My 12 Christmas Boyfriends

After my 15 Reasons to Skip Christmas post, you may think that I've had nothing but dreary, depressing, heterosexist holidays.

Actually, only about 30% of the Holiday Seasons I recall have been traumatic or otherwise unredeemably awful: getting sick, getting dumped, being bored to death, hearing that "Merry Little Christmas" song a thousand times, my dad yelling at us, the year my sister gave me office supplies.  50% have had a few redeeming moments, and 20% have been rather pleasant.

My top 12 have all involved boyfriends.

1. Dan.  In junior high,  Dad gave in and let me buy a naked man for Christmas.  Actually a statue of a naked man.  My brother got me pile of new comic books. Dan came over in the afternoon to help me read them.  Best Christmas ever!

2. Verne.  On the Christmas Eve my first year in high school, the Nazarene youth group went caroling all night, ending with a big breakfast at the church.  It was my first time staying out all night, and a lot of fun to be dashing through the snow with high school hunk Verne, who I would start dating soon.  The only problem was, my brother and sister were angry at having to wait until I got home at 8:00 to start opening presents -- usually we started around 4:30.

4. Brian.  In twelfth grade, Brian, who I used to babysit, showed up at my brother's Christmas party.  I kissed him under the mistletoe, then gave him a ride across the bridge to Iowa, hugged him, and asked him to call me.  Back home, I told my brother that, kiss or no kiss, I wasn't a "swish," then went upstairs and listened to the BeeGees on my clock radio.  At the time it was rather traumatic, but since it's become one of my most iconic memories.

5. Fred.  My first date with my first real boyfriend, Fred the Ministerial Student, was on December 21st of my sophomore year in college.  You'd think that would be too late for Christmas presents or to "meet the family," but no, he invited me to his parents' farm in Aledo, about 30 miles south of Rock Island, on December 26th.

6. Viju.  When I was in grad school in Bloomington, my friend Viju came home with me.  I had never actually had a "coming out" conversation with my parents, so I was nervous about how they would handle a rather flamboyant gay guy in the house.  But when we brought our suitcases upstairs to the room that I used to share with my brother, I saw that they had pushed the two twin beds together.  They not only "knew," they were fine with us sleeping together!

We weren't actually dating, but so what?

7. Dick.  During my deplorable year in Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, I went back to Rock Island for the holidays, and ran into my old bully.  Back in grade school, he made my life miserable with poundings and punches and a constant stream of slurs: "Wuss! Sissy!  Fairy! Girl!"  Who would have thought that he was struggling with same-sex desire of his own?  Or that, all grown up, he would apologize by inviting me back to his house.  Or that he was so...um...gifted.

8. Lane.  One year I had a job that didn't give me much time off for Christmas, so I couldn't make the trek cross-country.  Lane and I stayed home in West Hollywood.  We went to a Hanukah party and had latkes and Hanukah gelt.  We went to a bear party, with 50 naked hairy guys eating Christmas cookies and then wandering downstairs to the maze.  We went to Midnight Mass at a gay-positive Catholic church, and then stopped for breakfast at the French Quarter. And I didn't hear the "Merry Little Christmas" song once.  Best Christmas ever!

9.-10. Yuri and Jaan. My first year in New York, I brought Yuri to the departmental Christmas party.  He was still claiming to be straight, but I expected him to at least dance with me.  He refused, so I said "Look, I bought your ticket, so you either get up on that dance floor now, or get into my bed later."

He picked the bed.

Suddenly I had two boyfriends, Yuri and Jaan the Estonian Mountain Climber.  Best Christmas ever!

11. Mickey.  When I was living in Florida, I returned to Rock Island for Christmas, and my brother said that my old Sunday School teacher, Brother Dino, had two sons who were working as strippers.  I went to the show, and  got a kiss from Mickey.

Ok, he wasn't really a boyfriend, but my list, my rules.

12. Troy.  Born and raised in small-town Upstate New York, Troy has an extended-extended-extended family.  He usually goes to Christmas dinner at the home of his grandmother's cousin and her family, but one year Lisa, his grandmother's cousin's son's ex-wife, invited us all to her house.  There must have been eighty people there, and Troy was out to every one of them; no awkward "so who is this?" questions.

She sent us home with presents plus care packages full of leftovers for later.

The only problem: some kid kept playing the "Merry Little Christmas" song over and over and over.

See also: 15 Reasons to Skip Christmas.