Mr.
Akers
Mr.
Akers lived across the street from me when I was ten years old. My
friend Max and I loved to visit Mr. Akers. We would sit on the front
porch with him and he would tell us stories about the early European
immigrants to America, and about Native Americans. Mr. Akers always
had an impressive perspective on the European immigration, especially
for a working class man. Though he was proud of being able to trace
his ancestry to early European settlers, he had a deep respect for
the Native Americans and did not shy away from telling of the
atrocities that these settlers committed against them. I think that
Mr. Akers's wife might have been Native American. She had dark yet reddish skin, and a fierce
yet tender look in her eyes as she drove away to go to work wearing the smart
uniform of a security officer, complete with militaristic cap, gold
pins, and navy blue skirt. The times when we would talk to Mr. Akers
were usually times when his wife was away at work, and she seemed to
leave for work in the late afternoon.
My
relationship with Mr. Akers was one that seemed very natural and
smooth, and, though it sounds simplistic and trite, what I remember
feeling most about it was its rightness. My time with Mr. Akers felt
like my entree into the world of adult discussions and pleasures, and
with him I felt accepted as an adult. He never treated me like a
child, and this was immensely satisfying. Our many discussions were
long and intelligent, and Mr. Akers was a wonderful teacher of
history. In this world of comfort and adulthood there sometimes
intruded a danger in the form of my father, who seemed to come
looking for me and summoning me too often when I was in my happy
world of escape with Mr. Akers, attempting to bring me back to a
world of punition and control. I was jealous of my friend Max since
he was able to spend more time with Mr. Akers than was I, since he
had successfully managed to live that more enchanted and forbidden
adult life that seemed so much more right and so smooth, partly by
virtue of the fact that his parents were less obtrusive than mine. Even when
Max's parents did try to rein him in, he insulted them angrily and
refused. Max seemed to be less afraid of punishment by his parents
than I was. I remember feeling that my father's coming to take me
away from the company of Mr. Akers felt so wrong.
Our
three way relationship seemed to settle into the roles of friend and
sage on the part of Mr. Akers and lieutenant of the sage for Max. I
played the most junior role in the relationship, and Max would regale me
with stories of his times spent with Mr. Akers when I could not be
there, and hold special stories back from me, making me implore,
cajole, and practice some subterfuge to get them out of him. I
remember that once Max told me that Mr. Akers had given him a
splendid resume of his attractive, masculine, and mysterious wife,
singing her praises and also telling him that he thought she was a
lesbian. I was very excited by this but also chagrined and jealous
not to be a senior confidant of Mr. Akers and not to be able to spend
as much time with him as Max. His wife was also, to my
consciousness, another wonderful and mysterious asset of the world of Mr. Akers, one that we might
one day be able to discover more directly.
Most
of our time with Mr. Akers was spent on the front porch of his
duplex. The porch sat well above the lawn level, and Mr. Akers would
sit in an old-fashioned metal lawn chair while Max and I would
usually sit on the ground or on the concrete ledge of the porch,
talking, listening, and observing the neighborhood. Sometimes
though, we would spend time inside Mr. Akers's house, which always
seemed dark. Going inside felt especially exciting, and when we
first spent time inside Mr. Akers's house, I felt that I had reached
a new level of privilege. The house contained quite a few objets
d'art and wall hangings and mementos of travels and careers, and Mr.
Akers would take down objects and show them to us, telling stories
about them and their provenance. I remember being both eager for the
stamp of adulthood and adult seriousness that these stories and
questions represented, and yet also impatient with a vague energy and
a vague yet strong desire for more. I felt that I wanted to live
every adventure and every kind of life represented in these humble
objects, and my impatience and energy often spilled over into
silliness and lines of questioning derailed by my hyperromanticism, which
then seemed to solidify my place as junior in the relationship's
rank order, as Max and Mr. Akers were always more serious and more
reasoned in their conversation than I could manage to be.
The
excitement and feeling of moving upward in knowledge and adult
experience were partly the result of the fact that Mr. Akers never
seemed too eager or too fast in the growth of the relationship, but
would rather gradually reveal new and more hidden, more adult things
to us. Mr. Akers himself, though having no airs of magicianship or
mysticality, and in fact being very unpretentious and understated in
his manner and attire (he wore a crew cut and black frame glasses,
and dressed simply, yet with class, always buttoning his shirts all
the way up and wearing a t-shirt underneath), allowed for the magic
of discovery, and he seemed to be a master of allowing the process of
becoming more privy to the freedoms and pleasures of adult life to be
a paced one. One of the next steps into the exciting realm of
freedoms and possibilities that Mr. Akers brought to our lives was his
going into the tops and backs of closets to pull out objects, often
wrapped in cloth or tissue to further indicate their special status.
He showed us statues that were acquired in the course of a life that
seemed like a grand adventure, even if it had been the
not-too-unusual life of a man of modest means. The grand adventure
was really the forbidden privileges of adult life. I remember being
moved and almost frightened by the mysteriousness of the some of the
wooden statues in the closets that Mr. Akers would pull down and
unwrap, pacing his words as he did so, creating anticipation, and
putting my already hungry and romantic mind into a dither.
I
was feeling such natural and excited feelings about the relationship
between Mr. Akers and Max and myself, and I remember that when these
feelings came to occur within the sexualization of the relationship,
it seemed that I already knew that this was to come, yet I could not
articulate it. This movement seemed so natural and right, and I
already knew somehow inside that all of my desire was imbued with
sexuality and sexual energy. I remember that one day Max
brought up in our discussions, by way of continuing to secure his
rank in the trio, a fact that had come up naturally in a discussion
between Max and myself, and this was the fact that, while Max could
already ejaculate, I could not (Max was almost a year older than I).
I had already been having orgasms by this time, but without ejaculation, and I was happy and
not too surprised to have learned from Max that he was having orgasms
also. I did, however, feel worried and inferior when Max described
the semen coming out of his penis during these orgasms, calling it a
"male period". I thought that there was something wrong
with me perhaps because I was not yet getting my male period, and I
was eager for this further indication of adulthood. Mr. Akers
received this news about my deficiency as smoothly as he received
anything else that we brought up, and told me, without making humor
of it, that this event would come in time, and that there was nothing
wrong with me.
Sometime
after this Mr. Akers began to sometimes walk around the house in our
company with his fly unzipped. I felt no fear from this directly and it was
not at all off-putting to me, yet I felt anticipation and uncertainty
as to what it meant and as to how I should behave - my fear was of
not seeming to know what I should do. Max of course, much more
outwardly sexual and mature than I, superciliously told me to just do
the same as Mr. Akers was doing, and not to tell anyone about our
private freeform style. Max began to strut his stuff around Mr.
Akers's house with his fly open also, but I remember feeling shy
about doing so, and then further foolish because of my reluctance.
Somehow though, in spite of my unwillingness to walk around with my
fly open, I was much less afraid to pee with the bathroom door open,
which was Mr. Akers's next suggestion, though he made it at a later
date. I remember that as I stood peeing at the toilet in Mr. Akers's
bathroom with the bathroom door open and Mr. Akers and Max as my
audience, my attitude turned from one of reluctance and shyness to
one of pride and acceptance as Mr. Akers and Max complimented my
body. I started to feel like I wanted to stay there and continue to
show them my assets, but they seemed to be interested mainly insofar
as this was an exercise in getting me to relax and come to their
level of sexual knowledge and comfort, and presently told me to pull
my pants up and come into the kitchen to have some Kool-Aid.
As
our friendship with Mr. Akers continued, my father's interruptions
seemed more and more importunate, and I felt more distanced from the
relationship as a result, while Max seemed to be able to spend more
time than ever in the company of Mr. Akers. One day when Max and I
were together without Mr. Akers, Max told me that he wanted to try
something with me, something that he had been talking to Mr. Akers
about. Max described our getting into certain body positions in
relation to one another. I understood that I was to get onto all
fours and move my buttocks downward and backward in a certain
fashion, with Max behind me, but I didn't completely understand the
positioning, and I told Max that I did not see the point of getting
into these positions. There had already by this time been placed
into my head a heteronormative idea of lovemaking that involved a man
and a woman facing one another, though in my mind at that time, the
man-and-woman position somehow involved both facing one another and
kneeling. I had been told by my mother that men and women make love
because it feels very, very good, and I understood for whatever
reason that this lovemaking and feeling very, very good, looked
different than what Max was proposing, though I also felt somehow that he was
proposing lovemaking. I had no objection whatsoever to being naked
and in certain positions with Max, I merely felt that this would not
achieve very, very good feelings because I had been told that that
which did so was something different. Although I felt indifferent to
women sexually, I simply thought that this mixed sex positioning that my mother had described to me was
the correct procedure for producing the very, very good feeling. Max
didn't make too big a deal of my lack of comprehension and lack of
desire to get into the Akers position, but he did, as might be
expected from a senior lieutenant, show his feeling that I was not
yet advanced enough in the Akers Mysteries to rise in rank in the
relationship.
My
father's interruptions continued, and Mr. Akers's wife took a
different job, one in which she worked both different and fewer
hours, and thus my time with Mr. Akers was slowly diminished, and I
felt like perhaps I had done something wrong. I was angry and I
wanted to continue our relationship, but my father eventually
discouraged my going to Mr. Akers's house to such a degree that it
was an effective prohibition. Meanwhile, Max and I, in our energetic
and eager adolescence, continued to explore the possibilities and
freedoms of impending adult life. Sometime after Mr. Akers was
cut out of my life by the forces of heterosexual family security, Max
and I began to get naked together. I remember watching Max's
penis closely as he squeezed out globs of goo from it, always ready
with tissues to clean it up. My junior lieutenancy in the Akersian
Mysteries was thus continuing even though our mentor was no longer much in my
life, since I continued to be more shy and unknowing than Max for a
long time even as our naked adventures continued. We got naked more
and more often, and Max made a container that he filled with cotton
and into which he would stick his penis and move it until he
ejaculated as I watched closely. Eventually Max asked to put his
penis under my arm and between my thighs to see if this could produce
an ejaculation, but I was still shy and reluctant. One night when I
was spending the night at Max's house, and during a time when I had been getting more
warm to our developing sexual relationship, even up to the point where, that night, I was on the verge of allowing anal penetration, Max's older brother walked into his room
unannounced when Max and I were on his bed together naked and en
flagrante. Hearing the door knob turning, I had jumped and flown
through the air in an attempt to quickly get off of Max's bed and
into my sleeping bag. Max's brother got an eyeful of me, naked and
in mid-air, before I slid into my sleeping bag. Max's brother not
only interrupted the Akersian rites but also took Max out of the room
for what seemed like an interminable time. When Max returned from
what was a long chiding and interrogation, he was sullen and distant,
and we merely went to sleep. The heterosexist family police had
struck again.
Gradually,
two things happened simultaneously after this. One was that Max got
over the chiding and shaming by his brother. With his wild and
defiant spirit, he led the resumption of the Akersian rites. As time
went on however, my interest in the rites began to be less
experimental and less a result of my yearning for adult mysteries,
and more directly and purely a passion and lust. Some time fairly
soon after this, I noticed that Max began to lose his interest in
the Akersian rites, and eventually he even came to repudiate them.
Max began to talk more about girls, and less about my body, and we
began to be less and less physically close when we were naked
together, eventually merely masturbating together but separately. As
my interest in adult freedoms and mysteries turned to passion for the
nude encounter itself, and then into unadulterated gay sexual lust,
Max was turning outward. The first lieutenant was defecting, while
the second remained loyal. Max was becoming a heterosexual.
As time went on, I continued to pursue the exciting world of adult
freedoms such as intelligent conversation and the development of a
sexual persona, and Max and I continued to be friends, though more
distantly, since my family had moved away. Mr. Akers was rather out
of sight and out of mind with all of the new developments coming my
way - junior high school, swimming team practices, working on
getting straight A's and making honor rolls, smoking in the boys'
room, and a growing sense of peer popularity and its value. I
suppose that Mr. Akers settled into the pleasures that life with his
wife and in the old lower middle class neighborhood afforded, perhaps
with no one else to talk to about history and war and art. Max told
me that he ceased to really see Mr. Akers, except to say hello, but
Max and I would reminisce about Mr. Akers, always fondly and
respectfully, though these reminiscences also included all of the
aspects of the old neighborhood and its denizens. We were probably
moved by the predominant culture of heterosexist disapproval to
simply put Mr. Akers into a context in which he was merely another
item of interest and amusement in life's rich pageant.
As
I look back now on Mr. Akers and my time with him after having lived
a fair stretch of adult life, I feel a longing for a closer
relationship with him. I wish that I could have known that, with
"adulthood" come not only freedoms, but also the constant
harassment and policing of heteronormativity. I see Mr. Akers now as
a wonderful man, a friend and mentor and educator, one with whom I
would have like to have had a long and varied relationship. I
somehow feel that if Mr. Akers, Max, and I had been able to continue
our friendship without the intrusions of the security forces which
try to corral "adulthood" into a conceptual admixture of
cynicism and heteronormativity, and which try to make it the only
proper place for sex, I would have benefited so much from having this
intelligent and gentle man as a part of my life. Mr. Akers must be
long since dead now, and Max has adopted the mantle of
heteronormative life, though in one reunion as adults he did again
admire my body suggestively. On this occasion, I decided not to take
the opportunity to bring Max back to the Akersian mysteries one more
time. I was too angered by what I felt was his treason, cowardice,
and falsity. I felt he no longer deserved the Akersian imprimatur
and ecstacies. I was angry at myself though, too, as I looked out
over the landscape of life. Perhaps I could have changed things had
I not been so accepting of heterosexist lies about life and sex and
love. I loved Mr. Akers, and I love him even more now. I mean that
in every way imaginable.
I
love you Mr. Akers.
But
I only wish I would have loved you better.
If I had to do it over
again Mr. Akers, I would have sucked your penis.
(The
above is a true story from my life. Names have been changed to
protect persons mentioned and their memories from the Family Values
Police)
