Gershom Practices on Me for His Date with the Gentile

West Hollywood, January 1993

In the gay Jewish community of West Hollywood, dating Gentiles was frowned upon.  They would push you to abandon your customs and traditions, and maybe even try to convert you to Christianity.

At the same time, Gentiles were stereotyped as wild, barbaric, sexually voracious, and gifted beneath the belt.

So when Lane and I started dating in 1989, some of his friends grumbled in Yiddish Voz is er azoy gut?, Why is he so great?  

Others squeezed his shoulder and whispered "Congratulations!"

Gershom was one of the shoulder-squeezers.  He was in his 30s, tall and slim, with curly black hair, thick eyebrows, sensual lips, and a scraggly beard.    He always came to Shabbat services at Beth Chaim Chadashim, the gay synagogue, in a suit, even in L.A. heat, and wore a prayer shawl for davening.

One Friday night after Shabbat services, he approached me at the refreshment table. "Boomer, vi geyt es du?" he said.  "Ken ikh fregn ir epes?"

Sometimes people spoke to me in Yiddish to feel me out, see if I was one of them.  But Gershom knew I wasn't Jewish.  What was going on?

"No comprendo," I said in Spanish.

"Sorry, sorry."  He grinned. "I go back to Yiddish when I'm nervous.  Let's take a walk outside, ok?"

Curious, I followed him out onto bustling Pico Boulevard.   "What's up?"

"Well...you know Bernard and I broke up a few weeks ago."

I didn't know, but I nodded.

"We started dating almost the moment I got to West Hollywood.  Eight years we were together, and totally monogamous, no sharing."

Where was this going?  Was he cruising me?

"Well, there are lots of cute guys at the synagogue," I said. "As soon as word gets around that you're available, they'll be knocking on your door."

"That's the thing.  At work there's a new guy, Nathan, a blond angel, so cute I can't stand it!  And smart -- he speaks five languages.  And he's cruising me constantly.  And yesterday he asks me out!  I'm thinking, 'my first date in eight years!'  Where should we go?  What should I wear?  And then I get all ferblunjit." 

"Sounds great.  What's the problem?"

"The problem is, he's goyische -- a Gentile!"

"So what?  You're not prejudiced, are you?"

"Well -- you see I'm not very experienced.  I've only been with four guys before, other than Bernard, and none of them were Gentiles."

How was that possible?  But, I figured, he grew up in Brooklyn's Hasidic community and now lived in the heart of L.A.'s Jewish neighborhood.  He had a job in a travel agency that specialized in flights to Israel.  His entire social life revolved around the synagogue and the Gay Jewish Alliance. How would he meet anyone non-Jewish?

"We put our pants on a leg at a time, just like you.  And take them off."

"Well, that's the problem... you don't get a bris, you're nischt mie -- uncut, right?"  He looked down at my crotch.

I instinctively covered it with my hand.  "Right, I'm uncut, but circumcision is pretty common for Americans.  I wouldn't worry..."

"Boomer, Nathan isn't American, he's French! From Marseilles!"

"Ok, then, he's probably uncut, but what's the difference?  It's still a penis."

"What's the difference, oy -- what if seeing one makes me sick?  Or I gag on it?  Or the foreskin gets caught in my teeth?  The date will be ruined!"  He looked down at the sidewalk.  "Nu, I was wondering, if Lane doesn't mind, could I...well, could I practice on you?"

I was surprised, but not unpleasantly.  "Sure!  We can all get together tonight, if you like."

"Oh, no, I don't have sex on Shabbat. And the date is tomorrow night!"

Wait -- no sex during the 24 hours from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday, and then the date begins?  "How will we have time?  Sharing on the first date is a really bad idea."

"No, no, not sharing," Gershom said quickly.  "I have it all figured out.  I invite you and Lane over to have dinner with us.  Then they sit down in the living room to watch a movie, and I say I need help in the kitchen, with dessert.  Nu, while they're busy, we practice in the kitchen.  Then I'm ready for Nathan.  Simple, es iz ams?"

As simple as an episode of Three's Company.  "What if Nathan catches us together during his date with you?  He'll be furious!"

"That won't happen, I promise.  Please -- I really need to practice."

Lane, always up for an adventure, agreed to the plan.

On Saturday night, Gershom prepared a nice kosher dinner of brisket, fried potatoes, cabbage, and cucumbers in a cream sauce.

Nathan was a Cute Young Thing, tall, svelte, in his mid 20s, with blond hair and a handsome, clean-shaven face.  He was new to West Hollywood, a flight attendant who visited L.A. for the first time last month and decided to stay.

"I have not met a Juif before Gershom," he explained.  "Your religion, it is so fascinating.  I want to know everything! Tell me why you do the circoncision of boys.  And how you know when food is kosher."

And indeed, he asked so many questions that the dinner seemed more like a Judaism 101 lecture.  But eventually we moved into the living room, and Lane took over the answers.  Gershom asked me to help clear the table and get the dessert ready.

We went into the kitchen and shut the door.

Gershom tried to unzip me right away, but I said "We have to kiss, or I don't get in the mood."

So we kissed and groped for awhile.

"Feels like an ordinary penis," he said in a strangely disappointed voice.  Had he been expecting some diabolical pointy thing?

After a few minutes, I dropped my pants, and Gershom fell to his knees and got to work.  He did an excellent job.  I finished very quickly.

"Was I ok?", he asked, rising to his feet again.

I zipped up.  "Yeah, great, but we'd better get back out there, or Nathan will get suspicious."

We needn't have worried.  When we went back into the living room with our tray of chocolate mousse and pot of coffee, Nathan was on his knees in front of Lane.

We both stared.  I cleared my throat.

Nathan pulled away and jumped to his feet.  "Désolée, désolée, Gershom.  I know it is our first date.  But I was worry.  I have never before been with a gars who was circoncis, and I wanted to be nice for you later."

"It was my idea," Lane said with a grin.  "Why should Gershom be the only one who gets to  practice in advance?"

We had our desserts and left them alone, to finish their date without any distractions.

They only dated twice -- apparently they didn't have a lot of erotic interests in common --, but Nathan's fascination with Judaism continued.  He began coming to Shabbat services. Soon he was inquiring about conversion.

By the way, Reform Judaism does not require its converts to be circumcized, so he remained uncut.

See also: Scandalizing the Orthodox Cute Young Thing; Lane's First Trip in the Straight World; The One Thing Kerry Wants in a Guy

A Hookup with My Dad's Old Navy Buddy or His Grandson

Plains, October 2014

Last fall, around Halloween, I got an email about the next M4M Party from a guy named Phil: "I'll be driving through town Saturday, and I would like to come."

Unfortunately, the party was on Sunday.

"I must have read the date wrong," Phil replied.  "Can I come by anyway and hook up with you?"

Guys who can't make it to the parties request hookups all the time.  I usually refuse, but Phil sent a very attractive selfie: he was in his 20s or 30s, round face, dark eyebrows, nice smile, and very muscular, with well developed pecs and abs.

But that's not why I agreed to meet him: he looked absolutely familiar, as if I had known him all my life.

On the brisk Saturday afternoon before Halloween, we met at the gay-friendly coffee house a few blocks away from my house.  In jeans and a red t-shirt, Phil looked even more familiar.  I wanted to run up, hug him, and say "It's been a long time!"  Instead I shook his hand and asked "Have we met before?"

"I don't think so.  At least, you don't look familiar."

He told me that his father was a diplomat; he grew up bouncing from Germany to Italy to Sweden, and through a dozen U.S. states.  All that moving gave him wanderlust, so after high school he joined the navy, and traveled to Korea, Japan, Okinawa, the Philippines, and Singapore.


That list sounded familiar, too, but I couldn't figure out from where.

After the Navy, he went to UCLA and majored in East Asian languages, then"bounced around," doing all kinds of things.

"I've been a hustler in Prague, a kept boy in Morocco, a translator in Beijing, a dishwasher in Nepal, a ski instructor in Spain, and an English teacher in Iran.  Have you ever eaten caviar while watching the sun rise over the Caspian Sea?"

No way!  Americans couldn't work in Iran after the 1979 revolution.  Phil was feeding me a line!

Well, I was something of a world traveler myself.

"I picked up a Swedish bodybuilder at a gay bar in Tallinn, Estonia."

"Oh, the Angel Bar, down the street from the Kiek in die Kok Tower?"

"My friend and I tried to start a gay Pentecostal church in Osaka."  

"Osaka!  Have you ever been to Physique?  I used to know the owner.  Very nice guy."

Ok,this guy had swallowed a Damron Gay Guide.  How could he have crammed all that travel into 25 or 30 years?  He must be feeding me a line.

But he was very cute, and he still looked very familiar, so I invited him home.

Phil was affectionate in bed, versatile, and very gifted beneath the belt -- a Mortadella+!  I could believe his tales of being a hustler and kept boy.


"So, does your truck driving job bring you through town often?"  I asked afterwards.  "We could get together..."

"Maybe.  I never know my route in advance.  One week I might be driving to Tuscaloosa, and the next to Anchorage.  I'll let you know...."

Which in gay circles means "It's been nice, but I don't want to see you again."

That night I sat staring at Phil's selfie and going through the old photos on my computer.  Friends from Upstate, Florida, New York.  No.

West Hollywood, 20 years ago?  No, he wasn't old enough.

College, thirty years ago?  No.

Then I remembered!  I texted my Dad.  "That picture of you in the Navy, with civilian clothes.  Could you email it to me?"


An hour later, a photo appeared as an email attachment, Dad in civilian clothes and his 1950s hair wave, his arm around a taller guy with a crew cut.  "Me and Luke, Okinawa."

Different hair, but same face.  Phil, 50 years ago!

That's why he looked so familiar.

Dad always said that his years in the Navy, from 1956  through 1960, were the best time of his life.  He had a whole album of photos of him and his buddies, which his grandson had recently scanned and put on his computer.

When I was a kid, hungry for any evidence of same-sex desire, I was intrigued by the quiet intimacy of the photos.  I stared at them for hours, wondering if Dad had a secret gay life, but afraid to ask.

"Who was Luke?"  I texted Dad.  "What can you tell me about him?"

Dad isn't good at texting, so he called me.  "He was a couple of years older than me, in his late 20s. He took me under his wing when I was stationed in Japan.  And I think we were in the Philippines, too.  I had never been outside of Indiana before, but he had literally been everywhere!  He spoke fluent Japanese!"

He sent me three other pictures of him and Luke together.

 My favorite, one that I found hot as a kid, depicted them in swimsuits on a beach, their arms around each other, cans of beer in their hands.

Dad had a bulge.

"Did you keep in contact with Luke later" I asked.

"Not really.  Last I heard he was in college, studying international relations on the G.I. Bill. But that would have been in the early 1960s. Why so many questions about Luke?"

"Oh...um...I met a guy today who looked exactly like him.  It was spooky."

I sent him the selfie.

"That's the spitting image of Luke!" Dad said.  "Must be his grandson.  Imagine hearing about him again after 50 years!"

Did I hook up with Luke's grandson?

Or with Luke himself, unchanged, eternal?

See also: The Mystery of the "Kiss My Ass" Burro; The Football Player who got unstuck in time.

The First Time Yuri and I Shared

Long Island, February 1998

Yuri knows the exact moment he came out: at 7:40 pm on December 5th, 1997, the night of the department Christmas party.  The night he found out why my nickname is Boomer.

We tried to date afterwards, but we were so used to being friends that it was awkward.  So we decided that Yuri should start exploring the gay world on his own.

"For my first date," he said, "My first real date, I want somebody special.  Big."

"What, I'm not big enough for you?"

He laughed and hit me on the shoulder.  "You know what I mean.  Super big!  In Russia we don't have a lot of chernokosnie -- black guys.  Have you been with them?"

"A few."

"How big are they?"

"Well, I can't speak for all black guys, but T, the thug wannabe I dated in West Hollywood, was a Mortadella+."

He grinned.  "Great!  We will go to Manhattan and find some chernokosnie.  Except  for my first time I'm a little...um...scared.  So for the sex, you will be there too, ok?"

I knew all the places to meet black men in Los Angeles, but in New York, I wasn't so sure.  I checked the Gayellow Pages and the Damron Guide, and came up empty except for the Mount Morris Baths in Harlem.

On Sunday afternoon we took the train into the City and checked it out.  But it looked rundown and sleazy, and Yuri didn't want to go in.  We spent the afternoon at the Museum of Natural History instead, and then went to a tea dance at Barracuda in Chelsea.

A sea of white faces.  I was beginning to suspect that Manhattan was as racially segregated as West Hollywood.

We were cruised extensively, but we came to Manhattan to meet a specific kind of guy, and that's what we were going to get.

"What about the Bondage Club you go to?" Yuri asked.  "Do they have black guys?"

"Occasionally.  Not a lot of black guys are into dominance and submission games."


"I saw a club in the Gayellow Pages.  Black and White Men Together?"

"No, that group is for guys already in an interracial relationship.  You won't find a boyfriend there."

We returned to Long Island and tried a search on gay.com.  Eventually we started instant messaging Ali, a grad student at Hofstra University, 25 years old, rather slim -- Yuri preferred older and muscular.  But he was black, and he spoke Russian!

Yuri typed furiously for awhile, and then told me "He always wanted to be with a Russian guy.  He thinks we are big down there."

"Well, you're not small.  Sounds like a date."

 "Sure, sure.  But don't forget, you will be there for the sex."

The next Saturday night I watched tv in Yuri's apartment while he met Ali at an Indian restaurant.  Afterwards they went to the Hercules Pavilion, which houses the figurehead from an old ship.  It was the only public beefcake on Long Island, a favored spot for a first kiss.

They returned to the apartment at 10:00.  Ali was a polite, soft-spoken young man who called me "sir" and shook my hand.

Did he think I was like Yuri's father, inspecting his son's date?

"We can do better than that," I said, drawing him into a kiss.

Soon all three of us were in the bedroom, kissing and groping and pulling our clothes off.  We fell down onto the bed with Ali in the middle.

He was only average beneath the belt, not even a Bratwurst.

I started to go down, but he pushed my head away.

"Sorry," I murmured.  "I guess that's Yuri's job."

I tried to push Yuri's head down, but Ali resisted again.

"It's not that," he said.  "I don't really like oral."

Yuri looked confused.  "No...down there?  I will turn over for you, then?"

"Not without a condom!" I reminded him.

"No anal either," Ali said.  "Sorry."

Now it was my turn to be confused.  "No oral, no anal. That's different.  What do you like?"

"This, mostly."  He started kissing and groping me.

Nothing else happened that night, except between me and Yuri.

Rather an inauspicious first date.

But not to worry, Yuri soon learned to negotiate gay chatrooms and started setting up his own dates. Black, white, big, small, he didn't care, as long as you were attractive and able to hold a decent conversation.

And willing to do things other than kiss.

See also: Yuri's First Boyfriend; Why My Nickname is Boomer

Teenage Millionaire: The Teen Idol Career of Jimmy Clanton

Have you ever heard of Jimmy Clanton?

I thought I was an expert on teen idols, but I missed this one.

Born in 1938 in Louisiana, he burst onto the charts right after high school, eschewing the usual rock for rhythm & blues.  Between 1958 and 1962, he released six albums, and had three hit songs:

The full post is on Boomer Beefcake and Bonding