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| Harold Norse, poet
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All Four Sexes |
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I lived with a secret sexual longing that went unappeased until I was liberated by a [Brooklyn College] professor. At summer's end, I arranged to meet David in Ohio and proceed with him back to Brooklyn . . . We spent our last night in a motel in Pennsylvania and I watched him shave as we hit the Jack Daniel's. That night, my state of virginity came to an end. And it became clear why he had shaved at night: so that his beard wouldn't scratch.
Afterwards as we lay in the dark, I stammered in little-boy wonder and apprehension, "How long have you been that way?"
"What way, Harold?"
"Homosexual!"
"Oh, all my life," said David nonchalantly. Then, after a pause, "Yes, I've fucked all four sexes."
"Four sexes!"
"Yes. Heterosexual men and women, homosexuals and lesbians."
Pause.
"Isn't that . . . abnormal?"
"Harold, if you love someone or are attracted to them, it can't be abnormal. It's abnormal not to."
I thoroughly enjoyed the deflowering. My sprit rose with the flesh. Tension ebbed. If I couldn't reciprocate in kind, as I had no wish to, that too was natural. It was a relief for both of us. I remained the puer eternus, the object of desire, the loved one. He was the "older man" — thirty-four — and physically unattractive to me. He accepted his role with no visible signs of regret. (Pennsylvania, 1935)
from Memoirs of a Bastard Angel: A Fifty-Year Literary and Erotic Odyssey by Harold Norse (William Morrow, © 1989)
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