I was already aware that I was not like other boys because it was decidedly other boys I was interested in, while they were bragging--almost too insistently--it seemed, of their conquests of girls.

I already had had propositions from the few openly gay males of various ages who were around, and I had turned them all down. It was not that I was looking for Mr. Perfect--exactly. It was simply that I didn't want to have sex--certainly not first-time sex--with any of the available gay men I had access to in my town in my day. A vital element was missing--attraction--and something else beyond my barely eighteen-year-old comprehension.

I had begun to suspect that what I was searching and waiting for didn't exist. Not anywhere. Certainly not in my own hometown. I seemed to be longing for some kind of impossible romance with just the kind of man who was the least available to me: some supermasculine jock who pumped up his muscles and chased girls!

I seemed to be longing for something even more unlikely than making out with the likes of, for example, Mr. Perfectly Unavailable Personified, of a high school football star!

I was yearning with seemingly masochistic futility for what I pretentiously like to call The Mythic More--the pursuit of it--that larger-than-life fantasy--hounded and refined--until life with its limited choices must yield to the fantasy and myth must give up its secrets.

I was a comic-book addict, too, and Batman gave me a hint of what I wanted (aside from wanting to be Robin!). Flash Gordon gave me more. No, I didn't want to be Dale. I wanted to be the masculine equal of my blond, muscular, handsome hero or, at least, aspire to emulate him. I wanted to run away into outer space with Flash Gordon and his rocket ship--be his sidekick and constant companion--his all-American boy lover! I wanted at least some real-life approximation of that impossible dream--that Mythic More--and no way was I going to get it from the kind of guys who congregated in my hometown's one and only gay bar.

They all wore suits and ties there. It was considered the chic thing to do. All "chic" meant to me was "not sexy."

I had gone there and drunk beer there and listened and tuned in there and was bitterly disappointed. I could not find one man there I would want to follow in all ways and be willing to lay down my life for. So I read comic books and went to the movies and fantasized and jacked off a lot.

Then came that Saturday afternoon double feature at the Arcadia where I saw on the screen of my neighborhood movie house something that, somehow, explained it all to me. That is to say, explained me to me! All the more amazing and unlikely because movies in those days weren't supposed to tell us anything about sex. They fed us only the acceptable propaganda demanded by the censorship code which said that there was almost no such thing as sex! Even a married couple in a movie slept in twin beds with a space between wide enough to accommodate a table with a lamp on it.

As for gays, or recognizable gay role models, whether "good" or "bad," there simply was no such thing--at all! Except for an occasional harmless, asexual, one-dimensional "sissy," gays in movies, as in life, were invisible. At age eighteen, still a virgin while thinking of almost nothing but sex almost all the time, I felt that I was the most invisible human on earth.

So, as I was completely invisible, I naturally felt almost comfortable in a darkened movie theater.

When I went to the Arcadia, I always sat in the second-balcony smoking section even though I didn't smoke. There was a certain atmosphere way up there among the men who liked to smoke and watch movies alone.

It was very dark up there. So dark that you had to let your eyes adjust for a few minutes before you sat down or risk the embarrassment of sitting in some guy's lap. It was a cool, dark, moist, seductive atmosphere enhanced by smells of tobacco, popcorn, disinfectant, and male bodies.

At the very back of the top balcony next to the projection booth was a short row consisting of only two seats. Nobody else liked to sit there, so it was all mine.

Behind me, against the wall, was a cigarette machine that emitted just enough light to make the various brands readable in the surrounding darkness. Almost always, a man could be seen standing next to the cigarette machine, leaning on it; and a pale half-circle of light would bathe only his blue-jeaned legs, making me wonder what his face looked like. Sometimes a thin beam of light seemed to shine directly on the man's basket, made more emphatic by the way his thumbs were hooked into his Levi's pockets. Although I couldn't see his face, I always knew he was young because of his slim, elegant legs showcased in tight jeans--in addition to his bulging basket. It was not the same man each time, of course. But there always seemed to be one standing there. It was as if the cigarette machine was not complete without a man in Levi's leaning on it.

I thought of them as one--those men. Shadowed from the waist up, they all became, for me, "the man in Levi's leaning against the cigarette machine advertising his basket."

I tried not to look back at him too obviously. I tried not to do anything too obviously. Certainly, if I expected to preserve the safety of my invisibility, it wouldn't do to be seen turning around in my theater seat to stare at a man's basket. Even if the man was advertising consciously, he had too much of the advantage: all he was doing, really, was standing there looking at the movie screen, and any man who stared at his basket too much had to be queer!

Of course I was sitting in total darkness, but I felt it was not completely trust-worthy--that darkness. I was right, actually, because a suddenly bright scene on the screen would light up the audience and expose my guilty, furtive staring. It was thus that paranoia inhibited my desire! Oh, how I wanted to get up and stand beside him, not to dare to speak, no, not even in whispers--but to pretend not to notice him while being close enough to see if by any miraculous chance he could be the one.

The one.

Somehow, I knew that when I found The One--he would speak to me!

He of the Mythic More would take over. All I would have to do was follow. Very little speaking would be required. He would question me with his body, and I would answer him with mine.

There he was, as usual, that particular and very special matinee. This time he was not especially tall. I could see part of his chin caught in a fugitive speck of light that crept up from the machine that glowed so softly like a big rectangular lantern. Not tall--but impressively muscular. He was wearing--I could just barely see it--a form-fitted green T-shirt. His thumbs were hooked into the pockets of his Levi's (of course!), and the belt line was riding down low on his hips--while the T-shirt only reached his waist. This resulted in an exposure of at least two inches of bare belly below his navel.

He couldn't have looked more carnal had he been naked.

The message his body sent out as he stood so catatonically still there upset me. The message said, "I'm standing here watching the movie and minding my own business, and if my incredibly sexy, seductive pose turns you into a bowl of quivering lime Jell-0, that's your problem."

I resolved not to turn around and look again, no, not even one more time, nor give him another single thought. In order to carry out that firm resolve, I used all my willpower to concentrate on the main feature of the matinee, which was just starting, and get completely caught up in it even if it was excruciatingly boring.

It promised to be very boring. I almost groaned audibly during the credits, already convinced that the next ninety minutes of my life were going to be an eternity of stale, trite cliches in glorious black and white.

I started right out hating the movie's lead character--a boy about my age--perhaps a little younger. He seemed to feel that the most important thing in his life was pleasing his father--living up to the asshole's unreasonable expectations. Dear Old Dad had graduated with honors from that same silly-assed boys' school and kept telling Junior he wasn't man enough to make the grade. Instead of telling Dad to go screw himself. Junior stuck it out and busted his chops trying to excel while taking an incredible amount of crap from the school bully and his jeering goons.

Oh, my God! Yet another rip-off of Tom Brown's School Days. Only worse. I could only be grateful it wasn't a musical!

Then I started noticing that some of the boys were cute. It seemed strange and interesting to me that the school bully, who was obviously the villain of the story, was the oldest and best looking of all the actors playing students in the movie.

The skinny little hero's wimpish sensitivity turned me off. I didn't want to identify with him. I thought the meanie was much more interesting and certainly better looking.

I wanted to look like the mean guy. When he appeared in a swimming scene wearing skimpy, black, shiny, wet, clinging swim trunks that covered almost nothing and showed off his buns and his basket, I stopped noticing anything except him. I was for him--whatever he did. Jesus, I was starting to like the movie for the wrong reason: I was getting off on the sexy villain! I loved looking at his body in his extra-brief swim shorts that, when wet, looked like not much more than a black jockstrap.

I already had a thing for black jockstraps'.

Soon, it began to occur to me that the actor playing the sexy baddie was really too old for his part.

Nobody has a body like that at the age those schoolboys were supposed to be. He was obviously one of those not tall but perfectly proportioned Hollywood Adonises with boyish faces and pumped-up muscles who play high-schoolers and even younger when they're actually twenty-plus.

Then it happened--a five-minute scene in a derivative, laughably bad movie that, nonetheless, taught me something about myself that I was nearly too timid to want to know. I watched and reacted and never could be the same again.

It was as if the director (probably European) who had been forced by his studio to shoot a terrible script full of bullshit cliches that had already been done before--and better--was having his revenge by turning censorship against itself! Here's how he did it: Sadism meant only "pure mean" in those days and had nothing to do with sex--certainly not homosex because it didn't exist.

Remember?

So, while the unsophisticated censors were on the alert for code infractions they could comprehend, such as low necklines, belly buttons, and horizontal love scenes, an extremely kinky boys' school hazing scene that could only have been directed by a true S/M devotee got by!

The bad guy and his gang crept into our Boy Hero's room late at night and dragged him out of bed. They gagged him and carried him off to their secret cave in the woods. The cave was where they held their Fascist-style meetings. It was also where they took their victims for some serious hazing.