16 Naked New Yorkers

Of all the gay neighborhoods I've lived in, the East Village in Manhattan is my least favorite --  better than anyplace in the straight world, but still lacking.

It has some of the iconic sites of gay culture, including the Stonewall Inn, where Gay Liberation began.  Plenty of gay bars, bookstores, organizations, and cultural events.  Plus the best museums, art galleries, and bookstores in the world were a brief subway ride away.

Still, there was something cold about the City, something distant, something...well, almost grim.  West Hollywood felt like home from the moment I arrived, but in the City I was always a stranger.

During my three years living with Edward in the East Village, I only had one real boyfriend: Joe the Regular Guy, who moved back to Pennsylvania after a year.

But I had a series of crazy hookups, dates, and sausage sightings.

1. A hookup with Yuri and the hippie, who talked a never-ending stream of trivia and gibberish, and turned out to be deficient beneath the belt.

2. Back in L.A. for a visit, a celebrity date with Nate Richert, who played Harvey on Sabrina the Teenage Witch.  I didn't know who he was at the time.  

3. The Harvard boy I picked up in the Rare Book room of the Widener Library.  That was in Boston, not New York.

4. Tomor the Mongolian Shaman.  Ok, he was from Paris, not New York, but how often do you meet Mongolians?  Who are shamans?  Who are gay?  And gifted beneath the belt?

5. Barry, an acolyte at a traditional but pro-gay Catholic community, who got exorcised from a homophobic demon.  I think I just wanted to date him because of the exorcism.

6. The HIV Positive bondage boy: he had just gotten his positive status, and he wanted to go to the New York Bondage Club for his birthday.  He had never tried BDSM before, but he figured it was safe sex.

7. Another celebrity date, with Broadway songster Andrew Lloyd Webber.  Again, I didn't have the slightest idea who he was at the time.  But we had tacos in a limousine.

9. The Man in Black who just appeared one day, walking next to me on Christopher Street.  Maybe he was a Catholic monk.  Maybe he was an alien.

10, Mario the Teen Model, who took me on a crazy roller-coaster ride of a date involving a movie, tacos, a dance club, a bath house, and 4:00 am macaroni and cheese.

11. The Bushman.  Where I answer the question: "Are Bushmen always semi-tumescent?"  In South Africa, not New York.

12. Liam, who waited until the exact moment of his 18th birthday before initiating the romantic activity.

13. Jorge, a bar pickup.  I was depressed, so I broke every rule of gay cruising with him.  Turns out he lived with his parents, who didn't know he was gay.  He had to sneak me out the back door while they were all having breakfast.

14. The Football Player Who Got Unstuck in Time.  Was he really a University of Alabama undergrad from 1938 who somehow took a "jump to the left" and ended up on 2000s Christopher Street?

15. My Nephew Josh.  My brother's kid.  At Christmastime in 2000, he asked me to teach him "about gay sex."  You can't get any weirder than that.

16. The Amish Boy. I take that back.  Nothing is weirder than seeing an Amish boy at the urinal in a highway rest stop, wearing red bikini briefs.  A fitting end to three years of strange dates, hookups, and sausage sightings.