Stories from Seventeen

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Troye Sivan released his expansive and brilliant sophomore LP Bloom on Friday, providing us with poppy vignettes of queer love, pain, and curiosity.

I had to sit down to listen to "Seventeen" for the first time. Very few songs--Lorde's "Green Light" and Kevin Abstract's "Empty"--have caught me off guard so profoundly that their first listens act as experiences. I remember hearing each part of the song, each lyric, taking in the sound and slowly putting together the subject matter. Once it clicked, I couldn't believe it. The track made me feel heard and validated, to the point that I probably wouldn't be comfortable writing this without it.

The chorus is sensitive and tender, without ever trivialising the experience to the listener. Lyrics like "and he said age is just a number" or "boy becomes a man now," accompanied with a dreamy synth soundscape, are so painfully succinct that they're enough to stop you in your tracks. To hear a mainstream pop song openly and critically, yet never negatively explore the desire of queer closeness, sex, and empathy from the eyes of a 17-year-old is euphoric.

Representations of legal relationships between younger and older men are far and few between. When they come about, in films like Call Me By Your Name, the rhetoric that surrounds it permeates conversation with, at best, reservedness, and at worst, disgust, something that the general public would rather not think about. But they exist within queer experiences more often than we might think, and I believe they should be acknowledged.

I reached out to friends, some real-life, some online, and found that many had similar experiences when coming into their sexuality.

Editor's Note: The stories herein do not necessarily reflect the views and beliefs of Out Magazine and its writers. These brave contributors have shared their own personal, intimate stories to start a conversation about the frequency of age-gap relationships among LGBTQIA+ youth, and their collection as a whole seeks neither to validate such relationships in total nor further condemn them.

25, Melbourne

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Unsurprisingly, my first gay experience was with a man on Grindr. I was 18 (but I told him I was 20, as if that made a huge difference) and still trying to understand my sexuality and my place in the gay world. I hadn't had much success through the app until we started messaging. All I could see of him on my phone were a pair of sunglasses, a slight beard and his broad, muscly shoulders. He responded quickly, and it wasn't long until he invited me over to his inner-city studio, a fair drive from my family home out in the suburbs.

Heart pounding, mind racing, I arrived at his place and he opened the front gate. I gulped when I saw his built physique tucked under a tight t-shirt and shorts. His deep voice soothed me. He was a fair bit older too, late-thirties, but he already told me that he didn't mind. His studio was glamorous, modern, enormous -- photos on the wall let me know he was a very minor celebrity. He fixed me a vodka soda. We chatted for a bit, asking me questions about why I hadn't been with a man yet. He kissed me. I was shaking with nerves, not knowing what to do, or how to do it, or if this was even a good idea. But an electric current rocketed through my chest -- it felt right. His lips on mine, his hand on my wrist as he placed it on his cock. I was completely electric now, every touch, every sound, every breath pulsating within me. We headed to his bedroom, stripped each other off, fooled around. I was exhilarated.

I was still 18, though, and nerves got the better of me. I apologised. He said not to worry. He let me finish in the shower, dried me off and saw me out. We met up again a few times after that. I fumbled around less and less every time. It wasn't for a few years that I came out to my friends and family; a few years after that when I had my first real relationship. Sure, I was young and clueless, but he was my first stop on an inevitable path, and I'm grateful for what he taught me.

19, Student, Sydney

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I grew up being what I like to call first generation queer. This is when there is little to no presence of queer persons or sexually-diverse people around you in school, home, work or community. All sense of pride in identity must be formulated from within. You build pride by yourself.

I had to source information and connection to my sexuality online -- no separation from the average queer-youth experience of today. I knew everything about what happens in a gay club before I could go to one.

My first sexual encounter was a hook up. He was 32, I was still 18. I never had sex with my first boyfriend, and I was keen to lose my socialised idea of 'virginity'. In my head, I knew everything there was to know about queer sex -- everything I could have learnt from a free 8-minute video online.

This is why I thought BDSM was standard practise.

At age of 18 I was tied against the bed, whipped, burnt and, all in all, recorded. I have no idea where these videos could be, nor did I care at the time. All knowledge accumulated about queer sex opened my mind to the BDSM community; it was a part of my community and I lead myself to believe this was the life I was meant to have.

I led myself to believe a flame against my chest was standard practise for a queer sexual encounter, I walked into something I thought I knew everything about. I put myself in hands of a situation I thought every queer person went though. Those same hands tied mine around my ankles.

To the young LGBT+ person who will hear "Seventeen," listen to what is said. Everyone of us has a sexual identity within us. Sex is personal. Sex is trust. I was not hurt, but I did not take the time to learn what sex is for me.

I can only reflect on what this story would be like, if it was with someone I trust.

25, Los Angeles

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I'm in my mid-twenties now, and writing this was always something in the back of my mind. But before I get into the meat of the story, I want to make very clear that this isn't at all intended as a didactic vignette or a statement about all relationships like this -- all of them are going to be different, and this is just mine to share.

When I was 17, I had already been in a relationship for about a year with a man quite a bit older than I was.

For context, this was the same year Grindr became available and before it had really taken off, back when some used to list their sexuality on Myspace as a crude form of online dating. It makes me shiver to think about the implications of where this data went: if a Myspace page had a sexuality listed, it could actually be searched on the platform and refined by location. Just narrow a blank search by gender, age range, sexuality, and add a radius around your zip code and you'd have a list of nearby folk who identify.

Coming from a small town in a red state, it's not a surprise to me some used this as a tool to meet others, and that some checked it quite frequently. Living in between coastal sanctuary cities for LGBTQIA+ people can feel like a drought, and what might seem like predatory online behavior to some could also just be a long-bottled need for companionship finding its path of least resistance.

His younger brother found me this way right after I moved back from California after my sophomore year of high school and asked me on a date. On that date, he said no less than 20 words in total (nerves, I get it), so I found myself talking mostly to his friend, who turned out to also be gay and who came on the date as well, and to his older brother, also gay.

His older brother was turning 21 in the fall, and I was just about to turn 16.

All four of us went to a movie about an hour and a half away, up in the mountains. He was sweet, charming, and very handsome. I don't remember what was playing, but I do remember thinking I'd found something I didn't want to let go.

Fast forward a little over a year and we've spent 13 months soaking up all of the love and adoration we'd been denied by circumstance, generations of homophobia, rural masculinity politics. It was everything we thought we wanted, and, at once, too much of a good thing.

I'd become estranged from my family and friends, stopped going to school regularly (but kept my grades, shout out to an almost certainly absurd curriculum), and become intertwined with someone I wasn't sure about anymore. When things were just starting to unfold between us, the phrase "age is just a number" had been worn on both our sleeves. With just one more year under my belt, it became clear to me that wasn't always true.

About five months into the relationship, I'd found nudes on his computer. While I'd been dreaming of men much older than I was since before I can remember, he'd been apparently dreaming of men who looked exactly my age. There were between 10-20 of them in a folder, and while none of them looked older than 18, any easily could've been.

I didn't think much of the photos when I found them -- it wasn't until a while after that I realized how significant they were.

I broke things off with him to get back to what I thought was a more authentic high school experience. I started hanging out with more of my friends from middle school. I went to parties, smoked weed for the first time. I joined cheer (one day I'll say/write that without cringing). I took AP classes that changed my life.

I went off to college a year later in a fit of independence. I wanted out of my small town, and I wanted a new life. University living came with new friends, new challenges, and new a wealth of learning experiences that I wouldn't trade for anything. And about halfway through my first year, I found out my ex was dating a senior in high school. At this point he'd have been 24.

And cue the regret.

24, Writer, Sydney

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While I came out when I was 15, it was slim-pickings. Having already had an awkward fling with my best friend, I decided to dive deep and download Grindr. Messages were creepy, and mostly I'd block people whenever the idea of meeting IRL was floated. But this one guy was different: he was cute, a musician, and at 21, only seemed a little bit older, right? More importantly, our conversation flowed -- I'd message him and show friends the back-and-forth, seeking approval on his Helvetica-filtered pictures.

I had a crush: one Saturday, I took the hour-long bus trip into Sydney's CBD to meet him to see a movie, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. His photos were flattering; his slight B.O. wasn't. I remember thinking that he didn't wear deodorant because he didn't care about the date -- then, my fears were confirmed when in the film, a character said the only reason an adult would date a teenager is to get over their ex. After a tense moment, he leant over and promised it wasn't true.

An hour or so in, his arm had settled around my shoulder during the film, though he got stuck for a good while ruffling my hair. It stayed there: it felt nice, but attached to the wrong person. Turned out he lived on the same bus route: when he got off, he kissed me on the cheek, which was terrifying. We didn't see each other until a few years later, when we ran in similar circles -- we mostly ignore how we met.

18, Writer, Sydney

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I went on a Grindr 'date' for the first time when I was 17, this year, just before my 18th. It was after a SZA concert in Sydney. As I was about to jump on the train out of the city, and back to the coastal, beach-side suburb where I grew up, someone nearly a decade older than me asked me if I wanted to come over. I told him I was 18.

At this point, my sex education consisted of a few, really progressive Teen Vogue articles, porn, and the only point I learnt at school which was when my PE teacher said, "It is an unnatural act for the penis to enter the anus." Which was met mostly with laughter.

My jacket was drenched from the rain, and I spent 20 minutes running around Redfern trying to find the apartment, having the shakes from being simultaneously cold and nervous. Whenever I'd seen hookups represented, they were in the few and far-between, yet sometimes tacky gay netflix films, or (unsurprisingly & again) porn. I imagined he was going to look me up and down whilst awkwardly biting his lip, or he was going to grab me and push me against the wall in some psuedo-power move. I didn't want either. But I also didn't know what I wanted, besides from just being with someone like me. When I arrived, he hugged me, and asked if I minded if we watched the end of his Real Housewives episode. It's like he knew what was going to calm me.

We walked up a staircase with pink walls to get to his apartment, talking about the concert I had been too (which fucking ruled I might add), how he was a before-and-after school carer, and how I should've started watching Real Housewives already.

We hugged and kissed on my way out, but after I left, the guilt was instant, and I still don't really know if it was valid. I had been with only few guys before, he was genuinely nice and we didn't do anything intense, nothing I wasn't ready for, but the resentment I felt towards myself was consuming.

I've been with more guys since and have never had an overtly bad experience. But I don't know if the guilt will ever fade, and I don't know why.

19, Los Angeles

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I was 18 when I lost my virginity, a sophomore in college. He was 28, a third-year post-doc medical resident. At the time it was happening, I thought this was the normal LGBTQ+ experience--having to find older people that were more secure in their sexuality to teach you some unlearned or hidden "truth."

"Got something here to lose that I think you wanna take from me"

The day after the first time we had sex, he texted me saying he wanted to "fall asleep with our cum inside each other." I personally found this absurd. We used condoms the first time, per my request. As a student majoring in public health, I believed there was no logical reason to trust a stranger, whose last name I still didn't know, with the future of my STI/HIV status. It was even more shocking that he was studying to be a doctor--how would he function in a hospital if he had such disregard for his own health? We knew nearly nothing about each other, but a certain level of trust was assumed, solely based on the connection of sex.

"He'll just do whatever, do whatever he wants"

I soon realized that if I found myself at twenty-eight having to use dating apps to hook up with 18-year-olds, I would be a little disappointed. Even though I found myself to be emotionally mature, there are few reasons that someone ten years older than me would want to hook up with a barely-legal teenager than the exertion of power or dominance. He drove over an hour to see me each time, just to have sex with someone whose virginity he took.

After a second time with him, I broke it off, but caved again four months later. Within minutes of our third experience, I told him to stop and to leave. I realized I deserved more, and casual sex wasn't for me, especially with someone who lived in such a different world than me. In order to find fulfillment in sex, something that is often very difficult in young, gay relationships, I would need to find someone who valued me for who I am, rather than my age or who I have/n't fucked.

---

Ben: Troye Sivan has been extremely vocal about his restraint of labelling himself as The Queer Icon of our time, but this shouldn't take away his significance. Bloom is a compact and stunning manifestation of Troye finally reflecting the joys of being queer, creating a record that would have provided an oasis when I was closeted. We're not often taught how to navigate the experiences we've described. Whether by lack of parental instruction or community involvement, oftentimes it's just up to us to figure out our first steps into such new, pliant territory. And it can feel terrifying to force yourself to into a world you may or may not be ready for.

My hope is that by sharing these stories, we'll start to talk about them more -- and maybe they'll be useful for someone else at the edge of 17.