Mario's Date with Rob Lowe

West Hollywood, September 1987

When I first arrived in West Hollywood in 1985, Rob Lowe was an androgynous prettyboy who took off his shirt a lot in Brat Pack classics like The Outsiders (1983), Class (1983), The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), Oxford Blues (1984), and St. Elmo's Fire (1985).

His fire faded a bit during the late 1980s, and his career almost fizzled out in 1988, after a tape surfaced of him and friend Justin Morritt having sex with a woman in a hotel room the night before the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta (there were actually two women there, but one doesn't appear on the tape).

Such shenanigans didn't ruin his popularity with gay fans, or the belief that he was probably gay himself. Even though he, and his Brat Pack buddies, made some of the most horrifically homophobic movies of the 1980s.  Even though he married Sheryl Berkoff in 1991 and had two children (Matthew and John Owen).

We still figured he was gay.  Why else would he star in the gay subtext-filled Bad Influence (1990) and The Finest Hour (1992), as  the psychiatrist treating the dead gay guy's sister in Suddenly Last Summer (1993), and as the mute, angelic, asexual Nick Stavros in The Stand (1994)?  Why else would he appear at so many AIDS Walks and AIDS benefits?

Why else would half the guys in West Hollywood claim to have dated him?

During my 10 years in West Hollywood, I heard about a dozen "my date with Rob Lowe" stories.  The one that sounds the most believable is from Mario, the wannabe actor who picked me up at the Different Light Bookstore.

He was black, rather feminine, thin and willowy, wearing gold rings, bracelets, and necklaces -- an immediate turnoff.  But he was also shorter than me, dark skinned, with glasses that gave him a studious look.

During dinner at the Greenery, I told him about my Celebrity Boyfriend, who dumped me for Alan the Pentecostal Porn Star.

He said, "Honey, forget those minor teen idol wannabes. You gotta start at the top.  Take me: I was in town about a month before I had a date with the super-hung superstar Rob Lowe!"

Hollywood, Spring 1981

Mario was 18 years old, a transplant from Richmond, Virginia, living in a tiny apartment off Selma with a drag queen named Esther Dicks, and eager to break into acting,   So far he had danced in a shoe commercial, and played basketball on a episode of Saved by the Bell.  

Then he got a starring role in a tv movie starring Vicki Lawrence (Mama's Family) as the owner of a hip jeans store.  He played the best friend of her son, Tucker:

A 16 year old actor named Rob Lowe.

Rob was a junior at Santa Monica High School, a handsome prettyboy with incredible eyes and a bulge that wouldn't quit.

Although he had starred in A New Kind of Family (1979-80) and an Afterschool Special, and had a few articles in teen magazines, Mario didn't know him.

He didn't come out, of course -- he invented a fake girlfriend back home in Virginia.  Rob said he hadn't dated much -- he was "shy" around girls.

"Uh-huh, honey, you know what that means."

They bonded during filming.  Rob invited him to a weekly basketball game that Garry Marshall (Laverne and Shirley) held at his house in Tarzana for every cute boy he could find.  Vince Van Patten and Ralph Macchio were there.

"So, Garry Marshall is gay?" I asked in surprise.

"Ain't nobody in Hollywood who's not gay, once they get a few beers in them."

One night Rob invited him over for dinner at his house in Malibu  -- "It wasn't no palace, by a long shot.  It looked like somebody air-lifted it from Wichita, Kansas. They didn't even have a swimming pool!"

Afterwards they went up to his room and watched Magnum, P.I. and drank beers they sneaked from the refrigerator.  They discussed whether Tom Selleck was gay, and whether he was hung.

"He's got nothing on me!"  Mario exclaimed.  "Why, when I get going, the honeys all be screaming 'It's too big!  It's too big!'"

They sat together on the floor, their knees touching.  Mario saw Rob starting to tent.

"Well, I'm not one to let an opportunity like that slip by!  I took the bull by the horns, by which I mean I fondled him until he pulled it out and let me go down on it.  Gigantic, baby!  8 inches!"

It took him a long time to finish -- not that Mario minded! But, Rob didn't reciprocate; afterwards he zipped up again, and they continued watching tv as if nothing had happened.

They got together a few more times after that.  Oral only -- Rob wouldn't go down on Mario, or even kiss him.  And when the filming ended, they moved on to other projects, and didn't stay in touch.

Evidence that Mario's story was accurate:

1. Rob Lowe did star in a pilot for Garry Marshall, Mean Jeans, with Vickie Lawrence as the owner of a hip jeans shop. He says it was in early 1980, not 1981.  His character was named Tucker.  That information was not readily available in 1987.

Here's a picture of his best friend -- I can't find the name, but he looks a lot like Mario.

2. Mario got other details right: living in Malibu, the "shy around girls," the basketball games at Garry Marshall's house, the size of his penis (before the sex tape made it common knowledge).

Evidence that he was exaggerating or making the whole thing up:

1. Wouldn't Mario remember that his first major acting job was in a tv pilot, not a movie?

2. A tv pilot takes about a week to shoot.  How did they have time to bond, play basketball, have dinner, and become intimate several times?

3. Rob Lowe doesn't mention any same-sex intimacies in his autobiography, Love Life, but he does say that he was into "experimentation" in high school.

See also:  Rob Lowe

How Matt Began Renting Himself Out

San Francisco, April 1997

One night around 11:00 pm, I got a phone call out of nowhere.

"It's Matt, mon ami -- I'm at the Castro Street Muni Station.  Come pick me up!"

Matt the Cute Young Thing?

Nine years before, my college boyfriend Fred moved to Pomona, California, about an hour's drive from West Hollywood, to study at the Claremont School of Theology.

He brought Matt, 23 years old -- a scandalous age difference!

Plus Matt was an ultra-elitist snob, a graduate of the Andover Academy and Harvard University, who adored the opera, peppered his conversation with phrases in French and German, and complained that everything about my world was bourgeois or jejune:  the Midwest, West Hollywood, USC, Raul, the Greenery, the Different Light, you name it.

Plus he gossiped about everybody and everything, providing the weird voices.

Then Beau told his "Uncle,"  wink wink, "Be sure that yo' get mah new underweah in extra-extra-extra lahge."

But when you got beneath the sarcastic cover, Matt had a good heart.  And he was extraordinarily cute.

In the bedroom, while you were going down on him, he kept up a nonstop monologue of his progress, in three languages:

I'm getting there...un peu plus, mon chevalier.......je vais arriver...Mein Stollen, Mein Stollen...bien, bien...here I go...


We were never friends, exactly.  I only socialized with him -- and shared his bed -- because of Fred.  And that didn't happen often, maybe once every couple of months, and at Christmastime, when we all flew back to the Midwest.

Fred got his D. Min in 1993, and couldn't find a church, so he returned to his old job as a mental health counselor in San Bernardino, about 30 miles east of Pomona.

Ninety minutes from West Hollywood.

"I so envy you, mon ami!" Matt often said.  "So close to the action, the heart of the heart of the gay world, unsere Heimat!"

In 1995, shortly after we moved to San Francisco, Fred took a job at a congregational church in Fresno.

Three hours from West Hollywood

 "This town is even more dreary than San Bernardino!" Matt often said.  "And you're living in San Francisco, the heart of gay Heaven, Paradis."

In retrospect, I should have seen it coming.

I picked up Matt and his backpack at Castro Street Station and took him to Orphan Andy's for a hamburger.  He was 32 years old, no longer a Cute Young Thing, but quite buffed from hours at the gym.

"Fred and I are kaput! Over!  I caught him having sex with a kid in the youth group.  I'm all for sharing, but en cachette?  And I'm pretty sure the kid is underaged!"

"Well, you should at least hear his side of the story."

"No, I've had it.  J'ai trop mangé!  This isn't the first time, mind you, but I've put up with it because of my misguided sense of loyalty. But no more."

We returned to my cramped third-floor walk-up, over a hardware store, which he criticized as "impossibly bourgeois" and "a downscale dump," and spent the night.

It was my first time in bed with Matt without Fred being there.  He still kept up a nonstop monologue of his progress while I was going down on him: "Oui, mon ...étalon...comme ça...it won't be long now...a little more...bien, bien..."

In the morning, I called Fred and confirmed that this was no quarrel.  It was definitely over.  Matt's stuff was packed up and waiting for him in the guest room.

So we just had to get Matt the three essentials of life in Gay Heaven: an apartment, a gym membership, and a job.

The apartment came easy: a very nice second-floor in a Victorian on Dolores, near the Castro, for a frightfully high rent.

The next weekend, my friend David and I drove a U-Haul down to Fresno to pick up Matt's stuff: an antique grandfather's clock, a old secretary-style writing desk, ten boxes of books, and a lot of kitchen equipment, including a breadmaker and a pasta maker.  A second-hand store furnished the rest of the apartment.

The job was a problem. Matt stood to inherit several million dollars when his parents died, in fifty years, but for now his trust fund held only about $20,000.   And his resume was blank.

"I went straight from Harvard Yard to Fred's bed.  I've never actually had a job.  But I'm up for anything.  I'll sell my butt on Polk Street if I have to."  He turned around to display his butt.  It was indeed very nice.  His frontside, too.

"You're a little old for hustling," I said, hoping he wasn't serious.  "And not big enough for a career in porn.  But we'll find you something."

Ideas #1 and #2: Matt was fluent in French and German.  He could be a translator, or a guide for European tourists.

It turns out that everyone in the world was fluent in French and German -- I was fluent in French and German.  Aand European tourists usually came with guidebooks in hand.

Idea #3:  He was a Harvard alumnus, with lots of contacts in the City.  He called Santa Claus, aka Bearnard, the fantasy writer, and landed a job as his personal assistant.  But Matt's habit of criticizing everybody and everything did not sit well with Bearnard, and a few days later he was scanning the want ads again.

At least he got a hookup out of the deal: "Bien, bien...soon, soon...mon choux...comme ca...ich komme...."

Idea #4: I brought him over to "share" with Kevin the Vampire, my sort-of boyfriend, in the hope that he might have some supernatural suggestions.

"What have you being doing with yourself for all these years?" he asked.  "Sitting around watching soaps and waiting for Fred to come home, like June from Leave It to Beaver?"

"Basically," Matt admitted.  "I did all of the cooking and cleaning.  The marketing.  The laundry.  I was sein Hausmädchen, ja?"

"So you should get a job as a housemaid."

"Me as a housemaid?  That's hardly suitable for a graduate of the Andover Academy and Harvard University."

"And they only make about minimum wage," I added.

Kevin the Vampire smiled and touched his arm.  "But you could give it a Castro Street twist."

"What do you mean?"

"There are plenty of old queens in the City with more money than they know what to do with and absolutely no chance of bedding a Cute Young Thing.  They would pay premium rates for you to vacuum, dust, and prepare their afternoon aperitifs.  With your spectacular butt and sausage open for them to gawk at."

"A nude housekeeping service!" Matt exclaimed.  "Sounds like a way to syncretize my housekeeping skills, my entrepreneurial skills, and my physique.  And I could hire some twinks, in case clients like them younger.  A whole stable."


"Just be sure to specify that no sex is permitted, so San Francisco Vice stays off that spectacular butt of yours."

I moved to New York a few months later, but I understand that Matt soon had three assistants to handle about 20 clients per week.  His most popular service was "nude waiter" for dinner parties.

No sex during the housekeeping, of course, but nothing in the contract said that workers couldn't make a date for later.

"Mon etalon...a little more...ein bischen, ein bischen...almost there..."

See also: Fred and the Cute Young Thing; 8 Harvard Boys in My Bed; and Matt Gets on His Knees Behind the Bar