[sebbie]

Over fifty years ago, I enrolled as a college freshman. Living in a 3-story dorm that was entirely made up with rooms, two men (that was new, we were suddenly not boys any more) to a room. Me, I was just a wee lad of only 17, not even 18 yet.

Some of the guys may have females on their minds. Me? I had another, much more important and immediate issue. On each floor of the dorm there was one very large military-style bathroom located way down the hall, with completely open showers with shower heads all in a row. There was a row of toilet stalls which, fortunately had doors, and a long row of sinks with mirrors, but that was it.

Does this sound like the dorm Josh and Dylan have been living in? Well, not surprising!

The guys wandered down the long hallway to the showers both morning and night, usually clad only in a bathrobe. That was the easiest way to deal with the situation of having to be out in the open and wanting to shower. Of course, the University had a military (ROTC was offered) “flavor” and men’s dorms that by design were somewhat like military barracks seemed only logical. After all, guys who went into the military would face a similar situation, and this was the late 60s when the draft and the Vietnam War was on. For the moment, anyway we were “safe” because generally the college kids had educational deferments at least until they finished undergraduate degrees. The question was what would be going on once we had graduated from college.

Me? by 17 I had already developed a series of masturbation techniques that I enjoyed a lot. Not quite as elaborate as the ones Josh and Dylan have been pursuing of course, but they were great fun for me nonetheless. Dylan and Josh have gotten to try a bunch of different things that I hadn’t thought of when I was a beginning college student and what they did in this respect has gone way beyond what I was actually able to do at that age.

The basic problem I faced was very simple. With no privacy, how was I going to adapt what I was doing with and to myself to the circumstances I was now in? In retrospect, I was pretty naïve at that age. But social morays were quite different back then as well. In those years, in this setting, there were no males who were openly gay, and certainly no males living under semi-military style conditions in the little double dorm rooms. At least, that was the assumption. Generally any male living in one of these double dorm rooms was assumed to be perfectly straight.

I guess we all were aware that some guys didn’t quite fit with that idea, but, interestingly enough, I never was aware of any teasing or bullying similar to what could have easily gone on in junior high or in high school. Still, there was this problem that if you were inadvertently discovered to be masturbating, and that meant at minimum that you were not getting any (with a girl). This led to the assumption that the frequent masturbators could be or even likely were gay guys. Therefore the “penalty” for being discovered masturbating was not something most guys would want to endure. This was long before the vast majority of guys were comfortable being openly gay.

These are my observations about undergraduate college life from over 50 years ago when society was very different from now. I keep thinking about how society has gradually changed with respect to being more and more comfortable with the entire idea that there are some people who are openly gay and that this is not something that any more needs to be kept secret. There are interesting implications for all of this in many ways.

For starters, a lot of these old dormitories still exist where the rooms are small doubles with the restroom facilities down the hall. Further, even back then, if two guys wanted to pick roommates, housing offices generally allowed and even encouraged that. So even back then there were no restrictions on two male guys rooming together in a dorm room for the entire duration of college. And what they did with and to each other during that period of time behind closed doors was completely private.

The issues are interesting. The housing office, then and now would never rent a dorm room to a guy and a girl who wanted to hook up for four years of college. But for two gay guys, this was perfectly fine.

Me, I was 17 and not anywhere near wanting to form a sexual relationship with anyone, male or female. Much like Dylan, I had too much else going on academically. I was a bookworm, pretty much and excelled at doing that.

Still, I was already deep into masturbation as an interesting and hugely enjoyable activity, and even then I kept thinking up new and endlessly fascinating ways to enjoy my own body. I kept thinking up stuff in that department that I had not yet gotten to try. But even admitting to being interested in masturbating was a very taboo topic for guys to even discuss, let alone demonstrate, even inadvertently or by “accident”.

For most guys, the entire topic of engaging in solo sex remains quite taboo and something that should be kept very secret. It’s still a topic that most guys refuse to discuss openly with other guys unless the guys are gay males. But even here there is still stuff that stumps me. A lot of gay guys seem to equate being in a gay relationship with having sex that involves an exchange of bodily fluids which is usually thought to be oral or anal sex, and if two guys do not do that, then they are not in a “real” gay relationship.

I also keep thinking about what seems to me to be at first a very simple question. That question is “what is sex?” Is sex defined as simply male and female penis in vagina? What about oral sex? Is that “real” sex? Or anal sex? Must “real” sex involve an interchange of bodily fluids?

Then is solo masturbation is not sex does this somehow change if another person is present? If a guy is masturbating and another person is present that is not masturbating is that mutual masturbation? Or does the other person have to also be masturbating as well? And is mutual masturbation, however defined, then actually a type of sex? What about a married couple who enjoys mutual masturbation? In so doing are they having sex? If they are not having sex what exactly are they doing in the presence of each other?

I’ve met male-female couples, often even married, who claim to be in love with each other but never actually have penis-vagina sex and they both seem to be fine with that. I suspect that the same also must happens with some, perhaps many gay male couples, but then we get bogged down in trying to define what is a gay relationship versus just a male roommate in a completely “innocuous” situation much like the male roommates in the dorm rooms.

Suppose I simply have a male roommate, and inadvertently he wanders in and discovers me having a lot of fun playing with my own body? Has the situation suddenly changed making him more than just a roommate? What if anything changes if when he watches me having so much fun that he gets horny just thinking about what I am doing, and, as a consequence, he can’t keep himself from starting to masturbate himself while watching me? Has the situation for both of us suddenly changed from just roommates to something that is on the cusp of becoming a true gay relationship? And am I suddenly finding more enjoyment because my roommate has suddenly decided it was OK to join in? Are the two suddenly on the cusp of a “real” relationship? This, to a degree, is exactly the problem Dylan and Josh are confronting.

To be continued…