STORY: 1978—Werner Seelig and I met in the South of France. He was twenty-one and from Indiana. I was twenty, a hippy from California. We were both staying in a commune up in the mountains of the Languedoc. I was immediately attracted to him and over the course of a couple of weeks of exploring the wilds of the countryside together, we became inseparable buddies.
We were both on summer vacation from college and backpacking across Europe, so we decided that we should travel together for a bit longer. After roughing it in the mountains, we headed to the Cote d’Azur for a few days on the beach. I was totally enraptured by Werner. Up until this point in my life, I had convinced myself that I was straight. I had a girlfriend back home and had never done anything sexual with another guy. And I kept reminding myself of this point, as my lustful feelings for Werner grew. Besides I couldn’t imagine the interest was mutual.
We arrived in Nice and checked into a small hotel down near the beach. The manager tried to put us into a room with one big double bed.
“Non!” we both bristled nervously. “Deux lits, s’il vous plait!”
That night we went out on the town for a dinner of seafood, bottles of cheap French wine, and endless talking, about our lives, our futures, and even our girlfriends back home. We stumbled drunk and happy back to our room and fell into our beds, still talking.
“Tom...” Werner said.
“Yes?” I replied.
“I have something to tell you…” He paused. “I’m…I’m bisexual…”
“Uhuh.”
I began shaking uncontrollably. I gulped and squeaked out hesitantly “I sorta am too.”
That was all it took for Werner to leap stark naked from his bed into mine. We groped and thrashed, sniffed and groaned, and kissed and licked. I felt a sexual exhilaration that I had never experienced with a girl. At some point, Werner wanted to take things a bit further and ran into the bathroom to find some lube. He returned to the bed a few minutes later with a very large bottle of Suave strawberry-scented shampoo. For the rest of the night, we proceeded to have wild monkey sex, each taking turns using the shampoo to lube up.
By morning, we had whipped up quite a foamy froth, and our asses were rubbed raw from the not-so-effective soapy lubrication. We showered and tried to treat our well-worn lower regions with Nivea hand cream which only made things worse. We could hardly sit down, but had committed to renting motor scooters that day to explore the hills above Nice. Straddling the scooter, my butt screamed with pain—but I was with Werner, in love for the first time, and now sporting one of the cleanest a-holes in the entire south of France. To this day, I still wince a bit at the smell of cheap strawberry shampoo.
—Tom Walker