[This is my own bondage autobiography, written in the early days of Bound & Gagged, back in 1991. It appeared anonymously in Issue 25. This is the first time I've 'fessed up to it. While some of my bondage turn-ons have changed over the years, this piece is accurate for when I wrote it. BW]
1. "IT WAS AS IF EVERYONE HAD BEEN WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO BRING THE SUBJECT UP."NEW YORK, NY. I've never much cared for the word bondage. It carries too many ugly historical associations which don't turn me on at all. Not that I necessarily see anything wrong in playing sexual slave for a night (it's not my bag, but that has nothing to do with anything) or, for that matter, a week, month or lifetime, if it's done with full knowledge and consent. I'm not altogether sure that a steady diet of slavery is good for anyone's self esteem, but am not about to make a moral issue of that here. One thing I've learned after many years of watching the kinkiest people sneer at people whose kinks are different from their own, is that it's hard to see beyond one's personal turn-ons. God knows I've found that to be the case with my own, most of which involve bondage, or what I prefer to think of as tying up. Tying up has a boyish sound to it, which I like, since I think of it as essentially a boyish activity. Also, it was when I was a boy that I got my first taste of it—and of a gag stuffed into the mouth and tied securely in place—and found I liked the whole thing better than Twinkies. I've kept the taste and the boyish enthusiasm which I had from the beginning, and that's more than I can say for most other things I used to be crazy about.
One of my earliest tying up memories dates from pre-kindergarten days. One afternoon in nursery school, when he was being particularly unruly during a reading of Babar the Elephant, the teacher tied a hyper little boy named Ned into his chair with a jumprope. I was spellbound by the sight of Ned tied in the chair. The idea of something similar being done to me seemed unbearably humiliating, and desirable. Ned just sat there wriggling in his loose bonds and laughing.
My first actual experience occurred when I was nine or ten. Family friends of my best friend Mike, who lived in my apartment building, came to New York for the Easter vacation from Denver. The family had two sons, Ben and Tom, who were almost exactly the same age—with the same two year gap between them—as Mike and his older brother Hugh. I was three months younger than Mike to the day.
I was sick in bed the first few days of Ben and Tom's visit—didn't even know they were there—but I was eaten up by jealousy when I heard about them, since Mike was clearly infatuated with them, and eaten up by something else when I asked Mike what they'd been doing together and he said, "We've been tying each other up."
It wasn't long before I met Ben and Tom and immediately fell in love with them both, especially the older brother, Tom. He was tall, blond, with clean, sharp Irish features, a faceful of freckles, a wonderful, wicked smile and eyes that had a glint to them. There was a hint of something potentially dangerous about him, but at the same time he was friendly, which a boy two years our senior seldom was. Mike and I almost never played with Mike's brother Hugh, a loner who treated us with contempt, but this particular day, when the grownups went out leaving the five of us alone in the house, we found ourselves all fooling around together.
I don't remember what we did first, except I found it boring. I wished the subject of getting tied up would come up without me being the one to introduce it. But it didn't, and at last I did toss it in, as offhandedly as I could, as if I wasn't burning with desire to try it.
I only had to say the word. It was as if everyone had been waiting for someone to bring the subject up. A moment later Mike was running into the kitchen and returning with a bunch of clothesline, and a moment or so after that, when Hugh (God bless him, and I'd always hated him till then) pointed to me and said, "He's never been tied up yet," I was on the floor with two boys holding me down, another one tying my hands behind my back and a fourth tying my ankles together. Then my ankles were pulled back to join my hands, knots were piled on knots, and all four boys stood in a circle around me admiring their handiwork and making bets on how long it would take me to get free, if I could do it at all.
While I squirmed and struggled, unsuccessfully, Tom, Hugh and Mike ganged up on Tom's brother, Ben, and hogtied him, and then Tom and Hugh grabbed Mike and managed to tie him to one of the posts of his and Hugh's doubledecker bed.
Mike managed to get free—actually, they had used up most of the rope on Ben and me—but Ben and I stayed tied up until we were released, maybe a half hour or so.
We did a lot of tying up during the rest of that vacation, either in Mike and Hugh's room or in a woody aread behind our building. In fact,though my memory may play me false, I seem to remember that every time the five of us were alone together someone was getting tied up—and almost always it was one or all of us younger boys. I know we all jumped Tom and tied him up once, not very well, but I don't recall ever trying to do it to Hugh.
I have one very strange but vivid memory of something that occurred between Tom, Ben and me, which I am certain is at the root of my major not necessarily bondage-related fetish—for hightop basketball sneakers. Most strange about that memory is I have no idea where Mike and Hugh were at the time, or why I should have found myself alone in their room with their guests from Colorado for what must have been at least an hour or more. And yet, because of the personally humiliating aspect of the situation, if Mike or Hugh had witnessed it or been in any way involved I'm sure I would remember.
Both Ben and I were hogtied on the floor, with Tom standing over us. Ben was wearing high black Keds and Tom was wearing high white Converse. Ben and I had both been tied up for a long time, it was some sort of contest to see which of us would get free first, or be first to ask to be untied. I didn't want it to be me, but I was beginning to hurt all over, and when Tom stood over me and asked me if I wanted him to untie me, I reluctantly nodded.
"Okay, but first you have to kiss my feet," he said, and he shoved a white sneaker under my mouth. His sneakers were new, and had a wonderful smell of fresh canvas and rubber.
Something in me refused the indignity, especially with Ben looking on. I pressed my lips together, shook my head and looked away.
"Okay, then you just stay tied up until you're ready to do it. What about you, Ben? You ready to be untied?" Ben was. "Okay," Tom said. "You know what you have to do." I watched as Tom went over to Ben who unhesitatingly kissed first the toe of one sneaker, then the toe of the other. "Okay, Ben," Tom said. "You know what's next." I watched in amazement, and with a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach, as Ben put out his tongue and licked his brother's sneakers, while Tom stood looking down on him and smiling, hands on his hips. From the way Ben did it I could tell he had done it before.
When Ben had licked each of Tom's sneakers to Tom's satisfaction, Tom mussed his hair in a friendly way and untied him. Then, from his crouching position, Tom grinned at me. "You ready to do it now?" he said. By that time I was aching everywhere and ready to do anything. Besides, I wanted to, though I didn't want Tom to know that. I nodded. Tom stood over me. "Kiss them," he said. I kissed first one foot, then the other. "Now lick them." I licked the shiny rubber toe, then the rough canvas. "My whole sneaker, all the way up, that's right. Now the other. Now you can do it to Ben. Come over here, Ben, let Robby kiss your feet." Ben placed his dirty old black Keds beneath my mouth, and I kissed and licked them up and down until Tom was satisfied. Then the two brothers untied me. "Tell Robby what I do to you sometimes, Ben, and what I did the first time you wouldn't kiss my feet when I told you to." "He gagged me with his socks and tied his sneaker over my face," Ben said, and added that he didn't like it much and wished Tom wouldn't do it. "You know I won't do it if you just do everything I tell you to," Tom said.
The actual words may be inexact but that was the substance of the dialogue and the event that took place before I was old enough to perceive that something deeply sexual was going on, both physically and in my mind, something that would be the basis for my first and most enduring jerk-off fantasy, and that would in some way color all my erotic thoughts from that time on.
Ben and Tom returned to Denver and that was the last time I ever saw them. Mike, Hugh and I didn't play any tying up games after that, in fact Hugh went back to being as standoffish as ever. A year or so later he went away to prep school. Though I did some sexual experimenting with Mike when we were in our early teens (we sucked each other's cocks; I liked it more, much more, than he did, but pretended I didn't), he too went off to prep school, we saw each other only at vacation time and drifted apart. Eventually both he and Hugh got married and had families, and I doubt either of them remember that Easter vacation with Ben and Tom except as kid stuff. I do wonder about Ben and Tom, though. They had more going on between them than met the eye, and for all I know, one or both of them are big bondage enthusiasts themselves, maybe even reading this in B&G.
2. IN THE SECURITY OF THE THICK BAG I CAME ALL OVER MYSELFMore memories: summer camp, especially during rest periods after lunch. Counselors tying up kids, kids tying up counselors. At one time a kid even played with a spread-eagled counselor's cock until he came. I don't remember anyone ever talking about that later; if anyone did, I avoided listening to it. The business was so erotic for me that I couldn't face it head on. But it does seem to me in the shadowy area where that memory lies that no one directly associated the counselor's coming with the fact that he was tied up; he came because his cock was played with, that was all. His being tied up, for the others at least (or so at any rate it seemed to me) had nothing to do with it.
I did my share of ganging up on bunkmates and helping to tie them up, though I never directly initiated the activity, perhaps because it meant so much to me. I remember getting tied up once, too, being spread-eagled to a steel-frame bed and given a pink belly. I don't remember if I had a hard on though I can't imagine I didn't. Fortunately, if I did, no one noticed. Once on a boy scout camping trip a bunch of kids sneaked up on my tentmate and me, jumped us, tied us into our sleeping bags and kept us that way overnight. I remember that time in particular because in the security of the thick bag I came all over myself. In the morning when they set us free the cum had dried. Again, to my relief, no one noticed.
For a year or so when I was in my early teens my cousin Jeff and I got together regularly on Friday nights to sleep over at his house or mine (depending on whose parents were going out for the evening) and play games with rope. We tied each other up in different positions and saw how long it took us to get free. We also experimented with blindfolds and gags. More than once I had to make up an excuse to my mother for a telltale bit of sticky white adhesive which I hadn't succeeded in scrubbing off my cheeks. Jeff and I even attempted to carry out a kidnapping of sorts of a kid we both hated who lived in Jeff's building. Our plan was to invite him to sleep over at Jeff's house, and in the middle of the night jump him, tie him up and then (Jeff's idea) give him an enema. The attempt failed. The kid fought us off, went home and told his mother, who told our mothers. Great discomfort and uneasy, embarrassed explanations all round, which put an end to the games Jeff and I played on our own.
As a result of a variety of problems with his parents, Jeff began to see someone for analysis, or therapy. Having always worshipped me (I was a year older than he), he tended to tell me pretty much everything he told the doctor during his sessions. But one day he came and asked me if he could tell about our Games. I had always encouraged him to tell the man everything about his awful mother, but here I balked, hemmed and hawed, said I'd prefer it if he didn't but of course I couldn't stop him if he wanted to.
I don't know if he did or not. I felt betrayed by his very desire to share this secret with someone else, especially an adult, and a shrink to boot, who would almost certainly conclude that the poor child had been led astray by someone who was totally depraved if not downright crazy. I pulled away from Jeff, immersed myself in high school activities, had no time for him, and a few years later left for college. We didn't really start to get to know each other again until we were both adults and living "normal" lives, which is to say going out with women.
Jeff remained "normal"—he's married now, with kids. Though he and I see each other ever so often, we have never referred to those adolescent Friday nights. And yet, from a casual remark he'll make every once in a while ("whips and chains, whips and chains," he'll intone in a singsong voice with a little glimmer in his eye) I can tell those memories still live in some way in his erotic fantasies. He always was fascinated by the idea of forced enemas.
I don't know about Jeff, but for my part I remained afraid to fully acknowledge the sexual nature of my perverse appetites even to myself, even as I was letting myself indulge them with him. I can't remember our ever playing with ropes without wearing something, if only underpants. We never did any genital bondage, or induced each other to cum while tied up. Later on in the evening we would sometimes jerk off together, but at those times each of us kept his fantasies in his own head; sex was supposed to have to do with girls, we were supposed to be fantasizing girls. Later still, when I was older and did try to look at what turned me on with an objective eye, I was appalled; I saw it as I imagined "normal" people did—as abnormal, shameful, deeply embarrassing, maybe not even sane. What I was so powerfully drawn to equally powerfully repelled me, and I continue to be horribly conflicted by it for a very long time. It wasn't till I was in my late twenties, and married myself, that I began to deal with these inadmissible desires, more or less at the same time that I began to deal with my inadmissible homosexuality. Only then did I discover—as people generally do when they finally dare to face their greatest fears—that neither was so terrible to contemplate after all. Quite the contrary.
3. THE STORY OF YI was living in Paris when The Story of O was published and quickly became the talk of the town. The idea that the story should be happening to a woman turned me off (women were categorically denied entry into all my bondage fantasies, as they were, for that matter, into most of my sexual fantasies; when fucking with a woman it was invariably with the image of a man in my mind) but if that kind of story could be imagined, whether happening to a woman or a man, if someone could write about it and people could sit around talking about it in ways I couldn't possibly do myself… I began to wonder if my fantasies weren't more widespread and less unusual than I'd ever imagined. I read the book from cover to cover, changing O's sex wherever possible in my mind and skimming over those passages where her unfortunate female anatomy got in the way. Then, in secret, and with a raging hard-on, I set about writing a more desirable version, The Story of Y (for if O stood for the cunt then Y clearly stood for the cock and balls). I was forever interrupting the writing to jerk off in the bathroom, and never did finish the book, though trying to write it did serve as a catalyst for putting an end to my marriage.
A year later I was debauching myself with men in San Francisco, mostly doing ordinary suckfuck sex but on the sly reading up on whatever bondage literature I could find and furtively glancing over "toy sections" in leather shops. It was just my luck to do my sucking and fucking with guys who didn't need much probing from me to inform me that they looked on people with my kinds of interests as freaky and weird. On the other hand, I was nervous about answering any sort of bondage ad in The Advocate or The Berkeley Barb. One reason for this was the bondage/SM porn I'd come across, which not only seemed to place an excessive reliance on a leather mystique and accoutrements which smacked of medieval torture chambers from fantasy comic books; the porn also seemed to be put together by and for the delectation of gents who had already weathered their first ninety days of Sodom in Sade's chateau and, licking the shit from their bruised victims' lips, were about to embark on the final thirty day stint with activities from which few would emerge in one piece, if alive. Bondage and maybe some rough play turned me on, but terrible pain and mutilation didn't. I'd never gotten off on stories of actual tortures myself. But from what I read it seemed a lot of other people did. Was this then what it inevitably had to come to? In one of the alternative endings of The Story of O, O asks her lord and master to let her die, and he does. I didn't see that sort of thing as a viable option for me, and because I finally convinced myself that not everyone else needed to carry the experiences to such extremes, either, about a year or so later, when I moved to New York, I got myself a post office box and answered an ad in a New York paper.
My earliest experiences weren't particularly satisfying. My first scene was with a guy who himself published a bondage roster. He attached leather cuffs to my wrists and attached my wrists to a hook in a ceiling beam. Then, while I stood there bored to death, he sat behind me watching television. Without much effort I could have unbuckled the cuffs, or merely lifted them off the hook in the beam, but I didn't want to hurt my chances of having the guy set me up with other people who might do a better, more interesting job, and besides, I'd been brought up to be polite. So I hung around there until the program he was watching ended and he saw fit to take me down, lie me on the floor and jerk me off.
He gave me the name and phone number of a guy who was into a Master/slave scene which was supposed to involve a lot of bondage. I called the guy, who invited me over. The guy was a living masterpiece but the scene was a flop. He knew it when I first walked in and he asked me if I wanted a drink, then went into the kitchen and fixed it for me. As a rule, he told me later, the first thing he did was order new slaves into the kitchen and make them fix him a drink. I didn't have the right subservient attitude, but he decided to go through with it nevertheless. No sooner did we start than I knew it was a flop. He tied my hands behind my back using leather cuffs which I could easily unbuckle, a bummer right there, then put a collar around my neck and chained me by the collar in a corner. The whole business struck me as ridiculous. His main turn on was to be begged to have his cock sucked and his feet licked. His cock and his feet were as beautiful as all the rest of him, and I had every desire to suck and lick them for days, but I felt like an imbecile when I heard myself calling him Master and begging for the privilege. A moment later we both confessed it wasn't working, something our cocks had done already, he took the cuffs and collar off, and we sat down on the couch and had another drink.
"Don't feel bad, you're a nice guy but you're a lousy slave," he said. I agreed, and said I supposed slavery wasn't what I was looking for. He asked me what I was looking for, something no one had ever asked me till then. I thought about it for a moment. "Kids' games," I said at last. "Horsing around with rope, the way we used to when I was a kid. Somehow all the leather stuff doesn't seem…authentic to me. What I like is getting really tied up, so you really feel tied up, and you won't get free without a lot of effort or until somebody unties you. No role playing, no head trips. Two guys—or more—but all of them equals, just guys, who get off on the thing as much as I do."
The idea was new to him, and didn't turn him on personally, but he saw no reason why it shouldn't turn on others. He suggested that I put an ad of my own in a paper, wording it my way.
4. RICKA few weeks later my ad appeared in The Advocate. "Ever play tying up games as a kid?" it began.
I got 17 responses the first week my ad came out, 21 the week after, and countless more in the course of the several years I occasionally sent it in. But all the best replies came from the first ad. Not all were great. Some were from people who were mainly into jerk-off letters, others from people who were up for a jerk-off phone call, a few from guys who weren't into the thing at all but just got off on answering letters, one from a religious nut who told me the wages of sin were death, and the largest batch from guys who from their statistics and/or pictures didn't turn me on, or weren't turned on by me. Even so, I did get together with a good dozen, and got it on with seven or eight of those, often more than once. With some of them I'm friendly still, years later.
But the best by far, which came out of the first ad, was a programs analyst named Rick, with whom I got something going that went on for almost two years. I couldn't believe my eyes when I opened the door and saw him, or my luck when he gave me a big smile and came in. The only other one who'd even begun to look like that hadn't smiled at all when he saw me, and had only stayed long enough for a beer and a piss. But Rick liked what he saw, which meant a lot.
Rick was Boston Irish, with the kind of cheekbones that make me trembly and weak in the knees like a romance novel heroine, blue eyes, an incredible smile, and a Marine Corps bulldog tattooed on his arm. We were about the same age, height and weight. He was perfect for me in every way, and I was all set to fall in love with him forever when he informed me that he had a lover who was perfect for him in every way but one—that one being a desultory interest in rope games at best—but that he had no intention of ever leaving that lover, a doctor he had met while in the service, who had put him through school. The doctor did tie Rick up from time to time but wasn't really into it, so he allowed Rick to seek such pleasures extracurricularly. Rick warned me at the end of our very first session that if he ever felt me getting serious about him, or felt that he was getting serious about me, that would be the end of our games together. And so I remained hopelessly in love with him for two years without ever letting him know it.
We already knew from letters and phone conversations that our turn-ons were very similar, but I still found getting started a bit awkward. Rick had no such problems. While I went into the kitchen to get us a few beers, he checked out the apartment; I found him in the bedroom where he had already dumped the contents of his backpack on the floor—a number of bondage magazines, quite a few of which I'd never seen before, an envelope full of photos of guys of all shapes and sizes, Rick among them, tied up and often gagged, a picture of his lover (big, hairy, no beauty) tying Rick up, and a fat tangle of well-worn rope as well as belts and straps and neckerchiefs and things, a welcome addition to the 100-feet or so of starched clothesline which was all I possessed so far in the way of "equipment."
I'd had a hard-on from the moment he walked in and was all set to start in then and there, but we first looked over the pictures together, and leafed through the magazines. I put the last one down and glanced at Rick, wondering who was going to do what to whom. He solved the problem before I stated it. He put a hand on my leg. "Ever wrestled?" he said. "Not since I was fifteen." "Wanna wrestle? You got a nice space here, and the bed looks solid." It was, a captain's bed with an extra-thick board beneath the mattress. It was also pretty much the only piece of furniture in the room, except for a table and a chair; I hadn't been living in the city long. "The loser…loses," Rick said. "Winner ties him up. You game?" "Sure, why not." "Then take off your clothes." He was already taking off his. That's when I saw the tattoo. "Were you in the Marines? I won't wrestle with you, you'll kill me." He shrugged. "That was over ten years ago and you look like you're in pretty good shape." "Come on," I said. "Don't worry," he said with a grin, "maybe I'll let you win."
He didn't, and I was glad about that, though I fought hard, and it did turn out we were more evenly matched than I'd thought. At the end we both were dripping with sweat and out of breath, even if he was the one on top, pinning me down and keeping me there until I cried uncle … twice.
He lay on top of me then. "That wasn't bad," he said with a grin. "Not bad at all." He slapped me lightly across the face, back and forth, then jumped off me and went and pulled out a length of medium sized rope. "Okay, get up, come over here, turn around." He tied my hands tightly behind my back. Only then did I remember somebody once telling me what has been often repeated in BOUND & GAGGED, that you should never let anyone you don't know tie you up in your own home, something I've always considered good advice. Well, too late to worry about that now, and besides, I'd known from the moment he walked in that I'd let him tie me up if he wanted to, anywhere, at any time, and take my chances.
He sat on the side of the bed, legs apart, cock standing straight up, and began untangling his pile of rope. "Get over here and suck my cock while I do this." He had a wonderful, fat, uncircumsized cock it was a pleasure to slurp over, and I wallowed in the musky smell of his crotch. "Now here's the rules." He held my head firmly down with his forearms as his hands unravelled long pieces of soft line which fell down my back. "See if you can remember them. Now I'm going to tie you up and give you—how long? half an hour? an hour?—to get free. You tell me this time." He let me raise my mouth off his cock long enough to agree to one hour, then pushed me back down on it. "If you get free, you tie me up. If you don't, you take the consequences. Think you can remember that?" With his cock plunged so far down my throat it was all I could do to breathe, I grunted what I hoped he understood as yes, then took advantage of a relaxation of his pressure on my head to come up for air and ask him what the consequences were. "I beat your ass or I fuck you," he said. "Or I beat your ass and I fuck you. One or the other or both. You got any objection?" I didn't, except to tell him I hadn't had much experience getting fucked and none at all getting my ass beaten, and hoped he'd take these things into consideration. He told me not to worry.
He hogtied me securely, stuffed a rag in my mouth and tied it tightly, then sat on the chair with his feet up on the bed, practically in my face, as he played with his beautiful cock, commented on the nice job he'd done, and watched me struggle unsuccessfully to free myself. He'd done a very nice job, and I didn't have a chance in hell.
He tied a piece of rope around my cock and balls and jerked it from time to time, and also, when it was clear to us both that I wasn't going to untie myself, began to play with my cock and balls and tits, especially my tits, doing so in a way no one had ever done it to me before. Others had squeezed and licked and sucked and nibbled on them, and I'd tolerated it because it wasn't unpleasant, but it wasn't arousing to me, either. Rick, on the other hand, started by getting a firm grip on them, but quickly went beyond that, to pinching and twisting, which I remember I didn't care for at all the first time, though it in no way diminished the firmness of my incredible hard on (I found myself liking it more and more over the weeks, months and years to come, and quickly with Rick graduated from clothes pins to ever stronger tit clamps).
At the end of the hour he untied me, and retied me, belly down and spreadeagled. A pillow stuffed beneath my belly raised my butt in the air. Rick sat himself down with his legs spread and his crotch beneath my head, removed the gag and regagged me with his cock (those were the glorious pre-AIDS days), then replaced the gag and tied it tightly in again. He got up, pulled his thick belt out of his jeans, and brought it down resoundingly and painfully on my ass. He only gave me about ten whacks that first time (in future get-togethers he gave me many more, as I did him). Finally he greased himself and me up with some of the KY I kept in the drawer of my bedside table, and after working my ass for a while with his fingers, pushed his cock inside me, gave me a moment to get used to it, then started pumping away. In the course of his pumping I myself came into the pillow.
Rick and I continued to get together approximately twice a month and always at my place for the better part of two years. Our sessions generally lasted anywhere from two to six hours. As far as I was concerned, we were an ideal match, made all the more ideal when Rick showed up for our second meeting in his old pair of hightop Cons. He himself had no fetish in that direction (he preferred military boots) but he had always worn the sneakers so didn't have to put himself out much to make me happy.
We didn't always wrestle for control (he almost always won when we did, which was just fine with me; and I did love the hard physical contact with his beautiful body) but worked out other ways to determine who would be on top: tossing coins, shooting pool in a neighborhood bar, playing cards. Our only unchangeable groundrule for changing position was that neither could be on the bottom three times in a row. If one of us had been tied up twice running, the next time that one did the tying up.
Because our attitude toward bondage games and the way we each felt they should be played between guys was practically identical, and because we could experiment so easily together, we helped each other expand our interests toward more "sophisticated" stuff, the kind of items which formerly had seemed too inauthentic to me. Neither of us cared much for regular handcuffs and chains, which undoubtedly did their job but at the same time seemed to lack some necessary sensual qualities (since then I've played around with Hyatts, from Fetters, which are something else entirely), but the same could not be said for things like leather. We wandered into leather shops and browsed through catalogs, and little by little acquired such things as leather military and hospital restraints together with the lock-on belts that went with them, leather gags, head harnesses, mitts, hoods. We enjoyed playing with all those things though our first fidelity remained to rope bonds and tied-in rag or sock gags.
I was in love with Rick for the entire time we were seeing each other, but did everything in my power not to let him know it, and I sometimes wonder if I didn't succeed too well. In the end he left me and his lover for some guy neither of us knew about, and from what I gather moved out west to some place like Seattle or Portland. I got a card from him about a year or two later, with no return address on it.
