Saturday, July 23, 2016

The One Thing Kerry Wants in a Guy

West Hollywood, December 29th, 1998

I'm back in West Hollywood for New Year's Eve.  Lane and I are having breakfast at the French Quarter, catching up on the gossip of who dated who, who moved in, who broke up, during the 3 1/2 years I've been away.

"And guess what?" Lane says in a confidential hush.  "Kerry finally found a boyfriend! He moved into his apartment about two months ago!"

We met Kerry at the gay synagogue in West Hollywood several years ago.  He was 21 years old, a theater arts major at UCLA, sharing an apartment off Melrose with two roommates and working in a video store, where he always found a gay-themed movie to promote as his "Pick of the Week."

He stood out in the crowd: tall, a boyish all-American face, smooth sculpted physique, and a shock of red hair beneath a yarmulke decorated with little shamrocks.  One doesn't meet many redheaded Irish Jews.

Turns out that Kerry grew up in an Irish Catholic household in the Boston suburb of Braintree.  On his 16th birthday he shocked his family by going downstairs for breakfast in a yarmulke and announcing that he was converting to Judaism.


AND that he was gay.  In the same conversation.

That's chutzpah!

No wonder he moved 3,000 miles away to go to college.















We bonded over our outsider status, surrounded by guys who grew up kosher.  Lane and I had him over a few times for dinner and sharing: an oral bottom, average sized, surprising for a redhead, but with that face and physique, who cared?

He was very popular at the synagogue, at the gym, and at the twink bars. Some of the most desirable guys  in West Hollywood were asking him out.

There are six traits that make a guy stand out as boyfriend material in West Hollywood: movie industry connections, an extraordinary knowledge of the arts, a handsome face, a bodybuilder's physique, a gigantic penis, or money.   Kerry was being asked out by Cecil B. DeMille, Leonardo Da Vinci, Leonardo DiCaprio, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jeff Stryker, and Richie Rich, or the West Hollywood equivalents.

BUT: lots of first dates, rarely a second, but by the third, he was shouting "Next!"

No matter how hot the guy was, Kerry always found something wrong with him: bad breath, weird tattoo, unmade bed, a yapping dog, ordered the most expensive item on the menu, said something bad about Boston, lived outside the gay neighborhood.

Maybe he didn't really want a boyfriend?  Maybe he just liked meeting new guys, going out, and the bedroom activity after?

But he kept complaining: "I want to find my soul mate, the one I was destined to be with.  I want there to be fireworks the first time we kiss!"

We lost contact after I moved to San Francisco, and then New York.  Finding out that he has a boyfriend -- and they're living together --  is huge!

Who is this Adonis who has risen above all other mortals, with their snoring and farting and eating peanut butter right from the jar, to become "the one" for the extraordinarily picky Kerry?

"I don't know.  Kerry doesn't bring him to synagogue, and he won't tell us anything about him, except his name is Mat with one 't'."

"Well, I've got to meet this Mat with one 't'!  Do you have their phone number?"

He doesn't, but he has a friend from synagogue who does.  I call, and get us an invitation to visit after dinner tomorrow night.

I wonder which of the six traits Mat will have?  Maybe all six!


December 30th

We drive to a rundown apartment building, brown adobe with bars on the window, on Willoughby, where West Hollywood meets the Straight World.

Kerry is a few years older, of course, but still has a boyish all-American face and a pale, tight physique.  Mat is about 30, thin, rather scruffy looking, with unkept black hair and a three-day growth of beard.

I check the six traits, one by one:

1. Wealth.  No -- the apartment is small and cluttered, with no dining room and just one bedroom.  They serve us cake on mismatched plates.

2. Movie Industry Connections.  No -- Mat has a clerical job in an office on Wilshire.  Kerry has given up on his acting ambitions, and is taking classes in human resources management.

3. Knowledge of the Arts.  No.  We discuss Ricky Martin.  the Matrix, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

4. Handsome Face.   No.  His face is long and narrow, his eyes too small.

5. Bodybuilder's Physique.  No.  Mat is rather thin.

Then he must have #6, a Gigantic Penis!

Sharing with two guys is rare, and neither of us find Mat particularly attractive, but we start cruising him anyway, just to see what his beneath the belt gifts are like.

We go into the bedroom.  I kiss and fondle Kerry, and he kneels and goes down on me while Mat goes down on Lane  -- without taking his pants off.

Mat doesn't stand up until Lane finishes.  Seeing my opportunity, I kneel in front of him, unzip him, and find -- average, maybe a little small.

But...Kerry is an oral bottom!  He likes them big!

Kerry kneels beside me.  "Can I help you with that?" he asks.

Ok, I can't figure it out,  So I invite Kerry to lunch a couple of days after New Year's and ask.

January 3rd.  

"What sets Mat apart from the other guys?  What was the initial attraction?"

"Oh, his face, his personality, his wit," Kerry answers.  "And his penis, obviously."

"It seems a bit on the small side to me."

"Who cares about size?  It's uncut!  Didn't you notice when we 'shared' that  was all over you and barely touched Lane?  I love uncircumcized men!"

For Kerry, it all boiled down to a foreskin.

See also Gershom's Date with the Gentile.

20 Preachers, Priests, and Religious Guys on My Sausage List

I have always been attracted to preachers, priests, monks, seminarians, and religious guys of all types.  There's something about a devotion to the spiritual world that makes your presence in the physical world especially erotic.  Maybe the paradoxical juxtaposition of muscles and Bibles, penises and prayer.

Or maybe it's because God has blessed religious guys with exceptional beneath-the-belt gifts.

I've dated or hooked up with members of most of the major world religions.  Here are the most interesting and memorable:

College

1. Fred, my first real boyfriend.  He was student clergy when we met, during my sophomore year in college.  Then he took a church in Omaha, and I followed him there, with disastrous consequences.  United Church of Christ.


2. During my junior year, Corey was a follower of the Maharashi Mahesh Yogi, and wanted to learn to fly. When I brought up the subject of gay people, he claimed to be opposed to "perversion." But years later I ran into him at the French Quarter in West Hollywood. He was living in San Francisco with his partner. Transcendental Meditation



3.  Peter, the priest with the pushy mom, spent most of our dates talking about why the Greek Orthodox Church wasn't homophobic, in spite of its homophobic policies.  The first time I spent the night, Mom came into his room without knocking. But Peter was #1 on my Sausage List. Greek Orthodox

4. At Indiana University, one night I went to Bullwinkle's, the local gay bar, and hooked up with a Nigerian guy who had a tattooed penis and about a thousand books on magic and witchcraft.  He performed a spell for me.  Traditional African Religion







5. Asher, from the night of six naked men at Indiana University, was the first (but by no means the last) Jewish guy I dated.  Judaism.

6. When Viju, my friend and roommate at Indiana University, invited me to visit him in India,  I hooked up with several Hindu guys, plus Arshad, a Parsi, a follower of the monotheistic religion founded in Persia by Zoroaster (Zarathustra) about 600 BC. There are only about 60,000.  Another gay Parsi was Freddie Mercury of Queen.  Zoroastrianism








Texas

7. My most embarrassing hookup was with Warren, a shy, middle-aged guy who thought I was a hustler. He said he was from the Reformed Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but later I found out that his distinctive underwear was "temple garments," the special underclothes that worn upon your "endowment" in the Utah church.  So....Latter-day Saints.


West Hollywood

8. When I first moved to West Hollywood, I met Alan, a student clergy at the MCC who used to be a porn star, and, earlier in his life, Pentecostal.  He went back and forth from "gay is good" to "God hates gay people" three times. But he was a nice guy, and #4 on my Sausage List. Pentecostalism.


9.  While I was visiting Alan in Japan, I looked around for religious guys.  Nearly everyone in Japan is nominally Buddhist and Shinto, but who still believes in the old rituals?  Turns out that Jin, one of Alan's hookups, was actually training to become a Shinto priest.  Shinto.

10. Finding Buddhists at Mugi, the gay Asian bar in Hollywood, was easy.  My favorite was Tranh, the Vietnamese gym rat and UCLA undergrad who I dated for a few months.  He was vegetarian, meditated every morning, and had a gigantic 3-foot tall statue of the Buddha in his room. Buddhism.

11. Rev. Jasper was a preacher at a Baptist church in Gardena, not out to his congregation ("but we're working on it").  He believed that the Bible prohibited anal sex, but not oral, so we were free to engage in all the oral we wanted.  Two dates were enough.  The American Baptist Convention



12,  Panther, my housemate Derek's ex-lover, the naked man in the bath tub, worked as a church organist, but he was also belonged to the Radical Faeries and a Wiccan coven.  Paganism.

New York

13. It's not easy to find Mongolians anywhere outside of Mongolia, and only about 2% practice the traditional, pre-Buddhist religion, so it was quite a stroke of luck to find Tomor at a gay bar in Paris, of all places.  He told me that Mongolian shamans are all bisexual, since they see beyond male and female to the beauty of the soul.

And he turned out to be gifted beneath the belt, with a Bratwurst+.  Mongolian Folk Religion.






14. My friend Andre, who was straight but celibate, belonged to a "traditional Catholic" spiritual community that disapproved of Pope John Paul and practiced only the Latin Mass, but supported female priests and gay rights.  One day he invited me to the exorcism of a  young recruit named Barry.  The demon turned out to be homophobic, Barry turned out to be gay, and I ended up with a date. Traditional Catholicism

 15. Shen, an undergraduate history major from Hong Kong, told me that he was the world's biggest fan of Confucian philosophy.  Confucianism.

16. The Amish Boy in Red Bikini Briefs.  Ok, it was just a sausage sighting at a rest stop on my way south from New York to Florida, but it's the closest I've ever come to a hookup with an Amish guy.





Florida


17. Arjun.  Have you heard of the Urantia Book?   It was published in the 1920s, or rather channeled, and it tells about our place in the galactic civilization. Lengthy descriptions of the galactic government.  One of the students in my Sociology of Religion class was a devotee, and invited me to get coffee after class in an attempt to convert me. I didn't get converted.   Urantian Fellowship. 

18. Raphael, the Gay Psychic Angel whose arms didn't work, the hottest guy I have ever seen, told me about my past lives.  I wimped out on the date, but at least we kissed.  He was affiliated with the Science of Mind, a new age religion founded by Ernest Holmes in 1926 that teaches that we create our own reality.






Ohio

19.  I have to include the Catholic priest in my bed, even though we didn't really hook up -- Father Christopher and I shared a room at a retreat.  But I did get a sausage sighting.  Roman Catholicism.

20. Farshad, the French Moroccan.  I had been with Muslim guys  before, but Farshad was especially devout.  He helped found the first gay masjid in Europe.  Islam.

See also: When Your Boyfriend's Religious Brainwashing Kicks In and all of my stories about growing up Nazarene.

L

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