Chapter Twelve ~ We’re all animals underneath

Despite feeling isolated most of the time, I don’t think I actually appreciate the condition. Quite a lot of the time I excluded myself which didn’t count but I can recall clearly several everyday events, like Birthday parties I went to despite always feeing like an outsider. There are just three which come to mind; at least while I was at the sort of age you participated in such things.

One, we were sent home early because the birthday boy wouldn’t share his new cricket bat during a game after tea. The second, we had bread and butter with our homemade ice cream and got chased by Guinea fowl; I put up with that one to be around the rather attractive blond curly haired twins. The last came to an embarrassing end after an argument turned into a full-blown fight over who would play with the new, all action Thunderbird toys. As I was obviously losing the physical confrontation that ensued, I stuck my hand down the birthday boy’s trousers to gain some sort of advantage in the testicular department; or perhaps it was more than that? Other than, or probably because of it, I never received another invitation to his house or any others in the village; I hadn’t even got to ‘cop a feel’ which would have perhaps made being ostracised worthwhile.

There was a handful of what we would now call ‘play dates’ and at least these had a few more if still fully satisfied benefits. Having always been drawn to one very good-looking lads in junior school, his perfect build and outgoing confidence were things of desire and I wanted these for myself as much as I wanted him as a friend. When we had both grown into more independent, but still young boys, I managed to engineer going to his farm to have ‘fun’. He was of course unaware of my feelings towards his outdoor rough-edged beauty as I attempted to follow the extended games of tag, pirates and Tarzan, in and out of the many barns and through endless tunnels created by bales of hay. Despite never being able to keep up, I would be content to just hang around and watch him swoop, leap, and freely express himself, perfectly tussled hair, sinuous musculature stretched and taught, for me it was tantamount to emotional torture. Even today, I can picture him, and need a minute every time I do.

Another advantage of my visits came from the diversity of the farming business, one part of which was milking cows. Having understood the basics of cattle management from our own calves, this was rather different but equally interesting. Milk made naturally by the cow to feed the calves who were born to them, but part of a commercial milking business it meant the youngsters were taken away and sold to people like us, to be raised as we did at home. If the adult cow was milked twice a day, it was months before she would dry up. The cycle of milk production was started again by getting the cow into calf, and so on.

The mating of the cows was in some part, an answer to my questions about the pigs from all those years ago. This farm had its own bull, huge, snorting thing which I was warned against getting too near. It looked magnificent in both its general size and of course for me in its appendages. A huge swinging scrotum tempted you to reach under and touch its power and intrigue but it was not to be; at this point, anyway. One day I was lucky enough to be around for one of the carefully controlled mating events and while keeping my distance, I paid close attention to the event despite almost embarrassing myself the first time I watched having to concentrate very hard to minimise the embarrassing tenting going on in my trousers. No one else seemed to be phased by it if they even noticed.

The process was of course just a natural thing, the mating as well as my arousal even I knew that, but I had never been able to have this direct admiration of it. The event itself came with a running commentary from my friend which was equally exciting. He obviously enjoyed sharing his expertise on the subject and I learnt the full story of the birds and bees, only with cows and bulls instead. He explained all the working parts of the business and I tried to take it all in to expand my very basic knowledge. He highlighted the specific parts of the cow which would be involved as his father carefully washed the area in question. The actual mating in the end was quite disappointing after having had such a graphic build up. The bull’s erection once exposed was disappointing being just a thin short pointed pink thing; I felt that for relative size I could do much better myself. The whole event was over in seconds with only a quick jump up, poking it in, a couple of pumps of his ample hips and straight back out again. Somehow, I had hoped for more prolonged action and impressive genitals, more like an elephant’s prehensile log or at least the length and girth of a horse. Disappointment aside, where the protuberance went was equally unimpressive, if it was any realistic representation of a woman’s parts and a man’s participation in them, I thought I now understood why I had no interest taking part in the human process.

Trying to relate all this new knowledge to what I already knew, plus what I thought I knew, plus what I had read about, some of it made sense but ultimately the experience left me with more questions than answers. This conundrum would stay with me but thankfully stored away. Trying to discuss it with my enthusiastic friend was a waste of time and he had no interest in sharing further thoughts on the subject presumably as it was just one of those regular things; At least in his life. My real hope was that the subject might open up to a slightly different conversation and give me a chance to share more personal comparisons; it didn’t happen of course.

It was at this farm, while I was making pointless attempts to further my curious interest in boys, well this boy anyway, where I came closest to getting my first authentic experience of horse riding. My friends much younger sister had a pony. Fortunately for us she was too young to be either interesting or tolerated by her brother but it meant that I never did get close enough to embroil myself in the possibility of sharing either her interest in riding or her animal. In the half-baked attempts to do so I did gain some valuable knowledge of much of the riding equipment. With my analytical brain working overtime, I saw where I might be going wrong with my paltry efforts at home and where I might be able to reproduce the much dreamed of experience I was looking for; not with the cows anymore but any other opportunity I could engineer in the wider world. What I would have given to just walk off with a saddle or bridle but although driven, I was not that desperate and contented myself with just running my hands over the soft smooth leather and the cold stainless steel whenever there was the opportunity.

The matter of sibling politics was something which I didn’t get involved in so had little idea of how it worked, the result was that I was torn between our friendship and my fixation. The opportunity would not be available for long as he went off to private boarding school and I went off to the local amenity and we lost touch. With no excuse to go onto the farm any more, I just looked on from afar as the girl and pony duo scampered about the open fields.

My self-deducing sex education didn’t just cover my own and other animals functioning sex organs, I was becoming aware of other ancillary items which went with them. Having read about people and having witnessed the mating process of cows, extrapolated this to the pigs and glimpses of other televisual treats, it had been somewhat of a mixed start and I knew I would need to formulate other opportunities to investigate it all in much closer detail. My already pricked interest led inevitably to a need for the more hands on experience, hopefully with suitably docile beasts. Our own animals seemed to be too young to provide the whole story but, on the farm adjoining ours there was another herd of milking cows.

As I was good at working out the strategies for such an operation, if I could fulfil the basic safety criteria then there was the potential to learn quite a lot. Having selected a suitable time of day, I got myself next to the fence which separated our field containing the cows. Still on our safe side, with the sort of comforting ‘cush cush’ noises people used, I managed to entice one or two into the secluded spot. Out of sight from both house and yard I climbed through the fence but stayed close enough for a plausible escape if I needed it, One last check back to the house and everything was set; I still wasn’t certain of what I was going to do.

Despite the total freedom for the cattle to run away, because they were used to being handled during milking I was thankfully allowed to explore the magnificence of these large friendly beasts with little problem. The warmth and the softness of smooth coats compared to our own animals was exhilaration itself. Running your hands over the long contours from an inquisitive damp muzzle with its rasping tongue, down a muscular back where beneath the protruding hip bones you could reach down to the mystery of warm pink distended udders. These were a comforting bag of wonderment; note to self, perhaps you should try and help with someone’s milking regime?

As for the matter in hand, obviously, I knew the practicalities that these were the animal representation of human breasts and I was sure there would be some Freudian anecdote to justify my interest in them; I was too fascinated to worry about any possible issues there. The four teats were softer than the rubber re-creations we used for feeding calves and I found it fascinating that they seemed to responded to even my amateur manipulation. Once I had warmed my hands up I managed to get warm creamy milk to spurt from them. The natural extension of this, to me anyway, was to see what a calf experienced when it was feeding. You couldn’t fault my thorough process in the pursuit of my interests however misguided they might have been.

Carefully positioning myself on the ground, half under the expansive underbelly. At first, I squeezed the teat as I had before and tried to aim for my open mouth. It might have been my being underneath her, but I didn’t get any milk to come out as I had hoped. After several tries, soothing and caressing her to hopefully relax the mechanism, I had to give up. Logically I didn’t think I had the right physiology or experience to make it happen naturally but it might be the only way to proceed. Taking a deep breath, I was not prepared for the intense feeling of the warm, soft, pliant finger of flesh inside my mouth and the sensations running along my tongue and the roof of my mouth were mesmerising. My exuberance found misplaced if still only gentle contact to be unacceptable to even the mildest mannered animal; another lesson learnt and I only got kicked once but only a nudge, not enough to deter me anyway. With practice and a calm nature, the task was finally achieved and was like nothing else I had experienced. Despite it being only an infrequent occurrence, the lateral thinking it stimulated was worth the effort. The physical contact and sharing of fluids forged a link which was one stop close to something I still didn’t really understand.

The herd was eventually sold off on economic grounds but, while I had the opportunity I took full advantage of these pseudo comforts and the greater opportunity to examine other more mature parts of their anatomy that interested me. The mature milking cows were patiently used to having their ‘bits’ fiddled with although they still required careful handling. With experience, it was possible to explore the wider functions quite safely and in so many new exciting and productive ways. After this extended examination, the realisation that our underdeveloped animals could only offer limited experience and so took the shine off, I realised I would need much wider experience to fill in the gaps of my knowledge. From several teasing and testing episodes, the one thing I really wanted to try was oral sex. The milking cows had offered a tantalising and it must be said, delicious opportunity, but it wasn’t quite it.

Disappointingly there were still so many other unanswered questions and unsatisfied curiosities but with the benefit of my accumulated knowledge, my brother’s imagination, the observations around farms and my own more personal experiments, I had at least what I thought of as a nearly fully formed idea about how sex worked. Some of it seemed great; some still had work to finesse, some seemed impossible to go further with but sounded exciting, exotic and even dangerous. I hoped I could try it all in time.