My 10 Best, 10 Worst, and 10 Most Erotic Summers

I hate the summertime.  It's hot, boring, isolated, and depressing, with the sun staying up until an ungodly late hour and people always trying to force you to play outside.  7 weeks left (groan!).

So I thought it would be fun to compile my 10 Best, Worst, and Most Erotic Summers (since moving to West Hollywood in 1985).

Summer will count as the months between the end of spring semester and the beginning of fall, except for the years when I wasn't in school or teaching (then it's June, July, and August).

The 10 Best

1. 1988:  No travel except for a week back in Rock Island, where I hook up with my old grade school teacher.  In West Hollywood, a busy round of parties, barbecues, concerts, book signings, trips to museums, being double-teamed by always-effervescent Fred and Alan.

2. 1990: Looking for penises in Poland and moving in with Lane -- my first live-in boyfriend (not counting 3 weeks with Fred in college).

3. 1991: My first Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam circuit, plus moving to Nashville to start a great new career (ok, a great new semester).

4. 1992: Back to Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam, plus a new job working with juvenile delinquents.  Three summers in a row!  I must have been doing something right.  

5. 1999: Anytime you spend a summer in Paris, it's the best summer of your life.  

6. 2000: Back to Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam, plus South Africa.  And, back home, Liam gave me a present for his 18th birthday.

7, 2007: My visit to Yuri and his boyfriend Michael in London, plus meeting the French Moroccan on my Sausage List.

8. 2009: Yuri visits me, and we go back to Manhattan.  Plus I'm picked up by a boy and his dog while jogging, and I start dating Troy, my boyfriend for the next five years.

9. 2014: Busiest summer in years.  Visits from Yuri and Eli (from Amsterdam), visits to Indianapolis and San Francisco, and a Pow Wow Hookup.

10. 2015: Another amazing summer.  Visiting Yuri in London, a bath house adventure in Paris, plus the Indianapolis-Cleveland-New York jaunt.

6 of my top 10 summers involved visiting Paris and 5 involved visiting or getting visited by Yuri.  I know what I'm going to do in August.

The 10 Worst

1986: It sounds good on paper, with trips to Australia and Japan, a lot of hookups, and meeting a celebrity at Mugi, but actually it was uncomfortable being a houseguest in a foreign country for an extended period.

1989: I am just starting to date Lane, which is nice, but this is the summer when I give up my doctoral plans with all but the dissertation finished, and go to work for the horrible Getty Consternation Institute.

1996: We are living in San Francisco.  Lane decides to move back to L.A., leaving me scrounging to find a new place with very little money.

1997: I fly crosscountry to New York, leaving my friends, most of my stuff, and San Francisco behind, to move into graduate student housing at a dreary college on Long Island, with three straight roommates and the nearest gay neighborhood two hours away.

2002: I start dating Wade the Beachboy, but back in Indianapolis, Dad asks me about "pretty girls."  Plus I go to a terrible conference in Brisbane, Australia.

2005: I've just left all of my friends in Florida behind to teach at-risk teenagers in Slovakia.  I get to visit Germany, Hungary, Austria, and the Czech Republic, but still -- it's Slovakia.

2008: My move to Upstate New York, five hours from the nearest gay neighborhood.  My exile into the Straight World begins.

2011: Dull, dull, dull!  Monotony broken only by a Cleveland-Indianapolis jaunt.

2012: More of the same, plus I leave Troy Upstate for my terrible year in Philadelphia begins.

2013: More of the same, plus I move cross country to the Plains.  At least I get to spend a week in San Francisco visiting David.

7 of my 10 worst years involve ending -- giving up on grad school, moving to a new city, breaking up with boyfriends.  Almost everything bad that has ever happened in my life has happened in June, July, or August.

The 10 Most Erotic

1987: Alan and I meeting guys in a bathhouse in Tijuana, public sex at a conference at Notre Dame, and a Date from Hell at Mugi, "Mr. Muscle Doctor Big Basket."

1993: Visiting Alan in Norfolk, Virginia, and having him fix me up with Tarik.  It almost made being stranded on the Island of Dogs earlier in the summer worthwhile.

1994: Visiting Spain, where Lane and I hooked up with a Chinese Catalan guy and his roommate.

1995: The Great Redneck Roundup of 1995: Lane and I hook up with 20 guys in 20 days.  Plus we moved to San Francisco.  A fitting end to three erotic summers in a row.

1998: Trip to Estonia, Finland, and Russia with Jaan and Yuri, plus cruising at a conference in Montreal and discovering the Truth about the Formosan Penis.

2001: Moving to Florida, a memorable encounter with the Amish Boy in Red Bikini Briefs, plus getting into the hectic Wilton Manors nightlife.

2003: Hookups, dated, and sharing.  Janik, the Frisian Bodybuilder at the Horseman's Club, invites me to stay.  I share Yuri's boyfriend.  David and I pick up a teenage hitchiker in Key West.   I date the son of my old high school speech teacher.  I'm surprised I had the energy!

2004: Visiting Larry in New Mexico, cruising in Tucumcari and in the Navajo Nation, plus, back home in Florida, Jaan came to visit.

2006: Doc and I search of sex and languages in Durban, South Africa!

2010: Troy moves in with me.  We don't leave the apartment for two days.

Only three of my most erotic summers have involved travel to Europe (hear that, Paris?), but eight involve visiting friends or traveling with a friend.  Apparently it takes the combined cruising efforts of two or more guys to make a summer erotic.

See also: My Best, Worst, and Most Erotic Christmases