SEX WITH OTHER BOYS: THE “HOMOSEXUAL” PHASE
BY EDWARD BRONGERSMA

“Sex With Other Boys: The “Homosexual Phase”, 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.

Human nature suggests a way out. In order to become a good sexual partner, a boy needs experience. But he has no backlog of experience to draw upon when his sexual appetite is no longer stilled by mere tenderness and skin contact but demands, as in the adult man, genital activity involving another attractive body. The original biphilia (attraction to both sexes) he was born with is still very much alive in him, and now it can bear its finest and most genuine fruit.

Let us suppose that the child at birth is sexually an unwritten page, that is to say, equally attracted by every human contact, pan-sexual. Probably this is an oversimplification and there are also certain inborn dispositions. But let us, for the purposes of simplification, forget about this for the moment. The child, then, is like a person placed between two magnets. These magnets are of the same strength, and they attract the pieces of iron he has in his hands with equal force.

Pulled in opposite directions, the person would die on the spot if he didn’t have the energy to choose a direction in which to move. He believes – or it is whispered in his ear – that one of the magnets has a nicer colour. He takes a step in this direction. Now it is possible that at just this moment something disagreeable happens to him, or acquired, vexing inhibitions deter him from going on. So he turns around and now tries to move the other way. The original direction is rejected, cut off as a permissible objective. This can make the person ill – he becomes a pseudo-heterophile, pseudo-homophile, pseudo-paedophile.

A healthier scenario is possible: the person moves in the direction of the magnet which seems most beautiful to him or is presented to him as being most beautiful. The force of the other magnet gradually lessens, not because the person is deterred from responding to it but because the first is nearer him and pulls him more strongly.

Thus might we depict the choice of sexual object in male humans. Originally biphile, attracted to both sexes, he moves either toward the female or the male object until he has reached the place where he will stay, somewhere in the force field between the two magnets. In children “at first, their sexuality is rather diffuse, but it becomes more focused as they grow older.”^[1] The boy at puberty is somewhere in the middle. He is already aware of which of the two magnets (female, male) attracts him more and what, therefore, would be his first choice. But at the same time he feels the opposite pull (male, female) strongly enough to experience lust in satisfying it.

Along the road from birth to adulthood the sexual appetite grows more and more specialised. The little boy is what Freud called “polymorphously perverse”^[2] Young children show an utterly polymorphous sexuality. Before puberty, boys respond with vigorous erections to a great variety of situations, often to situations which arouse any kind of intense excitement. These may include everything from fast rides, getting mad, and seeing big fires to reciting before a class or getting home late – in short, to any combination of fright, anger, or pain that raises tensions and excitement. With the coming of puberty and an increased sex drive, this diversity of response quickly begins to narrow down, first to general sexual situations, then to more specific situations, then to people, and finally to particular kinds of people.^[3] Specialisation continues after puberty.

This evolutionary process applies not only to the object of the sexual drive but also to ways of satisfying it. Freud described the process as a contraction of sexual sensibility into erogenous zones: first in the region of the mouth, then the anus, finally on the genitals.^[4] “Only gradually, under the influence of social conditioning, do children begin to structure their sexual behaviour in a way that is acceptable to the culture in which they grow up, in other words, they not only learn the ‘proper’ responses, but also suppress and forget the ‘improper’ ones. In fact, when they later try to increase their sexual responsiveness, they may spend a great deal of time and energy relearning the very responses they were once taught to suppress.^[5]

In comparison with the adult, the sexual imagination of the child is thus much more varied and complicated.^[6] At puberty, as we have already seen, the boy is half way along in his sexual simplification, specialisation. Even if, like the majority of boys, he is on the main road to adult heterophilia, he is still quite capable of enjoying sexual intimacy with a male friend. This capacity is absolutely “normal”.^[7]

Now, for most boys, access to male friends is much easier than finding a willing girl. Girls are mysterious, different and less enthusiastic about sex. Psychiatrists Sengers and Bieber supposed that homosexuality in adolescents results not so much from homophile attraction as fear of heterosexuality.^[8] A boy’s strong sexual appetite on the one hand, and the lack of specialisation of his sexual instinct on the other, push him toward homosexual activity.^[9] This tendency is most pronounced in very “macho” boys, those with the most powerful sex drive. In obvious contradiction to popular opinion, it will thus be the most virile boys, those who will later be most active with heterosexual intercourse, who, during adolescence, partake in the greatest amount of homosexual activity. Beech was the first to observe this.^[10] Males with a low sex drive are most averse to sex with comrades. Giese & Schmidt likewise pointed to the pronounced correlation between a strong sex drive and homosexual activity. They discovered that those boys who had homosexual experiences between the ages of twelve and eighteen were also those who engaged in a high level of masturbation activity. “A strong sexual appetite (or low tendency to inhibit sexual impulses) is evidently an important factor in homosexuality of youth.”^[11]

While society pushes a boy toward heterosexuality, it tells him at the same time he musn’t touch girls. “Activities associated with future heterosexuality are more stringently taboo than those associated with homosexuality; this occurs more by default than intention. For whatever reason, adults rarely spontaneously voice explicit prohibitions against sex play among same-sex peers: typically they do so only when they become aware of homoerotic play.” (…) “It is inevitable that homoerotic activity would be a normal adolescent experience in this culture. Limited in the ambisexual explorations of childhood, the opportunities for learning heterosexual self-confidence have been partially narrowed. Burdened with guilt that weighs most heavily upon self-exploration and heterosexual experimentation, early adolescents frequently feel most free to express their newly intense sexual feelings with those around whom they feel most comfortable – their same-sex peers. Such sexuality is certainly not entirely guilt-free, especially the masturbating aspects; it is simply that for many adolescents this is the sexual arena that is least anxiety-producing and least hedged about with taboos.”^[12]

It is the same in all cultures where boys are not allowed sex with girls, but non-Western societies are often more honest and open in their handling of the situation. Some instances are given by Bullough^[13]: “Similar practices for young boys were tolerated among the Lau in the Fiji Islands. The young Lau boys could not play in mixed groups or in adult ones. (…) The only emotional outlets for boys of this age is in masturbation or homosexual relations with other pilos (prepubescent boys). In many societies homosexuality was acceptable only in certain age groups and not in others. Among the Ngonde, in the 1950s, for example, where boys were confined to boys’ villages, homosexual activities were tolerated from the age of 10 to the time the boy was married. When a boy slept with his friend, sexual activity was permissible, provided it was voluntary; the only crime was to force sex upon another boy.” (…) “Among the Gond of Central India, sex was not a sin provided relations were with the right people at the right time, in the right place, and in the right way. In the segregated communal dwelling (ghotul) where the young people lived there was freedom of sex, and in the boys’ ghotul they played with each other’s genitals, rode each other in imitation of the normal sex act, and were often taught to massage the legs of their elders.” (…) “One observer believed that homosexuality might have been tolerated among the Makassar, because there were prohibitions against contacts between boys and girls, and the only acceptable outlet for young boys was in homosexuality, but girls were denied this sexual expression.”^[14] There are known ethnic groups, such as the Batak people of Lake Toba in Sumatra, among whom homosexuality and heterosexuality both are universal customers. They are experienced biphasically. In the first phase, all males are homosexual among themselves between approximately the ages of 9 and 19. During this phase, they sleep in a community house erected specifically for them.”^[15] “Other societies (e.g. Fang and Marquesas) expect all boys to engage in homosexuality but discourage this behaviour in adults.^[16] Rich Roman fathers used to give their adolescent sons a slave boy for their sexual use, and Catullus, in one of his poems, tells how such a slave boy, in turn, molests the local peasant girls.^[17] The Spanish Conquistadores discovered that the same paternal practice existed among the Maya Indians of Guatemala.^[18]

In ancient Greece, sex between boys was considered normal behaviour for their age.

In having sex with his same-sex peers, the young human male only duplicates what can be observed everywhere else in the animal kingdom. Homosexual play among young individuals has been specifically observed in chickens and monkeys.^[19]

Many writers have labelled this phenomenon “the homosexual phase” of boyhood^[20], but the term is misleading. Let us first of all recall and repeat that homosexuality and heterosexuality are not mutually exclusive. “Any culture that draws an artificial dividing line between homosexuals and heterosexuals thereby betrays a highly peculiar and very narrow view of human nature. It is a view that has become blind to the gradual character of human differences, to the shades and nuances of human behaviour, in short, to the natural variety of life.”^[21] Both tendencies are present in every human being, therefore in every boy. What happens in puberty is not the emergence of a new tendency, a transitory homosexual phase. It is simply this: at an age when his omnipresent homosexual tendencies, be they strong or weak, are not yet inhibited, when, in other words, his sexual nature is not yet specialised, the boy suddenly has to deal with a greatly increased sexual drive and a much higher sensitivity in his penis, both caused by his entry into puberty. Where the road to heterosexual intercourse is made difficult, or totally blocked off, he has to look for another outlet, and, using his homophilic component still available to him, he enjoys sexual activities with another male. Where the inhibition is weak or absent, homosexual contacts prove to be very satisfying to many individuals.^[22] It is useful “to distinguish between three basic factors:

1. Sexual capacity, i.e. what the individual can do.
2. Sexual motivation, i.e. what the individual wants to do.
3. Sexual performance, i.e. what the individual does do.^[23]

Even if his lust is directed mainly towards girls, the boy can perform with other males, because his sexual capacity is greater than that of adults. Homophilia is not dominant in a larger percentage of boys than of adult men. It is just that the boy’s sexual capacity is less specialised, more varied and, for most boys in our society, there is more opportunity for homosexual than heterosexual contact.^[24] In a culture like that of the Muria, already mentioned, where every boy is used to having intercourse with a girl every night, the situation is quite different and there is little homosexual activity.

103  In a remarkable book by N. M. Iovetz-Tereschenko called Friendship-Love in Adolescence, the diary of a Russian boy called John is subjected to deep analysis. In it John reveals all the wavering feelings characteristic of his age. When he was six, John experienced for the first time conscious sentiments of love for his peers. Shortly thereafter the sight of naked women bathing excited him sexually. But love only became a serious preoccupation when he reached the age of 13 years, 8 months. A half-year later he had his first ejaculation during an erotic dream. Although he had no sexual relations until he was sixteen, he went through long and shorter periods of being in love, first with four boys, one after the other, then with several school girls, then again with a boy; after this it was with two separate girls, then again with a number of school girls, then with his friend Peter, his girl-friend Cleopatra, his friend Karl, his girl-friend Margaret. In different parts of his diary John described his feelings as “an experience of happiness. I would say of beatitude, a peculiar, strange feeling, a pleasant feeling in the breast, an experience of its being something morally positive – more than that, something of a sublime nature.”^[25] There was no conflict between this experience and his religious faith, but there certainly was between it and his sexual desire. He had been brought up to believe that sex was something vile and despicable, and as a result he could not bring it into harmony with his lofty sentiments of love.

Boys who manage to overcome this trauma inflicted upon them by their upbringing, or who learn to accept sexuality as part of human existence, easily resort to sexual play with their comrades during maturation. The earlier they start with these homosexual activities, the less problems they pose (Schmidt, quoted by Schult in Ein Staatsanwalt sieht rot). Their bodies and their imaginations drive them toward physical contact with another human; girls are out of reach, strange and intimidating beings; boys are nearer and more familiar.^[26] A male comrade is a better advisor than a girl.^[27]

When a boy touches the penis of another boy he knows exactly how the other feels; he knows from his own body exactly what to do to give him pleasure. “A boy caresses much better than a girl, because he knows how he would like to be caressed himself.”^[28] Masters and Johnson, who observed in their laboratory a great number of subjects between the ages of 18 and 80 perform masturbation and intercourse, were surprised to see that same-sex couples generally had better “love techniques” than anyone else.^[29]

104  (Continued from No. 28) In this connection, the experiences of 18-year-old Alcide are typical. “Especially when I was younger I had this feeling that it was twice as easy to win over a boy, to get a relationship with him going and to fuck him, as a girl. (…) As a matter of fact, when I first started to sleep with girls I thought it was an enormously difficult thing to do. To begin with, you had to put on this kind of act, which is not at all natural – I really didn’t like that. When I slept with a mate it was much nicer: you joked with each other, you laughed, you talked, you told all kinds of stories, you looked at each other’s body a little, you compared, you did everything. Afterwards, if you wanted, you just got up and walked away. The first times I slept with a girl – today it’s a little different – the fact was I just simply had to fuck her, and it was very important to know how to do this or that just right. I found it really a lot better to sleep with a male friend; it was nicer and simpler.^[30]

Boys and men accept the idea much more easily than females that sexual intimacies may follow directly upon getting acquainted.^[31]

Homosexual play with peers is extremely common before puberty. “As a matter of statistical fact, before their tenth birthday boys have more sex play with other boys than with girls."^[32] But data derived from researching this phenomenon are not too reliable, since cultural taboos make many boys unwilling to confess homosexual contacts. Of Biener’s 16-year-old Swiss boarding school boys, only 18% admitted to such experiences – 13% with a peer, 5% with an adult.^[33] An investigation among 19-year-old French boys came up with a 32% figure. Hanry’s own research elicited 30%, but no less than 18% of his male subjects refused to answer the question.^[34] Yankowski organised in the United States two investigations of homosexuality, one among young adults, the second among school boys. The replies of the adults may have been more honest, but they are inevitably more distorted by amnesia. The replies of the school boys relate to rather recent experiences but are more distorted by an unwillingness to admit engaging in such activities. Making a distinction between active behaviour (”Do you remember sexual experiments in which you have touched the penis of another male?”) and passive behaviour (”Do you remember sexual experiments in which your penis was touched by another male?”), the adults reported as shown in Table 10.

Table 10. Homosexual Behaviour in Youth.^[35]

Table 11. Experience With Homosexual Acts Leading to Orgasm

 

Kinsey^[37] heard from 60% of his younger subjects that they amused themselves with comrades; this reached a climax at the age of twelve. Dort^[38] interviewed 213 American boys between the ages of thirteen and nineteen about participation in mutual masturbation groups and was told by 11 that they had participated once, by 73 occasionally and by 33 often. Only if we take into account the enormous impact of anti-homosexuality taboos endemic in North American society, especially during the period of this research, so deeply entrenched in education, upbringing and public opinion^[39], can the cumulative percentages for the incidence of homosexual activities leading to orgasm be fully understood. They are shown, for middle class boys in Table 11. The cumulative figures reach a peak of 45% by the age of 19.^[40] This only applies to activities which lead to orgasm. “If all types of homosexual contacts are tabulated for the males, it is estimated that the percentage would approach the 100 mark.”^[41] In the sample of the Hite Report^[42], 54% of the males had masturbated with another boy during his pre-pubertal years; the percentages mounted to 81% at thirteen years, 88% at fourteen, 94% at fifteen, 97% at sixteen and 99% at seventeen.

And what boys actually do, of course, lags behind what is actively desired. Yankowski looked into this aspect, too. His subjects reported that they wanted to have the kinds of homosexual contacts shown in Table 12.

Table 12. Homosexual Desires of Young Males.^[43]

In recent research among Dutch university students, no fewer than 17% of them admitted being strongly attracted by homosexuality.^[44]

As we have seen, among prepubertal boys homosexual play is more common than heterosexual. Play-wrestling, especially popular at this age, has a clear erotic component: the desire to be in close contact with a comrade’s body.^[45] “Among normally developing pubertal boys, verbal exchange of sexual experiences, curiosity about each other’s genitals, mutual display, communal masturbation, and homosexual horseplay are exceedingly common. (…) Overt homosexual activity at puberty is particularly common in boys, and most authorities agree that usually this has no great significance for future sexual orientation.” Professor West^[46] here quoted, calls the policy of teachers who take “drastic action against the young participants (…) unnecessarily cruel.”^[47] The victims and their peers always consider such punishments unjust: in the NISSO research, no less than 73.2% of the 15- to 17-year-olds said they thought it all right for two boys to be physically intimate with each other if they both were willing.^[48]

One is tempted to agree with 30-year-old Thomas, who travels around with a famous boys choir, when he claims “that all boys are more or less inclined to such relations.”^[49]

Where boys are thrown on one another for company, “special friendships” proliferate. Mende, who has investigated the behaviour of young people in holiday camps, found out that, though teachers and youth leaders did everything in their power to keep boys from being physically intimate, nevertheless “homosexual contacts were so frequent that nearly every boy was involved.”^[50]

105  The boys in a big city Belgian Catholic school formed a secret club. Every member had a button on which was a picture of a well-known automobile. If he put this on the lapel of his jacket it was a signal to the others that he wanted to be masturbated, and he would hang around one of the entrances when school let out, waiting for some fellow member to approach him and agree to satisfy his wish. (Personal communication)

106  “One 13-year-old boy described the ‘club’ that he and a school chum had formed as ‘not much of a club – just a bunch of guys that run around together. But we have some fun, too. Whenever someone wants to be a member, we warn him that he’s got to go through a tough initiation. If he wants to go through with it we make him promise to keep his mouth shut. Then for the initiation, he has to jack off every guy in the club. After that he has to get his own nut off while all of us watch!”^[51]

107  ”I was twelve years of age when I began to masturbate. Guys from school, groups of six to twelve, used to go to one guy’s house, after school, whose parents worked and didn’t get home until about 6 p.m. We had jack-off contests like: who could squirt the farthest, who could last the longest, the tempo of the stroke being set by following the beat of a song on a record. Who could come with the most quantity into a Mason jar; who could come the most number of repeat climaxes in measured time. There was mild homosexual contact: touching another guy, never actually stroking another guy to climax, checking out each other’s equipment. Group nudity and checking out asses.^[52]

Such arrangements are hardly restricted to the middle class. Davidson found them thriving among London street boys.^[53]

108  At the age of fifteen, Simon, a Belgian boy, was sent to an agricultural school run by priests. The first day he felt completely lost, but during the free evening hours a pleasant boy of his own age sat down next to him and began talking about the daily routine he could expect, and the customs of the school. At ten o’clock Simon, along with thirty other boys, went into their dormitory. A friar came by to see that everyone was in their beds and then put out the light. After some minutes Simon saw, to his surprise, in the dim light penetrating the curtains, white figures sneaking silently from one bed to the other; he heard whispers and half-stifled giggling. Beds creaked. Suddenly somebody was standing next to him: the boy who had talked with him earlier. “Take your pyjamas off,” the boy whispered. “Naked is nicer.” A few moments later, for the first time in his life, Simon lay in the embrace of another naked boy. He became enormously excited – more so than ever before in his life. He completely forgot where he was. Quite by instinct, inspired by his enormous passion, he made the right motions that finally brought relief to both of them. Only then did he become conscious of risk. “What if that friar had come back?” he whispered in the ear of his new friend. The other boy just laughed. “They know perfectly well what is going on, but they never make trouble. They pretend they don’t know. They would only interfere if some boy complained about violence or being forced. But that never happens. I talked it over once with one of the teachers I’d gone to for sexual information. He said he thought this went on everywhere in boarding schools. It’s something you could never stamp out, so you’d better tolerate it, because boys always behave better if these needs of ours are satisfied.” (Personal communication)

109  A 59-year-old Englishman recalls: “When I went to Public School as a boarder I found mutual masturbation very common and two older boys fucked me at 17, though before then half a dozen lads had tried to do it but hadn’t got right into me. Once it had been done to me I made haste to do it to another lad… In that year I sucked boys off and was sucked off, and fucked and got fucked quite often… The dorm was an orgy room most Saturday nights and two of the young sports masters approved and once or twice picked me out (and other lads!) for ‘special tuition’.”^[54]

While ‘special friendships’ can be fine, the situation can take a bad turn, too. “One educated ex-prisoner, Heckstall-Smith, has written a lengthy and apparently realistic account of his experiences of homosexuality in English prisons. He blames the influence of ex-borstal boys and inmates of residential schools for delinquents, who have been used to nightly sex orgies in the dormitories, for spreading among prisoners a sordidly uninhibited attitude to homosexual indulgence.^[55] An American author was told by a former inmate of a reformatory, “You needed to show them how tough you were right off or you’d be surprised how many cocks you’d have up your ass in one night.^[56]

110  Figger quotes the words of a 16-year-old boy in a German reformatory (borstal): “We’ve got here in the institute big boys, and these big boys, they want to be satisfied. (…) In the dormitory at night guys normally shack up together in the same bed to get each other off. Once a boy’s done this he’ll do it over and over again. Think about a smaller boy – he’s only fifteen – and he’s lying with the big guys – they’re jerking off: he’s got a pretty face and he isn’t stupid, so all the big boys like him; they tell him all sorts of things he’d never hear outside. Then one night everyone is almost asleep. They’ve barely shut the door on us and someone’s jumped on the bed of this kid and lays down beside him. Now, even if the kid wants to yell and fight he’s got to stay shut up, because he’s the youngest; he’s scared of the bigger boy, even though the bigger boy is just being nice to him, pretending all he wants is to tell him something. But pretty soon the big boy just can’t hold off any longer. He grabs the kid’s hand and puts it where he wants it. And the kid will do what he wants. And from then on this happens every night, until pretty soon the kid’s neck is all spotted with love bites and kisses; from then on he’s all right, the favourite kid of the big guys.^[57]

Jean Genet described similar scenes in French reformatories. Of a Dutch reformatory it has been written, “Sexual intercourse flourished exuberantly. From 13 to 21 years of age they all slept helter-skelter. Sometimes a younger boy was booked up by the older ones two or three nights in advance.^[58] Havelock Ellis mentions a boarding school where “all the older boys had younger accomplices in mutual masturbation. (…) One very precocious boy of fifteen always chose a companion of ten, because his hand was like a woman’s.^[59]

On the condition that no force or coercion is used, such relations should be looked upon as beneficial: “Homosexual friendships between the inmates of reformatories may contribute to their emotional stabilization.^[60]

The attractiveness of members of his own sex is so strong during these years that it colours even a boy’s heterosexual relations, as we have already seen. Many a boy is pushed into the embrace of a girl not because he really wants sex with a female but rather to impress his comrades and prove to them his virility. Adolescents “may want to live up to the standards of their peer group, and thus try to ‘go all the way’ simply because they hear that everybody’s doing it’.”^[61]

In one very true-to-life novel about young French people in Casablanca, a fourteen-year-old boy is taken by a slightly older friend to a woman who is drawn to young boys and left there alone with her. He becomes completely passive. She pulls off his trousers. “At one point I almost pushed her away; I wanted to get up and put my clothes back on. But then maybe she’d tell my friends: I’d be sure to fall in the eyes of Jacques, and even Daniel.” (Daniel was his age-mate with whom he had been having sex which he liked very much.) So he submits to the desires of the woman.^[62]

111  A boy of fifteen tells about his first experience two years earlier. He was with a group of 16-year-olds talking with a girl of nineteen. They told her he was only thirteen. “She said I didn’t look that young, and then she said, ‘You know, I really think it would be great to do it with a guy your age.’ ‘Really?’ I said. A couple more of my friends overheard this and started coming over. She said, ‘You know I’m propositioning you?’ ‘No shit!’ I said. I really didn’t want to do it with this girl. For some reason, something just told me you shouldn’t do it, but these guys were all saying, ‘Oh, my God, this girl just propositioned Mark!’ So they talked me into it. They really talked me into it. I wanted to do it slightly, but it was mostly the curiosity or being able to say, ‘Wow, you did it, Mark, you’re a man, wow!’^[63]

Professor Kentler agrees: “Just as in the big cities of the USA, the heterosexuality of boys on the lowest social levels and in marginal groups here has the highest degree of homosocial significance.^[64] “How some gangs intimidate new members before admission is well known. So is the custom that to pass muster, a boy must join in the group’s common cohabitation with one or several girls.”^[65] In Paris a gang of eleven- to fourteen-year-olds was found led by a twelve-year-old boy and a thirteen-year-old girl. The girl, very elegantly dressed, said she considered herself a very lucky woman, for she had ten such perfect husbands for intercourse.^[66]

One of Hertoft’s subjects told him that in his opinion you have to be 18 or 19 before you can really enjoy intercourse. ”When you’re younger, you do it only to have done it, just so you can boast about it with your friends; you have no tender feelings at all.”^[67] Hanry shares this view: “When the adolescent boy thrusts his penis between the tightly pressed thighs of a girl, or over her vulva, or inside her vagina, he is looking for an erotically pleasant discharge similar to what he gets by masturbating. (…) He will tell his comrades what has happened; he needs to do this in order to increase his standing within the group.”^[68]

112   One of Sorensen’s subjects had his first coitus at fifteen with the daughter of one of his mother’s friends: “She came up to my room and she started doing this whole number on me – on me. I was really scared. I was petrified. I almost wanted to cry. She just started talking to me and all those other things, and we just had sex. It was always something I wanted to do, but I wanted to back out at the last moment with her. (…) It was pretty incredible. I don’t know for sure how I felt. It was quite like not knowing what to do. That was the whole overtone of the thing. It wasn’t a beautiful or relaxing thing, but I told everybody it was great and I had to tell everybody.^[69]

This kind of forced heterosexuality carried out during a transitional phase in a boy’s life when he isn’t really ready for it, coupled with sex-negative moralistic indoctrination, may explain why feelings of depression so frequently follow first intercourse. Sorensen’s subjects felt, at their first experience: 17% afraid, 9% worried, 3% guilty, 7% embarrassed, 1% sorry, 7% foolish, 3% disappointed.^[70]

In still another way may homophilia mask itself as heterosexual behaviour. In imitation of Alexander the Great and his friend Hephaistion,^[71] two male lovers may have intercourse, one after the other, with the same woman.

113  A 17-year-old boy was deeply in love with his 15-year-old cousin, but, as the younger boy was always talking about girls, he didn’t dare reveal his feelings. However, being on the verge of manhood, he did manage from time to time to find a girl willing to go to bed with him, something his younger cousin couldn’t yet manage to do. He would insist, however, that the girl also lie with the other boy. When he succeeded in these arrangements he was able to have the pleasure of watching his handsome cousin strip naked and become aroused, and then look on while the younger boy made love. This spectacle was so exciting that it enabled him to carry off intercourse with the girl immediately afterwards. While so engaged, his eyes would be fixed upon his naked cousin lying satisfied, at his side. The realisation that his penis inside the girl was sliding in the sperm of his beloved was enormously thrilling.^[72]

Boys who are strongly attracted to girls but still lack the courage to make the necessary approaches, may discharge their lust with a friend. One fine, sensitive book written by a 17-year-old French grammar school student, Didier Gerval,^[73] describes two boys practicing with each other the acts they later hope to perform with girls. The tone and mood of the book is typically adolescent: the desire to conquer, to experiment, the curiosity about “techniques”, the almost acrobatic approach to sexual activity, a touch of cynicism but at the same time a feeling of purity and horror of compromise – all come in to play as Silvère tries out on his friend Etienne everything he dreams of doing with his beloved Liliane.

These examples show how close the connection can be at this age between heterophile and homophile tendencies. To experience this calmly and consciously, and to give physical expression to it, can only be beneficial to a boy’s mental health and psycho-sexual development.

Continue to Sex With Other Boys: Special Friendships

^[1] Haeberle, E. J., The Sex Atlas. New York: Seabury, 1978, 441. [Author’s reference]

^[2] Freud, S., Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1920, 102. [Author’s reference]

^[3] Tripp, C. A., The Homosexual Matrix. New York: New American Library, 1975, 18. [Author’s reference]

^[4] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe, Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 1538 [Author’s reference].

^[5] Haeberle, E. J., The Sex Atlas. New York: Seabury, 1978 146-147. [Author’s reference]

^[6] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe, Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 2183 [Author’s reference].

^[7] Hanry, P., Les enfants, le sexe et nous. Toulouse: Privat, 1977, 117. [Author’s reference]

^[8] Sengers 1969, 327 [Author’s reference, but it is not clear which is meant of two works by W. J. Sengers published in 1969 and listed in the bibliography].

^[9] West, D., Homosexuality Re-Examined. London: Duckworth, 1977, 247. [Author’s reference]

^[10] Tripp, C. A., The Homosexual Matrix. New York: New American Library, 1975, 31. [Author’s reference]

^[11] Giese, H. & Schmidt, G., Studenten-Sexualität. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1968, 174-175. [Author’s reference]

^[12] Gadpaille, W. J., The Delay of Normal Psychosexual Development. In: Constantine & Martinson (Eds.), Children and Sex. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1981, 100, 102. [Author’s reference]

^[13] Bullough, V. L., Sexual Variance In Society and History, Chicago: University of Chicago, 1976, pp. 28-30, 35, 43 [Author’s reference].

^[14] Bullough, V. L., Sexual Variance In Society and History, Chicago: University of Chicago, 1976, pp. 28-30, 35 [Author’s reference].

^[15] Money, J., Bisexual, homosexual and heterosexual. Journal of Homosexuality 2, 3: 229-233, 1977, 229- 230. [Author’s reference]

^[16] Werner, D., A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Theory and Research on Male Homosexuality. Journal of Homosexuality 4, 4: 345-362, 1979, 345. [Author’s reference]

^[17] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe, Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, pp. 622-723 [Author’s reference].

^[18] Bullough, V. L., Sexual Variance In Society and History, Chicago: University of Chicago, 1976, p. 43 [Author’s reference].

^[19] Kruijt, J. P., Ethnologische gezichts punten. 5. In: Hart de Ruyter (Ed.), De sexuele ontwikkeling van het kind tot volwassene. Leiden: Stafleu, 1976, 27, 35. Langfeldt, Th., Sexual Development in Children. In: Cook & Howells (Eds.), Adult Sexual Interest in Children. London: Academic Press. 1981, 103-104. [Author’s reference]

^[20] West 1971, 1 [Author’s reference, but there is no book in his bibliography by a West published in 1971].

^[21] Haeberle, E. J., The Sex Atlas. New York: Seabury, 1978, 235. [Author’s reference]

^[22] Freud, S., Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1920, 98. [Author’s reference]

^[23] Haeberle, E. J., The Sex Atlas. New York: Seabury, 1978, 131. [Author’s reference]

^[24] Hart de Ruyter, Th., De psychoseksuele ontwikkeling bij zuigeling en kleuter. Het kind als slachtoffer, als ‘dader’ en als verleider. Seksuele voorlichting en opvoeding. In: Hart de Ruyter, Th. et al, De seksuele ontwikkeling van kind tot volwassene. Leiden: Stafleu, 1976, 73-74. [Author’s reference]

^[25] Iovetz-Tereshchenko, N. M., Friendship-Love in Adolescence , London: Allen & Unwin, 1936, p. 262 [Author’s reference].

^[26] Léonetti, P.-F., Je suis un homo… comme ils disent. Paris: Lefeuvre, 1978, 211 [Author’s reference].

^[27] Gide, A., Corydon. Paris: Gallimard, 1925, 135. [Author’s reference]

^[28] Lambert, J., Histoire véritable. Paris: Fayard, 1979, 211. [Author’s reference]

^[29] Masters, W. H. & Johnson, V. E., Homoseksualiteit. Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1980, 221-222. [Author’s reference]

^[30] Schérer, R., L’emprise. Des enfants entre nous, Paris: Hachette, 1979, pp. 263-4 [Author’s reference].

^[31] Léonetti, P.-F., Je suis un homo… comme ils disent. Paris: Lefeuvre, 1978, 140. [Author’s reference]

^[32] Haeberle, E. J., The Sex Atlas. New York: Seabury, 1978, 156. [Author’s reference]

^[33] Biener, K., Jugendsexualität und Präventivmedizin. Stuttgart: Fischer, 1973, 65. [Author’s reference]

^[34] Hanry, P., Les enfants, le sexe et nous. Toulouse: Privat, 1977, 11-12, 163. [Author’s reference]

^[35] Yankowski, J. S., Sex vor der Ehe. München: Lichtenberg, 1965, [Author’s reference]

^[36] Yankowski, J. S., Sex vor der Ehe. München: Lichtenberg, 1965, 69-77. [Author’s reference]

^[37] Kinsey, A. C. et al, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: Saunders, 1948, 168. [Author’s reference]

^[38] Dort, N. M., Teen-age Masturbation. Los Angeles: Spartan House, 1968, 36. [Author’s reference]

^[39] Churchill, W., Homosexual Behavior Among Males. New York: Hawthorn, 1967, 49. [Author’s reference]

^[40] Kinsey, A. C. et al, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: Saunders, 1948, 624. [Author’s reference]

^[41] Blake, R., The Sexually Precocious Teenager. Cleveland: Century Books, 1970, 35. [Author’s reference]

^[42] Hite, Sh., The Hite Report on Male Sexuality. New York: Ballantine, 1981, 856. [Author’s reference]

^[43] Yankowski, J. S., Sex vor der Ehe. München: Lichtenberg, 1965, [Author’s reference]

^[44] Mede, P. van der & Spee, J., Sexualiteit ‘82.17 Zeist: NISSO, 1983, [Author’s reference]

^[45] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe, Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 882 [Author’s reference].

^[46] West, D., Homosexuality Re-Examined. London: Duckworth, 1977, 16. [Author’s reference]

^[47] West, D., Homosexuality Re-Examined. London: Duckworth, 1977, 18. [Author’s reference]

^[48] NISSO, Onderzoek jeugd en sex. Eerste bericht. Zeist: NISSO, 1973, 23. [Author’s reference]

^[49] Hennig, J.-L., Thomas, 30 ans: Bruno, 15 ans: le nouveau couple zig-zag. Recherches 37: 137-166, 1979, 130. [Author’s reference]

^[50] Mende, J. & Dobrovich, G., Schülersexualität. Frankfurt am Main: Melzer, 1971, 12. Krist, G., Pedofilie. Leuven: Katholieke Universiteit, 1976, 24. [Author’s reference]

^[51] Dort, N. M., Teen-age Masturbation. Los Angeles: Spartan House, 1968, 26. [Author’s reference]

^[52] Hite, Sh., The Hite Report on Male Sexuality. New York: Ballantine, 1981, 607-608. [Author’s reference]

^[53] Davidson, M., Some Boys. London: Bruce & Watson, 1971, 181. [Author’s reference]

^[54] Barrington, J. S., Sexual Alternatives for Men. London: Alternative Publishing, 1981, 214. [Author’s reference]

^[55] West, D., Homosexuality Re-Examined. London: Duckworth, 1977, 237. [Author’s reference]

^[56] Meers, D. R., Precocious Heterosexuality and Masturbation. In: Marcus & Francis (Eds.), Masturbation. New York: International Universities Press, 1975, 429. [Author’s reference]

^[57] Figger, W., Sexuelle Konflikte in der Heimerziehung. In: Kerscher (Ed.), Konfliktfeld Sexualität. Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1977, 201. [Author’s reference]

^[58] Hoekstra, R. C., Sexuele doding. Groningen: Van Denderen, 1969, 953. [Author’s reference]

^[59] Ellis, H., Studies in the Psychology of Sex. Philadelphia: David, 1913, I-240. [Author’s reference]

^[60] Kerscher 1977, 8 [Author’s reference, but there is no book by Kerscher published in 1977 in his bibliography].

^[61] Haeberle, E. J., The Sex Atlas. New York: Seabury, 1978, 173. [Author’s reference]

^[62] Decrès, O., Chronique des garçons de Casa. Paris: Oswald, 1982, 73. [Author’s reference]

^[63] Janus, S. The Death of Innocence, New York: Morrow & Co., 1981, p. 286 [Author’s reference].

^[64] Kentler, H., Sexualpädagogische Aufgaben bei Jugendlichen der Unterschicht. In: Pacharzina & Albrecht-Désirat (Eds.), Konfliktfeld Kindersexualität. Frankfurt a.M.: Päd-extra, 1978, 145. [Author’s reference]

^[65] Bettelheim, B., Symbolic Wounds–Puberty Rites and the Envious Male. New York: Collier, 1962, 34. [Author’s reference]

^[66] Bloch, I., Das Sexualleben unserer Zeit. Berlin: Marcus, 1909, 700. [Author’s reference]

^[67] Hertoft, P., Unge mænds seksuelle adfæd, viden og holdning. København: Akademisk Forlag, 1968, I-299. [Author’s reference]

^[68] Hanry, P., Les enfants, le sexe et nous. Toulouse: Privat, 1977, 124. [Author’s reference]

^[69] Sorensen, R. C., Adolescent Sexuality in Contemporary America. New York: World Publishing, 1973, 195. [Author’s reference]

^[70] Sorensen, R. C., Adolescent Sexuality in Contemporary America. New York: World Publishing, 1973, 203. [Author’s reference]

^[71] Brongersma’s source for this modern invention about Alexander and Hephaistion is a mystery. No ancient source says they had sex with the same female. Most likely it was a modern work of fiction, as elsewhere Brongersma treats novels about Alexander as historical sources. [Website footnote]

^[72] Stekel, W., Onanie und Homosexualität. Berlin: Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1921, 172-173. [Author’s reference]

^[73] Gerval, D., L’âge des gestes. Paris: Buchet/Chastel, 1957, [Author’s reference]