My First, Second, and Third Time with David from San Francisco

San Francisco, June 2018

One of the problems with being an academic is constantly moving from job to job, which means you make a lot of new friends, then move away, then make more friends, and so on and so on.  Every summer is a flurry of activity, as you fly across the country to visit them, and they fly out to visit you.

This summer I was in Indiana (Tyler and my relatives), New York (Troy and his relatives), Virginia (Jonathan), North Carolina (Verne), and San Francisco (David).

David is 65 years old, a bald, buffed Daddy with craggy features, a moustache, a tight hairy chest, thick biceps, and extra-thick beneath the belt gifts.  A Baptist preacher from conservative small-town Arkansas, married with children, he  didn't have his first same-sex experience until his 43rd birthday, January 6th, 1996.

Within a week he had come out, resigned from his pulpit, filed for divorce, and moved out of the parsonage.

Within a month he had moved to San Francisco, the only place he had ever heard of with gay men. He got an apartment, a job, a new wardrobe, and a gym membership, and began cruising.

David vowed to have "make up for lost time" by having sex with 5 different guys a day until he reached the goal of 5,000.  Soon that proved impossible, even in San Francisco, if he wanted to do anything else, so he reduced the goal to two, then one.  The rules were:

1. It had to be a new guy, one he hadn't been with before.
2. He couldn't go to a sex club or bath house and get a whole week's worth at once.  One per day.
3. Except if he was too sick to have sex, he could make up for it later.
4. Any oral, anal, interfemoral, or mutual masturbation counted.  No orgasm was necessary.

During my visit in June, I asked David if he actually kept track.

"Absolutely!" he exclaimed.  Every night, or if the guy spends the night, the next morning, I record his name and pertinent details in my Little Black Book."

"It must be a Big Black Book by this time."

"Actually, it was written at first, but around 2000 I moved it all to an Excel Spreadsheet.  I record the guy's name, where I met him, and any pertinent details."

"Rating, on a scale of 1 to 5?"

He laughed.  "No, nothing like that.  Just their size, what we did, that sort of thing.

"What if it's a sex party or a bathhouse?  Do you record a dozen guys?"

"No, just one guy per day."

Suddenly I had an idea.  "Hey, let's look up me.  Our first time together, back in 1996.  See what you said."

He agreeably opened his laptop, pulled up his spreadsheet (it really was titled Big Black Book), and searched for Boomer.  15 entries, mostly guys annotated with lines like "Shared with Boomer" or "Boomer's roommate."  But the first Boomer entry, the first time we had sex,  was Tuesday, June 25th, 1996:

Boomer.  Met at work. Nice chest.  Interfemoral.



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"I remember that night," I told him.  "It was first week at the AIDS Foundation.  I was working in publications and publicity, and you were in prevention services.  You offered to take me out for "a drink" after work.  We ended having dinner, talking about the deprivation of a fundamentalist childhood, then having sex."

"Interfemoral," David says.  "With me on top."

"But I didn't spend the night -- I went home after.  I don't remember why."

"You were babysitting your friend Buzzy's dog."

"Right...he was going away for the weekend."  I thought for a moment.  "For the weekend...it must have been a Friday night, not Tuesday."  I checked the spreadsheet.

"Oh, I must have mixed up the dates when I was transcribing all this," Dave said.  "Maybe the sex club Daddy was on Tuesday, and you were..."

"Or I was the previous Friday."

Friday, June 25th.  Haldor.  Waiter at Almost Home.  From Denmark.

"That was our dinner!  Almost Home, because you wanted to be reminded of home.  Haldor was our waiter.  He was from Denmark, and I went to a Swedish Lutheran College, so I won him over.  Did you go back after our date and pick him up?"

"No, of course not." David said.  In San Francisco, as in West Hollywood, you have a rule: if you start off an evening together, you stay together.  Your only end-of-the-evening option is to go to bed, together or separately.

"I ran into Haldor at the gym that morning.  I topped him in the sauna, and he told me that if I came to Almost Home, he'd give me and my date a free dessert.  That's why I suggested Almost Home in the first place."

"And probably why he was so nice to us, not the Swedish thing," I added  "So, why did you record Haldor in your Big Black Book instead of me?  Because he was the first you were with that day?"

He stood up and walked into the kitchen, leaving the laptop.   "So, do you want to go out?" he called.  "There's a sex club..."

I looked back at the spreadsheet.

Saturday, June 22nd: Bryan.  Picked up at Twin Peaks.  Small cock.  Good kisser. 

David returned with two cans of soda.

"I remember June 22nd, too!" I exclaimed.  "It was the night after our date.  We went cruising together, picked up Bryan, and brought him back to my apartment to share.  I went down you while you were kissing Bryan, and then you topped Bryan while he went down on me.  We all spent the night, and had brunch the next day."

"That sounds about right.  So, if you'd rather stay in tonight, I can fire up Grindr and get us some hookups."

"Why didn't I get entered that time?" I asked.  "You didn't enter me until the next Tuesday, which was actually the third time we had sex.."

"Um...well, remember, Boomer.  I made these entries a long time ago. I didn't know that we were going to become friends."

"So..."

"We've been friends for over 20 years.  That's what counts, right?"

"So..."

"Well...if I get more than one guy in a day, I record...um...I record the one that's most memorable."

See: David's First Sexual Experience