Please note that this post contains stuff about sex. If you don’t want to know then, please, don’t read!

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There are moments in your life (it can’t just be me, so I am assuming that everyone is the same) that are life changing.  They are pivotal points, determining the path which you take.  Sometimes you realise they are life changing at the time, others seemingly unimportant later turn out to be life changing.

I’ve had a few of these, as everyone must have.

There was the time, at 14, I was sent to Boys Brigade camp on the island of Guernsey.  I still don’t know why my parents thought this would be a good idea.  Whilst I was away, they moved house.  In fact, they moved area which also meant me moving school.  For me, that was significant because I had been bullied and had found a way of coping with that which, although the wrong way, was a way – and not the one my father had suggested.

So the age of 14 was a pivotal time.  But back to the Boys Brigade camp.  A friend of theirs was something to do with the Boys Brigade.  Maybe they thought it would ‘make a man of me'; maybe they had been convinced by this friend that it would be fun for me.

I learnt three things at this camp.

I learnt that, all told, I was fairly law-abiding.  Not at that camp – but ever afterwards.  Some of the boys (and I do not remember any names nor even faces) taught me how to shoplift.  We shoplifted plastic animals.  Probably they cost a couple of pennies.  But it wasn’t what they cost, merely the fact that we had stolen them.  I have never, ever done that since and now, I have such a strong sense of what is right that, like the other day, when the shopkeeper gave me change from a €50 note, when I had only proffered a €20 note, I immediately told them that they had made a mistake.

OK, that was one ‘good thing’ to come from it.

Then there was the time, on some garden wall, just down from the camp, when some boys thought it would be fun to pull the wings off bees to ‘see what happened’.  Now, I’m no animal rights fanatic.  I eat meat (in fact, I LOVE meat), I like leather and fur and I’m not about to stop any of that stuff but, apart from those animals that we use for those purposes, I won’t go round harming any other living being, if I can help it – certainly not with purpose unless it’s mosquitoes, or something else that causes me some ‘danger’.

So, perhaps, another good thing,

But I’m not sure those things can be called truly life changing.

However, there was one other ‘thing’ that, in my opinion was absolutely life changing.

I’m not really sure how it happened but we were in tents that, probably, held 8 or 10 boys.  For some reason I went, or was called, into another tent.  This was, probably, early evening.  In this tent there were a number of kids of my age or thereabouts and an older kid.  I guess this ‘kid’ was 16 or 18 or so.  He was showing the other kids how to have a wank.  And he was encouraging at least one of the other kids to touch his penis or give him a wank or something.

I was both fascinated and horrified.  Fascinated because it was another guy’s penis.  This was something that I had dreamt about.  OK, so the guy was fat (and, maybe ugly) – but I just couldn’t take my eyes off his penis.  I wanted to hold it; to work it.  And I was scared because I knew that ‘wasn’t right’ – i.e. I was aware that being a homosexual was a bad thing – we had people on the television and my parents ensured that we understood how bad it was.  There was also the press where homosexual people were in the news mainly for being put in prison.

The trouble was that I knew I had more than just a fascination with other guy’s penises.  This meant that (although I don’t remember clearly) I had to get out of there FAST.  After all, if he had asked me to hold it, I’m sure it would have been more than obvious that I actually quite liked what I would have been doing!

But, then, all I could think about until I got home was the practising of what I had seen and heard described.  The fantasy of that camp and the things I had made up in my head as to what ‘could” have happened kept me going for a long time.

But that camp (and, in particular, the last life-changing event) also had other far-reaching effects which I can’t go into; other life changing pivotal events that will remain secret – at least for now.  And, for those reasons, although it was life changing, it was also distressing and hurtful and I wonder (still) what made my parents think that it was a good idea to send me there.

Of the three, the last one I knew to be life-changing there and then.  I knew, from that moment, that my life would never be the same; my thoughts could never be the same.

I think (I’m pretty sure) this is the first time that I’ve ever actually ‘told’ anyone about this camp.  So, if you’ve got to the end, then you are one of the few who know.  But don’t get to thinking that I need concern or it is a problem.  Without that last event I would, almost certainly, not be where I am now and I would not change that for anything; nor, in fact, most of my life afterwards.  If it hadn’t been that then there would have been another situation or occasion or event – but, that it happened then, at that time, at the time that my parents were taking me away from one place I hated to another place to start afresh, armed with the new knowledge, these new certainties – made the next few years important years of discovery and, eventually, led to me being with M – which led to V – which led to F.

And, that, my friends, puts a smile on my face.