Love Letters: William

A first gay encounter in a hotel room showed me who I was.

I’m Alexander Cheves, and this is LOVE, BEASTLY—a blog about sex, feelings, and manhood. It’s written mostly for men—gay, straight, bi, MSM, or just curious—but some readers are women, and some don’t fit into categories. Everyone’s welcome here.

This post is part of Love Letters, an ongoing series about men I know, men I’ve loved, or men who changed me.

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My first time with a man happened at an AmeriSuites hotel, a chain that has since been bought out by Hyatt and no longer exists. It was somewhere outside of Atlanta, Georgia, at the tail end of a church youth trip.

The group visited the North Georgia mountains for a Bible retreat—lots of singing, prayer time, and a day of canoeing down a cold mountain river. The hotel was a stop on our way home.

I was twelve or thirteen. In hindsight, the irony of this experience is that my sister and I did not even attend this church regularly—we weren’t supposed to be there (we knew almost no one in the group, and I'm not sure why we thought this would be fun; we were miserable the whole time). Our family attended a different church. But someone from school invited us along, so we went.

I remember the hotel bedroom, the highway outside the window, and the sounds of cars passing in the night. I was randomly paired in bed with a guy who was a few grades above me. I didn't know his name, but I knew he went to my school. He had bright blue eyes, dark curly hair, and freckles.

He was one of the popular guys—one of the roughhousing, teasing, mean ones who pushed and punched and sat at the back of the bus and did all the things I could not participate in. He was one of the guys I had to be scared of.