Fraternity Memoirs

i started reading these stories as recommended by fellow blogger TwoLives and i thought i'd recommend it to yall. it's a story of a former frat guy recounting pledging a frat his freshman year and the beginnings of his sexual attraction and experiences with other men. i initially was just skimming through it to get to the smutty stuff we all love, but i actually started reading them just for the story of this young college-guy coming to terms with his sexuality. obviously we've all been there and while my experiences weren't as young or nearly as hot, it brought me back to that time when being with a man was new, exciting, confusing, scary, and everything in between. yes it's a story of beautiful people having beautiful sex with each other (the author even describes his frat as the kind filled with AF models and jocks) but the underlying theme of having this burgeoning sexuality and not knowing what to do about it is there.

i'm not really sure why i've taken such a liking to the memoirs. on their own, they are well-written. but reading them just seems to evoke all these unresolved feelings in me. i'm not sure what it is. maybe it's a bit of sadness that i missed out on something similar in college. i had my share of fun in college but there was always that pre-med cloud of responsibility around me. i mean i've felt like i've had that cloud around me my whole life. sometimes i feel like i've gotten so wrapped up in being a doctor that i missed all the experiences that everyone else seems to have along the way. even now as i'm going through residency, i'm looking around at my other friends who are now getting married/having kids/otherwise enjoying life and i'm like wait, i want that too! what the fuck am i doing! so i guess in a way reading these makes me pine a bit for lost youth and also my current day-in, day-out life. everyone likes to shit on doctors nowadays but we've sacrificed a lot to get to where we are to take care of you, the patient. and i can't help thinking i've been missing the right train all these years.

besides taking me back to college, it unfolds to be a sweet story of first male love. there's no way you can read about his first time being with a guy and not think back to your own first time. i think it's like a gay rite of passage to always remember your first or few times with another guy. and the electricity of the writing is much better than any standard gay porn you could watch. some of you might read the stories and roll your eyes that this is some wishful-minded guy's fantasy, but life is always stranger than fiction and i could imagine that if these stories aren't 100% true, probably a variant of them has happened in some guy's life.

actually i've always been curious what the real "pledge" and "frat" experience is like (anybody who is/was a frat guy feel free to email me about the real life of it..and sorry if was is a bad term..once a frat guy always a frat guy?) yes i like the gay part about the stories, but i've always found fraternity, brotherly camaraderie, and team sports a fascinating subject.

while i've been popular enough throughout life, i've always held people at a bit of a distance from me. i certainly don't know whether i could ever call a group of non-blood guys brothers, but reading the pledge process, i could see how that happens. to be honest i've been slightly jealous that people could make such strong connections. i want to be in that connection, not the outsider looking in. i've never understood it, but i've yearned for it. i do have friends whom i love but i don't know if i've felt that bond between friends that so many other people seem to have. maybe it's a product of my upbringing (details i won't go into in this post) that i keep everyone emotionally distant. who knows. it's funny because i like to think i am a very emotionally warm person and i am extremely loyal and would really do anything for a good friend. but at the same time i have this disconnect and i don't think i've ever understood true male friendship. a frat might have been good for me.

anyway that's just a sampling of the stuff these stories brought out in me. i could expound more but i feel like i'm subjecting you guys to madman's personal psychotherapy sessions. the stories are actually pretty old, originally written around ~2001. the guy's handle has a 76 in it so i assume he was somewhere around ~24 when he wrote them, having gone to college in the mid/late 1990s, and pegging him at 36 now. at least as far as i've read i would definitely say this guy is more gay than bisexual. i wonder about how he turned out. did he end up suppressing his gay side and marry a woman? did he come to realize that he just wanted to be with men? has he happily been with a man for several years now? whatever ended up happening to the author, i hope he's happy out there, as everyone deserves to be.

read a few of the memoirs and tell me what you think. i hope i'm not the only one who got stirred up by these tales.

(by the way, the memoirs reminded me that i have never shared with you readers my first time with another guy. as a rite of passage, i'll have to make that my next post.)