From Walt Whitman to Tommy Miles in Four Hookups

Guildford, Surrey,  August 1917

Maurice Evans was born in Dorchester in 1901, but grew up in London, where his father was a chemist, a justice of the peace, and an amateur thespian.  As a boy he loved everything about the theater -- the lights, the costumes, the dark tragedy, the clowning.  He also loved music, especially Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, and fine arts, especially the nude Greek statues at the British Museum.  Was there ever any boy, he wondered, who found such joy in Greek statues?  Or in the soldiers going off to fight in the Great War, in their tight-fitting uniforms?

One day during the heart of the War, Maurice stumbled upon Iolaus: A Book of Friendship, by Edward Carpenter.  His type of love, the love of men for men, throughout history, even in the days of the Bible!

Discrete inquiries revealed that Carpenter was living in Guildford, Surrey, about 30 miles south of London.  So one day Maurice took the train out to visit him.

Carpenter was in his 70s, but still athletic -- he worked out with barbells every morning.  He lived with George Merrill, about 20 years younger: "a comrade, a helpmeet, the rib taken from Adam's belly -- that's George to me."

And that was the point of manly love, Carpenter explained: "adhesive friendships," intense erotic bonds that could transcend time and space.  "Do you know Walt Whitman?"

Maurice didn't.

"Oh, wonderful prophet of manly love!  He recited: Clear to me now standards not yet published, clear to me that my soul, that the soul of the man I speak for rejoices in comrades.  In 1877,  I visited him in Camden and bestowed upon him the everlasting kiss of many love."

His hand strayed down to Maurice's knee.  He began to get aroused.

"The everlasting...um...what?"

Carpenter knelt, unbuttoned his trousers, and put his mouth on Maurice's erect penis!   He had done nothing with a man before except some fumbling with hands and penises pressed together -- this was much more erotic, much more spiritual.  He finished in a moment, a glorious release, and Carpenter swallowed his semen.

"Your cock has been where Walt Whitman's was, fifty years ago," Carpenter said.  "Now you are joined, soul brothers."

Maurice went down on many guys after that, and had many guys go down on him, but no one ever called it the "everlasting kiss of manly love."

June 1970

Nearing the end of a long career on stage and tv and radio, Maurice, for a lark, took a role as a flamboyant, theatrical warlock, Samantha's father on Bewitched (1964-1971).  It was great fun, and he became close to William Asher and Elizabeth Montgomery, and their circle of gay friends: Dick Sargent (who played Darrin), Paul Lynde (Uncle Arthur), Richard Deacon, Wally Cox.

He was particularly taken by Randy, a fresh-faced young cowboy with a hairy chest and a perfectly enormous basket.  One night he went out to the clubs with Randy and Dick Sargent, and afterwards invited them back to his "pad" (actually a very nice house in Beverly Hills) for a nightcap.

"The younger generation is...er. where it is at, as they say." Maurice exclaimed.   "We never had anything so open in my day -- it was all about code words and beards.  Have you ever heard of Edward Carpenter?"

 Randy and Dick looked at each other and shrugged.

"He was a wonderful precursor of today's Gay Lib.  I have a first edition of Iolaus around here somewhere.  But for all his passion, he still used code.  He called homosexuality 'manly love of comrades.'  And do you know what he called French?  'The everlasting kiss of manly love.  Poetic, what?"

"Very," Randy said.  The music, the wine, the cruising were starting to effect him.  Maurice saw a definite tent in his jeans.  He slid to the floor, unzipped him -- beautiful penis, enormous yet perfectly shaped -- and went down on him while fondling his testicles.

Soon Dick was going down on Maurice.  He was rather proud of himself -- 70 years old, and still a stallion!

They retired to the master bedroom, where Maurice went down on Randy and Dick together until they had nearly simultaneous orgasms, a glorious shower on his face.  He didn't have an orgasm himself -- that would happen later, after the boys went home and he was immersed in the memory.

After they cleaned up, Randy and Dick got the post-orgasm munchies, so Maurice trotted into the kitchen to look for some snacks.  "Did you know," he called, "That I had French performed on me by Edward Carpenter, fifty years ago?  And fifty year before, he was with Walt Whitman, the great American poet.  So you fellows have a cosmic connection with the greatest gay poet of all time.   Don't you think that's rather...er...groovy?"

August 2017

Randall, the guy on Grindr, must be at least 70 -- older than Tommy's grandfather!  Tommy Miles liked older guys, but not that much older!  Still, he had a nicely muscled physique, and an interest in BDSM -- one of Tommy's fantasies was to be tied up and topped by an authority figure, a cop or a professor.  "It wouldn't hurt to ask for a cock pic," he thought.

He sent one of his own cock, and opened the one Randall sent -- bingo!  Enormous!

Randall insisted that they meet for dinner at a Chinese restaurant, which made Tommy a bit uncomfortable -- what would his friends think, if they saw him on a date with an old guy?  They'd think he was a hustler with his sugar daddy, or that he had a grandpa fetish.  Which, to be honest, he sort of did.

Mistaking his apprehension for being in the closet, Randall said "We don't need to hide anymore. There's still a lot of work to do, but things are a lot better for us than they were even 20 years ago, and especially when I was a boy, before Stonewall."

"What's Stonewall?" Tommy asked.

"You never heard of Stonewall?  It was only the beginning of Gay Liberation, when we started fighting back.  Before Stonewall, gay sex was illegal, it was illegal to go to bars or discuss gay issues in public, and we were labeled psychopaths by the American Psychiatric Association and subjected to electroshock therapy and forced castration."

"Wow."  He had no idea that gay sex had ever been illegal, or gay people deemed mentally ill.

"I was at the first gay right march in Los Angeles, in June 1970.  The police hated gays then, so we had trouble with harassment, and the city council thought..."

They returned to Randall's house, and he showed Tommy some books on gay history and culture.   The Gay Liberation Front...the Mattachine Society...Paris in the 1920s...Edward Carpenter...Walt Whitman.

 "Walt Whitman?  My high school was named after him!  Nobody ever told me that he was gay!"

"Fun fact," Randall said.  "When I was young, I went down on Maurice Evans, the movie star.  In 1917, when he was a teenager, Maurice went down on with Edward Carpenter, who, 50 years before, went down on Walt Whitman."

"A chain of hookups across gay history!" Tommy exclaimed.  "Cool!"

"Care to...um...continue the tradition?" Randall asked, fondling Tommy's aroused cock.

Full of life now, compact, visible, I, 48 years old, to one a century hence, or any number of centuries hence,
To you, yet unborn.
Now it is you, compact, visible, reading  my poems, seeking me;  
Fancying how happy you would be, if I could be with you, and become your comrade. 
Be not too certain that I am not now  with you.

See also: Cary Grant, Groucho Marx, and Dick Sargent in the Same Bed