Are Mike and Calvin Friends or Lovers?

Wilton Manors, October 2004

You're at a heterosexual party, and you want to know if it's ok to flirt with that hot person who came with the hetero guy.  Are they just friends, or lovers?

Easy: if it's a man, they're friends.  You may occasionally be mistaken, but 99 times out of 100, you can distinguish between friends and lovers by gender.

If you're not sure, check their level of physical intimacy.  Heterosexuals rarely sit with their hands on their friend's knee, or make out with them, or go down on them.

If you're still not sure, find out if they live together.  Heterosexuals over age 25 usually shy away from living with friends, thinking of it as "juvenile": grown-ups should only live with lovers.

With gay men, it's not so easy.

1. Both friends and lovers are men.

2. Friends have no qualms about physical intimacy.  They are perfectly willing to make out with you, or to go down on you.  But sometimes lovers are sexually incompatible, and rarely do anything.

3.  Friends often live together, and lovers sometimes do not.

4. Guys often have very close, inseparable friends.

But you have to be able to distinguish.  It's extremely rude to invite one lover but not the other to a party, to give a Christmas present to one but not the other, or even to hold a conversation with one without asking "How's your boyfriend?"

It's even more rude to cruise a guy's lover.

Mike and Calvin were two guys who worked out at Barney's gym: both in their 30s, buffed but not bodybuilders, with smooth chests and big biceps.  Mike was taller, pale/Anglo, and a little more buffed.  Calvin was shorter, dark/Hispanic, with longer hair, and a bigger penis (I saw them both in the shower).

I was interested in Calvin.  But I couldn't cruise him openly, until I knew whether they were friends or lovers.

And of course I couldn't just ask.  It was a complete taboo to ask "Are you guys together?"  It reminded us of growing up in the straight world, where two guys together were automatically assumed friends, where gay people were assumed not to exist.

So I had to figure it out some other way.  In weight room conversations, I learned that Mike was from Ohio, and had lived in Florida for three years.  He worked in the hospital.  Calvin grew up in Miami, and worked in a souvenir shop.  

That's all very interesting, but are you friends or lovers?

"Do you live together?" I asked.

"Oh, no, Mike has his own place," Calvin said.  "You should see his roommate!  Super-hot, but not into sharing."

That wasn't conclusive: you could share with friends or lovers.

They always lifted together, but they did separate cardio: Calvin on a treadmill, Mike on an elliptical (nobody jogged outside in Florida).  So I chose the treadmill next to Calvin and quizzed him for more details.  He came out as a teenager; his parents, conservative Catholics, tolerated him but didn't allow him to bring friends or boyfriends around: "They've never met Mike."

Suddenly Mike appeared on the treadmill on the other side of Calvin, and started a conversation of his own.

Jealous?  Trying to steer Calvin away? They must be lovers!

But at least I could have sex with Calvin.  Sharing seemed out of the question, but I could invite them to a party with sex games...

I approached them in the locker room.  "Barney, the gym owner, is having a party Saturday night, and we'd like you to come."

"I think we're busy," Mike said.

"Oh, come on," Calvin said, "You're always complaining that we don't meet any normal gay guys, just club kids into nonstop dancing and sex.  Won't it be nice to just hang out and have a conversation, without a lot of pressure to get naked?"

Uh-oh.  Getting naked was exactly what I had in mind!

So I planned a sedate, non-erotic dinner party, with Trivial Pursuit and a gay-themed DVD instead of sex games, and invited Yuri and his boyfriend Keith, Barney, Wade the Beach Boy, and Mike and Calvin.

When it came time for the celebrity dating stories, I told about my lunch with Michael J. Fox, without turning it into an energetic session of oral sex.

Mike and Calvin sat together on the couch, occasionally grabbing each other's knee or whispering in each other's ear.

When we played Trivial Pursuit, Mike and Calvin were on my team.  I tried to sit next to Calvin, but Mike pushed his way between us.

Possessive much?

Before we started the movie, Yuri and I went into the kitchen to dish out the dessert (low-fat pumpkin fluff with graham crackers).  Calvin followed.

"You guys need any help?"

"We got it, thanks," I said.

He wrapped his arms around me from the rear.  "So when you going to ask me out, Papi?"



I turned to face him.  Our crotches pressed together.  "Um...I thought..."

I glanced over at Yuri for help.  He was bent over the coffee maker, pretending not to notice.

"I know, Mike isn't being very nice.  He thinks you're not good enough for me.  But he's not my Daddy -- I can pick my own men."  He kissed me briefly.  "So, about that date..."

Calvin and Mike were friends after all!

In case you were wondering: anal bottom, but I talked him into letting me go down on him and doing interfemoral.

We only had one date, and I never got to share with Mike, who still didn't approve.

A Naked Indian God at the Pow Wow

Rock Island, September 1970

Every summer the Sauk and Fox Indians, who used to live on the site of Rock Island, returned for a Pow Wow at Black Hawk State Park.  On the Fourth of July weekend in 1970, just after fourth grade, Bill's big brother Mike and his girlfriend took us to see it.

We wandered the booths where Sauk/Fox  ladies sold beadwork, moccasins, feathered headdresses, little toy drums, fried bread, and ice cream sandwiches. For some reason, the phallic Weinermobile was there, selling hot dogs.

Mike bought me a small green-plastic statue of a Sauk with a round face, long flowing hair, and bulging muscles.


The lady at the booth said that he was Wisakeha, a beautiful youth who created all of the world's rivers.  He fell asleep on the day the White-Eyes first bridged the Mississippi, but someday he would awaken and banish war from the world forever.

Mike got quiet after that, maybe thinking of Vietnam.

The show came later: Fancy Dancers fluttering with fringed shirts and enormous feathered headdresses, Medicine Dancers in animal masks, Eagle Dancers with red and green streamers fringing from their pants. A "Wild Indian" blew cigarette smoke through his nose and scared the little kids with his tomahawk. Sauk women marched single-file across the dirt, chanting to the corn spirits.   Teenage boys wearing only buckskin pants marched across the dirt, pounding on drums and screaming. They invited the kids to scream as loud as we could to awaken Wisakeha.

When a white-haired old man in a red-beaded headdress began to screech in the old Sauk language, Bill and I decided to look for Indian arrowheads in the hickory-oak woods. We walked up a steep trail that led away from the Pow Wow until we could no longer hear the shrill song or the murmuring voices. Sometimes we caught a glimpse of the river through the foliage, glinting down past a white-brick dam.

Suddenly the woods became very quiet. We saw a figure standing a little down from the path, facing the river.  An Indian! One of the teenage performers, I thought, still in costume, except his buckskin pants were down around his ankles, leaving him naked. I saw the side of his thigh, the curve of his clenched buttocks, his thin striated belly, his massive chest painted green like the forest. He was peeing, I realized with a start -- and he had a garden hose between his legs!  It took two hands to direct the stream of urine into the undergrowth.

I had only seen a few penises before, or what the grownups called "shames": my brother's, my cousin Joe's, and my Uncle Paul's.   (I didn't count the Naked Man in the Peat Bog, because I thought he was a monster.)

He couldn’t be a real Indian boy! I thought. He was too muscular, too alien, too beautiful. His chest was green, but the rest of his body was dark gold, like a statue. He must be Wisakeha, the god that the Sauk and Fox worshipped, who would soon banish war from the world. We watched in utter silence, afraid to move or breathe.

Suddenly the boy noticed that we were watching. He turned, his muscles taut, his eyes pools of black. And he screamed. It wasn’t angry, like the screams of wild Indians on tv, or the preacher at church – he was screaming with joy.  He wanted to be seen.

But we were too terrified to stick around.  We ran back to the Pow Wow as fast as we could, and collapsed yelling into Mike’s arms.

Maybe we did awaken a sleeping god that day.

Sausage Sighting of an Indian God in Tennessee

When I was a kid, my Dad got a 2-week vacation every year.  We would always spend the first week visiting our relatives in Indiana, and the second camping up north,  usually in Minnesota.

But in 1973, just after seventh grade, for some reason we spent the first week visiting my Kentucky Kinfolk and the second in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, about sixty miles south on the border of Tennessee and North Carolina.

A whole week of nothing to do but sleep outside, fish, hike, and ride horses.

Gross! Where were all the historic sites? Where was all the beefcake?

Then Mom and Dad announced that we were going to spend a day at the Cherokee Indian Reservation.  We would see the Cherokee Museum, the Oconaluftee Indian Village (a replica of an 18th century Cherokee village), and Unto These Hills, a drama about Cherokee history performed in a gigantic outdoor theater.

The play (written by Kermit Hunter in 1950) was big on "noble savage" myths and short on historical accuracy (a new, more accurate version was introduced in 2006).

But it had lots of white-Indian buddy-bonding: future President Andrew Jackson befriended Chief Junaluska, and William Holland Thomas, a white boy adopted by the Cherokee, befriended Chief Yonaguska.

And lots of semi-nude male dancers.  I especially liked the head Eagle Dancer, a super-muscular teenager whose bare hard chest glimmered in the firelight.  I kept waiting for his white loincloth to flip up so I could see what was underneath.

He reminded me of the Naked Indian God at the Pow Wow in Rock Island three years ago, but I was just a little kid then, and didn't know how to handle the situation.  Now, a 12 year old grown-up, I knew exactly what I wanted -- to meet the Teenage Indian God, and hopefully see him naked.

 After the performance, I asked my parents if I could go get his autograph. They said ok, but hurry.

I pushed my way through the crowds to the little staging area behind the amphitheater, where the performers were wiping off their makeup.  I found the Teenage Indian God, surprisingly, alone.  He had already exchanged his loincloth for a pair of jeans, but his chest was still bare, smooth and hard, his pecs outlined in blue paint, and, as he was pulling them up, I got a sausage sighting -- dark, thick, uncut!

"Hi!  You were great!"  I said breathlessly, trying to memorize his physique and penis. "Can I have your autograph?"

"Sure."  He signed my program.  Our hands touched as he passed it back.

What could I say to get him interested?  "Um...I want to be a dancer, too, but the Mean Boys at school say it's just for girls."

"Don't let Mean Boys push you around," the Teenage Indian God told me.  "Do what makes you happy.  I'm the only boy in my ballet class -- one boy and twenty girls!  Nice odds, huh?"

Wait -- was he studying dance just to get girls?  What about the muscular male bodies?  What about the buddy-bonding?

"Gross!" I exclaimed.

He laughed. "Just wait a few years -- let me tell you, there's nothing like holding a foxy chick in your arms..."

"Don't you ever dance with boys?"

"If you're going to be a dancer, you have to dance with girls," he said, looking at me oddly.  "They're always going to be your partners, for the rest of your life."

They're always going to be your partners.  What a bleak future!

Blinking back tears of outrage, I rushed off, forgetting to thank him for the autograph.

When we got back to the camper, I looked at my program.  Kevin Martin.  

He wasn't even a real Indian.

I took it out into the woods and threw it away.

Researching this post, I found out more about Kevin Martin.  After high school, he studied dance in New York, and then spent twenty years performing for dance companies in Cincinnati, Louisville, and Washington.  Today he is the director of the men's dance division of the Nutmeg Conservatory for the Arts in Connecticut.

Hopefully he hasn't done it all just to get girls.