Cruising the park until boyfriend #1

After I graduated college, my first job moved me a few hundred miles to a little bit larger city. In fact, this was the first city I'd lived that was large enough to have suburbs. While mostly known for being home to a major university, few people realize there were 3 other colleges there. The cruisiest park basically connected the university to the community college. I ended up in an apartment by one of the other colleges. When I moved there, the city only had one gay bar and it was a private club where you had to give your name and some other personal details to the rather creepy owner to get in. The bar was out of the way, so I mostly cruised the park for the first year or so.

Of course, I started learning who a few of the regulars were in the park and how to tell if the park rangers were out. Because this park was more densely forested and had a really convoluted layout, I recall being more comfortable getting out of the car here, whether it was to get frisky or just to get comfortable. The park itself was another riverside affair and there was a second river that branched out from one place in the park. The local guys called that section "the mouth" as in the mouth of the new river. You might get a guy asking you to meet him "down at the mouth" which was a parking and picnic area a little ways off the main path through the park. There were at least 3 other cruisey sections of the park, all with colorful names, but one was usually more of a heterosexual "make out point" than the others.

I remember getting fucked in the woods by this guy who had more cock than personality.

I remember getting pick pocketed by a very well-hung black hustler who could get cash out of my wallet while sloppily sucking my dick.

I remember trying to 69 in the backseat of an Olds 98 and having to be a bit of a contortionist to make it work.

I remember this cute chubby Mexican pre-med student who drove a Ford Fiesta that I would take back to my apartment. He always wanted to shower first as foreplay. We played several times over a 2 year period, but we only ever met at the park. He was one of the first guys I remember as being a good kisser to the point of making kissing more important to me.

I remember this slightly flamboyant Texas gentleman who had decided he needed a memorable telephone number. Several of the suburbs had their own telephone prefix, so he didn't have much control over the first 3 digits, but he made the last four digits spell out "4FUN" so all you had to remember was his suburb's prefix 4FUN. He found me and chatted me up on Bear411 a couple of years ago. He still has that phone number, although the area code has changed at least once over the years.

I remember meeting another older gentleman outside the park and then later the same day inside the park who would become another mentor rather than a fuck buddy. He took me into his home and showed me Torch Song Trilogy for the first time and told tales of going to the leather bar in the big city. He set me straight on a few of the interesting regulars in the park. He always had a thing for the "beautiful people," but I don't think he was ever considered one of the "B.P." as he put it. His family was wealthy in a locally-owned business sort of way and he had inherited some of that. He traveled frequently and once offered to take me sometime, but that never happened. I heard from some mutual acquaintances that he died a few years ago, traveling alone outside the US.

You know the expression, "I wouldn't kick him out of bed"? It's very rare, for me at least, to terminate a sexual encounter once it has begun, but I remember taking one guy home and doing just that. He was terrible in bed from the beginning. I don't recall what completely set me off but I suspect he was rather toothy. I remember getting out of bed, getting dressed and telling him to get dressed before escorting him out the door. I probably headed right back to the park after he was gone.

After I was living there a year, someone decided to open a second gay bar in a more obvious location. I started going there a little more often, mainly with whatever gay friends I had made outside the bar and the park. One night, a short stocky bearish guy decided he was interested in me. I had only rarely gotten any attention at any bar, so I was quite flattered. I remember being somewhat embarrassed by our public displays of affection at the bar, but I didn't let that stop me. He was 17 years older than me and he became my first boyfriend. He had just gotten out of a 20+ year relationship where the other guy dumped him for a rough young thing. I always had the vaguest sense that I was caught in a "two can play at this game" situation. Evidently, he and his ex were strictly oral all those years while he and I moved directly to anal sex. After we'd been together for a few months, he took me to meet some of his friends at a Christmas party. He decided his friends needed to know the differences between me and the ex, other than the obvious, and started this silly hinting like "we're pregnant" or "we're knocked up" or something like that. It was lame and only got a chuckle or two out of the gang. I also learned several other things at this party. I had my first exposure to chubs and chasers hearing how one couple met that really embodied the "mirth and girth" concept. The hosts were also the first long-term live-in threesome I'd met. They also left me the impression that they didn't all 3 sleep together regularly, most often it was one-on-one in whatever combination worked that day. Unfortunately, my first relationship was very short-lived. When I went home for Christmas, I hooked up with an old buddy along the way. My boyfriend and I had been talking about monogamy as something we both desired, so I was kind of surprised that I jumped at the first opportunity to cheat on him. When I got back, the boyfriend just kind of disappeared. I don't remember if we talked about it, but it just kind of ended abruptly. I was not particularly heartbroken; I always knew it wasn't going anywhere. Even though I lived in this city for 4 or 5 more years, I never saw him out again and I didn't have any contact with him for about 10 or 12 years. He found me on one of the bear sites about 5 years ago and let me know just a few more details: he had made up with his ex and stayed with him until his passing.