Saturday, October 15, 2016

The Martian Boy Invites Me to "Play"

Rock Island, September 1969

My parents used to have a barbecue every Labor Day, and invited all their friends and neighbors.  This year Greg and his father came.  After our hot dogs and hamburgers and Lays potato chips and apple cobbler, they wanted to play croquet.

Greg and I were in 4th grade, too old for baby games, so we escaped. We walked across the deserted schoolyard, peeking in the windows of Denkmann School, then crossed the street to Dewey's Candy Store.

Dick the Mean Boy was out of town, so we were free to explore south of Denkmann without being attacked.  We found a scary bizarro-world where the normal rules of time and space didn't apply.

Streets had names instead of numbers.
They doubled back on each other like a space warp.
They dead-ended at nothingness.
We saw the end of the world: 46th Street then 1st Street, the beginning of a new universe.

It felt very dangerous, as if we might run into a mysterious threat around every curve.

Then, standing in a front yard all by himself, staring into space, we saw a boy!

A couple of years younger than us, very cute: black hair, black eyes, olive skin, wearing a red shirt and short pants.

But strikingly out of place: alone, silent, unmoving.  And Asian!

In Rock Island, "minority" meant Belgian, Italian, or Greek.  African-Americans were strictly segregated, below the hill, and I had never met or seen anyone Asian.  Not even a face in the crowd at Longview Park or Mother Goose Land.


[Even in 2016, the Asian population of Rock Island is only 0.75%]

He couldn't be real! He must be a ghost.  Maybe a Vietnamese boy who died in the War.  Or a Martian!  Maybe he came here in a spaceship!

"Can he see us?" I whispered.

"I dunno.  Is he even here?"

We approached.  He smiled invitingly and said something in a strange musical language.  Martian or Vietnamese!

"Do you speak English?" I said loudly, enunciating every word.

He smiled, not comprehending, and said more.

"My name is Boomer.  This is Greg.  What's your name?"

He pointed to himself.  "Chi Ehr Ma."

"Ma?" Greg joked.  "Whose Ma are you?"

More words in his musical language, a bright smile, and then, in English, "Play."  He turned and walked around the side of the house and into the back yard.

Was that an invitation?  Did the Martian want us to play with him in the back yard?

Then suddenly he came out the front door!

There's no way he could have gone through the back yard, in the back door, and all the way through the house in just a second or two!


Screaming in fear, we ran back down the curving street and side streets with names instead of numbers, back to Denkmann School where things were safe, where things made sense.

A while later, when we calmed down, we decided that there were probably two boys, twins, trying to scare us.

On another day when Dick wasn't around, we ventured south again, and tried to find the Asian boys, Chi Ehr Ma and his brother, but all the houses on that weird curved street looked alike.  We couldn't be sure which one they lived in.

If they lived anywhere.  They were old enough to be in school.  Why had we never seen them at Denkmann?  Or at Dewey's, or anywhere else in the neighborhood?  Maybe they were ghosts after all.

Days and weeks and months passed, and Chi Ehr Ma, the cute boy -- we concluded that he was probably Vietnamese -- became increasingly attractive in my mind  -- and increasingly mysterious.  What would have happened if Greg and I followed him into the back yard to "play"?  Would we have been transported to a new, magical world?   Or would we just have become friends, with long, lush afternoons playing, walking hand in hand, clinging together during sleepovers?

Chi Ehr Ma, with his dazzling, seductive smile became one of the icons of my childhood, combining with Jonny Quest and Hadji, with Kurt Russell in The Secret of Boyne Castle, with John Christopher's Tripod books as a clue to the unraveling the Big Lie.  Telling me that, in spite of the adults' hysterical screaming of "You like girls!  Every boy likes girls!", some boys like boys.

It is not raining upstairs.

In junior high and high school I met a few other Asian men and boys -- my judo instructor, Peter who invited me to a sleepover, the Vietnamese refugee who worked at the pretzel place in the mall --  always with a subtle, nearly unconscious desire, as if I expected them to flash a dazzling, seductive smile and invite me to secret places in the back yard.


Rock Island, February 1979

During the spring of my freshman year at Augustana College, I enrolled in a course in East Asian Culture and Civilization, taught by Professor Ma of the Political Science Department.

I loved it.  I wantd to change my major to Asian Studies, to immerse myself in the exploits of ancient Chinese emperors, The Dream of the Red Chamber, Taoism, Buddhism, and that mysterious, musical language.

"Chinese has four tones," Professor Ma said.  "Ma is my family name, but depending on the tone, it could be horse, mother, to scold, or a question mark.  Let me demonstrate:  Ma ma ma ma -- 'did mother scold the horse?'"

Ma!  The boy from my memory was speaking Chinese!  Not Vietnamese, not Martian.  He must have been asking us a question.

I stayed after class and asked Professor Ma what "Chi Ehr" means.

"Depending on the tone, it could mean 'The life force is strong' or 'He eats cabbage.'  It's also my son's real name, but he likes to be called Chip."

My mouth dropped.


Professor Ma moved to the United States in August 1969 to teach  political science at Augustana, bringing his wife and twin sons, Yung Yu and Chi Ehr.  They bought a house in Davenport, across the river. In September 1969 his colleague, who lived in Rock Island, invited them over for a Labor Day picnic.  

A few days later, Professor Ma invited me to dinner, and to reunite with my old friend Chi Ehr, or Chip, now a 16-year old high school junior. (The model is over 18.)

He escorted me to an upstairs bedroom: unmade single bed, stereo, books, clothes, and sports stuff scattered about, posters of Van Halen and Farrah Fawcett.  The smell of marijuana.

"Farrah Fawcett -- gross!"  I thought.

Chip was sitting on the bed, a calculus book open in front of him.  Very tall and slim, with long hair and a long face, not at all cute.

This was the icon of my childhood, a clue that gay people exist?

"Sup?" he said. "Dad told me that we met before, when I was a kid."  Suspicious scowl, American accent.  Not at all what I was expecting!

"Yeah.  Me and my friend Greg, in 4th grade.  We said hello, and then you went to the back yard, and your brother came out the front door.  We got spooked and ran away."

He laughed, and flashed that dazzling, seductive smile of my childhood.  "Oh, yeah -- I remember that!  When you vanished, I got spooked, too.  The first guys I met in America were a couple of ghosts!  I always wondered what would have happened if you stuck around."

We didn't hook up, or even become friends.  The smile was enough.

By the way, I just looked up "Chi Ehr Ma" on the internet. He's a professor of mathematics at a university in California (not the famous mineralogist).

Not married. 

See also: 20 Asian Dates, Hookups, and Sausage Sightings; Kurt Russell's Secret.; The Son of Mr. Blowfish

Thursday, October 13, 2016

David and I Hookup in the Restroom at Macy's


San Francisco, September 1996

A t-room is a public restroom where you meet guys for dating and hookups.

Sometimes guys do it right there.  There's a "glory holes" holes between stalls where you can insert things, or you can go under the barrier, or just use the same stall.

Why not just take them home?   T-rooms are gross and  uncomfortable, people could interrupt you at any moment, you could be arrested for "lewd behavior."

Besides, you can't do this in a t-room.

In 1970, gay rights pioneer Laud Humphreys investigated t-rooms, for his doctoral dissertation.  He found that most of the participants identified as straight -- they had wives and kids and family-man jobs, and therefore couldn't be seen in gay venues.

I've only known one gay guy who ever admitted to hooking up in a t-room: my friend David, 43 years old, newly out, and cruising constantly.

He told me "Look, you came out 18 years ago.  If you've had five guys per week, that's almost 5,000 guys.  I came out 3 years ago.  I'm going to have to have five guys per day to to catch up."











"I haven't had five guys per week!" I protested.  "Not nearly that many!  And besides, this isn't a contest."

"Just trying to make up for lost time," he said with a gleam in his eye.

He started by cruising in the conventional venues, in bars, at bear parties, at church, at the Gay Fathers Club, on Castro Street.  But hooking up that way takes several hours.  If you have a job, go to the gym, and want a non-sexual social life, you may have time for meeting one or two guys per week, certainly not five every day.

Besides, even in San Francisco, the number of gay guys into hookups, into you, and available at that moment is limited.  He had to seek out unconventional partners, closeted straight guys.

First the park.

Then the beaches.

Finally the t-rooms.

"It's great" David told me.  "Not just a bunch of gym bunnies and leather daddies."  He enumerated the incredible variety of guys he had: a middle-aged businessman carrying a briefcase, a college fratboy, a janitor, a construction worker, a teenage boy in a Domino's pizza uniform.

"No names, no coming-out stories, no discussions of art and literature -- sometimes we don't even make eye contact --  just the raw act itself, pure erotic pleasure.  Isn't that what being gay is all about?"

"What?  No!" I exclaimed.  "That's what the homophobes think -- that being gay is about having sex.  The sex is nothing -- it's about finding a history and a culture.  It's about belonging!"

"Right, right, Mr. Activist.  Why don't you give it a try before getting all judgmental?"

"I have --when I was stuck at the airport in St. Louis for 36 hours, back in college."

"Believe me, the restroom at Macy's is a lot more comfortable than an airport.  Come with me today, when all the cute little floorwalkers go to lunch.  We'll share."

So we went to Macy's,browsed through men's wear, and David latched onto a cute guy passing out cologne samples: in his 20s, with wavy brown hair, a gym-toned body, and a basket.  Obviously gay.

 It wasn't like regular cruising -- we approached, took a sample, made significant eye contact, but didn't speak.  Then we stood nearby and leered.

Cute Guy got an evil smile on his face and, after a long moment, headed for the restroom. After another long moment, we followed.

He was standing at the urinal, unzipped but not urinating, fondling himself.   Small but very nice, ruddy, with a "mushroom head."  We took the urinals on either side of him and unzipped.  He glanced at each of our penises.  Then David went into one of the stalls.

Cute Guy glanced at me. Eye contact.

"That cologne sample was great," I said.  "But you must get sick of it after awhile."

"That's for sure."  He had a mild Southern accent.  "I can't wait to get home and shower for about an hour."

"Sounds like fun.  My name is Boomer."

"Clay."  He zipped up and headed for the sink to wash his hands.  I followed.

David walked out of the bathroom stall and left, his mission a failure.

"Um...I was wondering if you'd like to get together after work.  Maybe get dinner, or go to the Eagle."

Clay smiled.  "Sure. I get off at 5:00 -- meet me in the front lobby."  He grabbed a paper towel from the dispenser.  "By the way, don't bring your crazy friend.  Can you believe he wanted me to do it right here?  Hello -- it's not 1955!"

In case you were wondering: into kissing, average beneath the belt gifts, up for it three times in one evening.

See also: Our Three-way with the Bible Boy; and He Pulled It Out

L

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