Tell Me I'm Okay

by David Bradford

  Equally dreary for me were the first few months after my family left Caringbah to live in Seaforth. Now, separated from Paul, on the other side of Sydney Harbour, I felt the first sharp pangs of lost love. Among a whole new set of unfamiliar classmates, I pined for Paul and his happy smile. Then, in the summer of 1952, and aged ten, I moved into sixth class at Balgowlah Public School; this began a truly eventful year in my life. During that year I came to understand, for the first time, that there was something very different about me.

  In January, before school recommenced that year, my parents packed me off to a boys’ camp, under canvas, on the shores of Lake Munmorah on the central coast of NSW. The ten-day camp was ofcourse religious, run by the Scripture Union. Six boys were allocated to each tent, supervised by an adult camp counsellor. The counsellor in my tent was an amiable young man, a civil engineer, in his mid-twenties. ‘Call me Tom,’ he’d told us when we first met him. I didn’t find Tom at all intimidating, nor was he especially handsome. He was just an ordinary sort of guy who played rugby for a church team in Brisbane. But, on the first night in our tent, something completely un expected happened.

  We boys were a little shy and already homesick, and sleeping in a tent was a new and strange experience for most of us. As instructed, we had changed into our pyjamas ready for bed when Tom suddenly made an announcement. He told us that he had a rash in his groin – he called it ‘dhobi itch’. He said his doctor had given him ointment to apply every night. He explained that he had to wait before getting into bed until the ointment had soaked in well. Then, while we looked on amazed, Tom completely undressed and for the first time performed what was to become a nightly ritual. He was a well-built and hairy man, with muscular thighs from playing rugby. There was substantial surface area to cover, and Tom took great pains to rub that ointment in well. Not an inch of his groin was overlooked. When the ointment rubbing was at last done to his satisfaction, Tom sat himself down on the edge of his camp stretcher and read the Bible, his legs spread wide and his genitals dangling for all to see. Wide-eyed on the stretcher opposite, I had a ring-side view of this amazing display of immodesty. The flickering light of the hurricane lantern enhanced the scene with Tom’s giant shadow cast above on the tent roof.

  On the first night, as this performance was occurring, we boys grinned nervously and rolled our eyes. There were even a few poorly suppressed titters. I had never seen a completely naked man before, nor had I ever seen an adult man’s genitals. Now, confronted by the real things a metre away – and they seemed so enormous – I becamehot, flustered, and strangely disturbed. But, at the same time, I found myself consumed with intense curiosity. My homesickness was completely forgotten.

  Each night from then on, Tom’s naked show was repeated until the moment when he would extinguish the lamp and roll nude into his sleeping bag. Although the novelty soon wore off for the others, I just couldn’t help sneaking longer peeps, and soon I was staring quite brazenly. Tom noticed this. If he looked up from his Bible and caught my eye, he would grin at me or wink. That was all. Perhaps he really was just an innocent Christian man with a rash in his groin, quite unselfconscious about his immodest displays.

  Tom’s nightly performance became the highlight of the camp for me. After I got home, Tom wrote a friendly letter that said I should keep trusting in Jesus, and that he really hoped we would meet again. The words made me feel that he and I shared a special secret, and the image of his hairy thighs, curly pubic hair, long uncircumcised cock and heavy balls hanging free was from then on imprinted on my brain.4 But, I don’t know if what he wrote were true and I was special to him, or whether it was just part of his duties to write afterwards to every boy in his tent.

  After camp, my mother took me to the old Spit Baths to enrol with a swimming coach. My parents thought I ought to learn to swim properly, not just dog paddle, so for the rest of that summer I took lessons from Sam Herford’s wife. I never became much of a swimmer, although I enjoyed it, but until school recommenced, I spent most days at the Baths. There, I had found attractions besides swimming. The manager of the baths, Sam Herford, was coach for a host of good swimmers, including the future Olympic gold medallist, Murray Rose. These gods of the pool had their own club change rooms and showers, but I passed many happy hours watching their lithe bodies tirelessly swimming laps, old Sam shouting orders and insults at them from the deck. I made sure I was nearby as the swimmers hoisted themselves out of the pool at the end of a training session. I would stare at the front of their speedos as avidly and unashamedly as I had watched the ointment drying on Tom’s groin back at camp.

  * * *

  I never noticed girls at the new school. But that year I developed serious crushes on two boys in my class: Terry, the captain of the cricket team – a slight, brown-haired boy with a worried frown that I found endearing – and Tony, the captain of the swimming team – blond, muscular, and smiley, with veiny arms like Caringbah Paul. Both were officially members of our Baptist Sunday School, although it must be admitted that their attendances were very irregular. Still, the fact that they did sometimes show up made them acceptable to my parents as suitable friends for me. I used to pester them with invitations to join my family on Saturday outings. Nothing ever came of these requests until one happy day when I was dreamily wandering around the school playground at lunchtime recess. Suddenly everything went black. I opened my eyes to find myself lying on the ground with a crowd of concerned spectators around and Terry’s much-loved face anxiously hovering over me. I had quite a headache and could feel a large egg-shaped bruise on the side of my forehead. Terry had been batting in a cricket match and I had wandered right into the path of the ball.

  A teacher assessed me and sent me home to rest for a day or two. Although it was hardly his fault, Terry seemed to feel responsible. He visited me at home and told me he and Tony would very much like to come on our next Saturday outing. At last, the long-awaited Saturday arrived and Terry and Tony turned up wearing their best long-suffering smiles; two adults and five children piled into our tiny two-door Standard Mayflower. It was quite a squash, but I didn’t mind, as I was pressed up against the side of the car by Terry’s bony frame. Every now and again I caught a whiff of his body; surely there was a hint of linseed oil mixed in with his own unique boyish aroma. My father motored to a picnic spot beside an oval in French’s Forest. The picnic went well; my mother always put on a good spread and the boys certainly did it justice. Afternoon tea done, I wandered around the oval with the two boys, one each side, prattling away as I tended to do when nervous. They listened patiently, grunting the occasional response, and even allowed me to drape my arms around their necks as we walked. Back at Seaforth, I reluctantly farewelled them. For a day or two I was supremely happy. At some deep level, however, I knew that this was not true friendship. They were two decent boys who were just being nice to me and indulging my hero worship but they never accepted any more of my invitations to a Bradford family picnic. I’m glad I had the good sense not to push them further. One perfect afternoon was almost enough.

  That year my father had set a goal for me; it was a daunting one, but one I wanted to accomplish just to please him. He had suggested I should read right through the New Testament, the King James’ version (the only one my father accepted), over the course of twelve months. In late 1952, I had reached the first chapter of Paul’s epistle to the Romans. At 6am one morning, on my own in my bedroom, I read for the first time:

  27. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.

  28. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient …

  32. Who knowing the judgement of God that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

/>   The text seemed to leap out of the page and hit me as hard as the cricket ball. I had suspected that developing crushes on other boys, having no interest in girls, and finding the bulges in men’s pants fascinating was more than a little unusual. My odd interests had puzzled me, but until that morning they had never been a serious worry. But, for a boy just turned eleven to see, written plainly in the Bible, that in God’s eyes he was worthy of death came as a mighty shock. For days I sleepwalked through my normal routine, withdrawn and preoccupied. I didn’t know where my same-sex attraction could have come from. In my wide, extended family, as far as I knew, I was the only one. I’d never set out to be like this; I didn’t understand it at all. The worst of the matter was that there was not a single human being I felt I could safely talk to about it. I decided I would have to depend on Jesus.

  And so the struggle began. I determined to fight this ‘burning lust’ by enlisting God’s help. I increased time spent in daily Bible reading. Morning and night I prayed earnestly for deliverance from sinful thoughts and desires. I stopped going swimming at the Spit Baths after school. I even stopped taking the latest editions of Popular Mechanics home on loan from the public library. Few of the articles in the magazine ever interested me, but I had always looked for theTell Me I’m OkayCharles Atlas advertisements in the back: ‘Give me fifteen minutes a day, and I’ll give you a new body,’ they said. I had not been tempted to send off for the fifteen minute-a-day course, but the pictures of muscular Mr Universe in his brief, leopard-skin swim shorts never failed to grab my interest.

  For a time I seemed to be having some success. But then in 1954 came puberty. I developed acne spots, hair under the arms, hair on my upper lip, and hair on my legs, as well as sprouting around my groin. I felt like I was starting to rival Tom from summer camp, and it all seemed to happen overnight. At any time, an embarrassing erection would occur. I no longer had control over my own body. Nights were the worst; I couldn’t get comfortable in bed. My penis seemed to have taken on a life of its own. And the ‘burning lust’ returned with renewed vigour. I found myself involuntarily ‘checking out’ my classmates, the more senior boys at school, even some of the younger teachers. Crotch-watching was back with a vengeance.

  When I was thirteen, other boys at school told me their fathers had given them a ‘sex education’ talk. I looked forward in hope, and some trepidation, for a summons from my father. It never came. Dad was far too shy to broach the subject of sex with anyone. But, my mother was made of sterner stuff. One afternoon after school she subjected me to a talk, quite literally about the ‘birds and the bees’. Both of us were embarrassed and her talk was unilluminating and obtuse. I was more confused than ever. To my mind there was little similarity between the stamen of a plant, which my mother seemed focussed on, and a teenage boy’s troublesome penis. However, she did hand me two small booklets for boys on the subject of sex: The Doctor Says and Purity and Impurity – a Booklet for Lads.

  I hoped I might read something more helpful in these booklets than my mother’s garbled account had been, but I was doomed to disappointment. Both booklets were written by doctors, but both had been published in the nineteen-thirties and were hardly up-to-date.The message in both booklets was the same: DON’T give in to the vice of ‘self-abuse’, and DON’T have ‘sexual relations’ until you are married. Both books gave practical hints for ‘purity’:

  Keep your mind occupied with ‘other things’.

  Exercise every day.

  Lie on your side at night – never on your back.

  Start the day with a cold shower.

  Avoid alcohol.

  Avoid dancing.

  Don’t mix with girls outside your ‘social station’.

  Aim to marry young.

  My own particular problem – ‘men burning in their lust one toward another’ – didn’t rate a mention at all. It didn’t rate a mention at church either in those days. There was plenty of preaching on Sundays against ‘the lusts of the flesh’, but these were never spelled out. Sex was only ever mentioned in the broadest of generalities, and homosexuality was the sin that Christians literally didn’t talk about because it was just too terrible.

  Indirectly, I did learn something from the booklets. I learned about masturbation. Up to that time, I was unacquainted with the ‘evil art of self-abuse’. It had not been described, nor properly defined in the booklets, although Purity and Impurity went so far as to say: ‘Self-abuse is the practice by which “the seed” is made to flow from the body … many lads learn it at school from their older companions.’

  My school was obviously deficient in ‘older companions’ who taught younger lads this ‘vice’, but presumably it wasn’t all that difficult to perform. After a little nightly experimentation, I soon found how it was done. It was a relief to discover it was exactly what my unmanageable penis had been demanding for all those uncomfortable months. And, I was amazed how good it felt. Onething was sure – once you’d ‘given in to it’, sleep was much easier to achieve.

  Gradually, I learned to live with the knowledge that my ‘unnatural’ desires made me an outcast in the eyes of God, the church and most other men. But, with no help coming from heaven above despite my earnest prayers, I decided I couldn’t be at fault having these feelings. As long as I kept quiet about them and avoided ‘working that which is unseemly with other men’ (or boys), I felt I should be okay. I resumed my borrowing of Popular Mechanics and my study of Charles Atlas’s perfect body in the privacy of my bedroom – until the day I unexpectedly found something much better.

  Picture the interior of a suburban newsagency at Seaforth. It’s after school and the evening papers have just been delivered. There are the usual three or four people browsing a magazine stand. Near them loiters a boy, maybe fourteen. Under his arm, he carries a dozen eggs in a carton from the grocer’s shop next door. Something has caught his attention. Shiftily, he sidles up, and seizes his objective. In a hurry, he makes his way to the cash register, collecting a copy of the evening paper in passing. Unsmiling and unhelpful as always, the newsagent rings up the cost of the newspaper on the till, but can’t immediately find the price for the other item. Impatient customers line up while the newsagent dithers. Meanwhile, the offending article lies in plain view. It’s a pocket-sized magazine called MAN-ifique! with a black and white photo of a naked youth in a brief posing pouch on the cover. The frightened boy waiting at the till feels his cheeks blushing crimson. He is sure ten pairs of eyes behind him are boring into the back of his head. At last, the newsagent grunts out the price. The boy throws down the money, grabs the magazine, conceals it inside the newspaper, and dashes out. Behind him, an egg plops onto the tiled floor, but the youth doesn’t even pause.

  For a brief period in the nineteen fifties, the strict Australian censorship laws of the time overlooked imported male physiquemagazines. The magazines were mostly from England, although a few titles from the USA were also available – the latter in full colour. The titles were varied: FORM-osus, Adonis, Male Model Monthly, Physique Pictorial, Today’s Man to name a few. They purported either to promote fitness and health, to encourage male modelling, or to aspire to classical art, but there was little substance to these claims. On the cover of my first purchase MAN-ifique!:

  Featuring the Best of Youth. Wonder-Full Physiques and Personalities!

  And inside, a caption under each model. Two quotes will paint the picture:

  RICKY: lithe and handsome, a typical London-born lad, who combines all the best Anglo-Saxon qualities with the charm and fire of Latin blood. Aged 21; 5ft 10 inches; 12 ½ stone. A ‘natural’ physique of near-ideal symmetry and proportion.

  GLENN: 18 yrs.; 120 pounds, is a muscular symphony of eye-catching proportions!

  By today’s standards, the images were innocent enough – strapping men in brief swimming trunks or posing pouches. But, they were homoerotic and meant to be so. For a teenager whose life was far more restricted than most boys my age, to have such publications i
n my possession was dangerous in the extreme, but I still found them irresistible. I never ventured back into our local newsagency, but at the end of the year, I went to work in my father’s pharmacy at Wynyard Station for pocket money over the holidays. I ran messages all over town, unpacked boxes, served on the counter in peak periods, and did all the odd jobs. I soon found there was a wide selection of physique magazines in newsagencies on all the city undergroundstations. Over the summer I bought several. I would take them home, hide them under my mattress and after the household had gone to sleep, study them under the bed clothes with my pocket torch. I never kept them for long. I was terrified my mother or father would find them; it would have been useless trying to claim the magazines were to help me in my quest for health and fitness. My parents were innocent, but not that innocent! So, after a day or two, and in a frenzy of guilt, I always destroyed the offending items.

  Guilt was to plague me, on and off, all my teenage years and well into my early twenties. I felt guilty about masturbating, I felt guilty at checking men out, and I felt guilty about my frequent lapses into buying dirty magazines. Sometimes, with great willpower, I would manage not to masturbate for periods as long as three weeks, but I always relapsed. I had read in the Bible that God would never allow you to endure temptations that you couldn’t overcome if you asked His help. I could not understand why He never helped me, despite my repeated asking.

  In July 1955 I was due to be baptised. I thought this might be the big breakthrough. If I had enough faith, it might be the occasion that finally rid me of my ‘burning lust’ for other men. According to the gospels, the baptism of Jesus took place in the River Jordan. Most Baptist churches, not being blessed with a nearby river, have to provide a large bath – called a baptistery – down the front, where the altar would be in less fundamentalist denominations. Baptisteries take some time to fill and the water is unavoidably cold. My baptism was scheduled for the depths of winter. I had purposely chosen this unpopular time for the rite; I thought this extra self-sacrifice might demonstrate to God that I was genuine about wanting to be saved from my homosexuality.