It was when I was working at Hospital Stores that I had my first exposure to homosexuality.  I was seventeen and had heard the terms queer and fag at school but did not really understand what they meant other than it had something to do with boys liking other boys.  The now popular term “gay” for homosexual persons was not in use at the time, “gay” meant happy, like my sister’s middle name was Gay because she was a happy baby.  I find it interesting how the meaning of a word changes in time. My 1974 edition of Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary listed the first definition of as  “gay 1: happily, excited” while the current online Webster dictionary listing the first definition of gay as “relating to, or characterized by sexual or romantic attraction to people of one's same sex” with the definition “happily excited” as being secondary.   I knew from school that you didn’t want to be called queer or a fag particularly in the P.E. locker room where you had to make sure you never looked at another boy below the waist which I found sometimes hard to do in the shared shower.   A few months after I started working at Hospital Stores another stock clerk named Stevie started working there.  Stevie I always thought a bit odd, he was a bit older, probably in his late 20’s, talked a little funny, and often did a funny round thing with his mouth, like he was eating a banana, but otherwise he seemed like a nice guy.  One afternoon Stevie and I had just finished sliding a bunch of boxes down the stair ramp into the sub-basement, moved them to their location, stacked them up, then we sat on the boxes to take a break, with me on a lower box and Stevie sitting a bit higher on the box next to me.  We talked a few minutes when Stevie put his hand on my knee, which thought was a bit odd, I tensed up a little bit but did not say anything, then he then started sliding his hand up my inner thigh.  Woe, that really made me uncomfortable so I said, “We should get back to work.” quickly getting up and without looking back walked away and went back upstairs.   I later mentioned the incident to another stock clerk who was a couple years older than me, and he told me that Stevie was queer and a fag and the funny thing he did with his mouth meant that he wanted to suck my dick and I should keep away from him which I did from that point forward. 

Updated: 10-31-2022

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