I don’t want to get too deeply into the details, but I did some dangerous and stupid stuff. The first time, I was so fed up with my inability to have sex in college that I hired a male escort. He came to my house, he generally worked for homosexual men so it didn’t really bother him that much. But it was hardly passionate and made me feel disgusting. He didn’t want me. He wanted money. So yeah, that’s how I lost my virginity. At least it gave me some pent up aggression to release on the unsuspecting people at work.
Another time I went to a public park and walked into a small wooded area and disrobed. I watched people run and a group of women in an outdoor yoga class while I masturbated and felt sick to my stomach. I don’t even know why I did that, it just made me feel like I belonged in the world. But the only way to do that was to be in a place where no one could see me.
I could go on I suppose, and describe some other actions from my early to mid-twenties that would make me shudder. But I think the point is made. I had successfully built my emotional wall, but there was a weakness in it, and I wasn’t sure how to shore it up.
I hit my lowest point with respect to my loss of sexual control and utter alienation from the world just two weeks before my experience dressing down Dan to the delight of my co-workers. I found a guy on craigslist who said he wanted a relationship with a “shemale.” He had a photo posted. Not great, but he seemed at least very open about it. I looked at his post for days, waiting to see if it disappeared. I wasn’t particularly attracted to him and I knew that going to meet anyone would make me vulnerable. But I was nearing the fever pitch of my sexual frustration. One night, after work, I turned on my computer and, after telling myself I wouldn’t do it for two hours, I’d agreed to meet him in at a bar located in the suburbs.
It was some chain place you’ve probably heard of. I walked in and saw him standing at the bar. He was about 20 years older and 50 pounds heavier than his picture. He had big, wrought iron arms. Suddenly, I felt absolutely certain that he was going to kill me. It was just instinct, but to this day I believe it was correct. What the hell was I thinking? Had I lost all sense? The danger I had just placed myself, as well as the overall pathetic nature of my mental state was almost overwhelming. I needed to get away from everything.
I hadn’t sent him a picture so I turned and ran out of the place. I sprinted across the parking lot and ran into the first place I found. A dirty old pet shop. The animals looked bedraggled and they screeched at me the instant I walked inside. I didn’t see an attendant. Something made me think the guy from the bar was still behind me, so I was glad I was off the street, but I wanted more cover. I ran into a door in the back of the place, thinking it was a store room. Instead, I found myself in a unisex bathroom. It was much cleaner than the rest of the place and I sprinted into the middle stall.
I sat down on the seat and put my hands in my head and just sort of rocked back and forth. This was my life? I’d left my parents’ home when I was 18 full of optimism and a healthy sexual appetite. Now I was trying to hook up with craigslist creepers and crying in strange pet store bathrooms. I don’t know how long I sat in the bathroom, it was longer than I think you’d believe. Near the end of my time there, I knocked my head three times on the wall of the stall. Then I paused for a few moments and hit my head harder one last time.
I didn’t intend anything by that, honestly. I was just trying to get myself together, trying to prevent myself from crying. But, apparently, I had stumbled onto something. I don’t know if someone was in the stall next to me during my entire breakdown or if a person had arrived while I was crying. But the fact remains that someone was there. And I had signaled them.
I leaned away from the stall wall just at the same time as a veiny cock poked through a hole located at about the same level as my breasts! I jumped in the seat but was too shocked to make a sound. I hadn’t even noticed the hole there. It looked like it was carved with a pencil or something and the rough edges were covered in duct tape. The stall wall itself was very thin, not the inch thick piece of aluminum or plastic usually found, but like a thin sheet of steel. And there was a cock sticking through it! I could hear breathing. For a moment I just stared at the thing. Then I realized what was happening. I quickly stood up, bumping the cock as I did so. I heard a man groan. I ignored him and quickly opened the door. I ran out of the pet store, confused and vowing never to return.
I didn’t even think about the guy in the bar anymore. I stumbled, dazed, out to my car and started to drive. When I got home that night, I tried not to think about anything that had happened that day. I told myself it was a close call with some real danger and that I could put it in my past, a reminder on how important it was to never let my guard down in any way. But, every spare thought seemed to go back to that strange bathroom stall in the pet store. It became almost an obsession. I just couldn’t stop considering the various angles of that place, the strange circumstances and… the opportunity. I of course knew what a glory hole was, but I’d never really thought about one before. If that place was what it seemed to be, wasn’t it the sort of release I had been searching for? A place where I could indulge my sexual desires while being completely invulnerable? I could go there and no one would know who I was or what I looked like. I would still be me, but no one would have to know about it. Someone would want me, even if they didn’t see the whole picture. And there was no pressure to reveal the full picture. Try as I might, I couldn’t ignore the hold that place had one me.
This back and forth went on in my mind for the next two weeks. But finally, the relentless drumming of my libido overcame my defenses once more and I was going back. I didn’t know if what I’d experienced was an aberration of if that pet shop was some sort of… hangout. But I had to find. (I would later look it up on the internet and confirm it was a well-known location for trysts, apparently it was the owner’s actual purpose in opening the shop). Regardless, the interaction with Dan pushed me over the edge. Now it wasn’t just my sexual anxiety, which, albeit, was intense. It was also the fact that every time I had to push the world away, it took an immense emotional toll on me. Despite what my co-workers might think, I did not like being an insufferable asshole. It ate away at me, it made me feel even less human. I couldn’t stand the tension anymore; I needed some sort of release.