Thoughts on just being a guy

[sebbie]

A Fondness for Speedos Part I

I am trying to remember what was going on in my mind and body at age 10 and 11, a year or two before I reached male puberty. Unfortunately, I did not take any notes that would be useful in writing this essay so I am relying entirely on my memory. I guess most people would call the onset of puberty in males as the point in time when the guy has his first instance of ejaculating semen. But if my memory is correct, I remember getting erections quite a while before that, it’s just that the erections did not end with ejaculation. In fact, given my small stature, I recall getting erections that looked very large to me. Fascinating, but why?

I also learned long before puberty that touching and fondling my penis was something that was quite enjoyable. But what was driving me bonkers is that I would sometimes get a firm erection for no apparent reason at all just seemingly out of nowhere, and I had no idea what to make of that. My body was telling me something, but what? Of course, guys my age were all wondering if their male classmates were somehow coping with the same problem, and if so, exactly how were they dealing with it.

Of course, now we know that people can have sexual sensations at a very early age perhaps even before they are walking. A current TV ad for diapers shows kids in diapers in all sorts of movements, some that appear to be putting lots of pressure in the groin area by lying face down on the floor and then moving rapidly across the floor. They are actually masturbating in that position prone on the floor. As I watch the diaper ad I keep thinking that its an ad featuring some really early efforts by these kids in that regard. Indeed there is serious research which reveals that kids masturbate long before their parents realize at all what they are doing.

So, by the time a guy is 10 or 11, even if he has not ejaculated, he is well along in the process of how to enjoy himself in this manner. The important point is that guys do not just suddenly get their first erection on the day that they first void semen, nor is the semen voiding day the first day in a guy;s life that the guy has ever touched himself down there. The masturbation process has been going on for a long time by the day the first semen voiding occurs, and the ejaculation is more nearly a culmination than the start of something new and interesting.

Somehow, finding out that the other males my age were also dealing with the same problem would be a source of “relief” for me, but this was the 1950s, and guys did not talk about stuff like that for sure even though they might be very curious as well. But there were all sorts of indirect ways of collecting information.

I the 1950 and into the 1960s, practically every guy wore a white cotton brief. Of course, these briefs fit quite snug an so if a guy was in a situation where he and his male friends were all stripped to their underwear, everyone looked around to see exactly what the situation was with each of the other guys based on how the cotton brief pouch looked. But these instances, often in a gym locker room, did not occur that often. And situations where all the guys were completely nude were even rarer, so information as to what was going on with the other guys was even tougher to come by.

My recalling of the advent of puberty for me is that there was not simply one day where I ejaculated for the first time. Instead, I had run into a new “problem” where I was waking up with dime-sized starchy spots on my pajama bottoms. Nothing big, maybe up to three of them a night, but this started occurring more or less regularly. Depending on when during the night this happened the spot could be completely dry, or maybe still wet. The wet ones that were made early in the morning were more difficult to hide than the ones I deposited shortly after I went to bed that by morning were completely dry on my pajama bottoms.

But, the onset of puberty supposedly is when the first daytime and fully awake ejaculation takes place. For me, this has a swimwear--tho not swim brief--connection. I liked to fill the inflatable pool with water, let the sun warm it, and then go out in the pool and contemplate my navel along with the meaning of life. I had a swimsuit but it was not a swim brief. What was popular in those days was looser fit, typically a small plaid in either blue or red (Mine was usually red). These had about 6-inch long legs, so by board short standards these were quite short (tho not brief style.). Still, these suits always had an inner liner made from a fine nylon mesh, and, guess what? The inner liner was actually made in a brief style.

The claim was that the liner was there for “support”. What was really going on was that without a snugger fitting liner, there was a real danger that the guy’s penis would fall right out one of the leg openings. Remember, the legs were not very long and since the material was a cotton blend and loose fitting.

Well, it didn’t take me long to figure out that the nylon mesh of the liner felt quite nice rubbing against my penis, and naturally, sitting in the little pool of water it was not long before I got to playing with myself. I would take a quick look down there by pulling the waistband away from my body, and I was quickly getting quite long and hard. My penis just sat there pressed against the mesh lining. Interesting!

I had been in this situation of having a big penis a number of times before, and it all ended with my penis simply coming down in size. But for some unexplained reason (well no, explained reason, as in the harder my penis got the better I liked it) I kept thinking about what was happening while I suppose, occasionally touching myself down there too. I was liking this situation a lot.

Well, somehow I went too far. Suddenly I started ejaculating semen into the nylon mesh liner. Now a guy’s first wide awake daytime ejaculation is quite an event to behold! I was feeling elated and terrified at the same time. No one told me this would happen even though I had been having erections and even nighttime spotting for some time. The first time a guy goes into full ejaculation complete with all the muscular contractions is huge fun but also scary as all get out. I was right on the edge between the two. But sitting in a little pool of water, I was in a position to hide the evidence pretty easily. No one else would know what had happened.

The swimwear with the mesh liner was far easier to explain than would be a swim brief, and whenever I got the chance, even if I was not going in the water, this style of suit was my go-to choice for daytime masturbation. I would masturbate into the liner of the suit and then put it back in my dresser drawer until the next time. Eventually I had big semen stains all over the liner but no one checked, and these would be somewhat washed away if I again wore the suit in water. Through my teen years I still harbored some fear of discovery but I got smart about hiding my activities. Eventually the semen destroyed the mesh liner.
 

[sebbie]

A Fondness for Speedos Part II

It’s funny. There is a strong “herding instinct” among a lot of young males. This is especially true when it comes to clothing, but particularly in undergarments. A lot of guys make choices based on what other guys are wearing, or maybe what they THINK other guys are wearing. From the mid 1950s and through much of the 1969s, the underwear of choice was the white cotton brief. Why? Because that is what the other guys were wearing. Loose-fitting blue plaid boxer shorts had yet to make an appearance. If you wanted to be one of the guys, you wore a white cotton brief. This was not a debate topic. That is how it is.

Of course, a pair of white cotton briefs CAN fit rather snug, but this did not seem to bother guys in the least. I have often thought that there was a bit of “I’m bigger than you are down there” maleness rearing its head, but that is only a theory. If my briefs fit tighter and my bulge shows bigger that is good not bad bit especially so if ever guy is wearing basically the same cotton brief.

Young guys tend to go through a lot of underwear growing up. And young guys tend to hit a rapid growth spurt shortly after puberty, where the underwear that fit maybe a year ago or even six months ago tend to be too small right now. In the case of a cotton brief it might be worn out but it might just be too small. Still, guys no doubt learn that a snug-fitting brief has its merits, even a brief that the guy has almost grown out of. Aside by continuing to wear these as regular underwear (You don’t have to replace these right now mom, I can still wear these!), guys have been known to keep some undersized pairs in the back of the bedroom drawer to use for masturbation purposes.

The same applies to clothing like blue jeans. That pair I wore last year has gotten really snug on me since I have grown, but I still like to wear them. And some of the guys in school think I look great in them.

You may think guys discovered snug-fitting jeans in the last decade or so. But there was another round of this in the early 1960s when guys really got interested in jeans that fit really snug. Sand-colored undyed denim jeans were really popular, and when I was 15 or 16, some of the guys in my class seemed to be running an informal contest to see who could come to school in the jeans with the tightest fit.

Of course, some of the guys discovered that masturbating in clothing that consisted of a tight pair of cotton briefs with a snug fitting pair of jeans over could be a lot of fun too. The semen would be enough to create a dark stain somewhere on the jeans. But where? And if this happened would someone call attention to it? Dangerous in that respect, but still fun!

So, back in the 1950s and 1960s we have all these guys whose clothing consists of snug white cotton briefs with tight, sand-colored jeans over. For swimwear, making the transition from the popular plaid cotton swimsuit with the mesh lining to a real swim brief was perhaps not that big of a deal except that the early swim briefs were all nylon, and only later did the poly stretch Lycra briefs show up. Guys were used to knowing how the ribbed cotton of their brief underwear felt down there and had managed to learn to control their urges. And they were used to being in situations where other guys clad in cotton briefs would see them. But now the idea of a small-and-slick-nylon swim brief might be pushing it. The classic question of course is will wearing such a suit with slick fabric give me an erection at an inopportune time and will I be able to adequately cope with the situation. But still, the swim brief is not that much different from the standard issue cotton underwear that all the guys wore daily.

So, my theory is that when white cotton briefs were almost universal, at least for males living in the US, the transition a Speedo--or more generally, any brief-style swimsuit--was not nearly as big a deal as it has been recently, when guys are instead favoring loose-fitting plaid boxer shorts as underwear. The boxer shorts as underwear led right into the knee-length board shorts for swimming. Still, young males are subject to a herding instinct whereby they really want to wear what the other guys think is acceptable, and definitely not go off in some new path, and particularly not a new path that would identify a guy as a “serial masturbator”. Even the admission that you masturbate could result in issues with peers (who also masturbate but dare not admit it) at some future point in time.

[sebbie]

A Fondness for Speedos Part III

Growing up, I was, well, more than a little nerdy. My family lived on a Midwest farm and our nearest neighbors were a half mile away. I had friends in school of course, both boys and girls, but I was not particularly close to any of them. I was more than something of a nerdy loner too.

However I did have relatives, some of them aunts, uncles and cousins who lived in a more urban world on the West coast. Part of what they did was to make road trips to the Midwest where my family and other families (more aunt’s uncles and cousins) lived. They would hop in the Oldsmobile or Pontiac and think nothing of driving over 1200 miles in a long two days. One of the trips occurred around 1960. I would have been nearly 13. Two male cousins came along, one a year younger than I, the other about 18 months older. I will call the younger cousin G and the older cousin D.

City kids coming to visit country kids was always an interesting time. We were used to engaging in farm activities that the city kids found fascinating. We were around farm animals pretty much all the time, and some of the farm animals were also pets. The city cousin G was on the “cusp” of puberty at the time. My own body was changing rapidly and my mind was filled with questions I dared not ask. Even at that age I was interested in what my cousins would be wearing. The city cousins were into sports (later on, G became a High School wrestler, but he was also a swimmer).

Both G and D arrive wearing the latest snug-fitting jeans in a sand color, the ones I described previously. They were lucky, I thought. I really wanted a pair too.

The farm was also not far from a lake which is actually part of a dammed river. The local aunts and uncles had cabins on the lake and it was routine for everyone to go down to the lake and get in some boating, swimming and whatever. Of course I was wearing my red plaid swimsuit as I described. I was, well, curious as to what my city cousins would be wearing. It didn’t take long to find out! Both D and G were in swim briefs. The brief G was wearing was bright blue with three whit pin stripes on each side. He looked great in it. Keep in mind that I was a gawky, nerdy looking. Even at that age G was built like an athlete. The suit fit him really well—as in it was way tight on him. Seeing G in this suit really got me fixated on wearing swim briefs. I suspect G had worn this suit for some months and was on the edge of growing out of it. That is why it fit him so well.

(to be continued)

[sebbie]

A Fondness for Speedos, Part IV

So my aunt, G & D’s mom, suddenly said something I thought was interesting. She said “G is really fond of his swimsuit. Once he gets into it I cannot get him to take it off. He wears it everywhere.” In retrospect, I don’t think G’s mom quite understood exactly what G was doing and why, but that is to this day a theory. My theory is that G was fond of the suit and wore it because he liked how it looked and felt down there. Moms think they understand everything about raising boys but there are a few things that do not quite register, well, you know.

So, after the boating and splashing around in the water it was time for everyone to go back to the town or the farm. With all the relatives from afar, beds are in short supply. It is decided that G would go home to the farm with me and my parents. Just as his mom said, G is still wearing his blue suit and has simply pulled his jeans over. The house on the farm had two small bedrooms both double beds, and my parents slept in one of the bedrooms. The only place for G to sleep is next to me in the other bed.

So G pulls off his jeans and is now clad only in the suit and crawls into bed. Me, I am in pajamas next to him. At some point during the night G decides he needs to get out of the suit and he pulls himself out of it and tosses it to one side of the bed. I remember that it just sort of hung there somewhat stiff.

I was thinking wouldn’t it be fun to try on that suit. But I am too scared to ask. What would my cousin think of such a strange request? Still, if there ever was a moment in my life that for me glued the idea of wearing a Speedo as erotic fun, this was it. I never did ask my cousin the questions that I really needed the answers to. Remember, I was just barely past puberty myself and my cousin had not likely reached that point. But still, there was something going on in his brain that got him to where he was—the idea of wearing a swim brief as underwear was linked to the idea of wearing a swim brief for the sheer enjoyment of at all.

Given what I know now in retrospect I could have been more forward, but I am not sure where that would have led either, say if I had asked to try on that blue swim brief. The cousin is just a year younger than I. He became a fireman in his adult life, was married for a short period of time and had two kids, but then divorced the wife and never remarried. I have never dared ask him about this sequence of events that occurred that night. On occasion I have wondered whether he was really that straight, given how his life evolved, but that is not a question I would dare ask either. The questions I would have he probably would be reluctant to answer.

It’s funny. Being deprived of something that a guy thinks would make him feel horny only makes the object that much more erotic once a guy finally gets it. I went through my entire high school days never owning a swim brief. But as a young adult I loaded up on swim briefs and used them regularly for masturbation. Is this a “problem” of some sort? As my readers know, relationship sex is not a big deal for me, but I thoroughly enjoy my own body. This may seem a bit weird according to some. Part of the problems with a relationship is that I would have to figure out some sort of a way to deal with the fun things I do to and by myself, and I never saw the tradeoff as making me happy. I am better off right where I am.

But how do other single guys not in a sexual relationship navigate this? Have they found solutions similar to what I enjoy doing? This leads me to another core question. Nowadays guys can order swim briefs or any one of hundreds of potentially erotic toys on line. I keep wondering how many swim briefs are actually mainly if not exclusively used for swimming versus other “recreational” uses. I think the market for swim briefs is much larger than it would have been had the main sources being a mall department or sporting goods store. The vendors that sell the briefs do not really care for what purpose the brief is sold. A sale is a sale!

So, I have a stash of stuff including swim briefs in many sizes that I keep on hand mainly for self pleasuring. A big stash, but living alone I do not have to explain this. Do other guys have stashes as well, but more secret stashes? An embarrassing question is why do I keep all this “stuff”? Do I have a “problem” of some sort, or have I simply found a successful way to live as a solo, unattached guy? Good question. If I can be of assistance to other guys who are interested in what I am doing and how I cope. I have found fun stuff. Lots of it!

Always “enjoy” yourself!

[dm106]

I had a friend on the swim team back in school days. He wore a speedo during the summer at our town's public pool and for a couple of years I really, really wanted to wear one. Finally worked up the courage to ask and he loaned me one of his. Wow, it was great. And so horny, too!

[sebbie]

 
A Fondness for Speedos Part V

I was 21 years old, and leaving from my native state in the Midwest to do my PhD at Purdue—some 1,200 miles away. I was still going to be living in a college dorm, but this one was made for graduate students, and all the rooms were single. I saw this as an opportunity not a problem. I could get to do the things I always wanted to do while studying for my doctorate, And there were lots of things by then that I really enjoyed doing, but in private.

The Purdue campus is separated from the main retail spaces in town but there are a couple streets just off the campus that were there to cater to the needs of the students. Lots of fast food places--back then a Burger Chef and a place that predates Arby's but also featured roast beef sandwiches, So I would often take a short walk only a block or two from the grad house to pick up a cheap burger or maybe splurge on a roast beef sandwich as well.

In addition to the food places, there were a few stores that catered to the clothing needs of college students—shirts, jeans etc. Periodically these places would have street sales as a way to reduce the inventory of stuff that hadn’t sold. And, guess what? In the fall they would invariably have some heavily discounted swimwear as well, including swim briefs. What an opportunity for a guy who had wanted to own a Speedo for so long, but never quite dared doing anything about it for fear of being discovered and with that a long line of uncomfortable questions.

And there it was. A heavily marked down genuine Speedo in a patriotic pattern in an early Lycra/Nylon blend. I pulled that off the rack and made my purchase. My life as a graduate student was not going to be that dull and boring after all. On another trip I found a swim brief made by Janzen at a heavily discounted price and I bought that too. Now I didn’t really intend to go swimming, but I was merely looking to make my time in the dorm room more interesting. I was spending a lot of time studying, but every guy also needs some “recreation” if I could call it that.

Sadly, though the room was single the bathroom was across the hall. You know, ten each of toilets, showers and sinks all in a row. The problem was that I needed a private space to rinse out a cum-stained swim brief.

But, it was not long before I solved that problem too. I discovered there were a few rooms with private baths that rented for only a bit more than the private rooms with the bath across the hall. So I rented one of those and changed rooms.

I worked hard but had great fun in graduate school as well in a host of different ways. Purdue is a great place to study and learn. I learned a lot as well about a bunch of different subjects some not at all related to what I was studying for being able to do as an academic. You might be able to guess what some of the subjects are. Following this was a 40-year career as an academic. But I also developed a side hobby writing on male sexuality which is completely different from what I did as an academic during my career.

Retired now, I still enjoy doing a lot of the same stuff I always did while also having the free time to devote to my hobby writing. Every day is an adventure for me.

The Speedo I bought that day collapsed into almost nothing decades ago. Cum stains are tough on Lycra. But the Janzen brief I bought at about the same time is still with me, though its condition is not that great as you might imagine after all these years. Still, I have not had the heart to just toss it, given all the excellent memories of a time long gone by.

[sebbie]

A Fondness for Speedos Part V
A Trip to Waikiki Beach

By the mid 1980s, I had settled into my academic career and had been a lot of places and seen a lot of things that I would never have gotten to see on my own. One of the curious features of an academic career is that the faculty are constantly writing and giving scientific papers. The groups taking in the papers like to go to various parts of the US for their meetings or conclaves, and one of the groups decided that it might be a lot of fun to meet in Hawaii. Flights out there were not THAT expensive. Hotel rooms were not cheap. The typical way this works is that if you present an academic paper, the department will find a way to fund most if not all of the trip costs. IIRC the $93-a-night hotel room looked high in the 1980s given that most hotels at meeting sites charged about $50 a night. The plane fares were only slightly higher that the fares to a major US city on the mainland. I would fly to Chicago, and then from there take a direct flight to Honolulu. The total distance was about 4,250 miles, approximately half of the distance over the US and the remaining half over the Pacific Ocean. It was about an 8-hour flight, but I had taken an early morning flight into Chicago. We left Chicago in the morning, but as we headed west, we gained hours. I arrived at the hotel at about 3 pm Honolulu time.

Given the long flight, I thought I would be dog tired and would want to get some sleep before I ventured off to the beach. But to my surprise, I was full of energy, and the beach was only about 2 blocks away. I was curious as all get out as to what the accepted beach wear would be. Of course, I had my favorite blue ocean wave patterned genuine Speedo along with me—an all-nylon suit. When making a beach trek, the big problem is always what to do with your key and other valuables when you are in the water. Each hotel room had a safe, and this was a good place to stash your wallet, plane ticket home, cash, but also, in those days, traveler’s checks. Credit cards then were not the big deal they are now. But then I needed a way to carry the room key to the beach with me, and maybe a few dollars to buy a drink or snack of some sort.

And I also had a pair of shorts that had pockets where I stashed the key. The idea was to wear the light blue nylon Speedo under the shorts and then remove the shorts and leave them on a reed mat near the water and go into the water wearing only the Speedo. I could keep an eye on my shorts with the key in the pocket from the water.

Basically, in the mid 1980s, that is what all the other guys were doing as well. They would alternate between sunning themselves on the reed mat on the beach, and then periodically go into the ocean. And nearly EVERY guy was wearing a swim brief (or, as I soon discovered, something smaller than a swim brief) but they also carried along a pair of shorts to wear over as well.

My Speedo was quite big by 1980s Hawaiian beach standards. Mine had 3-inch sides, but it was more common for the guys to be wearing briefs with 2-inch, 1-inch sides or even less. What fascinated me even more was this the first time I had seen a guy wearing a thong swimsuit, one with such a narrow band that the band disappeared between the glutes. I had my video camera along and got some short videos showing the suits. Of course, a lot of the women were wearing thongs as well. NO one (except me, maybe) paid any attention. This was just normal beach attire in Hawaii.

I soon decided that I needed to buy a swimsuit (or two) from one of the clothing outlets that catered to tourists along the beach. I did not find any thongs for sale but I did spring for a couple briefs far skimpier than my Speedo. A public right of way exists all along Waikiki and other Hawaiian beaches, even along the area in back of the beachfront hotels. The guys liked to walk the right of way in their tiny swim briefs that were brightly colored in neon green or yellow. It was a fun parade. I did that too, simply carrying my shorts (with the room key in the pocket) in my hand.

In retrospect, I made this trip in an interesting time in men’s swimsuit history. Shortly after I got home they were interviewing a sales clerk at one of the big department stores here (now a Macys) and the subject of men’s swimwear came up. She said “It’s weird, guys going for really big suits (aka board shorts) or really tiny suits.” She didn’t describe the exact nature of the tiny suits, but I knew as I had seen them in Hawaii. And, of course, the department store had a big rack of the new “really tiny” suits. It took some considerable courage on my part to buy one of the “new” suits but somehow I managed. I think I ended up with three of them, all very similar to the ones I had seen the guys wearing in Hawaii.

These were fun times. Sadly, the photos I see of the current Hawaiian beaches suggest to me that the attire the guys are wearing there is no longer significantly different from what we now see most guys wearing on any public beach here in the US. There are a few exceptions on the mainland, but it appears to me that the Hawaiian beaches are no longer as trend-setting as they were back then.

Oh, in case you were wondering, I did get to give my academic research paper while I was there, but at a 4-pm hour and most of the conference participants were already at the beach and not at the hotel meeting room. In contrast to the flight west, the trip back eastward to home was a total pain. I slept for maybe two hours, and then the sun was back up again. It took me a solid week to recover from it all.