My First Indian Sausage Sighting and BDSM Scene

Dowagiac, Michigan, March, 1971

Dad always claimed that he was half Indian, from the Potawatomi tribe of southern Michigan.   But he didn't mean by blood: when his big sister Nora married a Potawatomi man (my Uncle Henry), he was sort of adopted by the family.  When I was a kid, we occasionally drove to Dowagiac, Michigan, about four hours from Rock Island, to visit Grandma Rani, a small, brown, wrinkled woman who always said "You've grown as big as a beanstalk!"

One day in fifth grade, Dad told me "We're going out to Michigan for your Grandma Rani's 90th birthday.  All of your uncles and aunts and cousins are throwing her a big party."

Cousins?  Potawatomi boys my own age?

I remembered the naked Indian boy that Bill and I saw at the Pow Wow last summer -- huge beneath the belt.

And Cousin Joe, half Indian -- huge.

Suddenly I was very interested in meeting my Indian cousins.

When we visited before, Grandma Rani lived in a farmhouse in the wild birch woods, but this time she was living with her daughter and her family in a rather rundown gray house on a side street in Dowagiac

There were a lot of people.  Some I knew, like my Aunt Nora and Cousin Joe.  Most I didn't.  We ate cake or pie (not both), leafed through photo albums, and helped the now wheelchair-bound Grandma Rani unwrap presents.

Indian parties turned out to be like every other grownup party, except that you got a piece of cake with a lit candle on it, and an old guy gave a long speech about how "Rani has honored our people," accompanied by a slow, steady drum.

A very long speech.  I asked Mom if I could go out and play.

I wasn't the only one.  There were a dozen kids in the back yard.  I walked up to a couple of guys about my age and one older, almost a teenager.  They had black hair and dark eyes and smooth coppery skin. My Indian cousins were cute!  But were they big?

"Do you like Daniel Boone?" I asked, to break the ice. Then I kicked myself -- I only thought of it because the theme song said "Daniel Boone was a big man."  But it was a Western, about   wild, savage Indians!  Of course they wouldn't watch that!

"It's pretty cool," the older one said.  "I dig his coonskin cap.  I'd like to make one myself, if I can hunt down a coon."

I relaxed.  One faux pas over. Soon the guys -- Javon (13), his brother Rodney (10), and their cousin Mike (9) were showing me around.  Downtown was only a three block walk away -- it had an ice cream store and a newsstand where you could get comic books.

I was full of cake from the party, and I had just spent my allowance on comic books at Schneider's on Monday, but I pretended enthusiasm.  I really wanted my Indian cousins to like me.

I squirmed when I saw Turok, Son of Stone among the comics -- it was about two Indians with feathered headdresses and loincloths trapped in a prehistoric land.  But my Indian cousins didn't seem to notice.

When we finished looking at (but not buying) comic books, Javon said "Come on, let's play in Mill Pond Park"

  My heart sank.  I didn't like playing outside, and I didn't really know how.  "Um...what do you like to play?" I asked.  "Hide and seek?  King of the hill?  Cowboys and..no..."

Javon grinned.  "Those are baby games.  Let's play Green Berets.  It will get us ready for the army when we grow up."

The game was basically Cowboys and Indians combined with Hide and Seek.  set in Vietnam.  The Viet Cong (our enemy) capture an American G.I., tie him up, and torture him for information.  Two or more Green Berets (an elite military group) have to find him, subdue the Viet Cong and rescue him.


We ran back to the house, got some rope and toy guns, and set to work.

As the oldest, Javan got the pivotal role, the G.I.  I volunteered to be the Viet Cong officer.

While Rodney and Mike waited, I put a t-shirt on Javon's head as a hood and led him into the woods.  We turned a few times to make it more difficult to find us.  Then I tied his hands behind a tree. He was still wearing a hood.

"So you won't talk!" I exclaimed.

"Not so loud!" Javon said  "They'll find us too soon."

"We'll make you talk."  I whispered.  I carefully unbuttoned his shirt and ran my hand over his smooth, hard chest.  "You won't be able to stand this torture for long."


"You won't get anything out of me!"

"Oh, no?  Not even if we hit you on the wiener?"  I undid his belt, unbuttoned his pants, and slid them down.  I heard a sharp intake of breath.

A little disappointing -- much smaller than my Cousin Joe's.  But I didn't get to see many wieners, let alone touch them.

"We'll see how brave you are when we're hitting you on the wiener!"

I reached out and grabbed it: soft and warm to the touch, with a rubbery foreskin.  Then Rodney and Mike came war-whooping out of the bushes.   Rodney pushed me away with a fake karate move, and Mike shot me with his toy gun.  I collapsed onto the ground, "dead."

In the next iteration, Rodney was the G.I., and Mike the Viet Cong officer.  Then we had to pack up and go home.

I saw my Indian cousins only once after that, at Grandma Rani's funeral.  We haven't stayed in contact.  I wonder if Javon still likes getting tied up.  And by who.

See also:The First Boy I Tied Up; An All-Nighter at the New York Bondage Club; and Cruising in the Navajo Nation.

The Nanny and the Naked Man

San Francisco, May 1996

After I left my doctoral program at USC in 1989 (due to doctoral committees insisting that "you can't say gay"), I bounced around West Hollywood for a few years, trying out new careers: minister, human resources assistant, juvenile probation officer.  Nothing seemed right.  In 1995, Lane and I moved to San Francisco, where I took some courses at San Francisco City college, and tried even more careers.  I published a book, about 30 articles, and a dozen or so short stories, but the royalties weren't enough to pay my half the rent (at least I could impress people by saying "I'm a writer.").

My 36th birthday was coming up.  What did I want to do for the rest of my life?

The answer came from, of all places, The Nanny.  

One of the most popular of sitcoms about servants who revitalize a dying family (others include Nanny and the Professor, Charles in Charge, Who's the Boss, and Mr. Belvedere), The Nanny (1993-1999) starred  Fran Drescher as Fran Fine, a working-class Jewish girl from Flushing, Queens, Long Island.  Visiting Manhattan to sell makeup door-to-door, Fran accidentally encounters the depressed, morbid, dreary family of Broadway producer Maxwell Sheffield, injects them with joie de vivre, and lands a job as the Nanny (eventually, of course, The Wife).

There wasn't a lot of gay content.  For a Broadway producer, Maxwell doesn't encounter any gay performers.  Fran has a gay hairdresser; David L. Lander plays a gay Squiggy; Maxwell dates a woman who turns out to be gay.  The butler Niles was fey, persnickety, gay-vague, but he turned out to be straight, and eventually married Maxwell's business partner C.C. Babcock.

Nor was there a lot of beefcake.  Maxwell (Charles Shaughnessy, top photo) was handsome, and eventually Brighton (Benjamin Salisbury, left) developed a degree of teen-idol cuteness for the younger gay kids.

Nevertheless it was a Castro Street must-see due to the never-ending parade of famous guest stars, the snappy banter, and gay symbolism of an underdog taking charge and "moving on up."

Fran Drescher is a strong gay ally, besties with her gay ex-husband Marc Jacobson.  She turned the experience of living with him into a sitcom, Happily Divorced (2011-).  To promote the series, she held a contest called "Love is Love Gay Marriage Contest," and, using her ministerial certificate from the Universal Life Church, performed the weddings of the winning couples.

And the naked man on the horse: on May 6, 1996, Brighton gets a French tutor, and, bucking tradition, instead of a hot girl, it's a hot guy, Philippe (Paolo Seganti, left, in a photo from an Italian magazine).

It was a silly episode, mostly about people confusing "Je t'adore" and "Shut the door."  But it started a train of reasoning:

Of all the things I had done, interviewing bodybuilders, counseling juvenile delinquents, researching housing trends, writing job ads, what I liked the most was standing in front of a classroom.  Teaching.  The main job of college professors.

When the episode ended, I called Lane in Los Angeles and said "I think I want to go back to school, and try for a Ph.D. again.

He said: "You're crazy."

"I know."

Randall, the Muscle Bear with the Pierced Penis

Rock Island, December 25th, 1990

My boyfriend Lane and I have an open relationship: bedroom activity with other guys is fine, as long as we are both present, "sharing" or at least watching.  In emergencies, like when I'm back in Rock Island for two weeks, a close friend can substitute.

So on Christmas Day, I call Lane and tell him how my friend Dick and I went to JR's last night and hooked up with the Ginger Boy.  And he tells me about how he went to a bear contest at the Faultline, and got the phone number of the winner, Randall.

"You should have seen him!  A classic muscle daddy, in his 50s but not grey, a military haircut, a short-cropped beard, thick arms, nice muscular hairy chest!  I groped him -- feels like a gigantic Kielbasa down there!"

"Sounds hot," I say.  Not really my type though.  I just turned 30, so I'm not into the over-40 crowd.  I figure if they date, I'll just be the "watcher."

"And really into S&M: mummification, water sports, you name it."

I like some minor bondage, but Lane isn't into it at all.  What does he see in this guy?  "So, when is the big date?  You can bring Max along to share, if I'm still in the Midwest."

"No, we'll wait until you get back.  How about if we have dinner with him on the 5th?"

West Hollywood, January 5th, 6:00 pm

I expect Lane to drive me to a West Hollywood address -- San Vicente, Crescent Heights, Fairfax, La Brea.  But instead we get on the 410 and drive south for 45 minutes, to Long Beach!

The other side of the world?  What does this guy have that the 20,000 gay men in West Hollywood don't?  

Long Beach, 7:00 pm

We meet Randall at a restaurant on East Broadway, in the heart of Long Beach's gay neighborhood.  He is very attractive, very dynamic, in spite of being 23 years older than me.  Maybe I'll do more than watch.

I start bringing out my best stories.  I spent a summer in Japan.

"Really?  I lived in Japan for five years, after I got out of the navy. Nihonjin dansei ga miri kitekidesu!"

How about my celebrity boyfriend?

"Oh, I met him at a party a few years ago, when he was still in that tv show.  He let me tie him up, but I couldn't do anything else.  You know who's really into S&M scenes?  I'll give you a hint -- he's on Murphy Brown!"

Ok, my writing career.   "I worked for Muscle and Fitness for four years," I tell him, omitting the fact that I was a proofreader.  "But now I've moved into freelance.  I just had an article published in Frontiers [the local gay newspaper]."

"That's great.  I write a monthly column on the leather world.  You've probably seen it -- Randall's Ropes?"

Grrr.

10:00 pm

After cruising at the Mineshaft, a local leather bar, we go back to Randall's house, a square Spanish colonial flanked by palm trees.  Not much furniture: a nearly bare living room, a playroom with a pool table and a fireplace, a study with some paperbacks leftover from his college days.  But a well-stocked basement dungeon.

"Who's up for a scene?" Randall  asks.  "Boomer, you look like a bottom."

"Nope, a top.  Lane bottoms on occasion, but he's not really into it at all."

"Not tonight," Lane says.  "I want to try the dominance thing."

"Come on, Boomer -- you can't say no to two tops.  At least let us put you in my new leather-braided restraints and play with you a bit."

So I take off my clothes, and Randall wraps my wrists and biceps in tight leather bands.  He fondles my chest, and Lane goes down on me.  

But I'm not used to restraints, and it's very, very tight.  "Enough, enough!" I exclaim.

"But I was going to put clamps on your nipples!"

"Let me out of this thing!"

He unties the braids.  "Would you be up for a midnight swim instead?   In my pool, not in the ocean, so there will be no fish to nipple on your toes"

11:00 pm

Randall strips, revealing a nice muscular chest and a gigantic Kielbasa -- with a Prince Albert, what looks like a 3" thick metal hook through his glans.

Lane and I follow him upstairs and into the back yard.  It's January in Long Beach, 53 degrees out, jacket weather.  I assume that his pool is heated.

No.

Randall and Lane dive into the deep end.   I climb carefully into the shallow end and stand there, shivering.

Randall swims over and gropes me.  "Hey, Boomer, have you ever gone down on a guy underwater?"

Put my head under that ice shelf?  I don't think so.

I climb of the pool and go back in the house.  Randall follows.

"Sorry, you're from the Midwest, so I figured you wouldn't mind a little chill.  Let me warm you up."  He slaps my back -- vigorously. It hurts!

"Ouch!  Get away!"

"Sorry!  Well, let's get busy."  He grabs Lane, pushes him down on the couch, and starts aggressively kissing and fondling him.  His gigantic Kielbasa becomes aroused.  Who am I to turn down a Kielbasa?   I kneel and go down on him.

It feels like I'm going down on one of those old-fashioned hitching posts.


"Could you take that thing out?" I ask.  "It's breaking my teeth."

"Well, I prefer leaving it in.  Oral sex is much better that way.  Try this -- it will help you relax your throat."

He shoves a poppers vial at me.  I refuse.

Tired of getting my teeth knocked out, I move over and go down on Lane.

"Shall we go to the bedroom?" Randall asks.  He doesn't wait for an answer -- his fully aroused hitching post leads the way.

He sits on the bed, his back against the headboard, and Lane crawls between his legs and goes down on him.  I sit next to him.  We kiss for awhile.  Then he opens a carved wooden box and pulls out a homemade cigar.  "Want to get high?"

I don't drink.  What makes him think I do drugs?  I've never even seen marijuana before.  "Um...no, thanks."

"How about you, Lane?"

Lane looks up.  "Thanks, but I'm high enough as it is.  It's not every day that I get to go down on someone as big as you."

"Hey, he's not that much bigger than me!"  I exclaim.

"Just keep working, boy," Randall says, patting his head.  He lights up.  An acrid-sweet smell fills the room.

After awhile, he pushes Lane away and tries to turn me over onto my stomach.

"Um...I'm not into anal."

 "Just relax, boy." He spits on his penis and pushes it between my legs, while I'm facing the wrong way.  After a few dozen thrusts, he finishes with a yell.

All in all, a less than optimal evening.

But Lane loved it.  Randall was like a bigger, more accomplished, more adventurous version of me.  We visited him in Long Beach, or invite him up to West Hollywood, every couple of weeks until we moved to San Francisco in 1995.  And after we broke up, Lane and Randall became roommates.

Today Randall is 78 years old, still living in that house in Long Beach, still inviting Cute Young Things over to swim in his pool, try out his dungeon, and break their teeth on his Prince Albert.

See also: A Golden Boy for Christmas; Darren, Cary Grant, and Groucho Marx in the Same Bed.