Dabbling

In the late 1960’s, I was employed as an Office Boy in a shipyard, waiting to start an engineering apprenticeship. I had fashionable long hair and was small and slight. My job involved delivering internal mail and safety boots to the various engineering shops. In one of the shops, the Top Plater’s Shed, I was warned to ‘watch out’ for the foreman and the chargehand in the Bottom Plater’s Shed. I had no idea what was meant by the warning , possibly given just to wind up a naïve young boy and it succeeded! I always felt anxious whenever there was anything to be delivered there, which wasn’t helped by the wolf-whistles from the men working in the shed. The first few times I went there, various men would make as if they were going to catch me and I would scuttle for the door to hoots of laughter. Then, one day, the foreman, Mr Whitehead, or Whitie, got to the door before me. As I tried to squeeze past him, he put his hand between my legs and grabbed my cock and balls. I was so shocked that I just froze. Whitie twisted aside to show the other men that he had held me and I managed to slip out of the door with the shouts and laughter ringing in my ears. Nowadays, that sort of thing wouldn’t be acceptable, but more than 50 years ago, in a harsh environment such as a shipyard, it was just looked on as horseplay. It became a sort of game after that. I was allowed to deliver the mail but it was a race for me to try and get out of the door before Whitie caught me, literally by the bollocks! I even came to enjoy the challenge and didn’t mind when I did get caught, it was just a bit of horseplay. It never crossed my mind that I might be queer – the term ‘gay’ hadn’t been coined then – because I used to get sexually aroused looking at the masses of nude pin-up pictures plastered all over the walls of the different works offices and was always looking out for a girlfriend.
Maybe the ‘abuse’ I received affected my judgement a few years later when I allowed myself to be taken advantage of by a man in a pub. I had been out drinking on my own, celebrating the fact I could legally drink and overdoing it! Near the end of the night, I went to the toilet. A man came in and stood next to me, blatantly looking at my penis as I pissed. When I looked at him, he just smirked and said, “very nice. Meet me outside.” I blame it on the drink as I just agreed. After I finished, I was standing waiting and he said, “just go out and wait at the front door.” It didn’t occur to me to argue or disobey so I went out and waited. After a few minutes the man came out and said, “let’s go over there,” and led me towards a piece of unlighted waste ground. It was dark, but the front of the pub was lit up and people could be seen leaving it. He told me to lie down and he lay alongside me. Then he told me to undo my trousers, and I just did as I was told without question. I lifted my hips as he pulled my trousers and underpants down to my knees. After fondling my cock and balls, he leaned over and began to suck me off. Still under the influence of the alcohol, I lay and let him suck me. I admit it now, I was enjoying it, and why not? The act of fellatio feels the same whether a man or a woman performs it, although I can still remember the feel of his stubble on my belly and balls! Not that it’s relevant, but I didn’t get worked up enough to cum and the man – I never knew his name and he didn’t bother asking mine – just stood up and said, “mind, don’t speak to me in the pub, this was just a one-off. Stay there for a few minutes before you go home.” Then he walked off into the darkness while I lay there with my trousers around my knees, looking at my erect cock silhouetted against the pub lights. Eventually, I pulled myself together, stood up, pulled up my pants and made my unsteady way home. I felt remorse and shame the next day and vowed never to go to that pub again. I also wondered over the next few weeks whether I was homosexual, but I had such strong positive reactions to the nude pin-ups at work, that I put it out of my mind and soon had a steady girlfriend. I have now celebrated my Golden Wedding, I have children and grandchildren and I can truthfully say I’ve never felt any sexual attraction to another man, so I can look back and see that it was just an episode from an earlier part of my life, which happened and then I moved on.
I guess you can just 'dabble' without commitment!