The Preacher Discovers Homa-Sekshuls

Rock Island, September 1977

When I was growing up, every Nazarene Preacher had a hobby-horse, some sin or social problem that he screamed about in every sermon, regardless of the topic: working on the Sabbath, playing cards, liberal Christians, Communists, hippies.

 In 1977, at the start of my senior year in high school, we got a new preacher, Brother Spearman, whose hobby-horse was the Unpardonable Sin.

 God didn’t distinguish between little sins (like falling asleep in church) or big sins (like going to a movie).  The punishment was always the same, burning for eternity in the Lake of Fire.  But,  if you went down to the altar and moaned and sobbed loud enough, God would forgive you for any sin, no matter how heinous.

With one exception. If you committed the Unpardonable Sin, you were doomed to the Lake of Fire, no matter how often you went to the altar and moaned and sobbed.  God wouldn't forgive you.

God's Word didn't tell us which sin was unpardonable, though occasionally a Sunday school teacher speculated that it was believing in evolution, setting foot inside a Catholic church, listening to rock music, or getting your hand stamped for re-entry into an event.  Preachers usually kept mum, because their jobs depended on a lot of sinners going down to the altar, and you wouldn't go down unless you thought you could be forgiven.

When Brother Spearman dangled the Unpardonable Sin in front of the congregation; he got people to the altar, but it kept backfiring.  God held grudges.  When you got to the altar, you had to work to persuade Him.  You had to cry hard, moan and gasp, and plead over and over, sometimes for ten minutes, sometimes longer.  But suddenly anyone who didn't feel the ecstatic release of Victory within a few seconds concluded that they were doomed.

One Sunday Laverne Larsen, son of the Sunday School Superintendent (yes, a boy was named Laverne), was having trouble praying through to Victory.  Suddenly he brushed off the hands of the church men, leapt to his feet, and screamed “God won’t forgive me! I committed the Unpardonable Sin!” He ran sobbing from the sanctuary.

Making church royalty doubt their salvation did not bode well for Brother Spearman’s continuing employment. He had to think of a new altar call draw, and fast!

He hit on the answer when he read a newspaper article about a town somewhere out west passing a law that prohibited normal people from speaking out against Homa-Sekshuls.

Suddenly Brother Spearman realized: the Unpardonable Sin was turning Homa-Sekshul!

God liked symmetry. The first sin, that got man expelled from the Garden of Eden, was Adam seeing Eve naked and realizing that men and women were different. So the last sin, the one that could never be forgiven, was a man rejecting that difference. God talked about it on practically every page of His Word.

When the hippie boys started acting like girls in the 1960s, we called them harmless lunatics. But Satan was able use their long hair and beads and rawhide fringes against them. He whispered “Men are just like women, so why not become a woman?” And countless thousands turned into Homa-Sekshuls. And now we were allowing Them to roam freely in the streets and appear all over the tv screen -- on Three's Company, Soap, Barney Miller.  

There were even teenage Homa-Sekshuls, Shaun Cassidy and Leif Garrett, who sang songs to brainwash kids into turning that way!

I had never heard gay people mentioned in church before, not once in thousands of sermons and lessons and meetings. But I took careful notes, and later I looked up the tv programs and teen idols he mentioned.

The effect was strong, and immediate.  The moment Brother Spearman signaled the altar call, a dozen teens and adult men rushed forward to beg God’s forgiveness, some for the sin of a momentary lapse in masculinity, others for the sin of thinking that Homa-Sekshuls were just harmless lunatics.

Brother Spearman had found his new hobby-horse!  After that he included Homa-Sekshuls in every sermon rant, regardless of his actual topic:



Why does God hate premarital sex? Because once you start having sex with anybody whenever you feel like it, it’s only a matter of time before you start looking funny at men.

What’s wrong with the Catholics? They won't let their priests and monks get married, the way God intended, so they're bound to turn Homa-Sekshul.
Even at Christmas: When Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant, he could have left her, but he didn’t, because he was an honorable man, not a Homa-Sekshul.

I thought the whole thing was ridiculous.  What evidence did he have that Shaun Cassidy and Leif Garrett were gay?  How could you "turn" gay through heterosexual sex? Preachers always set up straw dogs, groups that it was easy to hate, so you could blame them for everything wrong with the world: Catholics, evolutionists,  liberal Christians, Hollywood movie producers.  Why were Homa-Sekshuls any worse?

My Hookup with the Son of Mr. Blowfish

Washington, Iowa, August 2003

The class I hated the most in high school was Public Speaking.  I didn't mind the speaking -- it was rather fun having an audience.  But the teacher, Mr. Blowfish!

Actually Mr. Lundquist, he was a prissy, snippy, ultra-swishy little gordito, balding, with a villain goatee, who lived to impress upon students that they were worthless.  He swept over the classroom, making condescending, sarcastic, and insulting remarks in his overmodulated, oversophisticated voice.

"Try speaking English.  Eng-Lish!"
"I have an idea.  Let's try to get it right."
"You can't be that stupid.  You must be putting me on."
"God, your parents must have been morons, to have you."

More than one student was reduced to tears, whereupon Mr. Blowfish would sneer "It's called real life.  Get used to it."

The whole class hated him.

I remember one piece of advice he gave us: When you're invited to a party, find out who's coming, and research their interests, so you'll have something to talk about.

Wait -- this miserable, mean-spirited little troll was invited to parties?

I eked by his class with a C-, which was pretty good.  No one got higher than a C, except for the two A's given to girls who, we assumed, were his relatives.

When I figured "it" out, the summer after my high school graduation, I realized that he was the first gay person I ever met.  A gay hint in junior high speech class!

The years passed.  I graduated from high school, moved to West Hollywood, then New York, then Florida.  When I came back to Rock Island to visit, I asked around the gay community.  No one had ever heard of Mr. Blowfish...um, I mean Lundquist.

Still, the little Truman Capote wannabe must be gay.  Nobody straight was that swishy.

Back in Rock Island in the summer of 2003, I finally found Mr. Blowfish: he was retired, living in Washington, Iowa, about 70 miles away.

Now, finally, I could find out if he was actually gay or just a swish!

I called and gushed, "You were my favorite teacher in high school!"

Naturally I got an invitation to visit.

On the hottest day of the year, I drove my sister-in-law's car to Washington, to a very nice grey-brick house with dormer windows.

27 years had passed since I took Mr. Blowfish's class, but still, I recognized the man who answered the door: a fat, bearded bear in his sixties, wearing only a swimsuit and flip-flops.  I saw a mass of thick white hair on the man-boobs of his chest.  I couldn't see a basket.

"Mr. Davis, how nice to see you again!" he said, offering a limp handshake.

"Dr. Davis, now."

"I know, I know!  Isn't that marvelous, even if you did go to a third-rate school!  You must be using the skills I taught you every day, or do you hide behind those dreary  -- what-do-you-call-it -- Powerpoint presentations?"

"Sometimes," I admitted.

"Cover-up for academic incompetence, I always say.  Well, why don't we go out to the back?  It's such a nice day."

Mr. Blowfish led me to the back yard, where there were lawn chairs, a little white table stocked with a pitcher of lemonade, and a children's wading pool amid miscellaneous toys.

My heart sank.  If he had kids, he couldn't be gay.  "Are those toys for the neighborhood kids?" I asked tentatively.

"Oh, those belong to the grandkids.  My boys are visiting just now.  No matter where they're living, they always visit at the same time -- safety in numbers, they say.  Stick around for a bit, and you'll meet them."

He sat his lawn chair, took off his flip-flops, and plopped his feet in the kiddie pool.  "Oh, feel free to take off your shoes.  And your shirt, too.  You obviously spend a lot of time in the gym trying to forestall the ravages of age, so you might as well show off the results."

I took my shirt off, to see if his eyes widened.  They didn't.  "So, how old are your boys?" I asked, still trying to salvage my lifelong belief that Mr. Blowfish was gay.

"Oh, Thanh is 32 now.   He was born just a couple of years after my late wife and I left Viet Nam. He lives in Des Moines, doing something idiotic with computers. Louie is 28.  He lives in Michigan.  He could have been a doctor, but he chose the stupid path, conducting low-paying research."

So Mr. Blowfish fought in Viet Nam?  I couldn't imagine it.  And when I was in high school, he spent his days berating, demeaning, and otherwise terrorizing his students, then going home to hold his five-year old and one-year old sons on his lap.  Named Thanh and Louie Lundquist.  The image was bizarre.

"...and Sam is 26.  He just got a tenure-track position in art history at Cornell College.  Not the good school -- the dinky one up by Iowa City. I told him to set his sights a little higher, but he chose the liberal arts. Now, I ask you, what good has lecturing on Rembrandt ever done the world?"

After about fifteen minutes of similar put-downs, there there was a roaring in the front of the house, and the back yard exploded with people and dogs and a flurry of voices.

"Grandpa, Uncle Sammy bought me an alligator!"

"We got ice cream, but we're still hungry for hot dogs!"

"Gross, your feet are in our swimming pool!"

After the introductions, Thanh and Louie set up for grilling hot dogs and hamburgers, their wives busied themselves with salads and pie, their four kids and three dogs roughhoused, and Mr. Lundquist yelled for everyone to keep out of his flower bed.  The youngest son, Sam, the one who lectured on Rembrandt, invited me for a walk down the silent, sizzling hot streets of Washington.  His eye-widening was unmistakable.

Yep, gay, not out to his family, but he was sure that they knew.  No one had inquired about a "girlfriend" for years.

"Was Dad really your favorite teacher?" he asked.  "A lot of people are turned off by his perfectionism."

"Well, maybe not my favorite.  But I thought he was gay, so we had kind of a kindred spirit."

"You thought Dad was gay?"  Laughing, he squeezed my shoulder.  "That's so bizarre!  After Mom died he was out with a different lady every night!  He always said that his three favorite things in life were wine, women, and...women."

"Mr. Blowfish...I mean Mr. Lundquist was a little swishy in class.  A lot swishy, actually."

"You called him Mr. Blowfish!  I love it!  Because you thought he liked...um...going down on guys?"

"No, no, because of his looks.  I never thought of that other connotation -- until now."

Sam smiled, and briefly touched my hand.   "That will be my nickname from now on -- Sammy Blowfish.  Apropos of nothing in particular, are you busy later?"

I ended up asking my sister-in-law if I could keep her car out overnight, and then driving home to Cornell with Sammy.

He was short, slim, dark-skinned, with a beautiful physique and nice beneath-the-belt gifts. And he lived up to the Blowfish nickname.

This story continues in Son of Mr. Blowfish

See also: I hook up with my "Uncle"; Getting the Chinese Delivery Guy into my Bed.

My Uncle and His Boyfriend in the Kentucky Hills

Eastern Kentucky, Summer 1973

It's the summer after seventh grade.  We're visiting my Uncle El, the only one of Mom's family to stay behind when the rest of them moved to Indiana.  Dinner is over, and we're telling stories of long-ago times, before I was born, when Mom was a little girl.   Sometimes the adults laugh at jokes I don't understand.

Uncle El's wife tells about the time she rode her bicycle all the way into Salversville to see a boy, but when she got there he was spooning with someone else.  (she obviously did not mean "sleeping front-to-back."  It was probably something like "making out.")

An elderly lady I don't know tells a story about witches.

Now it's Uncle El's turn.

"I'm going to tell about my brother, Manus, and his friend Graydon, two boys with the same soul."

I've been dozing off, but now I perk up -- sounds like this will be interesting!



Eastern Kentucky, Fall 1939

Manus and Graydon, the boy from down the holler, were born at the same moment, and some said they shared the same soul.

Oh, on the outside, they was as different as night and day:

Graydon was tall and dark, with thick arms and a tight chest, fond of wrasslin' and huntin' and fishin'.

Manus was short and slim and pale-skinned, a moody boy, always readin', but a good singer, with a clear tenor voice.

They was different down below, too.  You don't have much privacy in the hills, when you sleep three to a bed, and I saw them many times jumping nekkid into the creek, or lying on the soft grass.

Lordy, did that Graydon have a whopper!

"Eliot!  There are children present!"  the elderly lady snaps.

"Why, Marcy, surely they know that boys have something down there!"

Yet for all of their differences, Manus and Graydon were never separated, from sunup to sundown, when their parents forced them into different cabins for dinner.  Even then, they sometimes sneaked out to have secret adventures in the darkness.

Life was hard in the hills during the Depression.  Eight people in a four room cabin.

Kerosene lamps for light, a wood-burning stove for heat, and the woods outside for an outhouse.

They raised chickens and grew corn, beans, taters, and maters.  For everything else, they depended on Dad's job at a factory in Hueysville, eight miles away.

Still, they had fun. There were church socials and square dances.  In the evenings the neighbors came around to tell ghost stories and sing songs.  There'd be no dry eye in the house when Manus  sang "Barbara Allen."

Oh mother, mother, make my bed,
Make it long and make it narrow.
Sweet William died for me today,
I'll die for him tomorrow.

"I always hated that song," Mom says.  

In the summer of 1939, Graydon bought and fixed up an old clunker car.  Now they could drive all the way to Salyersville, 20 miles down the pike, to get malteds and go to the movies.

They liked Little Tough Guy, with the Dead End Kids, and Out West with the Hardys, with Mickey Rooney.

In late October of 1939, Graydon and Manus took ill, maybe from going swimming nekkid in the cold Brushy Fork Creek.  

They gave them herb medicine and mustard plasters and poltices, and Manus got better, but Graydon got sicker and sicker, and he died on November 5th, the day of the first snowfall.

His dad and older brother built a pine box to put him in, and they buried him in the graveyard up atop  the hill.

Well, needless to say, Manus was inconsolable.

He cried and cried, and after he stopped crying he wouldn't eat, he wouldn't sleep, he just sat on the bed in the room he shared with me and Edd, staring out the window, up at the hill where Graydon was buried.

Then one night he yelled to the family, "Hey, there's a light up on the hill!"

It was a swaying yellow light, like from a kerosene lamp.  But who would be up there in the middle of the night?  It was pitch dark, with just a narrow trail through the brush and trees.  

"I'm going up!"  Manus yelled, pulling on his coat.


But Mom and Dad forbade him.  It was too dangerous. He could wait until morning to investigate.

"No, I gotta go now!  I gotta!"  He tried to push past them out the door.  Dad grabbed him by the arms.  He fought.

There was no help for it: they had to lock Manus up in the room, where me and Edd could look over him.

Well, Manus paced and rumbled, and yelled, and cried, and finally sat down in a chair, still staring up at the light on the hill.  Finally Edd and me fell asleep.

The next morning, when we woke up, Manus was gone!

The door was still locked from the outside.  The window hadn't been touched.  There was no way Manus could have gotten out!

Some say one of his sisters let him out, and he went dashing up the hill and fell in a ditch, and got eaten by a bear.

El glances pointedly at my mother.  But she was only two years old at the time.

Some say a neighbor sneaked him out, and drove him to Salyersville, where he bought a bus ticket Out West, like the Hardys.

Some say Graydon came for him.

Whatever happened, no one ever saw Manus again.

But that night, up on the hill, we saw two glowing lights.

See also: My Kentucky Kinfolk; The Naked Man at the Crossroads; Erotic Story about Me and My Grandpa #1