Will the Bondage Boy Hooks Up with Peter Fonda

West Hollywood, April 1993

Every year Lane's mother Rosa hosted a huge Passover seder.  Her house on Crescent Heights was packed with relatives from New York, friends from Temple Beth El, employees, neighbors, and minor celebrities.  I went twice as Lane's roommate or boyfriend (depending on who asked).

Rosa died last year, so Lane has the responsibility of hosting.  Fifty people will never fit into our small two-bedroom apartment, so he's paring down last year's guest list, deleting Rosa's old housekeeper, the great-uncle that he only saw once a year, crotchety neighbors, and the elderly ladies from the Hadassah League.

"What do you think?" Lane asks.  "Should we keep Jane and Peter Fonda?"

I look over his shoulder at the guest list: Jane Fonda and Ted Turner. Peter and Portia Fonda.  "Rosa knew them?"

"Sure. They met when Jane's husband Tom Hayden was running for Senate. She's been to seder several times, [Her brother] Peter only once that I can remember, but Mom invited them every year."

The 1960s counterculture heroes sitting down to Passover dinner with Lane's elderly, kugel-baking mother?   It seemed bizarre.  But, I remembered, Rosa's politics were very liberal.  When she was younger, she wrote for a radical Zionist newspaper.

"Should I continue the tradition?  It means four table settings, and they probably won't come.

"Go for it.  I'd like to meet them."

A few days later, at lunch with Will the Bondage Boy, I mention the Jane and Peter Fonda guest list.

"Can I get an invitation?" he asks.  "It would be fun to see Peter Fonda again.  I wonder if he remembers our trick."  [Trick was our word for a hookup.]

"You tricked with the star of Easy Rider?  Why haven't you told this story before?  You always tell about Keanu Reeves."

He shrugs.  "Nothing to tell.  We tricked, the end.  A jealous-lover bondage fantasy with Keanu Reeves is much more interesting."

"I'll be the judge of that."

Tijuana, April 1978

Will was 20 years old, a sophomore at Occidental College, a Cute Young Thing ready for action.  This was before the fear of AIDS shut down all the bathhouses in Los Angeles, but he was afraid to go to them, lest someone from school see him and have him expelled.  So one weekend he and a friend went to a bathhouse in Tijuana, a seedy affair with musty showers, damp corridors, and leering drug-addled downlow men.

Will recognized Peter Fonda immediately.  He didn't find him particularly attractive: pushing 40, tall and thin, with a receding hairline, a long face, and a Tom Selleck moustache.  But who would turn down the chance to trick with Captain America of Easy Rider, whose homoerotic buddy-bonding gave the 11-year old Will his first glimpse of gay potential?

They went back to his room and collapsed onto the seedy, stained mattress, fondling but not kissing.  Peter went down on Will, but he was too star-struck and couldn't concentrate enough to get aroused.  After awhile, he gave up and moved to go down on Peter.



 Peter was enormous beneath the belt, a good 9", and thick as a beer can.  Will could only manage to get his mouth around the head; the shaft took two hands.  Still, Peter was impressed, groaning, whispering "Oh, yeah, that's great!  Feels great!"

He finished with a monumental spurt and, sweating and out of breath, drew Will into a hug -- still no kissing.  "That was outta sight!  Do you live in L.A.? If you have a place where we could crash, we could make this a regular thing."

"Sure, I have a place," Will said, thinking of his dorm room.  He could put a tie on the door handle to signal to his roommate that he was having a "girl" over.

"But don't tell your friends about me, ok?  I have a reputation of being a macho action hero, and I don't need any rumors ruining it."

"Ok."

Peter wrote his telephone number on a piece of paper and handed it to Will, then dressed and left.

West Hollywood, April 1993

"I felt like I should call, just because he was such a big star," Will says.  "But he wasn't that cute, and he wasn't that good in bed, so I gave it a miss.  I'm probably the only guy in history to dump a celebrity after the first date."

"No, I've done that, too,"  I say.

"See?  Not nearly as interesting as Keanu Reeves.  The only interesting part was his 9", and I've been with bigger guys since."

Will gets his invitation to the Passover seder.  The Fondas don't come, but Lane gives him Peter's address and telephone number from Rosa's address book.   I don't know what happened after that.

Was Will telling the truth?

1. Most celebrity dating and hookup stories make the the celebrity gorgeous, and the sex energetic and passionate.  Making Peter unattractive and the sex mediocre gives Will's story a ring of truth.

2. But being starstruck over Peter Fonda rings false.  He's not a big star.  During the 1970s and 1980s he starred mostly in car-chase actioners like Race with the Devil and The Cannonball Run.  In 1978 his only movie role was High Ballin', a Canadian attempt to cash in on the trucker craze, with Peter driving, brawling, and picking up a girl conveniently named Pickup.

3. Peter has been married to women three times, and has two children, Justin and Bridget.  He was with his second wife, Portia, from 1975 to 2011.

4. He's a gay ally.  He claims that he chose a black motorcycle jacket for Easy Rider to become an icon in the gay community.

See also: Will and Scott Have a Wild Night with Keanu Reeves; 21 Surprising Facts About Lane