9. OUR FIRST CRISIS

Right at the end of 1972 we had what could be described as the first real crisis since our relationship was established. I still have a letter dated December 29th, 1972 which I wrote George, because I always found it easier to put difficult things in writing.

 

To fully understand the reasons behind this crisis, it is necessary to go into some detail about our sexual relationship, which had never been spectacularly successful. I was able to play both passive and active roles, but the only time we tried anal intercourse I found it impossible to achieve penetration, he was just too tight. (He was never the active partner, at least not with me.) Some of his features were small (though the obvious one was of average size), and one of the reasons George looked so good in drag was that he had a small face, like a woman. I never realized how tiny his mouth was till he got dentures and I saw the size of my plate compared to his.

 

So we just ‘messed about’ when we had sex, which was more or less limited to mutual masturbation. We were really quite incompatible sexually, even though I am fairly versatile. Mutual oral sex was out since he lost his erection as soon as it got wet. So this was yet another activity which was out for us, as he never seemed that keen playing the passive oral role with me either.

 

Although all this did not seem important, being restricted to cuddling, kissing and mutual masturbation meant sex was never a fully satisfying experience for either of us, and I did not yet know the full truth about George’s sexual preferences. It was this discovery which led to the crisis in our relationship. Strange as it may seem, never in our 21 years together did we talk about our sexual preferences. It seemed we just couldn’t broach the subject. We got to know over the years, but we never actually discussed our likes and dislikes. Perhaps we should have, but I tend to be rather inhibited when discussing such things with a sexual partner, and George’s likes were obviously of a nature he did not feel able to be open about to me.

 

In the first few months we were together we were monogamous and faithful to each other. George had stopped taking amphetamines, which gave him most of his sex drive. However, he used to tell me about sexual experiences he had before he met me. This was a big mistake as I just could not handle it, and became incredibly envious of George. Our adolescent years had been so totally different. While I had been totally frustrated sexually, George had lived out and experienced almost every sexual fantasy any gay man could even imagine before he was 20.

 

Apparently he had been sexually active from the age of about 12. I now know he was sexually penetrated by his Teddy-boy step-brother, and went on the game in Glasgow at a very early age. The incident he related which caused most jealousy on my part, leaving me all ‘bitter and twisted’ as George put it, was when he met a uniformed soldier in a Glasgow cinema and gave him oral sex in an alleyway beside the building. This is the ultimate sexual fantasy for  many gay men, myself included. On hearing this and other stories, I was indeed all bitter and twisted inside, and felt I had just missed out on so much.

 

There was I, a virgin till well into my 23rd year, and here was George telling me about exciting sexual experiences he had when in his early or mid-teens. I remember standing at a bus-stop outside our first home together in Bradfield Court, and telling George I intended to go out and ‘catch up’ on some of the fun and experiences I had missed in my teens. So ended the monogamous period of our relationship, but I think it was inevitable it would have happened, given the very limited nature of our sexual activities together, my frustrated teenage years and George’s sexual preferences, which became apparent later.

 

I now know much more about George, and nearly all my wildest sexual fantasies seem to have been actually experienced by him: sexually abused by a Teddy-boy step-brother, oral sex with a soldier in uniform, forced into oral sex with a uniformed policeman under threat of arrest if he did not comply, having surreptitious sex under a traveling rug with a youth on a night coach to Glasgow whilst other passengers slept on unaware of what was going on - all these scenarios are well-known gay fantasies which form the basis of many porno movie scripts, but George swore they all happened to him.

 

So we started going to the Biograph cinema again, or at least I did. I cannot remember at which point George started going again. We never allowed ourselves to get emotionally involved with anyone else, though. If it started to get to that point, we stopped seeing that person. So we always remained emotionally faithful to each other right to the very end.

 

One day in December 1972 George left his wallet lying around and I found and read a piece of paper he had left in it, describing in intimate detail his sexual fantasies. I had led a very sheltered life, and knew nothing about sado-masochism or slave/master relationships, yet this is what George was really into. There is no denying I was terribly shocked, especially as George had weaned me away from atheistic Communism at that particular time, and I had joined the strict fundamentalist Assembly of God Pentecostal sect because my favorite singer, Jerry Lee Lewis, was brought up in it and they had a small church near where we lived in Camden Town. I eventually left that church as it became clear gays were not acceptable. Neither were people who drank, smoked or went to the theater, judging from the ‘testimonies’ (confessions) made to the congregation from past ‘sinners’. No wonder Jerry Lee is so messed up, since playing rock’n’roll is also considered a heinous sin.

 

The fact that I should pry and snoop into his private things left George just as shocked and horrified as I was by my discovery. My mother snooped and discovered his drag in the wardrobe, and now I had read some private notes in his wallet. I know it was wrong, but curiosity got the better of me. My previous boyfriend, Kenny, had read my private diaries in which I used to write down all my sexual adventures. He advised me to destroy them and never again write anything like that down, in case my mother should find them. He was absolutely right of course. George was also very silly, as it could easily have been my mother, not me, who found and read about his secret fantasies.

 

I realized when I read George’s notes, that he must have assumed when he met me that I would play a much more masterful, dominant role than I ever felt able to. When we met I was dressed all in denim, which looks very butch. However, being basically a pacifist, I could never convincingly play the role of a master, and certainly not towards someone I loved so tenderly.

 

I remember during this crisis I actually managed to talk to George about this, and he admitted that when he first met me he expected me to always play the butch role. I was then very new to the gay scene and knew nothing about ‘butch’ and ‘bitch’ roles, let alone ‘master’ and ‘slave’. As far as I knew every gay man was versatile and could play the passive or active roles. This is indeed true of many gay men, but in George’s circles everyone was either bitch or butch, passive or active.

 

When I told George of my ignorance of these roles, and my assumption that gay men were always versatile, he seemed to grow impatient with the fact that I just did not understand his sort of gay world at all. He had mixed with effeminate gays or ‘bitches’ ever since coming on the gay scene, but these were never sexual partners. He was never into what he called ‘tootsie trade’ or sex between two effeminate homosexuals. All the bitches he knew only had sex with ‘men’, i.e. straight-acting homosexuals, bisexuals or even heterosexual men who thought the bitches were real women or wanted to try something their wives would or could not give them. George liked to play a very submissive role to an ultra butch man, the classic slave/master relationship of the S&M scene.

 

This was all a completely foreign world to me. I thought gay men just messed about with each other as men, and did not understand this play-acting with ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles. Indeed, I had read John Rechy’s ‘City of Night’, which is full of effeminate homosexuals referred to as ‘she’, and was quite confused by the story as I could not even imagine such characters, not at that time knowing anyone like that in real life. George had lived amongst such characters for well over 10 years when I met him. Although I was versatile and so could not truly be defined as ‘tootsie trade’, George and I were basically sexually incompatible, and neither could be the ‘real man’ the other sometimes desired to satisfy their physical needs.

 

I could not broach such a subject verbally, and the religious phase I was going through at the time made the letter I wrote  George very pious sounding, with constant references to God and The Bible. I started off by saying how much I valued our relationship and that I was grateful for all George had done for me.

 

‘You brought me back to God and pure, straight thinking instead of the evil Communism I had embraced’, I wrote.

 

I told him how I had re-read our old love letters, and admitted I was to blame ‘for spoiling this beautiful, pure stage of our relationship, for it was me who started going to the Biograph again.’

 

I referred to the fact that in one of his early letters he said sex was not very important to him, but ‘now I have seen a glimpse of another side of you - a side of you I had no right to see I admit, but which reminds me too much of my own darkest thoughts and desires.’

 

I told him how the discovery of his secret fantasies a day or two before had a deep effect on me, and how I had been obsessed with sex all day. I wrote how I planned living ‘a sort of double life with you filling my emotional needs, (for I could never love anyone as I love you) and looking for casual encounters to satisfy my sexual needs.’ George underlined the words ‘my emotional needs’, in my letter, indicating he felt the same way about me, i.e. that ours was essentially an emotional relationship.

 

I then went off on a religious tangent playing down the importance of sexual excitement. George wrote a comment alongside about not being able to do these things when one’s youth and looks have gone, so why not do it now. Of course this was my very trouble - I had not done these things at the peak of my youth (in my teens) with those I most desired (some of the attractive boys at my school for instance) and even in my 20s I felt it was already too late, I had missed the boat. Now I was going through a religious conflict no doubt fueled by my entirely sex-less youth and my childhood in a sex-less, one-parent family environment, which had been sexually repressive and religious.

 

I wrote about recapturing the time when we used to ‘save ourselves exclusively for each other’, and admitted it would be a sacrifice ‘particularly as we are not very compatible sexually’. George underlined those last five words to indicate how much he agreed with that statement. On the next page I wrote that if we were both to try (together) we would be much more likely to successfully resist temptations (than if only one of us tried), to which George has wisely commented that frustration would be the more likely result.

 

I went on to say that we must try to understand and please each other and said: ‘While I can never be what I am not, are we really sexually incompatible?’ I continued: ‘Sex, whilst not of prime importance, is an essential feature in a relationship such as ours.’ George strongly disagreed, and wrote the comment: ‘No. Sexual destruction.’ He was right, for sex could easily have destroyed our emotional relationship.

 

When I mentioned ‘kinks’, referring to his S&M fantasies, George wrote: ‘Fantasy, not physical pain’. He was never into really heavy S&M, it was more in the mind. Quite a lot of people, myself included, are into a bit of verbal humiliation and play-acting, but have no desire to suffer real physical pain.

 

However, I was right, I think, in saying such things (as S&M scenarios) ‘only work in a purely sexual encounter and cannot work in a relationship like ours’. George agreed with me, for although later in our relationship I used to indulge in some mild, unconvincing ‘spanking’ to help him achieve orgasm, eventually the physical side of our relationship fizzled out. It just did not seem to work. George wrote on one page of my letter that ‘only strangers stimulate’ and that if I tried to play a more active sexual role, as I was suggesting, we would only be going through the motions, which proved to be the case.

 

I have since asked other S&M enthusiasts, and was told that if a ‘master’ and ‘slave’ form a genuine, long-term, loving attachment towards each other their relationship is usually transformed. Since the S&M roles cannot be sustained they are dropped and casual partners then have to be found if they wish to put into practice these sexual fantasies.

 

I wrote in my letter that I would not try and force George to do anything, and admitted I might be wrong, but wanted to stop and look ‘back at what we had in the beginning’ before going ‘headlong into unrestricted promiscuity’. I was worried about suspicion and jealousy wrecking our loving relationship.

 

Of course, there were grounds for my fears, but writing from hindsight and even knowing that this promiscuity led to George’s early death from an AIDS-related illness, I can honestly say we did the right thing in having an open relationship. Our emotional relationship survived for 21 years, and lives on beyond the grave. Had we tried to restrict ourselves sexually to the deeply unsatisfying physical possibilities within our relationship, I believe we would have split up long ago. The strain would just have been too great, however much we loved each other. Indeed, this love could have easily turned to resentment that the other person was ‘cramping our style’ and the resulting frustration would have caused an explosion sooner or later.

 

If two people are compatible sexually and emotionally, then a monogamous relationship is possible. If, however, they are sexually incompatible, yet one or both have high sex drives, the only way the emotional relationship can possibly survive is if they have some sort of open relationship whereby other people supply the physical needs. In other words, if you really love someone you want them to be happy and will not deny them something essential to their well-being.

 

With George and myself, the emotional relationship, a kiss and a cuddle, was all-important. But we both realized we each had sexual needs the other could not properly satisfy.

 

My letter and that crisis was a turning-point in our relationship. Had we done as I suggested, and decided if we could not satisfy each other’s physical needs, no-one else would be allowed to do so, then frustration and resentment would have eventually destroyed our relationship. As it was, we gradually established unwritten rules which allowed us to seek sexual relief outside our relationship without deceit, jealousy or risking our precious emotional bond.

 

We only saw other people at certain times, usually weekends, and we tried to coincide. We never got emotionally involved with other people, and broke off any relationship that appeared to be heading that way. We were thus emotionally faithful or monogamous, since George was the only important person in my life and vice versa. Our sexual partners merely supplied our fleeting sexual needs, and these relationships were of a similar nature to that of a prostitute and client, or indeed restaurant and customer: sex and food are two essential requirements for a happy, well-ordered life. It is not necessary to form a life-long emotional attachment to your local cafe or food-store owner who supplies your food, so why should you do so for those who supply you only with your sexual requirements?

 

At least this is how it worked for us, and indeed it could not work any other way. To become emotionally involved with our sexual partners would have altered the nature of those relationships and destroyed George’s and my emotional relationship at the same time. We could, quite possibly, have found sexually compatible partners and established long-term emotional relationships with them, but that would have destroyed our relationship together. In George’s case, it would perhaps have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, to combine an emotionally satisfying relationship within an S&M sexual fantasy context.

 

So, at the end of 1972, we could have broken up when I snooped into George’s secret notes about his fantasies. We could have put ourselves in puritanical sexual straight-jackets, and gradually poisoned our emotional relationship, till it withered and died amidst feelings of frustration and resentment, because we were incapable of satisfying each other sexually. Or we could come to the compromise we eventually achieved: an open sexual relationship with rules to insure our emotional relationship survived, and was not destroyed by deceit, jealousy and emotional rivalry from our respective sexual partners. It may not work for other people, but for our situation it was the only solution possible.

 

Over the years I was far more promiscuous than George, who all but lost his sex drive altogether. Unfairly, it was he who died first, of AIDS. It is not how many people you have sex with, or even who, but what you do. Passive anal intercourse, a practice George enjoyed more than I did, is the really high-risk activity if unprotected. George being extremely tight at the back made it all the more likely tears and bleeding would occur during intercourse. This is the main way the HIV virus is spread to the passive partner.