My Brother Picks Up a Boy

The summer of 1980, when I was 19 years old, was awful.

June 10th: I dropped out of college, and moved out of my parents' house to follow my boyfriend Fred to Omaha, where he was getting his first church (I wasn't out yet, so I told everyone that I had taken a summer job as his assistant). 

Neither of us had been in a live-in relationship before.  We were at each other's throats.

July 20th: I threw my stuff in my car and drove crosscountry nonstop to Los Angeles, where I stayed with my friend Tom and looked for a job.

Try walking in a gleaming corporate tower on Wilshire Boulevard with a resume that's empty except for two years of college and a job at the Carousel Snack Bar.

I lasted for two weeks.

August 9th: I high-tailed it back to Rock Island.  Fortunately, I had never officially dropped out of Augustana, and my parents thought that I was coming home from a summer job.

August 13th:  Dad asked, "We're going to Wisconsin Dells this weekend.  Do you want to come?"

Wisconsin Dells?  Hadn't this summer been dreary enough already?

We already spent half our lives on the road, driving to and from Indiana, some boring cabin in the northwoods, and various school and Nazarene events scattered all over the Midwest, but recently Mom and Dad had also been taking random weekend trips to Wisconsin Dells:

A tacky middle-class resort about three hours north of Rock Island.

Water parks, golf parks, zoo adventures, a Ripley's Believe it or Not museum, an optical illusion house, tourist-gouging shops and restaurants. Gross.

I opted out.

But later my 17-year old brother Ken cornered me.  "Are you crazy?  Wisconsin Dells means water parks. And water parks mean guys in swimsuits.  Just the thing to take your mind off that idiot preacher in Omaha."  (Ken was the only one in my family I was out to).

I was suspicious. "Why do you want me to go so badly?"

He grinned.  "Well, I do have a sneaky plan. I can't stand sharing a room with Mom, Dad, and Tammy.  If you come along, we can talk our way into our own room.  That means freedom!"

"We have our own room here," I pointed out.

"But no water park boys.  And I'll bet a lot of them are homos, too.  If you want to invite one to the room to, like, try on each other's underwear or something, I can just go down to the game room and play Asteroids.  A perfect plan!"

I doubted that I would have the nerve to bring home a trick, with my parents in the next room and my little brother playing Asteroids, but...naked water park boys...so I agreed to go.

We drove in Friday after Dad got off work, and stayed at a hotel across the street from a water park called Mount Olympus, because it had a three-story slide.  It didn't open until 11:00 am on Saturday, so we visited Alligator Alley and a go-kart place, and went back after lunch.

The beefcake was not spectacular: lots of nuclear family Moms, Dads, and kids, the oldest a few years younger than me.

Not a lot of single guys.

After about an hour, I had had enough. I asked Dad if I could take the car and check out the other sights.

No, I was absolutely forbidden from using the car.  What if I got into an accident?  The family would have no way to get home.

Grr -- get into one little fender bender when you're 16...

So I started walking.  Busy highway, no sidewalk on the south side of the park.  On the north side, the less busy, tree-lined Fitzgerald Road.

Unfortunately, it curved right back around to the busy highway. 

The side street led through Paul Bunyan's Cook Shanty, Culver's, Aunt Jenny's Got It All Shop, a busy cross-street, and a golf course.

Wisconsin Dells is not designed for pedestrian traffic!

I'm not a golfer,but I paid my money anyway, in case there were some cute guys on the course.

There weren't.

I was sick of the heat, the blaring sun, and the smell of sunburn and sweat, so I ducked into Paul Bunyan's Cook Shanty, which I read as "cock shanty."  Maybe there would be some cute waiters, or local boys hanging out.

Just my luck. Nearly deserted at 3:00 pm, no local boys, and the servers were all girls. 

I trudged back to the hotel, took a shower, and climbed into the bed in my underwear to read my book and wait for dinnertime. 

At 5:00 pm, Ken burst through the door.

"Oh...um...were you busy?" 

For all he knew, I was naked under the covers. masturbating.   I stood to demonstrate that I was wearing underwear.

Then I saw that he had a friend with him: about my age, blond, with a slim hard frame, six-pack abs, and bulging red speedos.

"This is Kerry," Ken said.  "His Dad works for Alligator Alley.  My brother Boomer."

Kerry's eyes went directly to my crotch.  Definitely cruising!

I reached out to shake his hand, and held it a bit "too long."

"After dinner we're going to the Alley," Kerry said.  "I promised Ken to let him go right into the pens.   Would you like to come with?"

It wasn't fair.  I searched all over Wisconsin Dells for the merest glimpse of beefcake, and Ken has a cute gay guy fall into his lap!

Nothing sexual happened, but who can say no to an alligator date?

The Mormon Missionary of Beaver, Utah

Beaver, Utah, August 1980

August 6th, 1980, a Wednesday night.  I was in my 1974 Dodge Dart, chugging along the Interstate.

I was depressed. I had been planning to stay in Omaha with my minister boyfriend Fred forever, but it didn't work out.

Then I spent a week recuperating with my high school friend Tom in Los Angeles.

Now I was on my way back to Rock Island, where there were almost no gay people that I knew of, wondering what went wrong.

In Utah, near where the I-15 meets the I-70,  I decided to stop for the night in the quaintly named town of Beaver, at the Delano Hotel, one of those old-fashioned neon hotels that advertises "color tv" and "telephones," as if those amenities are noteworthy.

The desk clerk, Derek,  was college-aged, handsome, with short black hair, black eyes, and a muscular frame.  He had a rugged, leering look.  In a 1980s gay nerd movie, he would play the arrogant jock who is dating The Girl before the nerd comes along and wrests her away.

Somehow I mentioned that I visited Colombia last year, and Derek said, "I'll be in South America  in September.  Brazil. My church is sending me there to be a missionary."

This was unexpected!  I expected Derek to be a juvenile delinquent, maybe, but not a missionary. "What church?"

"The Latter-Day Saints," he said.  "Pretty much everyone around here is LDS."

Mormon!  Nazarenes hated Mormons almost as much as Catholics -- an idolatrous, polygamous cult.  Of course, Nazarenes were wrong about almost everything.

I remembered the incongruous sight of pairs of clean-scrubbed, grinning young men riding bicycles while wearing suits.  There was always something erotic about them, a sensuality hidden just beneath their feigned asexual wholesomeness.

"What do you do for fun around here?"  I asked.

He mentioned a bowling alley.

"No, I mean real fun." I stared at him suggestively.  "You know, guys only."

He grinned.  "Oh, you can find just about anything you're looking for down in St. George."

"That's a long way.  I passed it like two hours ago."

"In the countryside you learn to be patient.  Sooner or later, the fun comes to you."  He paused.  "I'll be here all night, in case you get lonely or want to talk -- you know, about God or anything."

I went to my room and lay down on the bed.  Anything you're looking for. In case you get lonely.  Could he be gay?   Maybe his missionary partner was his lover?  Riding on bicycles side by side through the streets of Rio de Janeiro, returning to their room every night to cuddle and kiss?

I want to say that I invited Derek to my room, and we spent the night together.  Or that he came out to me, and we talked all night about growing up gay and Mormon.

But what actually happened was: I fell asleep before I could muster the nerve to call.  And when I woke up in the morning, someone else was staffing the front desk.

I kicked myself all the way across Utah and Colorado.

And I wondered how many other gay men were stranded in small towns in the mountains, longing to reach out but never getting the nerve.  Or the chance.

Thirty years later, I ran into Derek again.

See also:

A Sleazoid Plays Matchmaker

On May 27th, 1989, the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend, I went to the Zone in Los Angeles in search of black men. Instead I met Lane, a West Hollywood native (the French Quarter was his childhood hangout!), about five years older than me (so early 30s), hairy, buffed, hung to his knees, and way short -- just my type!  Apparently I was just his type too, since we skipped the West Hollywood rule of "no tricks" and went home together.

Later I  discovered that Lane had dumped his tropy boyfriend a few days before. I was his rebound. 

During the next few days, we broke every rule of West Hollywood dating:
.
1. At the first meeting, you were supposed to set up a date for 3-4 nights later (far enough in the future that you seem to have a busy social life). So if we met on the 27th,  Date #1 should be on May 30th, at the earliest.  We went home that night.

2. After Date #1, you were supposed to wait 24-48 hours to call, and then request Date #2 to take place 3-4 days later.  So if Date #1 ended with breakfast on May 31st, the call should come on the evening of June 1st, and Date #2 on June 4th. We stayed together all day Sunday, except for a stop home to change clothes.

3. After Date #2, another respectable 24-48 hours to call, and then Date #3 was a party on the following Friday or Saturday night, to meet the friends, "share," and get their ok for the relationship.  So if Date #2 ended with breakfast on June 5th, the call should come on the evening of June 6th, and Date #3 on June 9th at the earliest, nearly two weeks after the meeting.  We stayed together all day Monday, too, and met none of Lane's friends except his next-door neighbor Mort, a stand-up comedian who once toured with Madonna.

4. Within 24-48 hours of Date #3, you called to break up, or to ask "what shall we do this weekend?" You were now a monogamous couple. 

It was Tuesday morning.  Lane and I had spent three nights and two days together.  We saw a movie, bought books at the Change of Hobbit science, cruised at the Faultline, bought comic books at Book Circus, went to the Hsi Lae Buddhist Temple, went to the gym, went swimming in his apartment pool, learned a Hebrew prayer, had two breakfasts and a dinner at the French Quarter, and watched the annual Memorial Day Star Trek marathon. Oh, and had sex about 12 times.  Did all that count as three dates, or one marathon date?

1. One date:  I should call him on Wednesday and ask "are you free on Saturday night?"
2. Three dates: I should call him on Wednesday and ask "what are we going to do this weekend?"

If I guessed wrong, the consequences would be embarrassing -- or catastrophic.  Not only would Lane refuse future dates/dump me, word would get out, and I would become undateable as someone so needy that he moved too fast, or so clueless that he moved too slow.

After agonizing all day Tuesday and Wednesday, I decided to call Wednesday night and feel out Lane's intentions through some carefully planned chitchat.

But when I got home from the gym Wednesday night around 8:00 pm, Lane had already Lane had already left a message with my roommate -- just "Lane called" and the number  (there were no cell phones yet; answering machines were available, but expensive, so I didn't have one).  I called him back, and got his machine.

What did he want?  To ask me out?  To ask "What are we doing this weekend?"  To break up?  Grr....

Maybe I could run into him by accident.  There are only a few places he could be on a Wednesday night at 8:00 pm -- the Greenery, the Different Light Bookstore, the French Quarter, the gym (he belonged to the Melrose Fitness Center, not my celebrity-filled gym in Hollywood).  I tried all of those places -- no Lane, and now it was 10:00 pm.

I called home and asked my roommate if Lane had called back.  No.

The bars? Mugi, Basco's, the Zone, the Faultline?

Now it was almost midnight.  Lane managed his mother's apartment complexes, so he didn't have to get up early, but I did....

Enough of this! I drove to his apartment He had to come home sometime.  I went back to his apartment and knocked.  No answer.  Rick the next door neighbor let me in to wait in his apartment -- one of his mother's buildings, a six-plex off Larrabee, just north of the Different Light. 

No light upstairs.  Maybe he wasn't home...or maybe he was in bed...

I decided to go up and knock, make an excuse like "Did I leave my socks here?" But just as I locked up my car and started up the stairs, I saw Lane's car parking on the street below.  He got out...and so did a dark leather clad shape.

A date!  Or a trick?

They approached me cautiously.  I noticed that the trick or date was about my height, compactly muscular, sandy-haired, and sleazy -- sweat-soaked face, greasy hair, dazed eyes, too much to drink.

"Boomer, what are you doing here?" Lane asked suspiciously.

Thinking fast, I said "Visiting Morty.  He invited me for dinner -- what a hoot!  Nothing sexual, of course." I would call later and ask him to corroborate my story.

 I held out my hand to offer the trick/date a friendly grope. He obligingly arched his back to display his basket. "I'm Boomer."

"This is August," Lane said.  "He's a bartender at the Gold Coast."

The Sleaze Bar!  The one place I hadn't checked.

So Lane thought that the three-night, two-day marathon was a single date, and had moved on to someone else...."Well, you guys have a fun..." I began.

"Boomer!"  August exclaimed, in a gruff slurred voice.  "The guy who spent a sex-and-sleaze-filled three day weekend with Lane, then dumped him?  I should punch you in the nose, but I'm too happy to be getting a chance at him.  Thank God for rebounds!" 

"I didn't dump him!" I exclaimed.  "I thought...I mean..."

"You didn't call," Lane said, "So I figured you wanted to break up, and I called you to say I was going out."

"Could we not have this conversation in the hallway?" August asked. "I have to go, bad."  Lane led us upstairs and unlocked the door, and August raced to the bathroom.  Lane and I sat down on the couch and listened to the sound of urination from the next room, and an "Oh,yeah!", followed by the toilet flushing.

"So...you didn't want to break up?" Lane asked.  "Why didn't you call?"

August appeared, wiping his hands on a towel.  He had not zipped up -- his cock was hanging down, enormous.  He squeezed in between us.

"Clearly there's been a misunderstanding between you two, but personally, I couldn't care less. I'm just here to have some fun.  Either one of you is welcome to suck my cock.  Or both of you. So why don't we all go into the bedroom, and you can tease out the problem of who asked who for a date later."

With a footlong in your face, who's going to say no?

Lane and I took turns going down on August and kissing, and then Lane went down on August while I went down on him.  Poppers were produced, which we both refused.  After he finished, August left, but I stayed.

For the next seven years.

Lane and His Trophy Boy

West Hollywood, July 1989

You can easily tell whether heterosexual partners have broken up.  They begin going to social events alone, and no longer spend the night together.  Usually they never see each other again, period.

In gay communities, the boundaries are more fluid.

Romantic partners who have broken up continue to run into each other all the time (there aren't many gay places to hang out, after all).  They may still go to social events as a pair.  They may still spend the night together.

So the question "Are you still a couple?"  comes up often:
1. Should I ask about the other guy?
2. Should I invite them to things together?
3. Should I try to fix him up with someone else?
4. Is he free for me to date?

It's gauche to ask, or tell.  You're expected to just know.

My soon-to-be partner Lane met Danny at a gay Passover seder in April 1987.  He was an intensely hot Tropy Boy, 19 years old, newly out, with  a handsome male-model face, short blond hair, flawless pale skin, a smooth chest, and muscular legs.  Average beneath the belt gifts, cut.  Jewish, but not observant.

On their first date, three days later, Lane discovered that Danny was one of the few guys on Earth who didn't like receiving oral sex.  He put up with it to be polite, but his thing was giving.  He was very good at it.  Also into kissing, interfemeral, being spanked, and voyeurism -- he like watching other guys doing it.

That was all fine with Lane.  The bedroom activities were frequent and energetic.

After only three weeks, Danny moved from his parents' house in the San Fernando Valley into Lane's apartment.

Danny was so hot that Lane became the envy of West Hollywood.  Suddenly everybody at the Gold Coast, the gym, and the gay synagogue was his bosom buddy, and wanted to "share."

The problem was: Danny was so used to being a Trophy Boy that he didn't do anything, except drink milk right out of the carton and leave dirty dishes piled on the coffee table.

 He was ostensibly studying education at Cal State L.A., but he didn't go to class, and got straight D's (how do you get a D in an education class?).  Mostly he watched Duck Tales, went to lunch with his Cute Young Thing friends, and spent Lane's money on grooming products and clothes.

Lots of clothes.  55 shirts, 21 pairs of shoes, and 32 belts (he had something of a belt fetish).

The clencher came in May 1989, when Danny failed all of his classes and then cleared out the joint checking account on a Beverly Hills shopping spree.  Lane had to dip into his savings account to pay the rent.

He was furious!  There was crying.  There was yelling.

Danny's wardrobe was thrown, fancy belt by fancy belt, off the balcony.


By the end of the evening, Danny had packed up and moved back in with his parents.

Lane spent two days in his apartment, eating ice cream and listening to sad songs.  On the third day he went to the Zone, hoping to pick up a sleazy one-night stand.

He picked up me instead.  We were together for the next ten years.

But of course, Lane and Danny didn't cut off all contact.  About two weeks after the breakup, Danny came over for dinner and sharing.  He was, indeed, very energetic in the bedroom, fully aroused from the moment he took off his expensive designer pants to after he fell asleep.

But the change of boyfriends happened so quickly that Lane's friends were clueless.  He introduced me around, of course, but they seemed to think that I was just a new friend, or maybe a temporary fling, a mere setback in the Saga of Danny and Lane.

When Lane and I went to the gay synagogue, the usher tried to seat us separately.

His friend saw us at the Greenery, and asked, pointedly, "So, where's Danny?"

I ran into another of his friends at the Different Light Bookstore, and was asked "How are Lane and Danny?"

A full month after we started dating, a party invitation came in the mail, addressed to Lane and Danny. 

I was getting upset.  "You have to do something about this!" I told Lane.  "Let them know that Danny is history, you're with me now."

"They see me with you all the time.  They never see me with Danny," Lane said.  "What else can I do?  Obviously I can't make an announcement!"

I had an idea.  Danny was a trophy boy, so hot that no one could believe that Lane would break up with him willingly.  But Danny could break up with Lane.

On the night of the party, I drove to the Valley, picked up Danny at his parents' house, and came as his date.  Lane came by himself.

Danny and I stood with our arms around each other, flirted, kissed, brought each other drinks, sat together at the dinner table.

Lane said "hello" politely, but otherwise ignored us and sat by himself.

Heads turned.  Tongues wagged.


At the end of the evening, Danny and I opted to go cruising at Mugi instead of "sharing" with anyone.  Soon Lane joined us, effervescent.

"That was incredible!" he exclaimed.  "Everyone thought Danny dumped me for Boomer.  'How are you holding up?' 'He wasn't good enough for you!' Trying to fix me up with Cute Young Things!  Offers of sympathy sharing.  I never had so much fun in my life!"

Finally all of West Hollywood knew that Danny and Lane were no longer a couple.

And when Lane and I appeared together, no one commented on my sudden change in allegiances.  Obviously Danny was so hot that I couldn't handle him, so I latched onto Lane as the next best thing.

It's better than being Lane's "new friend" for the next 10 years.

See also: Sharing the Orthodox Cute Young Thing; and a New Lover Every Week

10 Pressing Questions about Hookup Apps

Hookup apps like Grinder, Scruff, and Adam4Adam are quick and easy; put up a profile, sit back, and wait for guys to message you (typically with "Hi").  A few minute's conversation, and he's on his way to your apartment.  Usually he's only a mile or two away, so time between logging on and the knock on your door: 30 minutes.

At least, that's optimal. More likely, the profiles are idiotic, the conversations are masterpieces of evasion, and when you cut through all the bs and get him to agree to show up, he notices someone mowing their lawn down the block and chickens out in a fit of "downlow" paranoia ("what if he recognizes me, and tells my wife?").

Here my top 10 questions to hookup app posters:

1. Why use a sunset, a mountain, fireworks, your pet dog. or anything other than your face and physique as a profile photo?  We want to see what you look like, not what a sunset looks like.

2. What's the point of the doggy ears and snout?  It blocks your face and looks gross.  Most guys on these apps are not into bestiality.

3. Why use a picture of you with your wife, girlfriend, or female bff?  To demonstrate that you're really heterosexual?  Believe me, that's not a point in your favor. 

4. Can't you think of any interests more specific than "I enjoy living life to its fullest" or "I like to have a good time"?

5. Where did you get the idea that saying "Hit me up.  I don't bite -- unless you ask nicely" is clever? Our reason for not approaching you has nothing to do with a fear of biting. 

6. Did you really think you would get a lot of responses by recounting detailed, specialized fetishes like "I want someone to tie me up with ladies' garters, put a bird cage on my head, and force me to sing the theme song to The Patty Duke Show.'"  Leave the fetishes to the fetish sites.

7. Do you think you will attract more guys with a long list of types that you find repulsive?  "No femmes, fats, queens, no one over 30, no one who belongs to a racial minority..."  Even the white Aryan gym rat twinks you are looking for will be turned off by your negativity.

8.  What makes you think that everyone is into anal?  People are into oral, anal, interfemoral, mutual masturbation, and who knows what else?

9. What makes you think that complaining about the men on this app will make you attractive to men on this app?  "You're all boring, superficial, shallow, sex-obsessed jerks.  Who wants to have sex with me?"

10.  Why bring up your (real or imagined) cock size?  No one cares.  An attractive face and physique can make up for the daintiest of members, and even a footlong cannot redeem a sleazoid.  Don't ask, don't tell.