by Nick Molloy
The only ‘sport’ I was allowed to play/compete in was chess. Personally, I view chess as a game not a sport. My definition of sport states that athletic endeavour must be involved to classify it as a sport. This rules out activities such as golf, snooker, and darts. They are classified as games. Sports such as cricket have always been a bit borderline for me as to whether they should be classified as a game or a sport. Anyway, in my final year at primary school I won the annual chess competition without knowing all the rules of the game.
As all my other activities were eroded I joined the local chess club, where I temporarily found some solace. I was never a great player, I just saw it as a bit of fun. However, chess taught me a lot, particularly in defeat. One error can undermine a couple of hours of concentrated good work to the point of collapse. I lost count of the number of times I snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Chess teaches you to lose. What I mean by that is that it teaches you to lose with dignity, but also to take much from the defeat. You are able to go away, play the game over again and analyse where you went wrong. Taken correctly, defeat makes you stronger and more capable the next time. These are very valuable life lessons. Furthermore, in a similar way to boxing, it demands so much control from its protagonists. When you make a bad move, you cannot simply pick up the board and throw the pieces away (or even at your opponent). That would be to concede defeat. Instead, you must coolly regroup yourself mentally and devise a strategy that can counter-act your mistake. This demands a high level of restraint and self-control. When applied to real world situations these are extremely valuable lessons.
When I first joined the club I was the leading junior player and I was soon asked to play for the senior team. By the age of 14, I captained the second senior team and soon formed a third team for my legion of up and coming youngsters, which I also captained. I sometimes used to play up to 8 people at once, but I stress I was not a great player. To the average man in the street, I may seem like a world-beater, but in reality I was just a reasonable club player. I became friendly with a guy called DK (he was called DK because there were four David Evans’ in his class at school and the distinguishing initials stuck). DK was a good player, he went to the Chess Olympics with the Welsh team and is officially ranked as an expert in the game. In the all the games I ever played against him, I have only ever beaten him twice.
Chess club was also a social outlet for me. I was more friendly with men 3, 4 and even 5 times my age than I was with any of my classmates at school. One of them, Terry, used to pick me up and we used to go and play an extra night each week at another club some 15 miles away. However, it seemed to me that my mother also attempted to interfere with my chess. She knew that I was playing for the team and she knew that on match nights I had to be there for certain times. Yet, when I would point this out and state that I would need to eat early it didn’t go down too well.
I never have been a very good cook. In fact, I am appalling to this very day. I was never shown how to, I don’t derive pleasure from it and have no inclination towards it. However, I’ve got to eat. My diet is especially important to me nowadays. Back then it was less so. Yet, I still needed to eat. In the end, I managed to get my mum to tell me how to make rice. On chess nights I used to make myself some boiled rice and eat it on its own. It was very boring, but at least I would arrive to the matches on time !
I continued to play chess until I left for university. It is one of my few pleasant memories from my time in Llantwit Major. Yet, it was only ever going to plug a gap for me. Often after finishing chess, I would like to go for a run. I would pound the streets of Llantwit Major, punching imaginary opponents in my boxing fantasy. After all that mental stimulation, the release of the physical energy was unusually satisfying and it was particularly pleasant on a warm summer evening.
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‘Some of them can even take traffic cones you know’
My location was Bristol. I had just performed at a gay fetish club night called Deviant. I’d secured the gig by walking into a gay club in Bristol and asking if they hired strippers. The reply was negative, but the friendly grey haired gentleman standing at the bar said he was interested in hiring my services for his club night.
Rob is a good guy, I like him. He’s a kindred spirit, a fellow nonconformist who doesn’t sit comfortably in the society we live. Apart from the leather getup he wears, he could easily pass for a cuddly old granddad – someone more akin to a pipe and slippers rather than hard core gay sex club impresario.
Anyway, I had performed at Deviant once before, but a stripper is frankly too tame for this crowd. I had returned at Rob’s bequest. He wanted to hire me as a model, albeit an unusual one. £300 demanded that I was naked, had to be tied up and pretend to be whipped, beaten and stretched in an underground dungeon by vicious skinhead masters, who wore copious amounts of leather. It was actually quite fun and very professional. I was earning over twice the average strip fee and wasn’t mutilating my genitals as I normally would. Instead, I was being photographed by an overwhelmingly friendly, caring bunch of people who kept asking me if the ropes binding my hands were uncomfortable.
Whereas I was being paid to be photographed, there were plenty of others present who were undergoing the same treatment just for the sheer hell of it. Some had all four limbs bound to a cross. Others were tied over a specially constructed bench, being spanked with paddles. Others still were being stretched on a medieval looking rack !
In the corner were the slings. Bald, leather-bound granddads, wearing chaps with their arses hanging out, seemed to abound in this area. Some were in the sling with their feet in stirrups, whilst another leather clad man was thrusting his entire fist deep into the anal cavity of what I can only describe as the victim.
Whilst I was staring in a sort of horrified wonderment, thinking to myself ‘I bet that hurts’, Rob approached and told me of the traffic cones. How far in the traffic cones go, I never actually established.
I slept on Rob’s couch that night as I was bound for Cardiff the next day. Before we could sit down and chat the night away however, Rob had to lock up his ‘slave’. His slave was a young guy barely out of his teens. A regular on club nights, he had to do as Rob told him. In the spare room there was a steel cage about four foot square. The slave spent the night locked up in there.
After securing the subservient deviant member, Rob and I chatted the night away on the ills of conformity. What wonderfully liberal minded people my new profession was introducing me to.
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My torment probably peaked around the age of 14. I’m not sure whether I adapted to my lonely existence, began the development of extensive coping mechanisms, or, if I began to see the light at the end of the tunnel (escape from home). Things began to improve a little. My daily routine, that of going to school, coming home and reflecting whilst out walking Jasper, then generally sulking until crying myself to sleep changed little. However, a couple of minor changes gave me some focus and re-direction. I was able to choose some of my subjects at school and drop some of the ones I didn’t like. A couple of new ones became available that weren’t available before (such as Business Studies and Media Studies). Other subjects actually took on a real and more serious edge. History for example, ceased to be a juvenile pastime where we were required to draw pictures of invasions. It became interpretive and investigative for the first time.
Media Studies was largely viewed as a mickey mouse subject by those that took it and even more so by those that didn’t take it. That is a shame, because it taught me more than other subject during my stint in academia, with history probably coming a close second. Media Studies was taught by a character whom was known to all and sundry as ‘caveman’. This could be ascribed to his scraggly appearance and dodgy beard. He also had a carefree attitude. His real love and primary calling was as an art teacher, media studies was an aside. He would come in, give a lecture and then leave us to our own devices for a month until the next section of the cou
rse was due. Most used the free time as just that. Caveman however, was always available to those that sort his council (me, myself and I). The key thing that media studies and history taught me was to question things. Most people take things at face value. It is a sad indictment on our current society that straight teeth in your mouth are now more important than the words that come out of them. Both subjects emphasized that everything we hear, everything that we are told is probably not as it seems.
My parents were keen for me to do well at school if not at sport. It was probably about the only thing they really encouraged me in. As a result I managed, under the pretence of media studies, to get my parents to change their daily paper from the Daily Mirror to The Independent. The minute I left home it was exchanged for the Daily Express.
After my acceptance slowly and reluctantly began to set in about football (and was still setting in about boxing), I was allowed a cheap set of weights from Argos and began to tentatively weight train (aged 14). My body responded well to my discipline and weight training gave me an individual sporting focus. It was a sort of adaptation to my original goals. Lifting weights in my room was something I could do on my own and nobody took it away from me. Of course that didn’t stop my mum from trying. She complained almost non-stop about my new activity. She would walk into my room and go into the cupboard whilst whining incessantly about the barbell in the way of the door. She would complain constantly about the noise I supposedly made whilst training upstairs. Even training in isolation brought its guilt trip problems !
It wasn’t long before I could clean and jerk (lift a weight above your head as the Olympic lifters do) my own weight. Most grown men struggle with such a feat, yet as a scrawny teenager I was already there. I was one of the smaller boys in my class at school. My new physique became the envy of many and it also began to change people’s perceptions. I hadn’t grown that much particularly, but I have small joints (the shape of a classic body-builder) and the perception was and still is, that I was bigger than I am. I was starting to realize some of my strength potential. All the guys at school began to challenge me to strength contests. I was able to resist all-comers despite being heavily outweighed. Yet despite, the challenges, I was still unable to make close friends. I was still an outcast, albeit one to be respected.
My body began to undergo changes at the usual age. Fine pubic hair began to grow when I was 13, going on 14. At 14 I had my first wet dream. My parents were never the most comfortable talking about the birds and the bees. In fact, they were distinctly uncomfortable. I recall a conversation when I was about 12 or 13. Both of them sat there in the kitchen, my dad leading the conversation with interjections from my mum. I just sat there nodding. No new information was offered that I hadn’t already garnered from the popular media. Certainly, I was poorly prepared for the perils of puberty.
The popular media had taught me the basic principles of sexual intercourse. The man inserts his penis into the woman’s vagina. Beyond that I knew very little. Because I had no friends, I had not benefited from their experiences. That is, either from those with sexual experience, or, from those with more liberated and informative parents.
I hadn’t even conceptualised the reasoning behind erections. My dick was hard about half of my waking existence. If I had been aware of its function, I might have been embarrassed that is was erect so often. However, it was normal to me. Indeed, when I was 18, after going out with my girlfriend for 3 months she commented that she had never actually seen me soft !
My first wet dream was an unusually low-key event, particularly given that I didn’t really understand what had happened. I remember waking up with a huge sticky mess in my underwear and a wet patch in the bed. I guess my coping mechanisms were becoming well established by then. I just calmly went to the bathroom and cleaned myself up.
Repeat occurrences of the incident every few days allayed my initial concerns that something was wrong. Furthermore, I was beginning to remember some of the dreams and they were always pleasant. A couple of times I distinctly remember having that orgasmic feeling whilst in my sleep, brought on by some random sexual encounter played out in my head. I would wake up to the sticky mess, but the pleasant memories made up for it. I didn’t have any material that I could research to find out what was happening to me and I had no friends to consult either. Despite this, the regularity of the occurrence and the obvious changes occurring within my body reassured me that it was just a sign of a new found maturity.
The other obvious change after the onset of wet dreams was my state of arousal. I had always had fantasies since an early age. I distinctly remember when only six years old being ‘turned on’ (in a six year old sort of way) by a girl grabbing my genitalia in the playground and threatening (in a playful way) to pull them off. I have gone to bed at night from an early age and played out fantasy situations of a sexual nature in my mind. Those sexual fantasies merely matured as I got older. They went from a doctors and nurses type scenario to actually wanting to poke and prod with the nether regions. At that age my fantasies were still in their infancy.
After becoming sexually reproductive however, the fantasies took on a new overtone. It became apparent that simply rubbing up and down against the duvet brought a pleasant sensation, one that simply wasn’t that good before.
My first masturbatory experience stuck close to the pleasure-pain principle. It was simultaneously both great and frightening. I knew nothing about masturbation or the techniques (the likes of which had never been mentioned in our household). I just knew that playing with my dick was extremely pleasurable. One night I was lying awake unable to get to sleep; in my head a fantasy situation was being played out with a girl that attended my class at school. I had adopted a method of rubbing my dick between both my hands as if trying to keep it warm. The sensation of pleasure continued to heighten until every muscle and sinew in my body tensed, my dick stiffened and I thought I had just pissed myself. I couldn’t quite believe it, 14 years old and I had just pissed myself ! When I turned on the light I realized that I hadn’t. The liquid that had come forth was not urine, but a white, messy, sticky fluid. I mopped it up with my underwear and putting two and two together realized that the ejaculate bore a close resemblance to the sticky mess I was waking up to every few days in my underwear.
However, I still knew nothing about what was going on in my body. Indeed, I didn’t masturbate again for a good couple of months after the first incident. The second time I was feeling braver and more prepared. Several sheets of Kleenex lay by the bed and the light was on so that I could witness and study the event. After I realized that there was nothing to be scared of and that the experience was wholly pleasurable, I became (and indeed still am) a ‘wankaholic’. Indeed, as you will see one day I became a professional at it.
Yet, I only found out about the internal workings of my body by reading biology books and I only became familiar with the term ‘cumming’ at university when I was 18. My new found friends were somewhat perplexed by my apparent naivety, so much so, they thought I was joking. I let them think I was. Being a virtual social outcast (VSO) had deprived me of some of the very important lessons that kids often learn from their peers. It was certainly a subject my parents did not broach, presumably because they did not feel comfortable doing so.
The subject of girls during my years in Llantwit Major is a very sore point. When I left Little Lever I was a confident out going kid (I had even kissed a girl behind the bike sheds). Since becoming a VSO I had been denuded of my confidence. I lacked completely the social skills required to mingle, fit in and integrate with groups. I had become an isolationist, even though deep down I didn’t want to be. I also used to take things very literally and had an unfortunate habit of repeating something my dad had one said : “there are three types of women – stupid, very stupid and incredibly stupid”. Needless to say this didn’t go down terribly well. How much of this was me reacting to my pain, like a wounded animal, and how much of it was down to Asperger’s type behav
iour, I’m not sure.
The truth is that I wanted to be loved and accepted just like everybody else. However, I wasn’t prepared to compromise who I was just to do that (nothing’s changed). I was not prepared to do, or say things, just so I could fit somebody else’s view of normality. What you see is what you get and if you don’t like it, I guess that’s just tough. People can be cruel, especially children and youngsters. I guess I felt the brunt of that and the resultant herding mentality. I made a conscious decision that I wouldn’t change myself to fit a stereotype or behavioural norm. I began to view my stay in Llantwit as a prison sentence that simply had to be served. As with all life’s journeys however, it is so much harder when you do it alone. I still had Jasper. I felt he was the only one that truly loved me back. He didn’t demand anything of me particularly (just walks and food) and he didn’t continually upset or disappoint me.
There were several girls at school that I had the hots for. Alas, I didn’t know where to start. Firstly, I lacked the confidence or know how, to approach them and chat them up. Secondly, it appeared to me that the school was full of people who exhibited juvenile and moronic behaviour. At the age of 15-16, most of my school colleagues began to drink alcohol socially at a club in the town. I was dragged down to this place once (and once only I might add). With hindsight it was a most amusing scenario. A plethora of 16 year old boys sat around the edges of this club on chairs, unable to order drinks with a complete lack of knowledge of what to do or how to behave. They all (with one exception) put on the bravado that they were in fact ‘manly’ by attending the said establishment and acted as though they were ‘it’. Personally I found the whole scenario very uncomfortable. I don’t and didn’t want to drink alcohol. Neither did I wish to have my eardrums perforated by the music and neither did I want to use a mega-phone just to speak to the person next to me ! I didn’t see the function of being there and when I pointed this out to the two people who had dragged me there, they had no evidence to the contrary. I didn’t go again (in adult life I have also learnt that nightclubs are awful pick-up joints).