This is the first interview (Interview 2, Interview 3).
Interview with Thijs
(Age: 10 years, 11 months.)
What do you spend most of your time doing?
Well, first of all, swimming, and after that not much. I don’t have many hobbies. I play football a bit. Yes, and do things with my hands – many different things. I play outside a lot, sometimes with my friends, sometimes alone.
Then what do you do?
Football, ride the trams around town. I go swimming all the time with Joop [his older partner] at the naturist pool. Usually with Joop, or with Loek, another man. Yes, he knows a lot of people.
Does it make a difference to you that it’s naked swimming?
Well, nobody cares if it’s naked swimming, but I don’t like it much if someone joins us I don’t know.
Do you do that every weekend?
Yes, but sometimes he goes somewhere else.
What do you enjoy a lot?
Playing outside.
But we already have that.
Well, I usually come here to Joop’s. And I play with him. I enjoy being with him.
What sort of games do you play, then?
Sometimes we just sit around, and then lots of boys and girls drop in at Joop’s, usually just as many girls as boys. Every Saturday, with chips and stuff, and I always come here. But I also come when there’s nobody here. So when nobody else is allowed in I am, just because I have known him for a long time. So that’s what I do a lot. Yes, and sometimes I make love with him.
What do you mean by make love?
Sex, make love, both the same.
You say that’s the same, sex and making love?
Pretty much.
So what shall we put down? ‘Sex with Joop’? Or would you rather say ‘making love’?
Doesn’t make any difference. It only happens between the two of us.
What do you really dislike?
Being at school.
How is that?
Because I can’t be outside playing. Just about every day we have something difficult we have to do – but always something nice, too. Well, I don’t know, it’s mostly just school.
Is there something that you think about a lot, for example, when you lie in bed at night?
Yes, every now and then I think that I used to be able to sleep with Joop but now not any more.
You think about that?
Yes, and in the morning I’ll have to go to school again.
That school is really quite important, isn’t it?
Sometimes I sleep with my mother, but I have my own room, too, but then my mother is all alone and she is so old.
Do you think your mother doesn’t like to sleep alone?
No.
Why, then, do you sleep with your mother?
Because otherwise she’s all by herself, of course. My sister sleeps with her fairly often, too, but she usually sleeps by herself.
In the past you were allowed to sleep with Joop?
Yes, but not anymore. Then she said, ‘You can’t go over there.’ She didn’t like it, she said, and of course I couldn’t sleep with him anymore. Yes, so it’s best not to do it, because she absolutely doesn’t want it, and after I’d been coming here a long time.
What do you think of that?
Well, it’s not nice, of course. And so I think a lot about it.
Who do you get along very well with?
With Joop and Loek.
Who is Loek?
The one who always comes along swimming.
Are there more people you get along well with?
A whole lot – with Loek’s friends, with the people I know well, of course.
Do you have any idea why you get along so well with Joop?
That’s because I’ve known him so long.
How long is that?
I’m not really sure – two and a half years or so. I never quarrel with him.
Who do you not get along well with?
Oh, my brother. My brother’s always calling me ‘mini-poot’ when I go off to see Joop.
(‘Poot’ is a derogatory Dutch slang word for homosexual - Ed.)
I’m always fighting with him. And my sister, who is always bossing me around.
What’s your brother’s name?
Guus.
And he calls you ‘mini-poot’?
The way he does it is real crude, I think. It’s sort of a rotten name.
Which you don’t like to be called?
No, not that name. But if they say, ‘You’re going with Joop.’ well, I don’t like that either.
And what’s your sister’s name?
Trees.
So with Guus and Trees you don’t get along so well?
And with Dickie. He says behind Joop’s back, ‘I’m not going any more to that poot’s home!’ But he goes to bed with him just the same.
So he calls Joop names behind his back?
Yeah, I’ve told Joop a couple of times about it, but he won’t listen to me.
Do you think that’s because it doesn’t bother him?
I don’t know.
Most things have pleasant and unpleasant sides. For example, going to school can be pleasant because you learn things there, but it can also be unpleasant, as when you are punished for something. If you now think about having sex with Joop, what would you say is nice about it?
That we like to be with each other. And that I’m used to it. And that it’s nice, and all.
You find it nice?
Yes, I just find it real nice with him, the sex and all.
What do you find is the unpleasant side of your sex with Joop?
There isn’t one. At least I don’t know of any.
Not even when you think about it real hard?
No.
Isn’t there something that you’d really rather not do?
No. If there was I’d certainly say so.
Now, I would like to go over some of the things you have written down. That you can no longer sleep with Joop. At first your mother let you?
At first, yes. A couple of times, a couple of days or so.
So, at first it was allowed. Why no longer?
My mother got to know a little about Joop, something about how he is.
She got suspicious?
Yes.
How did that happen?
It started over swimming nude. Joop’s friends said that I went swimming, naked swimming. And my mother thought that wasn’t a good idea.
Then she didn’t permit it anymore?
Yes, she already know a whole lot.
Was that a long time ago, that you were able to sleep with Joop?
A year or two – yes, a year and a half.
How long have you known Joop?
I don’t know, two, and a half years or something.
You’re almost eleven, eh, so you were around eight or nine?
Yes.
Can you remember how you got to know him, how it went?
Yes. We were going to play football. I was on a bike and the chain came off and Joop said, ‘Here, I’ll help you put it on’. Well, I could do that myself, but he wanted to help me so I let him. Then he said, ‘Would you like to come in?’ Well, so I went in, and then I started to go to football with him more often. And then suddenly one time we had sex. It happened very quickly, that sex. I didn’t know anything about sex then but I learned in a hurry. One evening I went to the bathroom and he took hold of my penis, and then we made a little love, I mean, had a little sex.
What did you think about it, that first time?
I was embarrassed, some, but later, when I’d been dropping by for a week, I just got used to it.
The first time you had sex together, you say, was right in the beginning, so you didn’t really know him for very long then?
I’d only known him for two or three days. That was when I was still in the boys' home. I used to come to his house every weekend, and also sometimes during the week. But then I usually had to eat at the boys' home. Around noon I’d say I was going to go outside and play, and then I’d go to my mother.
So it was right in the beginning. Can you say what happened the first time?
What, the sex? Yes first he asked me if it was okay. He said, ‘If you don’t like it you’ve got to tell me.’ And then he did this with his hand… he did that for a little while, a few days. Because I lived very close to him so I came by often. And finally, I think it was four weeks later, I did it to him, too. And two weeks later we had complete sex, almost every day we had sex, every day that I came. Now I do it every day, because I’m back at home again. Just about every day, but also sometimes not.
If you had to say who it was that began with the sex, that first time, who would that be, in your opinion?
Who started it the first time? He, of course. I had no idea what sex was. Well, yes, I knew what sexwas, but not that.
Not through having done it a bit yourself?
No.
What do you think about that, knowing everything about it?
Well, I knew about it when I was ten.
How does it happen now, when you have sex together?
We just have a little sex, and then we jerk each other off a bit, and afterwards we usually go to sleep, take a little nap.
Can you say who begins it now, when you have sex?
It’s always both of us, sometimes me, yes, mostly me. And he, too, a lot.
Can you say how you go about it, when it’s you that starts it?
I go up to him and say, ‘I’ve got to tell you something.’ Well, if anyone knew what ‘that’ was… that’s what he always thinks… but I don’t think everybody knows.
And then you go to the bedroom?
Yes, but a lot of kids know, and then they say, ‘Oh that again! Just hurry up and come!’
Has much changed since you first had sex with Joop?
A lot. We didn’t used to do it together. I didn’t used to know much about him and now I know almost everything. And then I didn’t have much contact with him, but now a great deal. And it wasn’t really sex with him I had that first time.
Do some people know that your have sex with Joop?
Yes, other people who visit here in the house.
What do these people think about it?
They just don’t say anything about it.
And your mother?
She may not even know. She really knows, but I just say that it isn’t true. But I still come visit Joop.
So you really are lying a bit to your mother?
Of course. I’m not going to be kept away from him.
Why not?
Just, well, because…
How do you think your mother would feel if she know you had sex with Joop?
She’d think it was dirty, I guess. A man and a boy she would think is not normal, it just shouldn’t happen. That’s what she says.
What do you think about the way she feels?
Absolutely stupid, although I wouldn’t tell her it was absolutely stupid. I mean, what business is it of hers? It’s my own business what I do.
Are there also friends of your own age who know?
Yes, school friends know about it, because they gossip about me. Something like half my school knows about it. They call me ‘poot’ and so on.
So they call you ‘poot’ to your face?
No, I don’t let on that I know they call me those names. I say nothing. I’m not stupid.
The boys also think it’s dirty?
Well, I don’t know. It could be, otherwise they’re just not doing it, or they think it’s dirty.
What do you yourself think about your having sex with Joop?
Just very nice.
For you, then, it’s no problem?
Just like a woman going to bed with a man; to me it’s the same. And the feelings you get and all.