PENETRALIA

 

MY QUEST

FOR SEXUAL SELF-ACCEPTANCE

FROM CHILDHOOD TO OLD AGE

 

by John Ellefsen

 

 

Something ever comes of all persistent inquiry.

                                          —Herman Melville.                                        

 

To be gay is to be in a state of becoming.

                                    —Michel Foucault

 

 

 

© 2008 by John Ellefsen. All rights reserved

 

 

PREFACE AND PREVIEW OF CONTENTS

 

Question: why did my search for sexual-self-acceptance not even begin to be successful until twenty years after Stonewall? The first major obstacle was a fundamentalist upbringing that reinforced our society’s deep-rooted homophobia. Another obstacle, from age 7 on, was a disfiguring hand injury that added self-esteem and body-image issues that for years were not treated or even acknowledged, thus compounding the psychosexual damage.

In my mid-teens, however, I had the spunk to reject fundamentalism, and during my first year in college—this was in the early 1950s—I realized that I was gay. I seemed to accept that fact and was semi-out, yet remained far too inhibited to have more than a few encounters. At age 24, starved for affection, I was introduced to heterosexual intercourse in a loving way, which quickly led to a brief marriage.

After another period of tossing about, my life took a dramatic turn in 1961 when I became intensely attracted to a dynamically sexy straight man—and at the same time fell in love with a sweet and trustworthy woman. The stress of this bisexual predicament took me to the edge of a breakdown until I “resolved” the dilemma by rationalizing my passion for the man and marrying the woman. As a couple, we were mostly harmonious and had three children, but later grew apart.

In 1973, at age 40, divorced and spurred by poorly understood motives, I jumped recklessly into a corner of the African American community, fascinated by its mix of free-wheeling cross-class sociability and rough-hewn machismo. Once again, I fell in love with a woman—and married her—still without openly confronting the issue of my attraction to men.

Those three marriages were emotionally rewarding and afforded me the privilege of parenting children. In retrospect, however, the relationships were sustained only through erotic compromises and subterfuge, abetted by large doses of disavowal, denial, and self-imposed ignorance.

During that long, seemingly heterosexual stretch, my homosexual desires, as irrepressible as ever but severely constrained, found outlets through fetishes, fantasies, and dreams, which are examined in this study as the primary means of insight into my innermost experiences—hence the title: penetralia.

Major social changes and dogged self-therapy eventually converged in the late 1980s, creating new possibilities—as described in the later parts of this book—for moving beyond closeted and unfulfilled longings into adventures and relationships, finding at last a satisfying home within gay culture, marriage, family life, and community.

My hope is that this detailed “case history,” large parts of which are based on journals, letters, poems, and transcribed dreams and daydreams, will be a contribution to the study of the infinite varieties of sexual expression and the lifelong process of self-therapy: in other words, the perpetual dance between knowing the truth and resisting it.

P.S. I also hope that readers will enjoy perusing this old man’s leisurely tale, which includes, mixed in with more serious stuff, a number of yarns that one way or another shed light on my sexual history.

 

 

A NOTE ON THE BOOK’S ORGANIZATION

 

The narrative proceeds chronologically and is divided into short numbered sections identified by the ages and years covered, with occasional forward glimpses. Certain key experiences are re-examined retrospectively, sometimes more than once.

 

 

A BRIEF GUIDE TO MAJOR PSYCHOSEXUAL THEMES

IN VOL. 1 (1933-1987)

 

§1-8 (pages 1-45) Birth-Age 19; 1933-1952: Effects of the hand injury. The emergence of homoerotic desires, gay sensibilities, and several fetishisms.

 

§9-20 (pages 45-100) Age 19-24; 1952-1957: First coming-out period. Avoidance of body image issues and other inhibitions result in frustration and lack of experiences.

 

§21-25 (pages 100-123) Age 24-27; 1957-1960: First marriage and divorce. Ambivalent attempts to re-enter gay life. Fetishisms emerge more strongly.

 

§26-36 (pages 123-179) Age 27-40; 1961-1973: Falling in love simultaneously with a man and a woman. Second marriage. First sustained attempt to stop hiding my disfigured hand and a partial coming out to my wife. First involvement in political activism. The homoerotic sub-currents and the role of fetishisms in my daily life and in my marriage until its dissolution after 12 years.

 

§37-54 (pages 179-249) Age 40-48; 1973-1980: My often adventuresome sojourn, intertwined with sexual issues, in Oakland’s black community. Falling in love again. First successful efforts to deal with some issues connected with my physical deformity. Unsuccessful attempts to have homosexual affairs.

 

§55-61 (pages 249-288) Age 48-52; 1980-1985: Third marriage, home life, and step-parenting. Reflections on the class and color issues that I struggled with while living in the ghetto. Homosexual anxieties and fantasies. Dealing with the harsh realities of depression, addictions, co-dependencies, and violence.

 

§62-79 (pages 288-350) Age 52-54; 1885-1987: The re-emergence of homosexual desires demanding attention. The disintegration of my third marriage. Finding a new home port for my sexual journey. The heart-breaking conclusion to this part of my life.

 

A Bibliography of published works and song lyrics cited in the above sections.

 

 

LOOKING AHEAD

 

As of February 2008, the rest of the book is still being written, but enough has been completed to say that the next big chunk of material (1987-1990) examines the drawn-out and uneven process that I went through uprooting internalized homophobia and overcoming other obstacles to fully accepting my sexual nature.

In these sections, particular attention is paid to the factors that made progress possible: reading, writing, recording my dreams, exploring my fetishes and fantasies through masturbation, attending lectures and conferences, taking part in workshops and support groups, beginning to make friends with other gay men, coming out gradually, and absorbing the lessons learned through one more heterosexual affair.

Researchers and scholars in the field of human sexuality are welcome to contact me by mail at PO Box 27, Hayward CA 94543, if you are interested in reading all or parts of the book.

Peering further into the future, my fondest hope is to be able to transform—if Fate is kind—what are now thousands of still handwritten pages into a readable, tolerably succinct narrative regarding my interactions with my true home community and the world at large, writing as a gay man ripening into old age, bringing the story up to the cusp of the 21st Century, with a Coda providing a glimpse of the years since. Finally, I intend to complete the Bibliography and create an informal Index to facilitate research.