Hi, My name is Don and I have the great good fortune to be a friend of Gerren and Stephen.
Let me tell you about myself, I’m 70 years old, retired government science officer, born and bred in Cornwall, just like Gerren and my hobby is History and especially Local history of Cornwall.
I’ve known Gerren since he was born, so that must be nearly thirty-five years, maybe a bit more. His family is one of the oldest in the district and it would be difficult not to know of them.
Like Gerren, and Stephen, I’m gay. I’ve always known I was gay; I am totally gay; never had any other feelings than being gay and never strayed into fish.
I’ve known Stephen almost since he and Gerren met, and they are a great loving couple and much admired by many.
Gerren and Stephen live about a mile from me on the West Penwith coast. I don’t see them too often, but we bump into each other every now and again.
It was Gerren who persuaded me to write about my gay life. There is nothing dirty or salacious about what I’m writing, so you don’t have to search for the exciting bits.
As I said I’ve always known I was gay, well since I was aware of the term. I had been attracted to some guys at school, even when I was at primary school. There were two I remember in particular that I liked to hang around with as I thought they were attractive to look at and also clever. I’ll call them Paul and Keith.
Paul was taller, even at the age of nine, brainy and talented musically. He played the violin and piano even at that age. Like Paul, I was musical. I used to try to sit next to him in the classroom and I’d rub my bare legs against his deliberately. I got some satisfactory feeling from it.
Back then there was a segregation examination called the eleven plus and depending on the results you got sent to different schools, and unfortunately, after the tests we did get to go to different schools. I sometimes saw Paul in town, but we hardly spoke. He grew up into our teenage years and he became quite handsome in my eyes.
Keith was different. He was quieter and a studier and very clever. He also went to a different school from me after the eleven plus exams. He became the ‘Head Boy’ at the primary school and at the senior school. I liked him a lot. He also became a good looker.
In my senior school, I became more aware of my sexuality, and tried to hide it, and became a little withdrawn. This would have been in the mid nineteen sixties.
There was one boy in my year, who was bigger, taller and larger than most of us and he terrified me. He used to pick on me, though not by physically beating me. It was more verbal. Not in a homophobic way. His name was Roy.
One day, I was walking to the bus stop in Penzance to get home, and Roy was walking behind me. He called me and suggested that we explore a derelict house nearby together. I don’t know why I did it, but I went with him.
It was there that I had my first sexual experience. He exposed himself. He was much bigger down there than I was, and I was forced to fellate him. He threatened to beat me or tell people what we did if I didn’t. I wasn’t frightened and I didn’t properly follow through the idea that he’d be owning up to people about what we did. What happened was that I became more aware of my sexuality. I now knew that what was happening to my body and brain was the same as others.
This happened a few times with Roy and soon he became tired of it and left me alone. I used to think and wonder if he did the same with other boys in my year.
There was one guy who caught my attention when I was maybe fourteen years old. I never knew his name.
My school was the largest in the district with a large geographic catchment area. It was an all-boys school as they were at the time and for reasons, I don’t know we were put into two distinct areas. One day, in the school yard, I saw a guy who really caught my eye, and set a desire that I have had ever since.
What I noticed was that the guy was tall and blond, and an outgoing kind. I wanted to know this guy and see him close up.
There was a very wide corridor between the two halves of the school. The blond guy was part of the opposite side. One day at breaktime, I saw him enter the toilets on the far side. I raced through the corridor into the toilets, and he was standing at the uprights peeing. I stood next to him and hauled out my cock and tried to pee and tried to see what he had. It was the first time I had been so close to this guy, and he was wonderfully handsome, and I wanted him so much.
I thought I caught him looking down at my dick, but he soon packed himself away and I only caught a quick glimpse of his.
The only other time I was close to him was when we had a sports day. He was a rugby player, and I was in the Cross Country running team. It was afterwards in the changing room that I was close to him again. I loved his blondness and his looks. He was just a row away from me by the lockers separated by the coat racks. I didn’t see his body at all, but I lusted like crazy. He never looked at me.
This guy set off my lust for built blond guys and I cannot tell you how many times I have fantasised about blonds.
Over the years, I’ve had a few relationships with guys and now fifty-five years after I first saw the blond guy at school I still lust after blonds. Strangely, all my relationships have been with non-blonds.
When I was eighteen, I was in a town a few miles away from home and needed to pee and went to a public convenience to relieve myself. I knew that at the time, public toilets were used for cruising by gay guys, and I had done some myself. This time my visit was legitimate.
I entered the ‘cottage’ as they were known by the gay community, and there was a young guy of my age already standing at an upright. I stood a few stalls away from him and peed, and looked at the guy and realised that it was Paul, the guy from my class in primary school. He was jacking off. He stood back and flashed at me. He was hard. We ended up in one of the private cubicles together. He never acknowledged that he knew or remembered me. It was the only time we were that private together. I never saw him again but learned a few years back that he’d died. There were many tributes to him on a website, and I learned that he had been in a gay relationship for twenty-five years. I added my small tribute but just said that I remembered him from my early school days and that it was so good to learn of his friends and how liked he was by so many.
Keith was a different story. I used to wander around the moors near my home, much to my mother’s displeasure and worry because of the unmarked old mine shafts in the district and I would go out at weekends and on holidays. I had one favourite place which was an old derelict engine house that was a bit difficult to get to. I liked the solitude of the place and just to hang out in the place.
One day when I was about sixteen, I was sitting around minding my own business when I heard someone approaching through the ground ferns. I was a little pissed off that I was being disturbed, but surprised that it was Keith, the head boy of the other school in the town, that turned up.
He recognised me and greeted me asking if I went to the place often. It turned out that he did as well. I’d never seen him and had no idea.
We were chatting about our school years since we had split to go to other schools and about friends we had and what had happened to them and so on.
Then he suddenly asked me if I ever got horny and what I did about it. I admitted that I did and after promising that he’d never tell anyone else, told him that I jacked off.
He did as well. Then almost stunned me by standing up showing off that he had a stiffy. He said that he was so horny there and then and asked if I minded if he jacked off. He had come to the ruin for privacy to do so.
I was fascinated and told him to go ahead. Well, the usual story happened, and I we persuaded to get out my cock and jack off with him and the climax happened, and we swore each other to secrecy. We actually met a few times afterwards and jacked off together each time but never more and we never touched the other, though I’d have liked to and maybe even to suck him. Like with Paul, we seemed to go our separate ways until one day, years later, I was in a gay bar in Plymouth and say Keith all very pally and happy with another guy and all became very clear about him.
In 1995, when I was 42 years old, I went out to Thailand, to advise on scientific things for the Thai Government, on a three-year contract and I met the absolute love of my life. I was based in Bangkok, and I’d been there for 18 months and was dancing with the Thai boys up on the stage at DJ Station, at the time the best known and most popular nightclub in South East Asia. I loved those sexy Thai guys with their great looks, fantastic smiles and fabulous bodies and most of them were younger than me and best of all, wanted to know me, accept me and to bed me. I loved that they’d take off their shirts, to show off their sexy bodies and persuade me to do the same and to dance closely together, with our bodies rubbing against each other.
There was one guy who caught my eye. Much younger looking but with a sensational body. He was really handsome, dark but much quieter than the others. He really caught my eye, but he didn’t look at me, or so I thought.
I asked some of my Thai friends about him and another expat I’d seen him talking to. He didn’t seem attached to anyone. I found out that his name was Phon, which means blessing. I asked one guy who seemed to be a mutual friend if he would introduce us.
Phon was a little suspicious of me as he’d seen me leave with many other guys from the club, but I persuaded him to come to visit me one evening in my apartment.
I was surprised and delighted that he agreed to stay the night with me, and we had great sex, some of the best I ever had.
Over the next few weeks, Phon came back to visit me and stayed longer and longer, and we found that we got on very well. He used me to improve his English which was fine to begin with as my Thai language skills were appalling.
After a couple of months, I invited him to come to live with me. He wasn’t in a great place to live, and I had more than enough space to live in.
We became very close, and personal, and I grew to love him. He was very caring towards me.
He often told me that I had given him ‘life’, and though I told him that I loved him many times, it took him nearly two years to tell me the same. I never had any doubt that he loved me. There was a difference in ages of 25 years, and it didn’t bother either of us.
To start, when we slept together, I’d wear a tee shirt and underpants and Phon would ask that I slept naked with him. So, I did, and then he asked that I slept with him holding him tightly, and I did, every night we were together.
Phon worked as a tourist guide for Chinese and Japanese tourists. He spoke Mandarin, Japanese, and Thai and his English improved over the months and years we were together.
I was lucky that I could extend my work in Thailand beyond the original three years and our lives together became stronger. We’d holiday in Malaysia, Singapore, and visited Hong Kong, Laos and Myamar, and even holidayed in Dubai and we visited home here in Cornwall twice.
I was so happy that Phon liked Cornwall so much.
He had a name for me hardly ever calling me by my name Don or Donald, but if he wanted my attention, he called me simply ‘love’.
We were happy, and only sometimes visited the gay area in town, but we had many friends who we saw every now and again.
Then Covid came.
Unfortunately, I was away working when Thailand closed its borders and couldn’t return to my lover. It was very difficult and we kept in touch via Skype and I was constantly telling Phon to wear masks, and to stay safe and be careful when meeting people and when it became possible to get himself vaccinated.
When the borders did open it wasn’t immediately possible for me to return because of my work situation, and then Phon became ill, and I was sending money for him to go to hospital. He had caught Covid. I was frantic with worry as I couldn’t communicate with him directly in hospital.
Then one day in Mid-2022, I was told Phon had died. I was 3,000 miles away and wasn’t with the man of my life for 25 years. He had lived over half his life with me. I couldn’t say goodbye to him or say a thank you to him or that I loved him and would love him for ever. His body was handed over to his relatives, who had him cremated in the Thai style.
There was to be no more of him. No more of him with me in Silom Road, or Siam Paragon or Big C in Rama 4 when we went shopping, no more of him touching up my bum publicly as we walked around the city. No more of me staring at his wonderful hard bum as he stood on the escalators as he stood above and in front of me. No more of his cooking Thai food for me. No more of him coming behind me as I sat at my laptop working and putting his arms around me, resting his head on my head. No more kisses, no more cuddling, and no more of him pointing out to me discoveries he’d made on YouTube as he lay on the floor watching the TV that he’d connected his computer too. No more of me talking to him as he wore those headphones when he listened to Thai folk music, no more laughing and no more of him telling me he loved me and calling me ‘LOVE’.
It was three months before I was able to return to Thailand and open the door to the apartment and see everything as tidy as always, save for our bed which was still unmade after he had been taken to hospital. I could smell him; that scent that came from his neck when we were close together, and I could feel his spirit.
I sat on the bed and for the first time in years I cried. The first time I cried after I heard Phon had died. For the first time ever, I was heartbroken. My heart felt heavy. I was sixty-eight years old. All my plans to retire and spend the rest of my life with him had evaporated. The apartment was full of our life together. All the fun and laughter, and enjoyment and satisfaction and love were there but now it felt empty. There wasn’t even the scent of Phon there.
There were messages from friends of course, but my life in Thailand seemed over. The reason for my staying there had evaporated in the crematorium, and I didn’t even have his ashes. His family had claimed them.
Over the next few months I wandered around Bangkok, seeing a few friends, receiving sympathy but to be honest there was nothing. I made the decision to return to Cornwall. I put my apartment in Central Bangkok on the market and arranged for what belongings I wanted to keep to be shipped back to the UK and put in storage until I’d found a place to live back in Cornwall.
I left Bangkok with thousands of memories but no regrets. My only concern was that I’d be alone for the rest of my life. There would be no way I’d ever find someone as loving and caring as Phon had been. We’d seen so many other Thai and foreigner relations blossom and wither away as the couples got older, but ours stayed strong. I came back to Cornwall and searched for a home and found one not too far from the village I was brought up in.
I’d kept in touch with old friends whilst I had been in Thailand and living and loving with Phon and during the times we had visited home, we’d stayed near to the village but even travelled to Scotland, the north of England and other places that Phon had asked to see. We even went to see if we could find the Loch Ness Monster on his birthday.
Gerren and Stephen have always been great friends even though I’d old enough to be their father and maybe even their grandfather. Strangely, they are both blonds which is still my favourite type of guy even after all those wonderful years with Phon.
A few months ago, on YouTube I saw a TV series that I’d missed whilst living in Thailand, called ‘Skins’. What caught my attention was one of the young actors who reminded me of the guy I fancied back in school, the blond guy. The character was gay, and he was outgoing, very handsome and blond. Going through the programmes and reading about the actor, I found that I liked the actor too, who was commenting on a retrospective of the series he was in and the lovely blond boy he portrayed. The actor now in his thirties, was also a handsome guy but straight. I still look at the series and find the blond guy as sexy as hell, just like the guy at school. If you want to find out about the guy the Series is called Skins and the character stands out.
I laugh to myself. I still find blond guys very appealing, and on the net, there are hundreds of photos of stunningly handsome and built blond guys who’d turn my head even though I’m now seventy. Two of my best friends are blond, stunningly handsome and built, but they are married. Gerren and Stephen of course.
My heart and head though, still loves one man. Dark, Asian, handsome, and loving, and I’ll love him for ever, even during my lonely years ahead as I could never find anyone I could live with who would be like my Phon.
