Not homosexual, although it was an act of love and kindness. I’m sure the Phelps folks would consign you to an eternity in hell for it, though.
And it did remind me of this (oldish) joke:
A man walks into a public men’s room, his arms are held awkwardly out to his sides, forearms hanging limply, fingers spread apart. He approaches another man and asks, “excuse me, but could you please unzip my fly?” The second fellow is embarrassed, but feels sorry for the stranger, who appears to be crippled. He thinks how humiliating it must be to have to ask for help for something like this, so he complies, unzipping the first man’s pants. Next, the man asks him to hold his penis while he pees. The second guy is even more embarrassed but does as he is asked. Finally, the first guy finishes, and the second man starts to put his penis back in his pants. “Oh, I can take care of that” the first man says, blowing on his fingers, “I think my nails are dry now.”
A man walks into a public restroom and sees a man standing at the urinal. The he notices that the man’s sleeves are hanging limp at his sides, and there are no hands coming out the shirt. “Oh, poor guy,” he thinks, “must have lost his arms in an accident.”
The second man leans over and asks, somewhat embarrassedly, if he will unzip his pants. The guy feels sorry for the stranger, and unzips it for them. Turning even more red, the stranger asks if he’ll hold his penis while he pees. Feeling obligated to help a stranger down on his luck, the man lowers the stranger’s underwear and moves to grab his penis. He notices that there are all sorts of weird red sores and pustules on his penis–probably from having trouble bathing without arms, he thinks–but being a good samaritan, he closes his eyes and finishes the job.
He moves to zip up the stranger, when curiosity gets the better of him. "Say, do you mind me asking—"he stops in mid sentence as the strangers arms pop out of his sleeves. “Haven’t got a clue, but no way I’m touching it!”
I think it’s been pretty well pointed out that it wasn’t a homosexual act. But what hasn’t been clarified is if you enjoyed it in an, um, erotic way at all, while doing it or thinking about it later…If so, it still wouldn’t necessarily be a homosexual act, but definitely a homoerotic one.
Not gay at all, and you are a better man than I am.
It takes a lot of empathy to what you did.
When I am confronted by sickness, I get all blubbery and helpless and probably would hinder things more than help, even if I tried.
On the other hand, I don’t like people fussing over me when I am ill too, I prefer to go into hiding (Of course, this is not a viable option in many cases, ex as in the OP)
I’ve admitted to being a recovering alcoholic and a recovering drug addict; I’ve admitted to having serially cheated on my ex-wife so I doubt I would be unwilling to admit to being bi-sexual or gay. The things I did for my friend were not erotic, at least for me, neither at the time I was doing them or afterward. If he found those things to be erotic, he chose to never say so.
But-----he and I were between thirteen and fourteen at the time. At that age, I believe a lot of people are not all that certain about their orientation and I simply requested the opinions of other people: Was what I did a homosexual thing or was it not. No ifs, ors, or what have been scenarios. As I have said, the primary thing that was most shocking to me were the reactions of some of the guys that my friend and I had known all our lives; namely that I had to be homosexual since, in their misinformed judgment, only a homosexual would touch another guy’s penis. I believe I’ve said several times that all of this took place in a small town in Texas, back in the early to mid 1950s. The level of ignorance and prejudice to be found in that setting are, by today’s standards, simply unbelievable. So many of my supposed friends taunted me about it is something that still has the ability to hurt and that’s about it-----hitting a friend in the face and being hit by that friend over something that was, in my view, an act of friendship caused me to doubt every friend I ever had. It bothers me from time to time.
Well you know guys, if this was discussed with two or more males, they would have to overreact about it to appear macho in front of their friends. Guys don’t exactly sit around discussing warm tender feelings.
I’ve been one of these teens uncertain about their sexual orientation who eventually turned up heterosexuals. If what you did had been related to an hypothetical sexual interest in boys, you would have known at the time. If it didn’t feel sexual, if you didn’t feel some “peculiar” interest in this boy and/or his genitals, if it didn’t feel, given the time and place, “dirty” but attractive, IOW if it felt just like something not particularly pleasant you had to do out of friendship, it wasn’t sexual or homosexual, not even in the “sexually immature and/or not really certain about my orientation yet” sense of “homosexual”.
