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