My Date with the Vampire

When I was living in San Francisco, a newcomer showed up in church one Sunday: mid 30s, very tall and pale, with a long face, long hair, and a weird Satanic goatee.  He was wearing sunglasses, but otherwise dressed normally, not like a vampire.

He didn't join in the singing, but that wasn't unusual: many former Catholics and Lutherans didn't care for the rousing, evangelical-style hymns at MCC.

During the coffee hour after the service, he adopted the "stand and model" procedure of a cruise bar.  That wasn't unusual, either.  Lots of newcomers tried to cruise in church.

What was unusual was his approach: he walked up to me and said, without preliminaries, "I would like very much to f___ you."

My mouth dropped in shock.  "Um...but I don't even know you."

"My name is Kevin, and life is too short for trivial small talk.  I would like very much to f___ you."

I stared.

He took off his glasses.  His eyes were very dark blue, almost purple.  Creepy.  "You find me attractive, don't you?"

Not at all.  Tall, pale, long faced, with a potty mouth, definitely not my type --  but I found myself saying "Of course.  But shouldn't we have dinner first?"

He sighed.  "If you're intent on pursuing bourgeois courtship rituals, I suppose we can stop for a hamburger on the way."

No way was I going home with this guy!

But I found myself following him out the door.

Kevin took me way up to the Richmond District, 45 minutes from the Castro, to a place called Bazaar.  It served nouvelle cuisine Japanese-Italian synthesis sandwiches that left me hungry.

I admit that he was interesting to talk to.  We were both into the paranormal, and he had a wide repertoire of stories about ghosts, aliens, and the Illuminati, rumored to be controlling human history behind the scenes.

But he dismissed nearly everything else as "bourgeois" or "infantile," and when he kissed me, his mouth tasted of cigarettes and booze.  I nearly gagged.

After lunch we walked down to the Green Apple Bookstore on Clement, where Kevin bought Jung's Psychology and Anarchy and Ego and Archetype by Edward Edinger.  I had my eye on some gay comix, but I didn't want to look stupid, so I bought Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus trilogy.

Then he said, "Now that we've satisfied your infantile need for preliminary social activity, I believe we have an appointment to f____."

Kevin was unattractive, elitist, creepy, and vulgar.  No way was I going home with him!

But I did.

You're probably expecting a weird ghost house with walls panted black, but it was an ordinary apartment near the Green Apple, with a very bright dormer window and prints of French impressionist painters.

Kevin was impressive beneath the belt, but still, the f___ was unpleasant.  Lots of oils and weird-smelling incense and Tantric sex rituals (look it up).  And he smoked and drank throughout.  Kissing him was like kissing a bar at last call.

It was nearly dusk when I finally left Kevin's apartment: the unpleasant f___ and cuddling afterwards took three hours. No way was it going to happen again!

But it did.

Every three or four days, Kevin called out of nowhere and said "I would like very much to f___ you."  Then somehow I found myself at his apartment for three hours of oils, incense, Tantric sex rituals, and cigarette breath.  We sometimes went out to dinner or a movie first, "since you're so hung up on bourgeois dating rituals."

In retrospect, I could have easily said "No, thank you" or "I'm busy just now."  But instead, I dropped everything, cancelled plans, and went over.

Once he knocked on my door at three a.m.  I let him in.

It was like I was hypnotized.

Some other weird things about Kevin that I didn't think about until later:

1. I rarely saw him eat anything. When we went out to dinner, he ordered an appetizer and just picked at it.  His refrigerator contained nothing but soda and beer, seltzer, and cream for his coffee.

2. I rarely sleep, either.  When I spent the night, we cuddled for awhile, and then he turned on the light and picked up a book.  In the morning, he awakened me with a cup of coffee.

3. I've never needed an alarm clock.  I wake up at 6:00 every morning, regardless of when I go to bed or what I was doing the night before. But after spending the night with Kevin, I slept until 8:00, 9:00, or even later.

4.  He talked about his childhood, his coming out story, his family, and his job, but afterwards I didn't remember any of it.

5. People couldn't see him unless he wanted them to.  When he saw someone attractive approaching us, he stood perfectly still, and instead of walking around, the guy would slam right into him!  "It's a good way to sneak a grope in," Kevin said with a grin.

Unattractive, elitist, vulgar, and invisible!

If I couldn't break up with him, I could scare him away.  I tried the scariest thing I could think of: meeting the relatives.

"My parents are flying out for a visit.  I'd love for you to meet them."

"I'd be happy to," Kevin said.  "You'll introduce me as The Man I'm F__ing, of course."

Ok, then, how about commitment:  "Isn't it about time we moved in together?"

"Certainly, if you wish.  Perhaps that would assuage your bourgeois guilt over f___ing for its own sake."

Wait -- Kevin wanted me to move in with him?

Before I knew what was happening, we had been "dating" for six months.  I was being asked "How's the boyfriend?" about ten times a day, and anyone who invited me anywhere said "And Kevin, too, of course."

If I wasn't careful, we'd be attached for life!

Kevin the Vampire's Date with Satan

 

When I was living in San Francisco, my friend Kevin the Vampire told us the story of his meeting with Anton Lavey. founder of the Church of Satan

Kevin grew up in Tulsa and then Enid, Oklahoma, two of the most dreary, depressing towns in the Bible belt, with nothing to do but watch sports and talk about girls.  His parents belonged to the ultra-fundamentalist Bible Missionary Church, where everything but breathing was a sin.  He went through life terrified that he would commit a sin without knowing it.  He used to pray for God to kill him, so he wouldn't have to die unsaved, and spend eternity in hell.

It was especially terrifying once he recognized that he was gay ("thou shalt not lie with mankind as with woman; it is an abomination") and that he was a witch ("thou shalt not suffer a witch to live").

Oh, he couldn't zap himself across time and space, or turn mortals into toads, but:

He knew what people were thinking

He could see what was going to happen in the future

He could make himself invisible. People would walk right past without noticing him, very handy for dealing with bullies and getting out of chores.

His favorite power was mind-control.  It didn't always work, but sometimes, if he looked at you the right way, you would do what he wanted.  His mother let him have two desserts; his teacher changed the grade on a paper; a high school jock agreed to a blow job.

A lot of high school jocks agreed to blow jobs.

As a teenager, he struggled to overcome his fundamentalist guilt. He forced himself to "sin," to go to movies and watch tv, to smoke and drink alcohol, to stay home from church on Sunday, to use profanity, to go to Catholic churches and Buddhist temples.

At the University of Oklahoma, Kevin majored in biology, partially in order to commit the "sin" of believing in evolution (a few professors changed his exam grades from C- to A+).

He dated a football star who later went pro, and who heterosexuals have probably heard of, but he was never sure if the jock really liked him, or if it was just his mind control.

After college Kevin couldn't settle on a career: he dropped out of medical school after one year, tried graduate school in biology but hated it, and worked as a hospital orderly, nursing home attendant, and phlebotomist.  Finally he trained as a medical technician, a job which allowed him a lot of free time to read and hook up with men.

In his ongoing attempt to rid himself of fundamentalist guilt, Kevin committed even more "sins."  He tried hashish and cocaine.  He read books on paganism, atheism, and New Age philosophy.  He attended a Wiccan ritual.  He deliberately blasphemed God, the Trinity, and Jesus Christ.

In 1996, Kevin finally achieved the life-long dream of gay men everywhere: he managed to move to San Francisco.  He found a job at St. Mary's Medical Center, and an apartment nearby in the Richmond district, a bit far from the Castro, but still Gay Heaven.

But even in Heaven, he worried about hell.  The nagging doubt just wouldn't go away: "Is there a God who is passing judgment on me?  Am I doomed to an eternity in hell?"

He determined to engage in one great, final gesture of defiance against the religious oppression of his childhood.  He was going to have sex with the Devil.

That is, Anton Szandor LaVey, who founded the Church of Satan in 1966.  Rituals were held in the famous Black House at California Street and 23rd in the Richmond District -- just around the corner from Kevin's apartment.

The Church of Satan was very popular among the youth counterculture of the 1960s.  Over a million people bought copies of The Satanic Bible, and there were dozens of famous converts or well-wishers, such as the Beatles, underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger, and actress Sharon Tate, who was killed in the Charles Manson murders in 1969.

In 1975, most members of the Church of Satan left for the rival Satanic Temple of Set, and LaVey fell from the limelight.  But he was still living in the Black House, still promoting his philosophy through books and magazine articles, still conducting rituals for a small group of loyal followers.

Still Satan.

 In December 1996, just at the start of the Christmas season, Kevin got an invitation through a friend, and made his way, trembling with fear but also eager, to the Black House.

To his disappointment, Anton was not at all scary.  He looked like someone's doting grandfather, tall, gaunt, bald, and smiling.

They sat in a perfectly normal-looking living room. A coffee table with a pile of People magazines.   Pictures of family members on the mantle.  There was even a Christmas tree, though Anton called it "a memorial to the Dying God."

He told Kevin that Satanism was about being true to your animal nature: "We are animals, not gods.  We should do what pleases us, what gratifies us.  Everything else is bullshit."

"What about helping others?" Kevin asked, playing the devil's advocate.

"If that's what pleases you, fine.  But never do anything just because someone expects it of you. Not your mother, not your boss, not some old guy sitting on a cloud.  More tea?"

"So, by that logic," Kevin said, "Satanism itself is basically bullshit."

"Exactly.  I'm a stage magician, a flim-flam man.  But name me one religion, philosophy, spiritual system, or ethical system that isn't bullshit.  There are no gods, there are no spirits, there is no heaven and hell.  There is here and now.  Eating, drinking, fighting, f**king.  Especially f**king."  

They eventually got around to the sex.  Anton wanted to top Kevin, but he settled for a blow job.  On his knees in Anton's bedroom, thrusting up and down on his thin spearlike dick, Kevin was surprised to find no sense of guilt at all.  Not even when Anton yelled "Ave Satanas" as he came.

No gods, no monsters, no heaven, no hell.  Nothing but the here and now.

Anton didn't reciprocate.  There was no cuddling or kissing afterwards.  But still, Kevin was elated.

 He left the Black House and walked through the misting rain, and looked at the Christmas lights shining red and green on California Street.  Never had anything looked so beautiful.

I Meet the Nazarene Teen Idol

When I was growing up in the Nazarene Church, twice a year, in the fall and the spring, we had a "revival": a full week of screeching, foot-stomping, Bible-thumping sermons by an evangelist who made his living going from revival to revival, getting people saved and sanctified.

You were encouraged to bring your friends who went to other churches, and thus might not be amenable to visiting on a Sunday morning.  But on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday night, they were free, right?

We did get a few converts during every revival, but not nearly enough for the evangelist, who stomped and shouted with more and more urgency as the week wore on and nearly everyone who needed to get saved was already saved and only a few people went down. Or no one.

The only bright spot of the whole ordeal was the gospel group that accompanied the evangelist. During the fall revival in my junior year in high school, the evangelist was the young, muscular but bellowing Brother Jonathan, and the musical group was the Smith Family (not to be confused with the punk rock group the Smiths, which I have several times).

They sang fast, upbeat songs which I assumed they wrote -- there were records for sale in the lobby.  Church oldsters used to old Salvation Army-style ballads like "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" were scandalized by their country-inflected lyrics, not to mention their guitars, drums, and tambourines.  One of their songs goes through my head intermittently to this day:

I've got confidence, God is going to see me through
Whatever the case may be, I know He's gonna fix it for me.

(I just discovered that "I've Got Confidence" was not a Smith Family original: it was composed by Andre Crouch and popularized by Elvis Presley.)

I haven't been able to find any photos -- too much interference from other Smiths on the internet -- but they looked something like this: middle-aged husband and young-adult daughter as the lead singers (baritone and soprano), teenage son on the guitar, preteen son on the drums, and wife on the tambourine, piano, or organ.

 Scott, the teenage son, was a year younger than me, tall and buffed with big hands, a round face, short blond hair, and dreamy blue eyes.  The Nazarene equivalent of a teen idol, our own Shaun Cassidy!  I was desperate to become his friend, or at least feel a warm strong handshake, but I didn't have a chance.  He was mobbed.

Girls were swooning, batting their eyes at him, writing him love notes under the guise of prayer requests.  Old people (anyone over 30) were pushing to tell him what a "fine Christian boy" he was and getting him to autograph any piece of paper they could find, even the "notes" page of their study Bibles.  Boys were rushing to kneel at the altar in the hopes that Scott would come down from the podium and put his arm around them as they moaned and cried and "prayed through to victory."

Unfortunately, I couldn't join them at the altar, because I had made a major tactical error.  You could go down only to get saved (forgiven of the sins you had committed), sanctified (made holy, so you would be incapable of future sins), or to help someone else pray through.   And, not knowing that Scott would be there, I got sanctified just a few weeks ago!

Going down again so soon would be admitting that I had never been sanctified at all -- that I had been deceived by Satan into rising from the altar without praying through. Or that I was lying to get the praise and prestige.  A major faux pas. a major humiliation!

The full post is on Righteous Gemstones Beefcake and Boyfriends

The Blue Power Ranger Dates Fred and Matt

Fresno, November 1995

David grew up in Montana and Iowa, where gay people were assumed not to exist, except as monsters conjured up by the minister at church.   He was 14 when Rock Hudson died of AIDS in 1985, and he heard all sorts of horrible things about the movie star: "filthy diseased pervert," "should have been shot," "burning in hell."

He thought "that's me they're talking about!  They think I should be shot!  They think I'm going to hell!"

He spent his high school years praying, reading the Bible, and working out ferociously, trying to rid himself of his "evil thoughts."  He became an accomplished gymnast, and won state and regional awards. But no amount of prayer or exercise could keep him from remembering that, deep down inside, he was a filthy diseased pervert who deserved to be shot.

In college David discovered dramatics.  Creating a character, becoming a whole new person!  Surely that could shield him from the monstrousness of his evil.  He performed in college plays, and two days after graduation moved to Los Angeles to become an actor.  After only three months of auditions, he was cast as Billy, high schooler turned superhero in  Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (1993-96).

Each of the power rangers was a superhero, but they could also combine into the giant robot Megazoid, losing their individual identities for the greater good.  David wished he could do that in real life, dissolve into an ocean of life where male/female, black/white, gay/straight didn't matter.

He wasn't out at work, but he must have had the Mark of Cain on his forehead, since the jokes and slurs started almost immediately.

 "Why don't you have a girlfriend?"
"You looking at my butt, fag?"
"Don't you ever worry about the kids watching you prance around like a little faggot?"
 "Why are you the Blue Power Ranger?  Shouldn't it be Tutti-Frutti?"

David didn't participate in the gay world at all.  He never set foot in a gay bar, never picked up The Advocate or Frontiers, never dated, just an occasional hookup to relieve the pressure, mostly from Power Ranger groupies and sleazy older guys.  Once he accepted a date with Eddie Mekka, Carmine on Laverne and Shirley, but then he found out that Mekka was married, cheating on his wife, and called it off.

That only confirmed his belief that gay life was tawdry and sinister, that gay people were disrespectable, lurking in public restrooms, preying on kids.

He prayed a lot, and went to church, trying Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, Mormon, Pentecostal.  Plus Buddhist meditation and New Age past-life regressions.

A hookup told him about an actual gay minister, out to his congregation. His name was Fred, and he lived in Fresno with his partner Matt.  They talked several times on America Online.

One Saturday in November 1995, David drove 3 1/2 hours north to meet them.

Fred was in his 40s, tall, handsome, with thick brown hair tinged with gray, and very muscular: broad shoulders, thick biceps, big hands. Matt was about David's age, shorter, sandy-haired, with small, tight muscles.

"I'm many things: a polyglot, a flaneur, a bottom, a Hausfrau, but not a gym rat," Matt said.  "Still, a few hours a week in the gym works wonders.  Rather a sumptuous behind, n'est pas?"  He grabbed David's hand and pressed it onto his butt.

David was shocked.  Flirting with him, right in front of his partner? A minister?

Fred the minister was quite knowledgeable about the Bible and church history.  It seems that same-sex unions were commonplace in the early days of the church, not condemned until the late Middle Ages.  Today there were several Christian denominations that accepted gay people, and some gay-specific denominations, like the Metropolitan Community Church.

David had never heard of it.

"Oh, you should go, aussitôt que possible!"  Matt exclaimed.  "Not only is it gay-friendly, but it's packed with all of the hunks in tight jeans you could imagine!"

So among gays it always boiled down to sex, even at church.

After dinner Fred and Matt suggested that they hit Fresno's gay bars, but David claimed to be too tired.  Instead they went back to the apartment and had dessert and discussed movies and church and weight-training regiments.

David was sitting on the couch with Fred and Matt on either side of him, Matt casually fondling his arm and shoulder.  "But, mon petit etalon, shall I show you my absolute favorite exercise?  Parfait for the muscles of the neck and jaw..."

Before he knew what was happening, Matt had him unzipped and was going down on him.

Wait -- Fred was right there!

But it felt so right, so natural....

Soon Fred had his cock dangling in front of David's face.  He opened his mouth and let the minister enter him.  A man of God, sacred, spiritual, meant for a life of prayer and contemplation, his thick hard cock ramming against David's throat while his partner licked David's cock head..  He wanted this...

But it was wrong!

Later he let Fred top him while he was going down on Matt.  He spent the night warm and safe in their arms, then went to church the next day, to watch the man whose cock exploded inside him  last night give a sermon on compassion.

Could God have compassion on him, after last night?

On Monday morning, after the first snide comment, David walked off the set and never returned.  He checked himself into an ex-gay conversion center and endured two years of aversion therapy, forced heterosexual encounters, all-night prayer sessions, a constant drug haze, and plans of suicide.

Finally he had enough.  "God, this is it," he prayed.  "I'm gay and alive, and I have no choice: I have to be both.  So get ready, I'm coming out."

He moved to San Francisco, found a pro-gay therapist and a pro-gay church, read up on gay history, and started dating.

The first person he called was Fred.

See also: How Matt Began Renting Himself Out