In 1974 my employer sent me to Long Island to be part of a team of instructors training new employees. We were using a facility on the campus of Hofstra University in Hempstead. I was staying at a motel about seven miles away in Hicksville. Nearby was a neighborhood bar called Gatsby's Pub, where I frequently went of an evening.
One day after class, a number of us gathered in the motel room of one of the instructors a couple of blocks from the building where we were doing the training. In the company was a young man named "Craig." I don't know why he was there. He was fairly short and slim, had wavy blond short hair, and was wearing a white turtleneck.
At some point I told of Gatsby's and indicated I was about to go there, inviting anyone interested to join me, and hoping that Craig would take me up on it. He didn't, and I went to Gatsby's alone.
I don't think I had a clear scenario in my mind for what would happen if he joined me. Certainly it included going to the motel after the bar. It included being in each others arms. It probably did not explicitly include bringing each other to orgasm. But I definitely longed for his embrace, perhaps in bed.
My friend asked me what if he had wanted more, and I just can't be sure. I would have thought it wrong, but I find it difficult to resist non-sexual blandishments so I might have agreed to what he asked. But to this day, what I long for from that encounter that never happened is an embrace, a loving embrace.
Upon further reflection, I realize that of course, such an embrace is a form of physical intimacy, although perhaps not what my friend was thinking about. Also, whatever I wanted, hoped for, was more than I wanted from "Bruce." At the time what I was hoping for felt to me like something that was way more than what I wanted from other guys I liked. Another point is that at the time, I believed that I had sinned in my heart in whatever it was I was hoping for or open to with Craig. But back then I was not so clear as to what was or was not necessarily sinful. Today, I would consider an embrace which is not intended as foreplay for orgasm to be okay- indeed possibly a useful way of satisfying the natural human longing for intimate contact. Back then, I tended to think of any physical expression of sexual attraction as necessarily sinful. So I felt that my dashed hopes constituted a sin which needed to be brought to sacramental reconciliation.
It may seem to readers that this is no different from how I felt about "Bruce" from high school or "Dave" from the Bananas, but to me it was a very different thing. And this did not involve a friend of long standing but a beautiful stranger whom I had just met. And I thank God that, whatever was in my heart, I did not get the chance to actually do anything that was truly sinful that night.
