Part 1 - England:

Barry was a young gay guy; eighteen years-old before he found what he really liked, twenty-one before he finally found what he needed. Irish by parentage, he was born and brought up in London, England. Physically he was a dark Celt, tall and slim, with black wavy hair, piercing light blue eyes and smooth pale skin. Barry had high cheekbones and a killer full lipped smile, which sadly he showed all too rarely.

Brought up as he was, strictly, in a devout Catholic family, with religious schooling, regular Church attendance and service as an altar boy, he struggled with guilt over his sexuality.

Barry always knew that he was gay, even at a young age, although he was outwardly very masculine in his general behaviour. He was the very opposite of any 'queer' stereotype - the kind of effeminate, rather flamboyant gays as depicted so often on television and in films. He was very much a 'man's man' in his habits; he liked his beer, playing poker and most of all he loved sports. He'd even been the captain of the London area school hurling team, a very fast and aggressive Irish Gaelic sport.

His late school years were, in ways, the best times of his life. He'd run with a group of friends throughout his West London neighbourhood. Well known locally, and to each other, as the 'Irish Boys, ' Barry, with 'Mad' McKeigue, Mullarkey, Gerald and Chris Hennessy, kicked up a storm. They played sports together, fought against others and amongst themselves at times, played hooky from school, scammed for money and generally raised hell, somehow always just avoiding trouble, be it from their parents, the police or worst of all the local priests.

Being good-looking and in great shape, naturally he attracted the attentions of the local girls. In denial, and to maintain his status with his friends, he dated several. On occasion he even screwed with them. Sure he could do it; he could make out. But always as he was thrusting down into a girl's pussy from above, or riding it from behind, in his mind's eye, the one that counts, he was fucking a man, a handsome young stud like himself. When he masturbated it was exclusively with the thoughts of men.

To his later regret, he'd even joined in at school with the bullying of Seamus Byrne, a sad very effeminate boy, with a girlish high-pitched voice. He'd joined in the taunting, the sly punches and kicks that the others had meted out. You see, in his community, to be a gay, a fag, a queer, a poof, a shirt-lifter, a sodomite, or whatever name was hung on it, and there were many, was to cut yourself off, to be rejected by friends and family alike. It was a kind of social death sentence.

A form of liberation, or awakening, came to Barry on his eighteenth birthday. Having just eaten a huge meal prepared by his doting mother and rather cloying older sisters, he escaped from his family to the tranquillity of his bedroom to get dressed up. He was going clubbing that night with some friends to celebrate.

Having dressed, and with some time to spare before his best friend Gerald, known as Jez, came round in his car to pick him up, he turned his computer on and surfed around some of his favourite Internet sites. Again and again, Barry was drawn to the same saved pages from his Yahoo groups: Tom of Finland 1, 2, 3 and 4. Drawings and cartoon images filled the screen. Idealised visions of muscular, hung gay men.

Handsome clothed guys posing; bodybuilders' nude with muscles and cocks pumped; truckers getting it on in the woods; cops fucking prisoners; comic strips of nervous young men getting it on for the first time with hung studs. He loved these images of strong guys with big hard cocks. There was nothing feminine, nothing soft here. These idealised images fed on Barry's own personality and desires. It almost as if the late artist Tom had read his mind.

Barry's cock was pulsing and straining inside his trousers. He badly needed relief, and pulled open the zipper and freed his cock. He jerked it and rubbed the mushroom shaped head for a while, then pulled the trousers and his crisp white boxer shorts down.

He leant back in his chair as a slideshow of his favourite pictures played on the screen. Barry slipped one finger under his butt and worked it inside his asshole. From his other hand, his fingers slowly and firmly pulled up and down on his cock. He felt good. Most of all Barry revelled in the 'cowboy' scenes. For some reason he had a recurrent fantasy of being fucked by older American men dressed this way, with the boots, the big buckled belts and the Stetson hats

Soon a familiar wave of pleasure and relief hit him and he spurted out hot cum all over his right hand.

Barry was just about to take a tissue from his bedside and clean off when, fuck, the door flew open and a familiar voice greeted him. His best friend Jez entered the room.

"Hey, Bazza, get your lazy ass out of... What the fuck!"

Jez was gob smacked, utterly bewildered and shocked as he looked down at his friend sitting exposed in a chair, one hand covered in cum, attempting unsuccessfully to cover his balls and his big erect cock as cartoon images of muscular men sucking each others cocks and fucking each others butts played on the computer monitor. The two friends looked at each other for a few seconds, unable even to speak.

After what seemed to them to be an age, Barry spoke first, with his usual wit and elegance:

"Jez shut the fucking door, for Christ's sake!"

"Ok mate."

With this, Barry quickly slipped his shorts and trousers back on and wiped his hands clean on a tissue. He looked at the floor, he felt embarrassed and humiliated. Well, what ensued certainly was a surprise. Jez was not disgusted at all. He just came to the conclusion that the situation was extremely funny. He began laughing almost uncontrollably. This, in turn, as it always did, set Barry off too, and soon they both laughed so much that tears were filling their eyes.

Eventually they chilled out. They discussed things, Barry admitted that yes he did find gay stuff a turn-on, because "Jez I am gay."

Jez just nodded and slipped an arm around his friend's shoulder. No-one had actually stopped the slideshow, which was running on a loop. Gerald looked at it for a moment, deep in thought, then turned and looked Barry straight in the eye.

"Fuck it Barry," Jez said, "I might as well 'fess up too; I like guys sexually; I'm not gay, well not entirely, I'm bi, and I've been active both ways for months. Jez had a regular girlfriend, Theresa, he but revealed, "One or two nights every week I go to gay clubs in Soho. I've been picked up, I've kissed men, been sucked off, had cocks in my mouth and my ass, and Bazza, I fucking love it mate, and I find you very, very sexy."

With this, they fell into a mutual kiss, tongue dancing against tongue. Jez then dropped to his knees and quickly freed Barry's cock. Although it was only a very few minutes since he had cum powerfully, he was young and fit, and his tool was pulsing and leaking pre-cum even before it hit Jez's mouth. Jez sucked his friend greedily until he came, and swallowed each and every drop.

At Jez's prompting, Barry dressed and cleaned up in the washroom after this, and they left the house after saying their goodbyes to Barry's family.

In Jez's car, Barry reiterated the plan for the night, call for the boys and hit a cheap 'happy hour' pub, sink a few then hit the clubs. All in all, a typical Saturday night, except for the birthday situation.

Pretty much this happened. Infuriatingly to Barry, Jez even started kissing and hugging with a girl on the dance floor at one club, before disappearing with her, then returning looking somewhat flushed 20 minutes later.

Barry was fuming, and as he sat at the bar and watched his friend dancing rhythmically once again, he almost felt sick. Jez was actually slightly camp in his manner; there was a sort of femininity about him. He was shorter and slimmer than Barry, and the way he walked and pouted his lips as he talked exaggerated this.

As McKeigue said to Barry, "If it weren't for his women, you'd swear he was gay."

Later that evening Jez got Barry on his own. In a quiet corner he told Barry that his older brother was away and that he had the keys to his apartment. Blatantly he was asking Barry back for sex. Despite his annoyance, Barry's lust was big and he agreed.

Back there, in the next 48 hours, in a big bed, in the shower, over a table, on a rug in front of a fire and once on top of a spinning washing-machine, Barry got his awakening. He fucked Jez's tight ass hour upon hour.

Despite Jez being the experienced one, Barry's natural air of authority, his latent aggression and his bigger size, in terms of weight, height and cock led to him being dominant. Basically, Barry found he most liked having his cock sucked and fucking ass. For Jez, the turn-on was to have a physically strong man dominate him and fill up with hard cock. Mouth or butt, Jez just loved to receive cum.

Barry had a great time, learning that surprisingly a man's nipples could be stimulated to heighten arousal, how to roll his tongue around a guy's cock-head, and up and down the shaft, how to suck and knead balls, how to work on an asshole to loosen it up for a fucking with tongue and fingers. What lube heightened the pleasure. How a prostate gland made a man enjoy having his ass stimulated inside. All of it.

Second day together, Jez fucked Barry's lubed ass. It hurt a bit, although not as much as he'd thought, and he enjoyed it.

The patterned remained though, as it did for the nearly three years they were together, that mainly Barry was the 'fucker, ' and Jez the 'receiver.' It was just the way things were, what they both enjoyed.

A couple of months after Barry's birthday, they both left London, away from their judgemental friends and families, who still didn't know they were gay, or at least never overtly voiced this opinion.

The two of them had surprisingly done ok with their school exams, and they entered a South Coast university together, though on different courses. Instead of, as most Freshers did, moving into college halls, they rented a room in a house, working at part times jobs to make good the finance.

In the liberal atmosphere and circles they moved in, they almost never met any prejudice. Sure, part of the reason for this was they, especially Barry, were not the touchy, feely types in public, but to anyone who knew them, and they were two popular guys, they were openly gay.

Much of the time they spent together was idyllic; the sex stayed hard and hot. Also, they had enough differing interests, Barry with his sports, and Jez with his drama and art obsessions, not to always be in each others pockets; they had some breathing room in their relationship.

Second year there, they had a brief split, Jez walked out after an argument. Next month or so Barry found a couple of other guys to fuck, he guessed Jez had too, but somehow it was never as good. It was fun, but the chemistry the two enjoyed was somehow missing, on both a physical and psychological level. That they would get back together always had a kind of inevitability about it.

Yet, there was one thing, one very big thing, that was between them, and made, to Barry, their lives a complete sham, a total lie. No, it was not the fact that their families and friends back in their enclave of West London apparently didn't know, and weren't told, that they were a couple. It was the fact that every Christmas, Easter, and long summer vacation, Jez would go home and carry on his relationship with Theresa, who became, in time, his fiancée.

Barry hated this, but such was his love for Jez that he went along with it. He'd promised Jez that he would never object to the fact that he needed women as well as men sexually, and he kept to his word.

A pattern developed that Barry hardly ever stayed back in London. Instead, in his vacations he travelled a lot, a thing he loved to do, exploring new places, new cultures and countries. Although not an extrovert, his calm, amiable personality made it easy for him to adapt wherever he was.

He travelled and worked in several European countries during his university days, and spent one especially memorable trip working as a beach vendor in Sydney, Australia. Still being very overtly masculine and straight acting, he never found the gay scene an attraction. He had nothing against it, but it just never was his thing.

From time to time he found a nice fuck-buddy. 'Hell, ' he thought, 'if Jez can go with someone else so can I, guilt free.' He tended to pick up guys either through his sporting encounters, or occasionally on a beach or in a straight bar. The unspoken communication, the look, stare, stance, shy smile and ways that straight-acting gays have of communicating their sexuality with each other were ones that Barry was very tuned in with.

The end of their final semester at university marked a big watershed in Barry's life. Along with the farewells, the parties; there was the realisation of how his and Jez's relationship was now doomed.

Jez was set on living back in London, and had a good job lined up. What he also told Barry as they were driving away from the South Coast town for the last time was a dagger to his heart. He told Barry he was marrying Theresa, but:

"I still want us to be lovers when we can, and also I want you to be my best man at my wedding."

Barry's reply, "Stop the fucking car now!" It was spoken with such utter aggression and certainty that a shocked Jez did indeed pull up.

He stormed out onto the hard shoulder of the M27 motorway, climbed a fence, walked for four miles across fields before he found a small town, went into a pub and got drunk as hell.

That night Barry slept out in a ditch, woke cold and wet the next morning, got a bus, got a train, went home and told his Mother everything, each and every detail. In the next week all his close family learned of his sexuality; biggest surprise? They accepted him as he was, all of them, even his father, despite Barry noticing a disappointment in the old man's eyes.

Although feeling a kind of warmth with his family, almost finding a haven, a place to heal up after a broken heart, Barry made some plans. Next year he would do the one-year teacher training course he needed to be fully qualified, and in the mean time he would spend the time travelling, he fancied seeing America. Conveniently, his Mother had a brother in Boston, and a phone call fixed him up starting place, or base camp, for his travels.

Part 2 - America:

Over in Boston, Barry found his uncle's household to very similar to the one he had grown up in, in London. It was the usual cliché kind of Irish abroad stuff, a strange over sentimentality for a country voluntarily left behind. There were the same pictures on the walls of the main family room, of the Pope and John F Kennedy; and the all too familiar love/hate relationship with whisky and beer. If you substituted his uncle's family's obsession with the Celtics basketball team for his own family's devotion to supporting Queens Park Rangers football (soccer as it's known to our American friends) club, he could almost still be at home with his parent's.

Barry felt stifled in Boston, and resolved to travel around, to see some of the States. He had this image in his head of the open road, of the quest for travel and experience. Despite lacking a green card work permit, he got a job as a salesman, going on the road selling specialist watches and jewellery. His job was specifically to hit the malls and shops in mid to small sized towns, and try to get independent retailers to stock them.

Since he had split from Jez, and come to America, in two months his sex life had consisted of a one-night stand with a really weird submissive Mexican guy in Arizona and a fun afternoon by a river fucking the butt of a cute young blond haired farm-worker in Iowa. Apart from that, it was the old routine of jerking off with only his imagination for company in cheap motel rooms, which, wherever he was, somehow always seemed so depressingly familiar. He still couldn't take the gay scene or gay bars. Somehow, he just found it too feminine and too cynical. It was fine for many he thought, just not for him