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"The best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley." - Robert Burns. I had it all planned and everything was going my way. I had always loved the sea and I decided to make the Navy my career. In my senior year of high school, I was accepted for admission to the U.S. Naval Academy. I had only to maintain my grade point average at the Watkins School and admission to Annapolis was assured. I planned to make a career of the regular Navy, spend 20 years on active duty, and then retire, marry, and raise a large family. I wasn't interested in team sports, but I enjoyed gymnastics very much and was good at it. Not Olympic quality, perhaps, but good. So it was that, on a hot September day, dressed in my tights, I was working out on the parallel bars. I was doing a hand-stand on one bar when my sweaty hands lost their.grip and I slipped. Before I could regain control, I fell, slamming my crotch against the bar and crushing my precious "family jewels" . I couldn't believe what had happened. I fell off the bar onto the gymnasium floor and rolled about holding my sex glands, the core of my manhood and the future of my family, for I am an only child. I had never gotten hit really hard in the groin before and the intensity of the pain was unexpected. I was embarrassed and ashamed to scream like a wounded animal, but the excruciating agony was entirely unanticipated. Nausea overcame me and I vomited in racking spasms. My anguish was not merely physical, though. I was sickened with fear that I would lose my testicles and be, as the popular expression goes, "ruined for life." When the coach reached me from the other end of the gymnasium, I was curled up in a fetal posture and my screams had died down to moans. I felt myself slipping into unconsciousness and wondered if I was dying. I regained consciousness and awareness of unbearable pain momentarily a couple of times in the ambulance. When I finally regained full consciousness, I was in very little pain. My scrotum stung and burned and there was a sick ache in my groins, negligible compared to what I had suffered before. There was no pain at all in my testicles. My relief was short-lived. As my mind cleared, I suddenly realized why there was no pain in my testicles. I HAD NO TESTICLES ! I could have wept. All my plans had just gone down the drain. A doctor came into the room just then and I asked "They're gone, aren't they ?" He nodded. "This ruins everything." I continued. "The Naval Academy will never accept me now. I don't think the Navy commissions eunuchs." I added bitterly. "They won't accept me even as an enlisted man without testicles." The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. I doubt it, though, even though your duties wouldn't require using your sex organs." I sighed. "There goes the rose-covered cottage and the big family, too." The doctor looked sympathetic but only nodded. "Dad will be so disappointed when he learns that he won't have any grandchildren." "Fortunately," said the doctor, nowadays, hormone replacement therapy will make it possible for you to lead a normal sex life except for sterility. You can maintain your masculine physique and strength. Fifty years ago, you'd have become fat and flabby with wide hips and breasts. As far as your career is concerned, have you considered going to sea as a merchant seaman ? The physical requirements are less stringent." I had had no occasion to consider this possibility before, but now I began to. I doubted that they'd admit me to the Merchant Marine Academy, but I could almost undoubtedly go to sea as a common sailor on a merchant vessel. The next day, I was back at school, in the infirmary, resting. My father came down from New Bedford to see me. He was, as I'd expected, greatly saddened that I could never present him with grandchildren, at least of our bloodline. As I pointed out to him, if and when I married, my wife and I could adopt children Curiously, though, now that I was relieved of the responsibility of begetting offspring, the prospect of marriage held much less charm for me than it had .Now, I was planning to join the merchant fleet and see the world and let the future take care of itself, as it tends to do, whatever we may plan. I was quite disenchanted with the making of long-range plans. In fact, now that I wasn't going to attend the Naval Academy, I began to reconsider going to college at all. A merchant seaman doesn't need a college education and would probably fit in with his shipmates better if he didn't have one. I finally decided to finish my studies at Watkins, forego college,or, at any rate, postpone it indefinitely, and ship out as an able-bodied seaman (without semen) at eighteen. And, that was exactly what I did. I was a deck hand at first, scrubbing decks, coiling lines ("ropes" to you land-lubbers), chipping paint, painting......all the usual jobs that nobody else did.Whatever I was given to do, I did to the best of my ability without slacking or loafing. In this way I earned the liking and respect of the bo'sun and my shipmates as a man who pulled his weight. I made no attempt to hide my condition from my shipmates and nobody made any remarks to me about it. It was, after all, nobody's effing business but mine.Nonetheless, I felt different, isolated, cut-off, somehow an outsider. This came from me, not my shipmates who were friendly enough. I had one shipmate, Neil, who seemed very shy and, like me, a loner who didn't quite fit in. He kept to himself much more than I did and actually seemed afraid of human contact. We gravitated together. He seemed to try never to take a shower if there was anyone else in the shower room. But I saw him come out of the shower room a couple of times, enough to show that he wasn't missing anything. We started going ashore together, as we were the youngest men in the crew and neither of us had much interest in visiting brothels. I guess I could have performed in bed, but, somehow, I wasn't very interested. Neil didn't seem to be, either, though I heard it said of him that he masturbated a lot. I never caught him doing it though, and wouldn't have wanted to because it wasn't any of my business. One evening in Bangkok, we went to see a live sex show just for the hell of it. It had something for everybody, straight sex, gay sex, sex with eunuchs, interracial sex, pedophilia, you name it. During the gay sex part of it, Neil got an erection and I suddenly realized why he was so shy and withdrawn. I was not repelledby the discovery that Neil was gay, rather, I felt very sorry and sympathetic toward him. I didn't say anything right away, though. After the show, we both got rather drunk and Neil suggested that, inasmuch as we didn't have to be back aboard until tomorrow morning, we should get a hotel room and get a good night's sleep. I agreed, though I suspected that Neil had something other than sleep in mind. We talked for a couple of hours about our feelings of strangeness and isolation and Neil asked me if I'd ever had sex with a man and I admitted that I'd never had sex with anybody of either sex. Then he asked me in that peculiarly formal way of his "May I presume to offer you some pleasure ?" I thought about it for a moment and came up with a rationalization more ingenious than logical. Sex between to persons of the same sex is homosexual, but eunuchs aren't male any more. Therefore, sex between a man and a eunuch is not homosexual. I told this to Neil and he bursted out laughing and said "You should have been a Jesuit." Nonetheless, we both accepted the rationalization and Neil introduced me first to frottage (aka the collegiate fuck, rub-off- or slick-leg). Somehow, while we were rubbing our bodies together and rubbing our penises against each other's belly it just seemed natural to kiss. We rubbed each other to orgasm, hugging each other tightly. We enjoyed frottage so much that we indulged in it three times that night and never progressed to oral sex until the next time we were ashore, in Hong Kong. I didn't care for the taste of semen and we went back to frottage. Neither of us found anal sex attractive, and so, though we came to be known as "asshole buddies" we confined our activities to frottage and mutual masturbation. Inasmuch as we did not spend our money like typical drunken sailors, both Neil and I accumulated substantial savings. After serving together for six years on the M.V. Suffolk Merchant. we had had enough of the sea and had seen enough of the world. We quit the merchant service and ,pooling our resources, opened a boatyard in Niantic, Connecticut which we have operated ever since. |