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.

Old School Cruising Cred

With this whole Senator Craig bathroom-cruising scandal, I thought I'd talk about my personal experience with pre-online cruising. I was never into bathroom cruising even though I loved to read trashy bathroom walls. I don't think I ever called any of the numbers posted there either. However, when I first went away to college, I got a lesson in "cruising the park" from one of the first gay friends I'd made on campus. He didn't have a car, so we would occasionally cruise together for some awkward moments.

The park was kind of a long rambling riverside affair in several sections. The parts closest to downtown were less active for cruising even though they were much closer to the town's one gay bar. The middle section was a good place to go if you met up with someone and need a little more privacy to talk or whatever. The transition between the middle and end section was a significant side street, a church and the odd fact that the street jogged over a bit, so you had to swerve a bit at the stop sign to continue gaily forward. The end section included a rest room that was supposed to be cruisy, but frankly, I never saw it, at least not at night. That end section had 3 smallish parking areas. The first two areas were suitable for 3 or 4 cars and the one closest to the rest room could have parked 10 cars. With this configuration, you could have 3 or 4 cars backed in so that potential hunters could just pull right in, roll down the windows and see what was what.

This park ended near the dam for the river, however, if you drove around to the lake side of the dam, there was another park that was less cruisy and more isolated. So if you were particularly bored, horny or desperate, you could leave the gay bar after striking out there, hit all the sections of the riverside park and then hit the lakeside park. If you don't find anything by the end of that route, you could turn around and backtrack. After all, you've wasted 30 minutes getting to the lakeside, the scene could have completely changed at the riverside or the bar by the time you get back. At least, that's what you told yourself on the slow nights.

From about age 19 to about 22, most of my sexual experience came from cruising this set of parks. While a lot of it has gotten blurry over the last 20 years, I have some distinct memories and milestones from my experiences there.
1. I remember fucking a guy about a my age at the lakeside park, probably without a condom and maybe even without lube. I remember him telling me he was a virgin, but he was quite into it when I bent him over his trunk.

2. I remember going somewhere with a guy from the base and fooling around. He was going to fuck me, but not having much luck. I distinctly remember him ordering me to "stand and deliver." I don't recall that being any more successful than his other attempts, but the spoken line was quite memorable for me.

3. I remember hooking up with an older chub who turned out to be my first gay mentor. He worked some government job involving psychological profiles. I remember him describing his own psych profile as "grossly normal." This was in the very early days of AIDS and the term "safe sex" was just entering the lexicon, but I remember he played safe every time we were together. Mostly, he was into mutual masturbation. He used lotion and I was entirely too sensitive for that. He had a lot of gay literature and I don't mean just porno magazines, although he had that too. We talked a lot and I learned a great deal of useful common sense stuff from him, but I never saw him outside the park or his mobile home.

4. I remember going home with this handsome blond gentleman who turned out to have a big dick and wanted to fuck me. Until this time, I really hadn't been fucked much or enjoyed the experiences I'd had. He was experienced enough to know how to deal with that. I remember he had some good lube and that was really my first exposure to that. He also recommended a position I had never tried before. I think that position is most commonly called the "cowboy" although "sit on it" seems to be the way to communicate that to your partner. His reasoning was that it allowed me, the bottom, to control how much and how fast I took. It worked! While I certainly recall a feeling of fullness from his big dick, there was also a significant amount of pleasure to be had. It wasn't at all like previous times, where I mostly endured what was being done to me. This didn't turn me into a big ol' bottom, but it did broaden my horizons a bit as well as ease my apprehensions about getting fucked.

My biggest scare happened at this park during this time. It's the closest I've ever come to being gay-bashed. I would say that I was assaulted, but battery is questionable. I remember being backed into one of the smaller parking lots at the end of the riverside park with another friend as we sometimes did. There was sort of an unwritten rule at the park about the number of people in a vehicle. If there was one person, it was considered safe to pull up and try to chat. If there were 2 people, it was considered a bit risky, but sometimes worth trying, especially if the vehicle was familiar. If there were more than 2 people though, it was safe to consider them gay bashers. I remember a car pulled up to chat with us and there were 2 people in the front and they both got out. One came to my side of the car and one came to my friend's side of the car. The conversation seemed normal for a minute or so and then suddenly one of them takes a swing at me and knocks off my glasses. Suddenly in "fight or flight" mode, I turned the key in the ignition and got the heck out of there. I know we were completely out of the park before either of us stopped shaking enough to think about looking for my glasses. This didn't really scare us off, but it did make us more careful or at least think we were being more careful.

Despite spending almost all my free time and late nights cruising, I graduated with better than a 3.0. I moved out of this town within a year of finishing college. I did move to a slightly bigger town, but that's a story for another day.