Gay experiences as a kid

Dad died when I was six.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer adults have high rates of adverse childhood experiences

The rabbi who lived in the apartment below took over for him. My brother was four. We would secretly meet in the woods, hug each other and cry. I learned to hate all religion and still do. Mom was a dark-haired, curvaceous looker, juicy, and in her prime. She liked sex but decided that all men had to pay for it. The butcher brought steaks; the florist, flowers; the bagel man left fresh hot steaming bagels by our door every morning for months.

Leon, the ice cream man left ice cream. And not to forget Abe, the jeweler, who brought, well, jewels. They all tried to get inside. Some did. When Mom met the man who brought it all, she married him. We lived in Borough Park, in Brooklyn. Until I ran away, I thought everyone in the world kid either Jewish or Italian.

I was intimidated by all the dark, Brooklyn-rough Italian boys in my class. Busing started, a few black kids filtered into school, and I made a new friend, Eric, who took me home to meet his mom in Bedford Stuyvesant, thought to be a dangerous black ghetto. I was the only white person there. Steven was in my history class.

Handsome and fair-skinned, he was a Neapolitan boy with curly blond hair. I sensed something different about him, so I asked him if he would like to come over to do homework together. Yes, he had—his junk was twice the size of mine. Every Friday afternoon, after class, Steven brought over dark, tough-guy Brooklyn-Italian, thirteen-year-old boys, to fellate.

They came sometimes two or three times. Steven sometimes came experience alone. He gay teased and tormented me. I was under his thumb, scared, ashamed, and aroused. InI turned thirteen. I was a wild child, filled with a bursting curiosity about the world out there I wanted to explore.