled as we maneuvered across the rocks.

"I think my penis has hair on it."

"What?!" he said louder with an irritated face--the same scowl that I have inherited.

"I think my penis has hair on it," I repeated, a little embarrassed yet hopeful.

"Humph," he mumbled, then kept walking.

There! I did it. I connected with dad, I thought to myself and smiled a little on the inside.

I have pictures from that fishing trip. My older brothers and their friends were slim and handsome as can be. But there was a grotesque figure standing amongst them with his back to the camera. A fat, ugly kid with pork chop calves and a big ass with a perpetual wedgie. To this day, I cannot look at that picture without shame engulfing me.

I don't know what it was I did that day. I can't remember. Something an insecure and love-starved 11-year-old might do to get a little attention.

"STOP IT!" my father yelled publically. "You're already sprouting pubic hair! So stop being an annoying, immature brat!"

It was loud enough that I swore everyone heard it. Loud enough to resound through a lifetime of dread and self-hatred.

And so, I found comfort instead in my made-believe world with men like papa Charles Ingalls holding me, comforting me, speaking tenderly to me. I would masturbate, feeling warmed and loved.

-----

Fast forward three decades to today.

I went online and searched for a picture of "wedgie."  This is what I found.

I think they call this male-bonding. A bunch of guys reveling in their maleness, affirming each other that their muscles, their sweat, their stink, their wedgies, their sex are all good.

I've been in a couple of situations like this. I've even tried to be one of the guys. Some party where there was some drugs and sex going on. I danced with one girl and pretended to make out with her. I was not in the least bit interested. But I knew the guys were looking. I did it for them. 

As I held her close to me, the girl had a look in her eyes that said, "take me, I'm all yours." But I did nothing. I had nothing to give her. My wedgie, along with my immature penis and reprimanded pubic hair, had been gutted out and tossed on the rocks to rot forever on that fateful fishing trip day.

But...

things are changing.

Because of you, and you, and You, things are changing.

I want so badly to be accepted as a man--sweat, stink, wedgie and all. I want to masturbate with a bunch of guys together and have them say, "dude, you're gonna make some girl one happy bitch!" And then ejaculate and laugh together.

Yes, I know. Not very Christian. But I don't care. I want to experience having my man-sex affirmed with other guys. I will not edit out these words. 

Not yet.