The Gay Cannibal of Colombia

Itagui, Colombia, June 1979

During the summer of 1979, just after my freshman year at Augustana College, the Nazarene Church was looking for some able-bodied college students to help build ten new churches in Colombia.  I hadn't attended regularly for about a year, but you stay on the membership roster forever, so they called me.

They warned us: this was the jungle, where Jim Elliot was killed trying to bring the gospel to the Auca Indians in 1956.  Expect poisonous snakes, crocodiles, and naked cannibals.  They might try to eat us!

Um...did you say cannibals would be naked?

I'm in!

Actually, my group ended up in Itagui, population 200,000, a major industrial center with gleaming modern architecture, a gigantic soccer stadium, and restaurants called "Chocolate Chicken the Prince" and "Nice Sandwich and Juice."

No poisonous snakes, but lots of poverty, crime, and drugs.  We were cautioned to not leave the Youth Hostel at night, and not go into Medellin, about 5 miles away, where murder and kidnapping were daily events.

Heck with that!  I was going to find a nice Swedish leatherman to dance with, like in Switzerland, or at least a cute gay waiter, like when I visited Olivet.  Only now if he offered "Come back to my hotel! I have Schnapp!", I would know what to do.

But with no internet and no gay guidebooks (I had never heard of the Damron Guide), how could I find the gay men of Itagui?

It turns out that they found me.

I went downtown, to a small, brightly-lit taverno that seemed to have all men inside, mostly elegantly-dressed young adults.  I sat down at the bar and ordered a Postobon, an apple-flavored soda.

Five minutes later, a college-age boy named Marco sat down next to me: short, muscular, with black hair and intense black eyes. He was wearing a track suit, as if he was in a race -- rather out of place for such an elegant clientele, I thought.

 We chatted, in my pretty-good Spanish and his rudimentary English, mostly about the Sandinistas taking control of Nicaragua and Skylab falling out of the sky.  His leg brushed against mine, and he didn't move it away.  Then he said, apropos of nothing: "Necessitas marimba?"

Why would I want a xylophone?   Later I figured out that he was offering me marijuana.  "No, no...busco...um..."  What was the Spanish word for gay?  "Hombres que aman los hombres." (Men who love men.)

"Oh!"  His eyes lit up, and his hand fell onto my knee.  "100 lucas...200 dollars."

"Para que?  No quiero comprar algo."  I didn't want to buy anything!

"Ok, ok, 50 lucas!"

"No quiero comprar..."

"10 lucas!" he exclaimed in exasperation. "Que barato!" About $20.  What a bargain!

Finally I understood -- I had read The Happy Hooker, after all.  I just never realized that there were male hustlers, with male clients.

"No way!" I exclaimed, pushing aside his hand and getting up from the bar.

He followed me out into the street and yelled, "Oye, chino!  Medio  luca!"  About $1.00.

"Estas burlando?"  I asked.  "Are you kidding?  That's about the cost of a Postobon!   It's not even worth it."

He grabbed my arm and started speaking very quickly in Spanish. "You're very cute, but you have to pay...I'm not a pillow-killer...I'm a cannibal...it's only for the money."

I threw him off and walked away, through the warm tropical night toward the youth hostel.  I was gratified that there were enough gay men in Itagui to make hustling profitable, but upset that Marco couldn't bring himself to acknowledge that he was gay, a "pillow-killer."  He was a "cannibal" (apparently slang for "hustler" or "on the downlow"): telling himself over and over again that it was about the money, not about desire.

So I met a cannibal after all.  Just not the kind that goes fishing in the nude.

See also: The Top 12 Public Penises of South America; The Teenage Hustler of Bourbon Street.

My Date with Andrew Lloyd Webber

New York, September 1999

I generally dislike Broadway musicals, and I've seen none of Andrew Lloyd Webber's, except for the movie versions of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Cats.

So I'm the last person who should be meeting Andrew Lloyd Webber, let alone having tacos with him at 2:00 am.  But that's what happened in the fall of 1999, when I was living in New York.

1. As you know, my friend Yuri, the Russian meteorology major, could get any guy he wanted: young, old, black, white, gay, straight.  In the fall of 1998, I let him lose on my stuffy, elitist boyfriend Blake in order to make the "Roommate Switch."  They only dated once, to the opera, but Blake continued to have a thing for Yuri.

2.  Blake was a Big Wheel in the New York Arts Scene, with connections all over town, in classical music, opera, and theater. He went to all of the Broadway Cares AIDS fundraisers, and in September 1999 he invited Yuri to the Annual Flea Market and Grand Auction.

3. Not wanting to give Blake the wrong idea, Yuri invited me along, as his "date," but with the understanding that either of us could meet someone else and vanish (I had just broken up with Joe the Roommate).

4. We spent the afternoon sorting among the Jekyll & Hyde t-shirts, posters from Sunset Boulevard, aand Chicago light switch plates.  Blake got a photo taken of himself and a naked boy (from Naked Boys Singing).  During the Grand Auction, I bid for a walk-on acting job on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.   Yuri cruised.

5. One of the celebrities manning autograph tables was John Benjamin Hickey, star of Cabaret  and the gay-themed Love! Valour! Compassion! (this isn't him).  Yuri got not only his autograph, but a lengthy conversation and an invitation to a party later.

6. Hickey picked us up at my apartment (Blake and I were invited, too), and drove us to Brooklyn Heights, to one of those ornate townhouses with living rooms that are pictured in design magazines.  There were about two dozen people, including some recognizable celebrities: Judith Light (of Who's the Boss), Top Wopat (of Dukes of Hazzard), Roger Bart (of Hercules).  

7. Yuri was occupied with Hickey, and Blake wandered off somewhere, leaving me on my own.  I gravitated toward a short, middle aged man with a pie-pan face sitting in the corner by himself, leafing through The Encyclopedia of Pantomime.  Short is my type, and there's something endearing about the lost and neglected.  So I started a conversation with him about the Commedia dell'Arte of 17th century Italy.

"Do you think Cats has any resemblance to the Commedia dell'Arte?" he asked.

"Oh, the musical?  I never saw it.  I saw the movie -- what a train wreck that was!"

He grunted.  I should have realized that he was involved with Cats, but I just thought, "What a cute British accent!"

8. Neglected, indeed!  A fawning coterie soon enveloped us.  I figured this guy was famous, but didn't know how.  After being ignored for a few minutes, I moved on to cruise Tom Wopat.

9. It got later and later. Yuri had vanished, and Blake didn't want to leave yet.  I was trying to figure out how to get to the nearest subway station, when the Pie-Faced Man approached.  "Going into the City?" he asked.  "I have a car, if you need a ride."

That means a hookup!  Ok, I'm game.

10. By "car," he meant limousine with driver. Now I knew he was somebody famous, but I couldn't very well ask who. I figured something to do with Broadway, so I said "I love You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown."

"What about Sunset Boulevard?" 

I should have realized that this was a clue, but I didn't. "Well, the movie was great.  I haven't seen the play."

He grunted.

11. We crossed the bridge into Manhattan, and the Pie-Faced Man said "You know what?  I'm starving!  These parties never serve enough food.  Do you like tacos?"

We stopped at the Empellon Taqueria, near Christopher Street, limo and all.  I had a taco chile relleno, and the Pie Faced Man had three tacos con lengua -- he was quite a trencherman.

"My favorite musical of all time is Chicago," I said.  "Bob Fosse was a genius."

He grunted.

A little while later, he dropped me off at my apartment.  No hookup.  Not even a kiss on the cheek!

Blake called the next day.  "How was your date with Andrew Lloyd Weber?"

"Who?"

"I saw you leave with him.  Is he gay?"

Andrew Lloyd Webber!  And I bad-mouthed Cats and Sunset Boulevard!  "No," I said, "And after my performance last night, probably not a gay ally, either."

I was joking, of course.  Sort of.

See also: Elijah Wood Dumps Roger for Jason Bateman.