20 October Hookups, Dates, and Sausage Sightings

It's October,, my second favorite month of the year!  The days get longer, tv and theater seasons are in full swing, the air is brisk, running outside is a pleasure rather than a sweaty chore.  You get apple cider and pumpkin pie.  And the scary, paranormal events that are rare in July happen every day.

Ray Bradbury calls this The October Country: where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and mid-nights stay. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain. 

In honor of our journey past the border into the October Country of 2018, here are my top October hookups, dates, and sausage sightings.

1. October 1968: My first date.  In third grade, a cute boy invited me to a movie, which was a sin to Nazarenes.  I was certain that God was going to strike me dead with a thunderbolt. He didn't.  Instead, I got to hug a hippie.

2. October 1969: My first kiss.  From Greg, the boy vampire (also an astronomer, geologist, naturalist, and psychic), while we were watching the Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows.  It was a compromise; he really wanted to bite me on the neck.

3. October 1972: Why corpses are called stiffs.  In seventh grade, my friend's brother who worked in a funeral home invited us to come in and look at the corpse of a teenage boy who died that day.  I didn't know that men become aroused after death....






4. October 1974: The preacher pops a boner.  At a pre-college weekend at Olivet Nazarene College, we sat on a lounge in the student union watching a ministerial student make out with his girlfriend. Gigantic boner, the stuff of fantasies.

5. October 1979: The German Choirboy.  During my sophomore year at Augustana College, I spent a quarter abroad in Regensburg, Germany, and got my first real boyfriend, Wolfgang the Choir Boy at St. Peter's Cathedral.  We went out about a dozen times, but never actually spent the night together, since we both had roommates.

6. October 1983: The Halloween Homophobe.  Aka the night I drank 1 1/2 beers.  In grad school at Indiana University in Bloomington, my roommate Viju and I invited some guys over for a Halloween party.  Jimmy the Bodybuilder on Crutches invited his homophobic friend, who didn't know that the rest of us were all gay.  He had a meltdown!

7. October 1987: Heinz and His Crazy Obsession.  In West Hollywood, my sort-of-boyfriend Raul was living with a crazy old guy named Heinz.  I still can't eat Jimmy Dean's sausage biscuits or listen to the song "Come away wiz me to Malibu...."  I agreed to sharing, just to be polite, until I discovered Heinz's obsession.  Hint: Nasssty!

8. November 1990: The Rocky Horror Picture Show Virgin.  I had seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show in theaters twice and memorized the soundtrack, and the moment it came out on VHS, I bought a copy.  So I didn't consider myself a RHPS "Virgin,"  Nor did I think that the audience would demand a "virgin sacrifice."

9. October 1992: The Lawnboy.  What's scary about a lawnboy?  When he lies about his age, and you don't find out until after you've made the date.  Fortunately, I managed to call it off before the jail-bait scalawag arrived.  We finished the date in 1995, after he turned 18.

10. October 1996: My Date with the Vampire.   I may have exaggerated the oddities of Kevin the Vampire, but he definitely had a paranormal aura.  If he stared at you the right way, you would lose your free will.  That's how he got most of his dates.  He got the others with cool Bohemian looks and enormous penis.

11. October 1997: The Fireman Fantasy.   I've dated two firemen, and they've both been rather small in the penis department. Maybe that's one of the reasons they want to work with those big long hoses.  This guy came to our apartment after my crazy straight roommate put some water on the stove to boil and then left for six hours.

12. October 1999: The Boy Who Refused to Leave.  Not only did Ozzie tell an unsettling story about hooking up with John Kennedy Jr. after his death, the next day, after a hookup with me and Yuri, he refused to leave Yuri's room.  Unsettling.








13. November 2000: The Football Player Who Got Stuck in Time.  I really believe (sort of) that the University of Alabama football player I hooked up with that cold Novmber day was on a field trip from 1941.

14. October 2002: The Gay Psychic Angel.  Raphael showed up unexpectedly at my house in Florida, did a past-life regression, told me not to move to Europe, and gave me his phone number.  He was ungodly cute, an angel, but his arms didn't work, and I wimped out on calling him.  I've been kicking myself for it ever since.  I tried looking him up again recently, but I don't remember his last name, and he doesn't appear in the directory of professional psychics in Florida.

15. October 2005: Remy the Jerk.  I've had dates with Creepy Old Guys, Sleazoids, elitists, idiots, and jerks of all kinds, but this guy was a complete, utter *hole, so nasty that it was scary.  It's a good thing we had our date on Halloween.


16. October 2008: The Satyr.    A massive guy, massively fat, with the biggest Kovbasa++++ I've ever seen, before or since.  I'm pretty sure he was a mystical being, Priapus the God of Virility, just manifesting in our reality as a super-hung chub.  His houseboy was cute, too.

17. October 2012: Assaulted in the Locker Room.  I've been yelled at and called names, but the only time I've actually been attacked was in the locker room of a gym in the gay neighborhood of Philadelphia, where a guy accused me of "looking at him" and rushed in to attack.

18. November 2012: The Dark Room. I went to the guy's house to pick him up for a date, and he opened the door naked.  Things went downhill from there.

19. October 2014: My Dad's Old Navy Buddy.   My weirdest paranormal experience to date: my Dad's old navy buddy shows up. Except my Dad was in the Korean War, and this guy is still in his twenties.  Ok, maybe it was his grandson.

20. October 2015: The Twink Who Wasn't Interested.  That's not actually scary, just perplexing for a twink magnet.  Turns out he was interested, he just didn't think I was.  Go figure.

The Hookup at the Sleepover

Rock Island, February 1973

When I was a kid, the Baby Boom was in full swing, so we rarely did anything alone.   I invited a friend for dinner, or got invited to dinner, at least once a week.  I invited a friend to stay over night, or got invited to stay over night, nearly every weekend.

And then there were sleepovers.  

At least once a month, starting in third grade and continuing into the first year or two of junior high.

Three or four boys arrive at the host's house after dinner on Friday or Saturday night.

You romp around, playing games (my favorite was Twister), watching tv, eating pizza, and generally roughhousing until bedtime, which is much later than usual.

Then you camp out in the host's bedroom.

You all compete for the honor of sharing the host's bed.  Everyone else squeezes into the other bed (most boys had two), or onto blankets laid out on the floor. Some boys bring sleeping bags.

The beefcake is amazing!  You bring pajamas, but rarely wear them.  You sleep in your underwear.  There are cute boys lying shirtless everywhere you look.

And the touching!  Nothing sexual happens -- by the time you are old enough to think about such things, sleepovers are rare.  But when three boys are lying side by side on the floor, who can help but hug, cuddle, caress?  When you share the host's bed, which is a little too small for two people, you have no choice but to sleep pressed together.

In the morning, you dress, have a nice breakfast, and walk home (if it's Saturday) or get picked up in time for church (if it's Sunday).

Bill, Joel, and I always invited each other to our sleepovers.  When I hosted, the fourth boy was always my brother, invited by default, and the Fifth Boy was someone new, someone I wanted to get to know better.

And see in his underwear.

The other guys did exactly the same thing.  The guest list was always: Boomer, Bill, Joel, your brother or another friend, and the Fifth Boy, a boy you wanted to hook up with.

Sometimes it didn't work out.  Once Joel invited David Angel as the Fifth Boy, but David refused to share his bed, allowing me the honor.  Both Joel and my boyfriend Bill were understandably upset, but they couldn't say or do anything, since the Fifth Boy was an unspoken tradition.

In the spring of seventh grade, I started "liking" Dan,  during my failed attempt to rescue him from bullies who were trying to shove him into the girl's locker room,  He accepted an invitation to my house, but refused to come to my sleepover the next weekend: "Sleepovers are for grade school babies."

So, for the Fifth Boy, I invited Peter, the only Asian kid at Washington Junior High, a tall, tight-muscled baseball player from my chemistry class.  He shared my bed, which was nice, but in the first flush of infatuation, I kept wishing that he was Dan.

Two weeks later, Peter invited me to his sleepover, obviously as Boy #2 or #3, since we had already hooked up.

Peter's Mom opened the door and escorted me to the basement rec room, where he was playing pingpong -- with Dan!

"Hey, I thought you said sleepovers were for grade school babies!" I exclaimed, hurt and jealous.

"Oh...well, Peter told me how much fun he had at yours, so I changed my mind."

"You're good friends?" I asked, afraid of the answer.  "Come over to his house a lot?"

"Not really.  He sits beside me in Civics Class, but I've never been to his house before.  He just invited me out of nowhere."

It was worse than I thought!  Dan was the Fifth Boy!

The rest of the night was a battle royale over Dan.  I sat next to him on the couch when we watched tv; Peter squeezed between us.  I brought him a soda; Peter brought him a piece of cake.  I bragged about how many push-ups I could do; Peter brought out his baseball trophies.

Finally it was bedtime, the moment of truth. There were blankets and pillows scattered on the floor in Peter's bedroom.  And one twin bed.

We all stripped to our underwear.

"Dan, you're with me!" Peter said, grinning as if to say "I've won!"


Think!  I told myself.  Keep Dan out of that bed!  "Um...are you sure?  It's pretty small, and you're pretty big.  There might not be enough room for Dan."

"Plenty of room!"  Peter insisted.  "My cousin sleeps over with me all the time, and he's bigger than me!" He climbed into bed and pulled down the covers.

"Anyway, I hate sleeping on the ground," Dan said.  ignoring my red-faced jealousy to climb into bed beside him.

"But...we listened to Donny Osmond!"  I whispered.  "Um...we can talk about him...."

There was nothing to do but take my place beside the other two boys, and try not to listen Peter and Dan whispering and giggling under the covers.

Later in the night, I was still awake when Dan climbed out of bed, went to the bathroom, then returned and pulled up the blankets next to me.

"Did you lose your way?" I whispered sarcastically.

"Peter kicks in his sleep," he said.

I slept with him two weeks ago, so I knew that Dan was lying.  He just wanted two hookups on the same night.  But I didn't care.

See also:  A Three Way with Danny and His Boyfriend.

Chris Redfield in Peril

While browsing through my tumblr feeds of BDSM art, I happened to notice a lot of pictures of someone named Chris Redfield, stern, muscular, very well hung, being menaced.  

Often tied to some sort of milking machine.

Or captured by a tentacle-monster.

Or both.

Rarely any consensual sexual scenes.

I figured he must be a tv character, so I looked on IMDB, and found Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010), wtth Wentworth Miller as an ex-con who fights zombies along with his sister.  He doesn't appear in any of the three previous Resident Evil movies.

He originally appeared in the video game franchise Resident Evil (1996-), a member of a special police force fighting supernatural bogies.  Later he joins a paramilitary group to fight bio-terrorism. 

That explains the monsters, but it doesn't explain why this rather obscure character is so popular.

Some fans think that Redfield is canonically gay.  He doesn't get a female love interest, and he's rescuing his sister, turning over the trope of rescuing the girlfriend.

(all pictures copyright by their respective owners)

Edward's Boyfriend for Pay

East Village, August 1999

One afternoon shortly after I returned from my summer in France, I walked into my apartment on 13th Street in the East Village of New York to find a very attractive young man in a business suit on the couch.  His thick Kielbasa was out and fully aroused.  My housemate Edward was on his knees, his tongue working feverishly on the shaft.

I was shocked.  Edward was a fey art appraiser in his 60s, who rarely dated and never hooked up.  And his cardinal rule was: no nudity in the living room.

"Hi!" the very attractive young man said.

"Hi.  I'm Boomer, Edward's housemate."

Edward hastily stood, his pants tenting.  "Terribly sorry to break a house rule.  I lost control of myself.  Boomer, this is my new assistant, Andrew Marvell (accented on the second syllable, Mar - VELL).  I hired him while you were in France."

"How are ya?" Andrew said, holding out his hand to be shaken.  It was very big, almost drawing attention away from his still-aroused Kielbasa.

"Nice to meet you.  Not very coy, are you?"

"Huh?"

"You know, Andrew Marvell, the Metaphysical poet?  'To His Coy Mistress'?"

Metaphysical poetry was that obscure, metaphor-filled Restoration-era stuff from the English Restoration that you had to read in your Survey of English Literature class in college.  You were probably assigned "To His Coy Mistress," in which Andrew Marvell tries to convince a woman to have sex with him:

Had we but world enough and time, 
This coyness, lady, were no crime. 

Andrew stared blankly.

"Where are my manners?" Edward said.  "Would you like to go down on him?  Please be my guest."

My guest?  It was Andrew's penis!  "Is it ok, Andrew?"

"Sure, go for it."

This was weird,but I never turn down a Kielbasa.  I got on my knees.  Andrew responded perfectly, with just the right amount of groaning and shaking, erotic but not ostentatious.

He finished quickly with a gallon-sized spurt -- Edward must have been working on him for awhile.  Then Edward said "Won't we be more comfortable in the bedroom?"

We had never shared before, but ok.  We took Andrew into the bedroom, stripped him out of his clothes ("Be careful -- that's an Armani suit!"), and found a hundred more things to do with him.

Andrew had a firm, tight physique, with a smooth chest, thick biceps, and toned abs, pleasant but not spectacular.  But he had a face that would make you melt, and a magnificent Kielbasa that was always aroused.

Of course, I had to share him with Edward, who was thin, hairy, wore rings and a rather feminine cologne, and never took off his socks and garters.  But I could work around that, going down on Edward for thirty seconds and then returning my attention to Andrew.

He finished a second time while Edward was going down on him and he was going down on me.  Then he sprang to life again, lay on top of me, and finished a third time while kissing me and thrusting between my legs.  Edward finished by topping Andrew.

He sprang up again, ready for #4, but Edward said "I think we'd better call it a day.  We wouldn't want to get totally spent."

We all showered and dressed and returned to the living room.  Edward went out to the kitchen to make tea.

"So you're Edward's assistant," I said, to make conversation.

"Yep."  He grinned.

"That must be interesting, cataloging all those rare works of art."

"Yep.  Hard, though.  I get stuck on the titles sometimes, and Edward has to type them in for me."

"Did you major in Art History in college?"

"I just took General Humanities at Laguardia (Community College), but I had a job as a model for an art class once."


Um...ok.  So...what's your favorite period?  From your name, I'm going to guess the Baroque."

"My name?"

"Andrew Marvell was a poet who lived during the Baroque era."

"Oh, Edward named me -- I thought it was about Marvel comics.  My real name is Andrew Balboa."

"Italian Stallion, huh?"  (Rocky Balboa was the name of Sylvester Stallone's character in the Rocky series).

"No, I'm American."

Ok, this guy was as dumb as a post. I bet he couldn't even find Europe on the map.  Why would Edward hire him to catalog objects d'art and correspond with dealers in French, German, and Italian?

"Edward gave me this suit, too.  Do you like it?"  He took my hand and ran it over the material, then down to his crotch, where he was aroused again.

"Still ready for action, I see."

"I'm always ready.  I won a contest once, five times in an hour.  But then I didn't get aroused again for almost two hours!"

Ok, I figured it out.  Andrew was a Boyfriend for Pay, hired for his handsome face and ever-aroused Kielbasa, not for his administrative skills or knowledge of art history.

For the next few months, I saw Andrew around the apartment a lot, laboriously typing into Edward's computer, fetching reference books for him, or more often, watching Rocko's Modern Life on Nickelodeon while Edward did everything himself.  We didn't share again, but Edward often asked me to "entertain" Andrew while he was working.

Sometimes I went down on him right on the couch in the living room, while Edward was working on his computer nearby.

I didn't mind. I even invited my friend Yuri to help out.

Familiarity usually decreases the frequency and intensity of your arousal, but not with Andrew.  He was just as eager the 20th time as the first.

Then one day in December, Andrew came into my room.  He was shirtless, wearing a Santa Claus cap.

"What's up, Andrew?  Did you bring a package for me to open?"

"No.  I just came in to say goodbye.  Right after Christmas, Edward is going to Europe for two months, and he said he won't need an assistant anymore."

"I'm sorry to hear that.  But you can still come over and hang out, right?"  Translation:  We can still make out on the couch while watching Rocko's Modern Life.

He brightened.  "That'd be great.  I can be a big help with your classes.  I can type up your papers, check books out of the library, keep track of your appointments, all kinds of things.  I get $25 an hour, or $150 for the whole day.  That includes staying overnight."

Cheaper than a hustler.  "Well, I don't really need an assistant.  I was thinking more of friends hanging out."

He frowned.  "Then how would I pay my rent?"

See also: Edward Tries to "Make" My Boyfriend