Steffen's story

What's wrong with my life?

That's a question I've asked myself many times. I've tried to find the answer by looking back at the 30 years of my life, and the 15 years until I accepted myself to be a boylover.

I was born in 1965 in the former German Democratic Republic, which is as you know doesn't exist any more since 1989/1990. It was a kinda normal childhood as many others are, with kindergarten and school, parents and grandparents who loved me, friends and so on.

Life looked to go the standard way, except that some people wondered that most of my friends I had when I was 14 were younger than me. They liked to be with me, and I liked it too and hadn't thought that much about it. They were my friends, and that was all that counted.

Unlike most of my school-friends, I hadn't ever had a girlfriend. My first and only girlfriend I had was when I was around 19 years. I guess I loved her but it was a short and platonic relation, about two months only.

The same year I was called into the army/navy and became a radio-operator there. It was a nice job, and I liked also the area at the coast of the Baltic sea, particularly in summer where lots of young boys played at the beach every day and I felt lucky while watching them. This was also the time where I started to think there is something wrong. Everyone else was watching the girls, maybe one or two were watching other men, but my eyes only wandered around the young boys, how they played, talked and enjoyed life.

Well I wasn't that old myself at the time and I started to ask myself if I was gay. I never tried to get in closer because this boys were kinda "untouchable" to me. I never thought that they were perhaps interested in a relationship or friendship too.

I suppressed all my feelings for a long time, but I still felt kinda guilty about them and asked myself again and again about the "why".

About four years later, at the age of 23, I finally wanted to know if I was gay and put an announcement at a local newspaper asking for contacts. It wasn't easy to make this step, but it was the only way I could think of to do it. Well, I was wrong - after the first meeting with one gay I knew this for sure, and I wasn't happy about because at least being gay would be kinda publicly accepted.

Some weeks later I met a boy by CB-radio, who was like me and interested in computer games, and some days later he visited me for the first time at my home. It was the beginning of a good friendship and he visited me often to play computer-games or to talk, until I had to move to another city because I got a new job.

(After about 7 years he visited me again and reminded me of the nice time we had. Well, it was "only" a friendship, I don't know if he was interested in more than this, and also I never tried anything more because I was just happy about him visiting me every weekend.)

I started to read some articles about pedophilia, but the opnes I read never described what I felt - they told about people with only sexual interests in children and never mentioned the possible deep relations between man and boy or in common adults and children called love, which is described by the straight translation of the word "Pedophilia".

I should call myself a liar if I said I had absolutely no sexual feelings toward boys. But I wanted sex as only as part of a good relationship, and of course only if the boy wanted it and asked for it and if so only the things he wants.

Well, I guess it's a part of a good relation that I won't withhold this to him, unfortunately there will be for me every time (this time) the fear about the consequences to him if someone else knows about our relationship. A good friend told me that he denied this part to the boy he loved, and this boy, now an adult , is still worrying about the things he wanted openly but missed. But back in time again.

It took again about 6 or 7 years after the mentioned "gay-test" until I accepted myself as I am in spring 1995 and started to not be worried anymore that I'm a pedophile, or boylover as we say (because the negative touch of the word pedophile). All those years I spent almost all of my spare time in front of my computer and it was nearly my only contact to the world outside.

Then came the time I got my internet-account and usenet access, and saw there many postings from guys with the same or related feelings. They talked openly about them, and it looked to me as normal as any other thing in the world.

But there was still that hopeless feeling, the thoughts that a boy would never be interested in such a relationship himself. Today I know that I was wrong about this.

I started, using an anon-account, to post my opinion to a German newsgroup where a discussion about pedophilia was already running. While doing so I met another friend - a man who had relations with two other men (not at the same time of course) when he was a child. He told me that all his memories about these relations were still his best ones. There were sexual activities as part of his relationships too, initiated by himself. Both of his friends had died some years ago, so he had no fear to talk publicly about this relationship. He said that also, if nothing bad happened, the next year he would publish a book about his friendships.

Some weeks later I found the alt.support.boy-lovers newsgroup and subscribed. At the same time the binary-group alt.binaries.pictures.boys appeared on my local news server. I met lots of new friends (and only a few real enemies) on the Net, and also there is a boy I'm really in love with.

I read Brongersma, Leopardi and Sandfort and their books told me that there's no need to feel sad or guilty about this orientation, it was normal and accepted for hundreds of years, and that it will, must be, accepted again.

So, again, what's wrong with this life ?

Is love only bad because it isn't between a man and a woman or between parents and their children, instead of between a man and a boy ?

Love doesn't ask about age or sex or family, it just happens.

I guess there is nothing wrong with that life, there is only something wrong with this world today. But that's no reason to stop my activities: it's a reason to continue them! (I suppose I should be grateful about a new hobby society gave me - collecting search-warrants: I've got 3 now. Maybe some months later I'll be able to wallpaper my home with them...)

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I suppose what I really mean to say is this:

Live your life with your head held high, and if you are strong enough try to fight for our right of love and, even more, the child's right of love wherever it's possible!