Julian LeMont

Many of us know about the trials and tribulations of growing up gay in rural environments, and most of us could not wait to turn our backs to the narrow and repressed mindset in our small home towns to seek fulfilment and actualize ourselves in more liberal urban settings. And following years of growing up repressed and neurotic, many of us may have fantasized of bringing that very fulfilment back home to the countryside to reach closure in our struggle to find ourselves sexually. Few of us, however, may stand a chance of reaching such closure, unless we move to these rural parts with a lover or life partner we found elsewhere. I thus never had opportunities to meet and be with someone back in the rolling hills of central Germany, where I spent most of my adolescent life.

That was about to change one summer, when I came for an extended family visit during the time of the summer solstice in late June, the most beautiful period of the year due to the long daylight hours, lush vegetation and cool, fresh nights. I had made contact with various local guys ahead of my arrival, not expecting much to become of it, since throughout my young life I had never met anyone within a 100 mile distance from my family’s community. Among my new local contacts, one stood out – a young, well-built German stud of Turkish descent, second generation Turk, in fact, since his parents arrived in the 1970s during the guestworker period of Germany’s economic miracle. He was sexually ambigous and confused, but sexual he was, oozing sex appeal from every pore of his lean, dark-tanned body. To finance his university studies, he danced at a straight local night club in BIELEFELD, “metropolis” of Eastern Westphalia, and hardly an exciting place. The only problem was distance, as his home was still a good 2 hours or so from where my family resided. We thus agreed to meet half-way in the conservative catholic city of  PADERBORN, the epitomy of everything we ever ran away from and hardly the venue for openly homoerotic fulfillment.

I decided to go by car to the small community of ALTENBEKEN; gateway to the Teutoburger Wald forest area and junction for several important local train lines, and took a short train ride to Paderborn central station to meet my Turkish stud. And studly he was – as soon as we set eyes on each other, we knew it was a perfect match. We complemented each other nicely, physically, optically and ethnically. Opposites attract and this attraction was tangible, sizzling and explosive. Paderborn was hardly the venue though for gay sexual explosions, and as we strolled through the mundane pedestrian zone downtown, we pondered ways on how to make it happen. Since it was a spectacular, hot, sunny summer day, the solution was simple: we both returned by train to Altenbeken, picked up my car and drove deep into the nearby Teutoburger Wald scenic area. Following a few miles into the woods, numerous smaller roads and trails branched off, opening up towards lush meadows, dark thick forest grounds and blooming fields. And there was noone to be seen anywhere, except for an occasional farmer tending to his fields or locals walking their dogs.

We continued into the woods by car for as far as possible, parking at the most remote corner and continuing our adventure by foot for about 500 yards until we reached an opening near a small creek. Surrounded by thick forest and overlooking a small meadow with cows and with truly noone to be seen for miles, we knew this was the time and place to live out our sexual fantasies, as we set out to engage in timeless hours of unbridled pleasure in various venues nearby – between trees, on the meadow near the cows, in a deserted wooden tree house used by forest rangers and hunters. The unprecedented sense of graphic detail present in each scene and action was worth remembering for a lifetime by its sheer extraordinary esthetic appeal. Our sense of ever-new exploration and adventure knew no boundaries, as we continuously discovered new venues for love-making and more ways to give mutual pleasure, reaching several moments of sexual fulfilment I had never experienced or anticipated, much less in such otherwise repressed rural environs.

Since that summer, I have never again thought of the countryside as repressed or´neurotic, as I began to understand that repression is felt and exercised by humans and not nature. The deserted unspoilt countryside in fact has its own liberating momentum. Wide, untouched fields, meadows and forests can provide the perfect backdrop for subverting rural repression, transforming consciousness and helping us to finally reach closure while getting closer to and finding our true sexual selves.