I'm gay. I was actually pretty good looking back then. Why didn't I get invited? I never even heard of this and I was a teen in Chicagoland in the early 1970s, when there was a period when anybody could buy porn (thanks to SCOTUS). I bought porn at the big bookstore in Golf Mill Plaza (Niles) and in Old Town when I was 14 and on. Nobody ever said nought at check-out.

Went to a public HS. The only time I saw other penises was in the shower room (starting in 7th Grade) until I got my first boyfriend at 15. Never got invited to a group jerk off party and I was in a lot of places where (I found out years later) it could have happened: YMCA Summer Camp, Boy Scouts, JROTC, school sports, drama club, church (Lutheran, not Catholic, so that may have been why in that case) ...  I was in all the right spots, evidently, but not once was I even "approached," let alone put on the mailing list or whatever it was. Seriously, I wasn't a bad looking kid. Wonder why, if this was happening, I never got invited.

21 years in the Navy, and not once did I get asked to (ahem) "inspect the fan room." Twice, we had NIS (or whatever group it was) inspect the command I was at for homosexuals (it was illegal back then to be gay and in the Navy), and I swear to God they interviewed everyone in my Division - except me! Even when the "Gay Witch Hunt" aboard USS Norton Sound at Port Hueneme was going on, the closest I got was to be assigned as a Bailiff at one of the Courts-Martial. And I was openly a member of the "Gay church" (Metropolitan Community Church). On one ship, people joked my Division had 3 watch sections: Port, Starboard and Pink.

For some reason, even now in my dotage, no one seems to think I am really gay. I've gotten stopped at doors to gay clubs to be informed, in case I wasn't away, that "this establishment serves a primarily gay clientel," I guess because they think I'm straight and intend to bust up the joint? My own niece and her husband actually told me they don't believe I'm really gay (this was at the 27th anniversary of me & Hubby!).

Now I wonder if I should feel belatedly inferior? After 18, I had sex 500 times+ in 5 years (when I met my first companion, and yes, I keep a journal, started for extra credit in the 6th Grade). Obviously, I wasn't some limping leperous troll, but why never an invite to a group grope or whatever it was called? I grew up in Chicagoland. If I'd ever have been invited, I'd've gladly stumped up for the pizza.

I never felt excluded in HS - until now.

Then again: when I first enlisted in the Navy, no one even talked about masturbation until maybe the 1980s. I was in my thirties before I began hearing shipmates, much younger, joking and even talking openly about 'baitin' in their bunks. Maybe I was just ahead of the curve and it was a younger man's game? I think I was a generation or decade off.  Porn was more available for most in the 80s than in the 70s. (I guess I was just more determined to look for it.)

I was an instructor during one enlistment. I remember during a break hearing a group talking about their time in San Diego with the strip clubs, etc... They asked one Sailor from the South why he didn't go out with them bar hopping and club prowling. (Read this in a Southern accent): "I saved my damn money. While y'all were out stuffing money in some stripper's drawers, I dug out an old stroke book, found my favorite itty-bitty hooker, closed the curtains on my bunk, and flipped the pages. I threw money at her and she threw it back. If'n I wanted her to dance, I jiggled the magazine. I wound up beatin' off just like y'all did only I didn't have to pay for her expensive drinks and my taxi fare. I had a sody and a Snickers for less than a dollar. And neither of us went to sleep  disappointed!" (Circa 1987) First time I remember a Sailor publicly admitting to masturbating to his Shipmates.

In Boot Camp (RTC Orlando, FL), I once had to wake the Sailor who was relieving me for the next Watch. When I woke him, again with a Southern accent and I think it was from WV, he said, "Dammit. Why'd y'all wake me up? I was havin' the greatest dream and my dick is harder'n Jap'nese 'rithmatick!" I woke the barracks laughing and dropping my flashlight.