SEX WITH MEN: ADULT LOVERS VERSUS PEERS
BY EDWARD BRONGERSMA

“Sex With Men: Adult Lovers Versus Peers” is part of “The Outlets”, the final section of “Boys and their Sexuality”, the third chapter of Loving Boys, the encyclopaedic study of Greek love by the eminent Dutch lawyer, Edward Brongersma, of which the first volume (including this) was published by Global Academic Publishers in New York in 1986.

Lycurgus, the Ancient Greek legislator, was of the opinion that no boy could grow up to be a good citizen if he hadn’t shared his bed with a man.^[1] And just recently a German author closed his little book Ein Leben für die Kalokagathia with the lines: “The natural partner for the small child is his mother; for the boy, his peer; for the adolescent, a man; for the young man, a girl.”^[2] He quotes one boy by the name of Jürgen: “Do I have a friend? Yes, I did, for many years. Martin and I understood each other very well. But when you’re fourteen, you are looking for more than what a boy your own age can give you.” Therefore Jürgen longed for a man who would take an interest in him. In Pieterse’s investigation, 62.2% of her paedophile subjects believed that many children felt the need of such a relationship; only 5.4% of them didn’t and the rest weren’t sure.^[3]

Sons of the “common man” in the great city apartment building complexes are, to their misfortune, inculcated with and inhibited by the homophobic taboos. But removed from their peers, such boys tend to be open and ready for human contacts that will bring them more than their associations with comrades can.^[4] Tony Duvert claims that many boys are much more interested in the company of adults and the genitals of adults than in being with their age-mates. He calls this “enigmatic”, but fifty pages later he explains: “As I have already stated, young boys often do indeed show a very strong preference for men, even – indeed particularly – for older men. No wonder: life makes you afraid; those who have already arrived at where you fear to go shouldn’t necessarily be despised… As soon as a boy no longer considers you a villain, all his ageist feelings disappear.”^[5]

This explanation isn’t very convincing, however. Isn’t it rather that the boy, arriving at puberty, begins to free himself from parental authority and wishes to be increasingly independent? But each emancipation process is made miserable by the fact that the individual liberating himself will always try to rush things, while the authority from which he is breaking away will at the same time be putting on the brakes. This leads to those continuous and unfortunately bitter conflicts which characterise both the political emancipation of a colony and the social emancipation of an adolescent.

The boy shakes off the yoke of parental authority and wants to forge ahead with his independence faster than his evolutionary stage permits. He is still in need of protection and guidance but is no longer willing to accept them from his father. This makes him uncertain and, as Schlegel^[6] rightly observes, he needs the help of someone else. He is looking, then, for an authority he can trust, but his striving for independence will only let him tolerate an authority which is of his own choice, to which he submits of his own free will, which, moreover, it is guaranteed he can shake off the moment it becomes too much of a burden. This is how the boy and the adult friend stand with respect to each other; there is a kind of ambiguity in the origin of such a relationship, but at the same time it may achieve a rare perfection because the bond is not limited to mental exchange but is welded by the heat of physical union.

The crumbling of parental authority and the rapid changes in his own body conspire to make the boy in puberty immensely insecure. There is a desperate need for assurance, and this his peers are quite unable to give him: only an adult can perform this function. That a grown-up loves him, thinks him handsome and attractive, rejoices in his growth and maturation is of utmost importance. And at an age when the physical is so all-embracing, nothing can better convince a boy of the sincerity of such feelings as the mute language of the body: the swelling of his big friend’s penis and the way, shaking with passion in mutual embrace, he spurts his seed. What better proof that the boy is attractive and loveable? Such a positive evaluation of self is an indispensable condition for being a lover. One can only love another person in the way one loves oneself, and therefore only if one loves oneself. Only if you believe you are loveable can you believe in another’s love for you and respond to it. He who despises himself as worthless can only distrust the loving expressions of another person: something must be wrong with anyone who pretends to love me, for I’m not loveable in the least.^[7]

A person who doesn’t accept his own body, thinks it ugly or repellent, will be ashamed of showing himself naked to his partner and will often aggressively reject sexuality.^[8]

And so the lover who conveys the conviction that the boy is able to inspire love and excite his partner’s lust, that in his sexual behaviour he is beautiful and enticing, pleasing to the eye of an experienced adult, such a lover performs an invaluable service to his boy.

133  “Marcel, the fifteen-year-old son of my host, likes to get up late during his holidays from school. But tomorrow he has an appointment at eleven o’clock. I offer to wake him up in plenty of time. He gives me a mischievous smile, as he knows something of my intentions, but he accepts. The next morning I enter his bedroom at the appropriate time without making any noise. He is only half asleep. One of his eyelids flutters. I draw the bed-clothes aside. He is stark naked: a fine, healthy body with fully developed genitals. I caress his chest and belly, and now he moves his head, opens his eyes, looks at me, still saying nothing. My hand now touches his knee and slides up the smooth inside of his thigh to the seat of nature’s forces within him. His balls are visible in the beautiful curve of his sack. I handle them, squeezing just a bit. ‘The sources of life,’ I say softly. ‘They’re big and solid, and that’s usually the sign of a strong desire for discharge, isn’t it?’ Now he grins, feeling flattered but still not saying anything. Serenely he lets me have my own way, and as I take his penis in my hand it soon swells up big and hard. I strip the foreskin down, uncovering the slick top. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ I ask. Now he’s completely awake, and very interested. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Well, look at how marvellous this shape is, the shifting of these curves. This is one of the most beautiful parts of your body, and no wonder, because it’s your flower, isn’t it?’ ‘I never thought about it that way.’ ‘But it’s true. We embellish our gardens and homes with the sexual organs of plants, yet we hide a boy’s flower. Boys at your age are so beautiful they should all walk around naked as much as possible so everyone can enjoy the spectacle of their bloom. You shouldn’t cover your flower but exhibit it proudly, because it’s a marvel, and the seat of your finest pleasure.’ ” (personal communication)

The English poet Raile advocated “an aesthetical appreciation of a boy’s manly attributes as a highly necessary accompaniment to a successful Uranian (i.e. homosexual) love-affair.”^[9]

Experiencing the rapid growth of his genitals at puberty, many a boy worries “whether everything down there is all right”. This stimulates his curiosity about what these parts look like in adults.

134 De Brethmas parked his car near the gate of a well-known grammar school. “I transfixed with my Gaze Number Four the roe-eyes of the passing boys, until suddenly there was a response. It was the fifteenth or twentieth. My prey is still rather young, about fifteen, white blond, sturdy but not squat. ‘Hello, are you free?’ ‘yes.’ ” He takes the boy to his home, makes him sit down on the bed by his side, then pushes him onto his back. “ ‘Is this the first time?’ ‘Yes.’ Their reply to this question is always honest. Only an adult could conceive the idea that they would deny this in order to seem like big boys. Youth doesn’t boast, has no pride for what it does in bed; they discuss it frankly, honestly, and they hope, by being plain, to facilitate the task of the partner who initiates them. With detachment they commit themselves to the elder who will guide them to what they have heard talked about, to what they have so often dreamed about, but of what they are still a little bit afraid, because of all one has been told about it. ‘But you want to do it anyhow?’ ‘Yes.’ This question is quite superfluous, as is clearly proved by the stiff condition of his barometer. At this age, being inexperienced, they still don’t know the pleasure of having yourself slowly undressed. If you touch their hard-ons with your hand, this is a signal for them – as the most natural of reactions – to start pulling off their clothes. Alain is no exception to this rule, while I find a mischievous pleasure in staying dressed. Trusting and filled with pride, he shows his little garden to me, looking at me in questioning suspense to see my reaction. He awaits the result of my inspection, the certificate of being well-shaped, that I, as an expert, have to grant him. This is part of a boy’s motive the first time he decides to exhibit his genitals. It explains why he undresses so willingly and why he so easily overcomes his sense of shame. It is like being examined by a doctor. He expects you to tell him that everything is all right, that he is a handsome fellow and that the girls later will run after him. It’s a last test before he gets his driving license. Therefore it is absolutely decisive for the boy’s future that, even if you find his penis ugly, curved, too short or too thick, you declare that he has the nicest cock in the whole school, the juiciest bails, the most elegant hair growth, the most seducing crotch you ever saw, and that he’ll become a real Casanova with such trinkets.^[10]

This inner lack of self-confidence drives “many boys to enter into only a short-term relationship with an adult. Once, or twice, and then they stop. It is a way to prove to themselves that they have a body, that they exist. And afterwards they don’t have to grope any longer. At this point the man should withdraw from the boy’s life, without pressing him further.” This is the opinion of one thirty-year-old boy-lover.^[11] 

With others there’s only curiosity: what really happens? As soon as this is satisfied they are no longer interested.

But for many, many boys, intimate relations with a man fill a deeply felt need during puberty and adolescence. This desire, as Freud long ago dimly perceived, is universal.^[12] Everyone who has done research in this field has met “some adolescents calmly asserting that they themselves made the first move, brought about the first contact, because they had already been dreaming of this for months, because they felt an imperative need for it and found a mental and physical relief in it which permitted them to work better at school or in their jobs.”^[13] What Plato said about those “wanting to make friends with men and delighted to lie with them and to be clasped in men’s embraces” was certainly not only valid for his own time: “these are the finest boys and striplings, for they have the most manly nature. Some say they are shameless creatures, but falsely; for their behaviour is due not to shamelessness but to daring, manliness, and virility, since they are quick to welcome their like. Sure evidence of this is the fact that on reaching maturity these alone prove in a public career to be men.”^[14]

Continue to Sex With Men: Willing Boys

^[1] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe, Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 590 [Author’s reference]. The real source is Plutarch, Life of Lykourgos XVII 1. Brongersma is perhaps putting it a little strongly, but it is essentially a fair enough interpretation. What Plutarch actually says is that, in giving laws to Sparta for its good, Lykourgos laid down that, at 12, boys “were favoured with the society of lovers from among the reputable young men.”
     It is doubtful, however, they can be said to have had beds to share since the same source (XVI-XVII) says all they were allowed to sleep on were reeds they had gathered with their own hands from the Eurotas river, supplemented with a little thistle-down in winter. [Website footnote].

^[2] Bielefeld, H., Ein Leben für die Kalokagathia. Hmeln: Bielefeld, 1975, 28-29. [Author’s reference]

^[3] Pieterse, M., Pedofielen over pedofilie. Zeist: NISSO, 1982, II-24 [Author’s reference]

^[4] Brethmas, J. de, Traité de chasse au minet. Paris: Perchoir, 1979, 23. [Author’s reference]

^[5] Duvert, T., L’enfant au masculin. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1980, 89, 137. [Author’s reference]

^[6] Schlegel, W. S., Die Sexualinstinkte des Menschen, Munchen: Rutten & Loening, 1966, p. 197 [Author’s reference].

^[7] Frenken, J., Afkeer van seksualiteit. Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1976, 166-167. [Author’s reference]

^[8] Steen, C. van der, Belemmeringen bij dc beleving van seksualiteit bij gehandicapten. In: Frenken (Ed.), Seksuologie, Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1980, 443. [Author’s reference]

^[9] Arch Smith, T., d’, Love in Earnest. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970, 116 [Author’s reference]. Brongersma has misread d’Arch Smith. Raile was not English, but the pen name of the American boysexual art connoisseur, Edward Perry Warren of “Warren Cup” fame [Website footnote].

^[10] Brethmas, J. de, Détournement de majeur. Paris: Perchoir, 1980, 93-94. [Author’s reference]

^[11] Hennig, J.-L., Thomas, 30 ans: Bruno, 15 ans: le nouveau couple zig-zag. Recherches 37: 137-166, 1979, 165 [Author’s reference]

^[12] Maasen, Th., De smalle marges van de pedofilie. Jeugd en samenleving 13, 2: 116-125, 1983, 119. [Author’s reference]

^[13] Baudry, A., La condition des homosexuels. Toulouse: Privat, 1982, 123. [Author’s reference]

^[14] Plato, Symposium 191 E-192 D, in the translation of Lamb [Author’s reference].