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Twenty Thousand Gold Stars

A Novel About an Internet Community

By Dusk Peterson

Chapter Two

Firewall

A few diary entries
Posted at Crossroads by Conscientious Objector on Thursday, March 15, at 6:32 AM

August 9: Bill and I walked on the beach again today, hand in hand. It's the first time he's let me hold his hand since that day when we first met. Ever since then, whenever I've tried to hold his hand, he has jerked away and joked about me being too old for that sort of thing. When he finally let me touch him, I felt as though an electric spark went through me.

We stopped to sit on that rock in the cove, and I put my hand on his thigh, but before I could move it higher up, he got up and said that we had better head back. I must find a way to make him understand.

September 12: A big scene today: Mom decided to flip my mattress, and she found the magazine that Ricky had lent me, the one he found lying outside that bar where only men go. Everything after that was awful, with Mom crying and Dad shouting and nosey parker Janet popping into the room every few minutes and asking what I'd done wrong.

When Dad stopped shouting and started talking quietly, things got even worse: he was talking about how homosexuals can always be cured and how shock therapy techniques have improved, and I finally bolted from the house. I went to a pay phone and called Bill. Fortunately, he was home from work.

I ended up crying over the phone like a little kid; luckily, Bill didn't mind. He told me lots of funny stories about the fights he used to have with his parents, and I felt better afterwards. I realized that this is just how some parents are, and you have to put up with it. I know now, though, that I'll never be able to tell my parents about Bill. They just wouldn't understand.

September 15: Ricky told me today that he heard from one of the ninth-graders that, if you stand in the alleyway behind that bar, sometimes men will come out and talk with you, and sometimes they'll let you have sex with them. Sometimes they'll even give you money afterwards. Ricky says he hasn't tried it yet because he's afraid to go there alone.

I wanted to rush up to the alley right away, but then it occurred to me that if Bill heard about me doing that, he might misunderstand and think that I didn't love him any more. I want him to know that he's the most important one, so I think I'll wait a bit with the alley thing.

September 20: My parents went out all of this afternoon, so Ricky and I were finally able to do it. Ricky was very excited afterwards and said that the first time is always the best, but I felt kind of let down. Even though we used the pictures from the magazine as a guide (I sneaked the magazine out of Mom's dresser), it still didn't feel okay – I kept getting the feeling that we weren't doing it right. I wish that Bill had been there instead.

September 29: Last week Mom and Dad came home all happy from their day out, and today I found out why. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to have to go to a stinking therapist who will "cure" me.

I went out and phoned Bill, using this as an excuse to ask him to meet me at the beach cove. (The weather has turned cold, so I knew that no one else would be there.) He came right away, but when I showed him the magazine for queers and tried to hold him, he got up and walked away without even saying goodbye. I cried for three hours.

I'm going to try writing him a letter.

October 3: Yes! He said yes! Joy, joy, joy!

October 4: It was so wonderful. God, God, God. It was everything I dreamed it would be.

~~~

The above passages (with my atrocious spelling and punctuation cleaned up) are actual entries from the diary I kept when I was twelve. Now tell me again, dear CA, how I was "groomed" in order to be "molested."

I know which of us was the seducer, and it wasn't my lover.

Conscientious Objector, hoping to open your mind a crack

Translating your post
Posted at Crossroads by Concerned & Angry on Thursday, March 15, at 4:45 PM
In reply to A few diary entries posted by Conscientious Objector

First of all, I have no proof that any of this actually happened. It looks like exactly the sort of story that an offender like you would make up in order to justify his abuse.

But even if it were true, all that it proves is that the worst aspect of pedophilia is that the abuser manages to convince his victim that it was "his" idea and causes the victim to bond with the abuser. This is a well-documented phenomenon called the Stockholm Syndrome; you can find information about it in books on hostages and on prisoners of war.

Here's what actually happened to you, though your abuser didn't allow you to recognize this.

# # #

August 9: One of the first things that an abuser will do is introduce certain ideas about sexual activity into the mind of the child, but do it so subtly that the child will not realize that he never thought of doing these activities until the abuser suggested it to him. Thus, for example, you had the idea that holding hands was something that you wanted to do, not something that your abuser wanted you to do. But here in this entry you slip, and you admit that he first held hands with you, which of course planted the idea in your mind right away that you would please him if you held hands with him further. (Incidentally, in reference to your earlier post, a grooming time of eighteen months is not at all unusual. Pedophiles like to convince themselves that they "love" the children they abuse, so they come up with all sorts of activities of mock love before they take the child to bed.)

September 12: This entry is a classic. The easiest way for a pedophile to win a child's love is to separate him from his parents' love. In most cases, this is done in a very subtle fashion; the pedophile will begin by saying, "Your parents don't understand you," and only later will he say, "I'm the only one who understands you." This entry reveals that your abuser had begun his final stages of grooming you.

September 15: Oh, God, what can I say about this entry? That the children of your town were prostituting themselves, and that the men in your town were taking advantage of such innocence . . . It's just too awful to contemplate.

September 20: HOMOSEXUALITY IS NOT THE SAME THING AS PEDOPHILIA! PEER SEX PLAY IS NOT THE SAME THING AS CHILD ABUSE! You keep mixing them up in these entries – that's understandable since you were a child, but you should know better now.

Homosexuality is not a mental illness; pedophilia is. Here is the definition of pedophilia, as it appears in the fourth edition (text revision) of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association:

Over a period of at least six months, recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children (generally age 13 years or younger). The person has acted on these sexual urges, or the sexual urges or fantasies caused marked distress or interpersonal difficulty. The person is at least age 16 years and at least 5 years older than the child or children in Criterion A. Note: Do not include an individual in late adolescence involved in an ongoing sexual relationship with a 12- or 13-year-old.

The American Psychiatric Association goes on to describe the nature of pedophiles:

[Pedophiles'] activities are commonly explained with excuses or rationalizations that they have "educational value" for the child, that the child derives "sexual pleasure" from them, or that the child was "sexually provocative" – themes that are also common in pedophilic pornography. . . .

Individuals may limit their activities to their own children, stepchildren, or relatives or may victimize children from outside their families. Some individuals with Pedophilia threaten the child to prevent disclosure. Others, particularly those who frequently victimize children, develop complicated techniques for obtaining access to children, which may include winning the trust of a child's mother, marrying a woman with an attractive child, trading children with other individuals with Pedophilia, or, in rare instances, taking in foster children from nonindustrialized countries or abducting children from strangers.

Except in cases in which the disorder is associated with Sexual Sadism, the person may be attentive to the child's needs in order to gain the child's affection, interest and loyalty and to prevent the child from reporting the sexual activity.

So, you see, the desire to have sex with a child is linked with a desire to manipulate and rape. That's why all of you here need to get psychiatric help now!

Children having sex with children their own age is entirely different from an adult taking advantage of a child. I'm not surprised that you didn't recognize this at the time; abuse victims often don't. Women who are sexually exploited by therapists or clergy often believe at the time that they are just as free to say no as their exploiter is. Only afterwards do they realize the extent of the power difference between themselves and the person who exploited them.

You were a child; you did not truly have the ability to say no to your abuser, even if you thought that you did. Children are biologically made to try to please adults – that's part of being a child. Your abuser took advantage of this to make you want to please him, even to the extent of convincing you that you were doing the seducing.

September 29: Here is the type of case that turns up so often in child abuse literature, of a child changing his memories of what happened as a way to deny the full extent of his abuse. You say that you showed your abuser a "queer magazine." Actually, what must have happened is that he showed you a magazine, most likely one that was filled with child pornography that would give you a good idea of what sort of acts he wanted you to perform. In this way, he not only exploited you, but he exploited all the victims in the pictures he showed you (in the same way that a man who willingly accepts stolen goods is as much a thief as the man who steals the goods). Naturally, by the end of this session, he had thoroughly convinced you that the rape of children was love.

I'm not sure how to interpret the end of this entry. Perhaps your abuser was having brief feelings of guilt, as offenders sometimes do in the moments before they offend. Or perhaps he just didn't like the idea of having anal sex with you on a windy beach.

October 3-4: Tragedy, tragedy, tragedy.

# # #

If these diaries entries are real, then I feel truly sorry for you, because you not only were abused but are now continuing this terrible chain by abusing other boys. I would encourage you to seek out a good therapist, and perhaps look into whether you should try to recover your memories of the missing events at the time of your abuse. You can find the help you need by looking up "child abuse" in the yellow pages, or your church may be able to refer you to an appropriate bureau.

CA stands for Concerned & Angry

Conscientious Objector and Concerned & Angry: Final Warning
Posted at Crossroads by Gold Star on Thursday, March 15, at 10:45 PM
In reply to Translating your post posted by Concerned & Angry

I must remind both of you once more of Crossroads' security policy against the discussion of illegal activity that has not been dealt with judicially; this includes both activity by oneself and activity by others. This is not the proper place to make a confession or accusation of illegal activity. If you feel a compulsion to do so, please consult a priest or a policeman, as the case may warrant.

Conscientious Objector: I'm permitting your post to stand because it describes events from forty years ago. Too many of your recent posts, though, have skated near the edge. You're a moderator, C.O.; you should know better.

Concerned & Angry: Please try to remember that we don't permit participants to accuse other participants of illegal activity. I'm sure that you wouldn't like it if another participant here accused you, without judicial proof of your guilt, of engaging in illegal activity in order to locate boylovers. If your remarks to Conscientious Objector, White Rose, and others here about them abusing boys are meant to be a statement that you believe they have engaged in abusive behavior by having legal sex with minors who are above the age of consent, then please make this clear in your posts.

Both of you: Pedo-Hag, White Rose, and I are getting tired of having to continually edit and delete your posts, as well as having to post first warnings to you every few days. The next time that one of you breaks a security rule, the offending party will receive a ban from Crossroads, temporarily or permanently, as the case may warrant. The Crossroads Committee is too overburdened with work to have time to deal with irreformable repeat offenders.

Gold Star
Webmaster
Crossroads

My apologies
Posted at Crossroads by Conscientious Objector on Friday, March 16, at 3:12 AM
In reply to Conscientious Objector and Concerned & Angry: Final Warning posted by Gold Star

My posts about sex with boys are purely hypothetical. I love to love boys hypothetically. As an example of the reformed behavior that I penitently intend to engage in from this point forward, please follow the link below to my post at BoyChat describing, in a hypothetical fashion, what it is like to share a shower with an eleven-year-old.

Conscientious Objector, turning over a new leaf

Link: Why anal is better than oral

To: whiterose@anonymail.com
From: paul@chaplaincy.oldcityuniv.edu
Date: March 16, 18:13 EST
Subject: Re: Re: This is Paul from CBF, introducing myself

Dear White Rose,

On March 15, you wrote:

> About a support group for your friend: I'm afraid I only know of one publicly advertised support group for boylovers that meets in real life, and it's not close to where your minor-attracted friend lives. I know that some boylovers who live in metropolitan areas meet informally with each other, but of course those meetings aren't advertised. Why don't you suggest to your friend that he visit CBF?

Jevon's college monitors its students' Internet use, so that's not possible, but thanks for the suggestion. It's proving much harder than I'd expected to find a support group for a non-offending minor-attracted adult. Jevon didn't care for the ex-gay meeting I took him to – his family is only nominally Christian – and the sex addiction group he has been attending this spring really isn't proving to be of much help to him. When I met him last year, he already had much better control over his sexual impulses than most non-pedophiles I know.

> If he has told his parents, as you say, then perhaps he could consider starting a "support circle," as a number of CBF participants have done. The idea is that you tell everyone close to you in real life who you believe you can trust with the secret: parents, brothers and sisters, friends, pastors, etc. That way, when you need guidance in your life, you have the same sort of network of real-life assistance that most non-boylovers do. The people who know you in real life may be able to figure out things that your online friends can't, since your online friends can't judge the situation close up.

That's a terrific suggestion, and I'll be sure to pass it on to Jevon.

> No, I'm not Neo-Pagan or Hindu. I started saying "Oh, gods" in high school because my parents didn't like me taking the Lord's name in vain. Apparently, it's all right to take the name of other people's gods in vain. :)

I met a Neo-Pagan boylover at CBF the other day who was seriously offended because I don't light candles to honor Zeus and his loved boy Ganymede. He asked me sternly whether I was opposed to interfaith tolerance.

> I haven't really found a label for what I believe. I guess you could say that I believe in Something that provides guidance to us and whose commands we should obey, but I think that everyone finds a different name for this Something. An atheist boylover I know (Gold Star) says that he follows the dictates of Conscience (he doesn't capitalize it, but he talks about it as though it were capitalized).

I hope, then, that his conscience is well-informed. An ill-informed conscience is a menace.

> As for myself, Socrates worshipped the god Love, and Jesus told his followers to worship the God who is Love, so I guess I've always envisioned the Something that is guiding me as Love – true love, naturally, not the selfish kind.

Ah, but which true love? English is a deficient language in that respect. If we had been writing in Greek, you'd have known that the Love Socrates worshipped was Eros, while the Love that Jesus enjoined us to worship is Agape (three syllables; I can't add accent marks to e-mail).

In Greek there are three main words for love; interestingly, two of them are used to describe ancient forms of boylove. (Thank you, by the way, for explaining how boylove is the English translation of pedophilia and pederasty. Despite my Greek classes in college, I never would have made that connection if you hadn't explained it.)

Eros is sexual love, as in paiderastia/pederasty, the sexual love of boys. Philia is friendship love, as in paidophilia/pedophilia, the affectionate love of boys (obviously the word got extended beyond its original nonsexual meaning). And agape is disinterested love. It the sort of love that God has for us and that we are supposed to have for everyone else, including our enemies – the sort of love that gives without demanding any reward for the giving. There's no such word in Greek as paidagape, but I gather that some of the CBF participants such as yourself are trying to achieve that sort of disinterested love toward boys.

Eros and philia play their proper role in life – certainly a friendship between a man and a boy is nothing to be sneered at – but the highest form of love, I believe, is agape, because it gives without asking any return: it is purely selfless. The best description of it that I know of is in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians (who were an early congregation that apparently needed some lecturing on this topic):

"Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends . . ."

> I'll ask At Peace to send you a document CBF produced several years ago on how boylovers can start real-life peer support groups and support circles.

Speaking of which, below you'll find my work address and my cell phone number. As you can see, I work for a city university; I'm an administrative assistant to the chaplain here. If things ever get stressful for you and you need someone to talk with in real life, I hope you'll consider giving me a call. (That is, if you live in the U.S. or Canada. I know that an overseas call might be prohibitive.) Think of me as an extension of the support circle that I trust you already have to help you in real life.

Sincerely,
Paul Kovar

* * *

Johnnie paused at the entrance to the campus café. Most of the students apparently considered Saturday morning a time for recovering from the after-effects of Friday-night parties, for the large room was bare except for several servers behind the cafeteria-style counter, a couple of earnest-looking young men arguing over a model of a dodecahedron, a gaggle of giggling young women, and, sitting at the next table and apparently oblivious to the beauty nearby, a neatly dressed man idly fingering a coffee cup as he perused a folded newspaper.

The man was balding, with the sort of round spectacles one would expect to see worn by Bob Cratchit or some other overworked scribe from Victorian times. He was wearing a white shirt and a black jacket and a red bow tie. Something about that tie suddenly gave Johnnie an image of a much younger man, sporting a pink shirt and a lavender jacket, and moving his body with a swish. Then the man before him turned the paper with a gesture of stiff formality, and the illusion was shattered. All that sat at the table was an ordinary man in his forties, taking a leisurely morning break.

Feeling the same sort of churning in his stomach that a soldier might feel before a battle in which casualties were expected to be high, Johnnie walked over to the table. For a moment, the man remained absorbed in his paper; then he lifted his eyes and smiled. "White Rose?" he said.

Johnnie nodded, swallowing. "You can call me Johnnie."

"I'm glad to meet you finally," said Paul and reached out his hand. He had a firm handshake, with no indecision behind it.

"May I get you some coffee? Tea?" asked Paul, gesturing toward his cup.

Johnnie shook his head. His gaze was drifting over to the next table, where, if he read the whispers right, the girls were speculating – with interest and hope – whether he was a new faculty member. One girl gave him an unabashedly assessing look under her carefully darkened lashes.

Paul, following his gaze, said, "Would you like to walk over to my office? It's more private there."

Johnnie quelled a momentary vision of walking into a room where a gathering of police awaited him. "Sure. Whatever you'd like."

Paul gathered up his newspaper, smiled at the giggling girls, and took his cup over to the dishes rack before ushering Johnnie out into the March sunlight. The campus – dating from a time before the city had crept around the university like ivy – was wide and green, with colonial-style brick buildings and well-manicured lawns. Paul, watching a group of students who were using a book as a Frisbee, shook his head and said affectionately, "Students! Sometimes I wonder whether they do any studying at all. Not that the university goes to any great efforts to encourage the academic life. The university admissions pamphlet is almost entirely concerned with the virtues of our social programs."

Johnnie thought of the young men arguing over the dodecahedron. "The math department is good."

"Oh?" replied Paul, peering with intent curiosity over his wire-rimmed glasses.

Johnnie felt a vision descend upon him of Paul poring through the university records for a man named John, who appeared to be in his thirties, and who had once majored in math. Would the university have kept his identification photo? Resisting an impulse to flee screaming, Johnnie added hastily, "That's what a guy at work said who attended here. The weather has turned nice, hasn't it?"

"Yes, spring has arrived early," said Paul, apparently not averse to turning the conversation, and they strolled along the treeless campus, discussing the best time of the year to trim forsythia.

They were headed, Johnnie realized eventually, toward a building built in the style of New England churches, with a shining white steeple and double doors opened wide to admit visitors. It looked formidably conventional. Much to Johnnie's relief, Paul steered him over to a side door which, when opened, revealed nothing more burdensome than a hallway. As the door swung shut behind them, Paul said, "By the way, I can't remember whether you ever mentioned anything on this topic at CBF – are you by any chance attracted to adult males?"

Johnnie found himself looking automatically around the hallway, but nothing appeared to be stirring in this part of the building. "No, not at all," he replied.

"Forgive me for being so nosy, but I placed a discipline upon myself a number of years ago not to visit unchaperoned with men who might be attracted to me. Here we are." He pointed to a doorway.

Looking over at him, Johnnie thought of the giggling girls and their assessing looks, and he wondered suddenly what Paul's feelings had been when he saw Johnnie's appearance for the first time. He had no further opportunity to think about this, though, for Paul was leading him into an office not unlike the one where Johnnie worked. Gesturing Johnnie into a chair, Paul took the seat behind the desk, upon which was laid the ordinary implements of office life: a writing pad, a computer keyboard and monitor, a jar holding several pens – all blue or black, Johnnie noticed – a paper tray, and a ruler. There was nothing here to suggest that Paul was in any way out of the ordinary; again, it looked very much like Johnnie's own work desk.

Johnnie sank down into the seat offered, opened his briefcase, and withdrew some of the papers within. He placed them on Paul's desk, saying, "I printed out this message I posted at BoyChat; I wasn't sure whether you'd seen it. It says a little more about how I came to post at the BL boards."

Paul obediently pulled the papers forward, fished inside his jacket for a second pair of glasses, put them on, and read slowly through the post as Johnnie looked further around the room. There were no windows in the room; instead, the walls had been festooned with framed posters of Christian art, mainly Madonnas weeping over dead Christs. On top of a file cabinet nearby stood two framed pictures. One showed a large, smiling family, in which the only teenager not smiling was clearly Paul. The other picture showed a grown-up Paul beaming as he curled his arm around a woman his own age, who was wearing a necklace holding a cross.

Paul removed his reading glasses and returned them to his jacket pocket, saying, "This story that you link to at the end of the post, 'The Priest and the Acolyte' – do you have a copy of it?"

"Not on me," said Johnnie. "I could e-mail you the link."

"I'd appreciate that," said Paul, leaning back in his chair as he adjusted his regular glasses on his nose. "Can you tell me what it's about?"

"I haven't read it all the way through," said Johnnie. "The part I read seemed very romantic, if a little sentimental. It's about this man who falls in love with a—"

He stopped, alerted not only by the footstep in the hallway, but by the change in Paul's expression. Paul's eyes flicked over to the doorway behind Johnnie, and he said, "Hello, Matt. I didn't expect to see you here today. Don't you have that talk at the Muslim Student Council this morning?"

Johnnie looked over his shoulder and saw a man with a clerical collar standing at the doorway. The minister looked with curiosity at Johnnie, but he said only, "I'm supposed to be there right now. I only stopped by to pick up that interfaith document on conflict resolution and restorative justice."

Paul dug through the pile of papers in his paper tray and emerged with a series of limp fax sheets paper-clipped together. "Here you are," he said, standing up to hand the papers to the minister.

The minister checked the top page of the document, glanced with curiosity at Johnnie again, and said, "Thanks, that helps. I'll see you on Monday."

"Good luck with the talk," said Paul and escorted the minister courteously to the door. Once the clergyman was gone, he shut the door.

Johnnie waited until he could no longer hear the receding footsteps in the hallway before he said, "Do they know here that you're gay?" He caught the flicker in Paul's expression and said hastily, "Sorry, I meant ex-gay."

Paul paused next to a knee-high refrigerator and leaned over to open it. "If I were gay, my life would be a lot easier. This university has a diversity-and-tolerance policy; one of the biggest departments in the administration is its Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Affairs Office. When I mentioned in my interview that I had done record-keeping for an ex-gay ministry, you'd have thought from the expressions of my interviewers that I'd just admitted to being a minion of Lucifer, come to drag the students into hell. Lemonade?"

Johnnie accepted the glass bottle from his hand as Paul reseated himself, saying, "They wanted me to promise that I would never talk about ex-gay matters to the students. All I could promise was that, if any student asked me for information on local Christian ministries dealing with same-gender attraction, I would provide them with brochures from both the ex-gay ministries and the pro-gay ministries, leaving the student to decide which path was best for him. My interviewers weren't happy about that, but fortunately Matt is very much concerned with dialogue between conflicting parties, and I was able to make him see that the university wouldn't be showing much commitment to diversity and tolerance if it refused to hire me solely because I'm opposed to homosexual behavior." He opened his own bottle of pink lemonade and sipped at it with clear pleasure, like a boy on a hot summer's day.

"I guess it's especially hard being both conservative and attracted to males," said Johnnie. "At Peace said once that his life would be much easier if he were in favor of BL sex, because as it is, he's attacked on both sides: by many of the BLs, because he's morally opposed to BL sex, and by the conservative non-pedophiles who come onto CBF, because he has the bad taste not to share their sexual feelings."

"Yes, those of you BLs who have committed yourself to lifelong celibacy have a hard road to travel. I can say that from experience."

Part of Johnnie noted with appreciation that Paul had followed his lead in adopting the abbreviation BL – less likely to be understood by outsiders if overheard – but the other part of him was occupied with noting the sudden increase in his heartbeat. After a moment, he placed his lemonade on the desk and said, "I'm not sure . . . That is, I don't know whether I've made such a commitment yet."

This was it, said Johnnie to himself as he looked at Paul's unrevealing face. This was the moment when a button was pushed or a finger was lifted, and policemen burst through the doors. He felt sweat forming on his palms, and he tried to rub them dry unobtrusively on the leather of his briefcase.

But all that Paul did was lean forward and say, "Can you tell me why?"

Johnnie licked his lips, then fished into the briefcase again. He handed the papers to Paul silently.

Paul took a mercilessly long time reading through Conscientious Objector's recent posts to Concerned & Angry. When he was finally finished, he stared into space for several moments before removing his reading glasses and saying, "I have a friend who eats every night at restaurants that serve junk food. I've invited him several times to join me at a better-class steak house that serves hamburgers and the like, but he always says, 'Why should I eat elsewhere? The food here is great.'"

After a moment, Johnnie said, "Maybe it's a matter of taste. My mom loves Hershey's chocolates, so one time I bought her Godiva chocolates for her birthday, but she didn't like them. I heard her tell my dad that they tasted too rich."

"Yes, but was she deprived of the opportunity to eat Godiva chocolates in the years when her tastes were forming?" Paul let Conscientious Objector's posts fall onto the table and leaned forward. "This gentleman worships at the altar of Eros – that's transparent in every line he writes. It's clear that he cannot conceive of a lifelong friendship that is based on anything other than an exchange of sexual pleasure. He may practice agapé unknowing, but I doubt that he understands what it is or makes any attempt to pursue disinterested love when given the choice between that and eros. This is hardly surprising; eros is the love he was given when he was young, at an age when our views are formed on what is most praiseworthy in life. But do you think that if his friend had had the strength and the courage to keep saying no to his sexual demands, and was able to find a way to show him higher forms of love, that Conscientious Objector would now be flitting from bed to bed as his posts imply?"

"You can't be sure that's the reason," Johnnie said, fingering the empty lemonade bottle before him.

"No, I can't be absolutely sure. That's the problem with BL sex; it's like Russian roulette. You never know how matters will turn out." He drummed his fingers on the table a moment before saying, "I'm still in the learning stages at CBF, Johnnie, but I was under the impression that the reason you folks call yourselves boylovers is because you love boys. Do you really want to risk fixating a boy on eros for life? Are you sure that you want to risk ruining his life in that way?"

For a minute, Johnnie stared at the corrugated glass and the small amount of pink liquid at the bottom of the bottle. Then he raised his eyes and said levelly, "Are you sure that you want to marry your girlfriend and risk ruining her life? How can you be sure that having sex with her won't cause her to fixate on eros?"

To his surprise, Paul laughed. "Touché," said the older man. "I can see why you spend so much time in debates at Crossroads. There's a difference between your situation and mine, but I trust that you'll come to see that over time. Would you like a tour of the chapel? Matt thankfully cleared out all the horrible 'improvements' of the seventies when he took over here – abstract paintings, posters of Snoopy saying 'Happiness is a Loved Child,' pictures of Jesus dressed as a Vietnam war protestor, etc."

Johnnie, who remembered quite well the bad art from the baccalaureate ceremony he had attended for his parents' sake, rose from his seat and followed Paul toward the door, then looked back at the desk. His post and Conscientious Objector's posts were still sitting there in plain sight. "Aren't you going to put those away?" Johnnie asked.

"The posts? Yes, I suppose I should." Paul went back to his desk, tossed the posts negligently onto the top of the paper tray, and then walked over to the doorway where Johnnie still stood. Johnnie was left with an uneasy feeling as he followed Paul, who was now speaking of the benefits of stark simplicity in religious architecture.

* * *

"I think it depends on the boylover," said Johnnie. "What your AOA is – your age of attraction – makes a big difference too. Gold Star, the Webmaster of Crossroads, posted once that he figured out when he was nine, because he fell in love that year with a first-grader. He didn't have the word to describe what he was, but he knew that he was different from the other boys."

Paul was leaning forward over the desk, his elbows on the writing pad and his chin resting upon his hands. He nodded. Johnnie had lost track of how long they had been talking; the lights in the windowless room gave the place an air of perpetual day, as though its inhabitants could speak for centuries without pausing.

"I can't claim to have been that precocious," said Paul. "I began to guess about myself when I was in senior high – and highly terrifying it was too. It took me quite a number of years to nerve myself up to the point of telling my family and the other members of my church. I received one measure of God's mercy: I knew from the start that I should never act on my feelings. The Bible, church tradition, reason – everything combined to tell me this. My big mistake came in thinking that the proper place for me was within the gay community. I didn't know of any other support network, and I desperately needed to be with others like myself."

He settled back in his chair, a shadow passing across his expression. "Those were terrible years for me; it's only been in the last few years that I've been able to bear being around gay people again. For a long time, the wounds were too deep. Daily temptations to sin, and each time people would be standing at my elbow saying, 'What's wrong? You love him, don't you? Why not show him your love?' I used to come home from gay gatherings and be sick in the bathroom, because I was so conflicted between what I believed was right and what others around me believed I should believe was right. Yet I couldn't stand to cut myself off from the fellowship of other same-gender-attracted people."

"How did you leave the gay community?" Johnnie asked. He was leaning back in his chair now, restful, with the briefcase put aside and his hearing no longer alert for policemen's footsteps in the hallway.

"God sent me a messenger: an ex-ex-gay. She was a lesbian who had had a very bad experience in the ex-gay ministries and therefore was bitterly opposed to them; she told me about them in order to warn me against them. I could have kissed her feet in gratitude. It was harder than I had thought it would be to break myself off from the social network of the gay world, but from the moment I learned about the ex-gay ministries, I thought, 'Thank God! After all these wasted years, I'm finally coming home.'"

Above the low hum of the building's air circulation, Johnnie said, "I guess in a way I envy you. I didn't know any other boylovers until three months ago, and it took me longer than you to figure out what I was. When I was in middle school, I first realized that I was attracted to boys, and that in itself was hard enough – coming to terms with the idea of being gay. Then, just when I was starting to get a handle on that, I moved up to high school, and I began to feel that something else was wrong. I mean, juniors in high school usually aren't attracted to twelve-year-olds. But I was attracted to enough of the boys in my high school that I could still convince myself that I was a normal gay."

He could feel his body growing more tense, and he willed himself to relax, focussing his thoughts on Paul's studious eyes. "I took a year off after high school in order to earn money for college, and when I finally started my freshman year, my world just exploded. Some of the guys who had been a year below me in high school were in my freshman class – guys I had been attracted to one year before. Only I wasn't attracted to them any more; I wasn't attracted to any of my college classmates. But if I passed a twelve-year-old on the street, my heart would pound. That's when I figured out that I wasn't attracted to adults. I was only attracted to boys in middle school and high school."

Johnnie shook his head as he tilted his chair back. "I'd told my classmates when I arrived at college that I was gay; this was supposed to be my big coming out. Now I didn't know what to do. I didn't dare tell anyone the truth – I was certain that I'd be kicked out of college if I did so. I had one very long night at the beginning of my senior year when I simply lay in bed sobbing, from bedtime until close to dawn. I couldn't figure out whether I should turn myself in to the police or slit my wrists or go out and rape a child. I thought those were my only options. I was just getting up the courage to search the dorm bathroom for razor blades when I heard Something inside me say, 'No, you don't want to do any of those things. You want to help boys.'

"What I heard made no sense, and I guess that's why I believed it. It wasn't a thought that would have ever occurred to me; it went against everything I knew about pedophiles. So the next day I signed up for the college's volunteer tutoring program to high school students, and from that point on, my path has been clear. Until this year, I was still half convinced that I would lose control and molest a boy, but at least I knew from senior year onwards that raping boys wasn't what I wanted."

He looked over at Paul, who was sitting with his hands folded, in a straight-postured pose. There was something comforting about this room, with its neat appearance and its signs of conventionality. Johnnie felt as though he were a juvenile delinquent who had spent several years in the detention room and was now, unexpectedly, being invited into the principal's office for a friendly chat.

He added, "I guess what's kept me from going crazy all these years is that Something, which told me what the rest of the world wouldn't tell me. In the back of my mind, I've always had the feeling that, if I ever faced a crisis again, the Something would come and tell me what to do. Fortunately, I haven't had that crisis yet."

Paul moved finally, reaching forward to unscrew a fountain pen, inspect its contents, and then screw the cap back on and place it in the pen holder. He said, "I am ashamed."

"Ashamed?" Startled, Johnnie returned the front legs of his chair to the floor.

Paul shook his head. "There is one problem you encounter over and over and over when you're same-gender-attracted; it has always mystified me. I could never understand how so many good Christians could fall into Pharisaism. Now I know."

He raised his eyes to look at Johnnie, saying quietly, "I've been like the Pharisee in the temple, saying, 'God, I thank thee that I am not like these sinners.' I wrote at CBF that I was a sinner and that I wanted you people to pray for me and that I hoped to learn from you – but those were just empty words. My mind told me that all of us are fellow sinners, but my heart had me convinced that I was better than the rest of you. I came to CBF as a missionary, to explain to you poor, deluded, misguided pedophiles what path you should take in life. I, your moral superior, was there to guide you, since obviously I knew more than you did. And here I find myself cast down to the bottom of the table, while you move to the front of the table and instruct me on where I have gone wrong."

Johnnie felt acutely uncomfortable. For the first time in several hours, he picked up his briefcase and fingered it. "I said something that was helpful to you?"

Paul nodded. "You revealed to me that we draw nearer to God, not in the times when we are free of temptation, but in the moments when we are filled with temptation and manage to resist it. I had known that with my mind, but it took your words to show my heart that this was true. All those years when I was under daily temptation, those 'wasted' years that I thought would have been better spent in the ex-gay ministries . . . Now I see that those were years when I was drawing closer to the Lord."

Paul smiled, his hand reaching up unconsciously to adjust his red bow tie. "White Rose, I think you have just healed the last of my wounds from those years. Thank you."

Johnnie couldn't think of what to say. The administrative wing of the chapel was very quiet, too far from the outside to have any sound but for the ticking of the clock on the wall. Paul glanced at the clock and said, "It's getting late. I'd invite you home for dinner, but I'm afraid that I have a date this evening. May I give you a ride back to your place?"

There was a pause of three heartbeats, and then Johnnie – responding more to long self-training than to reasoned decision – said, "No, I wouldn't want to put you out of your way. Thanks for the offer, though."

Paul nodded, apparently undisturbed by this rebuff. He stood up and began to escort Johnnie out of the room and into the dark hallway beyond, lit only by exit signs.

"I can't promise never to lecture you again on how to live your life," Paul said as they reached the outer door. "I'm afraid that's a habit I haven't been able to break myself of. But if you should notice me going astray on my own path, would you be kind enough to give me a nudge in the right direction? We poor, deluded, misguided 'normal people' need help from others."

Johnnie laughed then, and he was still laughing when the door closed behind him, and he found himself standing in the cool dark of the evening.

* * *

You guys are the greatest!
Posted at BoyChat by True Boylover on Saturday, March 17, at 9:05 PM

All the posts and e-mails you guys have been sending me have really helped! My life is so much better than it was a month ago.

White Rose, thanks for pointing out to me At Peace's post at the Christian Boylove Forum about warning signs of sex addiction. I went through the checklist, and I can see I'm going to have to start cleaning up my life. (I won't say how here, because it might break the rules.)

Conscientious Objector, your advice about daily meditation is GREAT. My apartment building is a bit too noisy for that sort of thing, but I've found a cabin in the woods nearby that no one seems to use, and it's the perfect spot for clearing my mind in the way you suggested.

I like what you said about the Hindus using sacred sexuality as a way to reach the Inner Self, but I'm having problems, because every time I try to focus on the image you suggested – a man and a boy kissing each other – I end up having one of my rape fantasies again. I don't think it's supposed to work that way, so maybe you could tell me what I'm doing wrong.

My life used to be really dull, with me spending endless evenings looking at stuff I shouldn't look at, but now I spend my evenings reading posts at BoyChat, and every day I feel a lot better. So thanks again!

Love,
True Boylover

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This text, or a variation on it, was originally published at duskpeterson.com as part of the series Master/Other. Copyright © 2007 Dusk Peterson. Some rights reserved. The text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0). You may freely print, post, e-mail, share, or otherwise distribute the text for noncommercial purposes, provided that you include this paragraph. The author's policies on derivative works and fan works are available online (duskpeterson.com/copyright.htm).