Cruising in the Navajo Nation

Window Rock, Arizona

I grew up around Native Americans, at the annual pow wow and through visiting relatives (my Cousin Joe is half Potawatomie).  But I was never with a Native American guy, through all my years in college and in West Hollywood, except for the Inuit that Lane and I hooked up with.

When I visited my friend  Larry in New Mexico, I was determined to find a Native American guy.

Cruising in Santa Fe proved fruitless -- well, I brought home a cute college boy, but he was Anglo.

Albuquerque, Tucumcari, Roswell, Alamogordo, the same.  Lots of Hispanic guys, but not a lot of Native Americans.

So I decided to go to the heartland -- the Navajo Nation.

Semi-autonomous, 27,000 miles in parts of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, population 300,000, of whom 170,000 speak the Navajo language.  Capital Window Rock, Arizona, population 2,700.

I got a hotel room at the Quality Inn in Window Rock and set out.

Then I realized that I had no idea how to go about it.

I had been planning on cruising in straight bars, but there weren't any in Window Rock.

Not a lot of street cruising, either.  No one on the streets.  People drove cars and trucks.

There was a string of fast-food restaurants, but I didn't think much cruising went on at McDonald's and Church's Chicken.

The Window Rock itself was a very scenic natural formation, and the Navajo National Museum was interesting, but....Navajo men?

I found a locally-owned Mexican restaurant, but when I went inside, all eyes turned toward me with hostile stares.

In desperation, I asked at the front desk what "activities" there were around.  I got a list of dull things like camping, hunting, fishing, the Navajo Nation Zoo, and buying arts and crafts.

Was I being too blatant?  Or too desperate?

I spent the evening in online chatrooms.

Nothing.

In the morning I went jogging, early, before the sun got too hot.  I passed a group of high schoolers on the jogging trail.

In three hours I would be leaving for the airport.  And Indian country would be gone forever.

Suddenly I saw a man jogging by himself.   In his 20s, tanned, hairy chest.  

Good enough. I caught up to him and poured on the erotic energy.  "Hot one today, isn't it?" I began, an inane but effective way to start a conversation.

Instead of the usual hostile stare, he smiled.

His name was Ricky, and he worked in human services.  I spent four years in human resources, so we talked a bit about the problems of personnel.  Then about the problems of meeting people in the Navajo Nation.

"It's all close-knit family groups.  You don't get to be friends unless your great-grandparents knew each other.  And dating -- forget it -- drive down to Albuquerque."

"So -- you don't have a girlfriend or boyfriend at home?" I asked.

"Just me and my cat."

"I love cats!" I exclaimed,  pretending to be excited.

He glanced over and smiled.  "You want to drop by and meet her?"

You know what followed.  Briefly petting the cat, followed by a shower and a bedroom.  Nice physique, average beneath the belt gifts.

 Then Ricky drove me back to my hotel, so I could check out and drive to the airport.

A nice, unexpected hookup.  With only one problem.  Ricky was Anglo, too.

See also: Kyle Hawk: Gay or gay-ally wrestler, with a nude Native American bonus

Why Not Pick Up Russian?

Los Angeles, October 1988

I remember every class I took as an undergraduate at Augustana College (1978-1982), from Fiction Writing, which convinced me not to become a novelist, to Paleontology, taught by the professor with the handcuff parties, to Culture and Civilization of Modern Germany, with the professor who kept denying that modern Germany suffered from "the problem" of  Homosexualitat.

 I remember most of my classes at Indiana University (1982-1984), from Victorian Literature, with the professor who kept giggling "this author was a homosexual!", to Restoration Literature, where Viju and I tried to determine if our professor was gay.

But I remember almost nothing from the University of Southern California, where I was working on a doctorate in Comparative Literature (1985-1989).  Maybe because I was busy with Raul and my bed-switching roommate, cruising Richard Dreyfuss, and bankrupting the porn industry.

Or maybe because I hated everything about it.

Except for the cute fratboys, the statue of Tommy Trojan, and the reading room in the Philosophy Library.

1. The professors were very rich and very elitist, driving Porsches, reading The New Yorker (in Los Angeles), talking about their summer homes in Cabo.  One invited us to her house for pizza, and I thought "Finally, someone with regular tastes!"  Turned out to be goat cheese and arugula pizza.

2. The professors thought that they knew everything.  Unfortunately, what they knew was contradictory. One insisted that that all quotes in academic papers must be in the original language only, and another, that they be accompanied by English translations -- not a problem until they're both on your dissertation committee, ordering you to take the translations out and then put them in again.

3. They thought that graduate students were their personal servants.  One told me to go get him coffee.  Another wanted me to pick up his dry cleaning.

4. They were homophobic, insisting that I omit any reference to gay people from all of my papers.

5. They were insane. One went into a 5-minute tirade, loaded with personal invectives, whenever we said or wrote "the Renaissance mind."  We tried hard to avoid it, but it's such a common expression that occasionally someone goofed, and we had to listen to the tirade again.

6. Did I mention that they were insane?  My degree required a reading knowledge of French, German, and Italian, but my dissertation committee added "an ancient language."

So I spent a year cramming Latin.

Then when I changed my dissertation field from the Renaissance to the Symbolist Movement, the committee chair, Dr. Lazar, said "Oh, you should pick up another modern language.  How about Russian?"

"I don't think it's possible to pick up Russian in six weeks," I said.  "How about if I pick up a Russian instead?"

They stared, not comprehending.

"It's a joke.  Picking up a Russian...."

They stared.

"See, the phrase 'pick up' refers to meeting a stranger for an erotic encounter, so I said pick up a Russian...."

They stared.

I sighed.  "What about Turkish?"

Nude Photos of Pontius Gemstone

  

In Episode 3.4 of The Righteous Gemstones, Jesse Gemstone walks through the house brushing his teeth, and stumbles across his son Pontius having sex with his girlfriend -- in a downstairs study?  With the window wide open?  I see Pontius has inherited the Gemstone cluelessness. 

Pontius was rejected by every college he applied to, so he must be a high school graduate, therefore 18.  But I was still hesitant about posting a shot of his bare butt, since Kelton DuMont (Pontius) has not revealed his age online. Could he have been under 18 when the scene was filmed?

The full post is on Righteous Gemstones Beefcake and Boyfriends

My Uncle Gus's Wiener

When I was growing up in Rock Island, we drove six hours east to my parents' hometown in Indiana two or three times a year.  When we visited in the summertime, my mother's family gathered for a barbecue or picnic at Grandpa Prater's farmhouse: four uncles, five aunts, two cousins, and sometimes family friends.

In the summer after sixth grade, my Aunt Lynn brought a friend.  She was only 10 years older than me -- I remembered her with schoolbooks in hand, waiting for the bus -- and cool, modern, with an Indiana accent amid the Kentucky drawls, up on Laugh-In and the Beatles, even willing to talk about comic books with us (although she preferred Richie Rich to Casper).

While the aunts placed tablecloths on tables in the side yard, and put out bowls of jello salad and trays of deviled eggs, Lynn waited.   And waited.  And leafed through a movie magazine and waited.    Then suddenly a red pick-up truck appeared.  The world's coolest car!  It zoomed onto the grass beside the other cars, and Gus jumped out.

A teenager, tall and thin, with short brown hair and jug-ears and a head that was too big for his neck, wearing a red shirt with an orange ascot and  tight white pants.  Not very attractive, and his leering arrogance made it worse.  He looked at everybody and everything as if they were his private playground.

"Hey, Gus!" Cousin Buster called "Give me a nickel."  (His actual name was Joe, but I'm calling him Gus to avoid confusion with my Cousin Joe).

Gus had one waiting in his pocket, and threw it over in a flash of color.

"Can I have one, too?"  I asked.  "And one for my brother?"

"Big family, huh?"  Gus said. He flicked two more nickels at me.  I dropped them on the grass.   Buster scurried to pick them up,  and he threw them again.  I missed again.  He laughed.

"Well, keep working on it, Bud.  You'll be a slugger someday, and all the girls will be beating down the door to get at you!"

Girls?  I definitely didn't like him.

But Gus stuck around.  For the rest of the afternoon.

December 1970

We were back Indiana for Christmas.   When we gathered at Grandpa Prater's farmhouse to to exchange presents, Gus was there again!  He and Aunt Lynne gave me a present "together": a baseball glove.  Gross!

I definitely didn't like him.

We were staying with Aunt Nora, my father's sister, and on the day after Christmas there was a constant stream of visitors from Dad's side of the family: Aunt Nora's husband's brothers and sisters, miscellaneous cousins, some friends from town.  And, at dinnertime, to my surprise, Grandma Davis, with Aunt Lynn and Gus!

Wait -- Mom's family was Kentucky hillfolk, hardscrabble farmers and factory workers, lapsed Baptists, smoking, drinking, card-playing heathens.  Dad's family was middle-class, with aristocrats in their ancestry, nice houses, summer vacations, and mostly devout, "never set foot in a theater" Nazarenes.  How woudl my Grandma Davis know Aunt Lynn?  Or Gus?

(Later I discovered that Gus was a Nazarene, the son of one of Grandma Davis' friends.  She had known him since he was born.)

Dinner was pizza, which Dad and my Cousin Joe went out to pick up. Gus asked  for "mangos"on his.  He meant green peppers.

We played a board game involving bidding for commodities like wheat, rice, barley, and oats.  When Gus's team won he threw his cards down, butted chests with Cousin Joe, and began chanting "We're Number 1!"

I definitely, definitely didn't like him.  I started imagining him tied up, like in a Tarzan movie, with a gag in his mouth so he couldn't talk.

July 1971

I was 10 years old, and Gus was now my Uncle Gus.  He and Aunt Lynn lived in a big stone house in Auburn, about 5 miles from Garrett.  So now there was no escape.  

When we visited Mom's family, he was there. 

 When we visited Dad's family, he was...there.  

Plus we made an extra stop on our circuit of relative visits just so Mom could spend an afternoon gossipping with Aunt Lynn, while Uncle Gus "entertained" the boys.  Mostly by sitting in the kiddie pool in the back yard.   


I saw him in a swimsuit: pale, a scattering of chest hair, not very attractive.  But he obviously thought he was attractive, which made things worse.

I didn't like him, and when we went to the Trailer in the Dark Woods the next day, I told Cousin Buster so.

"Oh, Uncle Gus is ok," he said.  "He gives you a nickel every time you ask."

"Can't bribe me to like him.  He's too big, too rough, too..."  I didn't know the word 'heterosexist,' but that's what I meant.

"Weren't you in the pool yesterday?  Didn't you see his best part?"  Cousin Buster grinned and held out his hands like he was measuring a fish.  "Bigger than Uncle Edd's even."

"His wiener?  You're not going to make me go through a whole big thing to see Uncle Gus's wiener, are you?  I still have a bump on my head from last time." (See: Uncle Edd's Gun).

He shrugged. "No sweat.  If you don't like big wieners, I don't care."

I suspected that Cousin Buster was putting one over on me, trying to get me into trouble by bursting into Uncle Gus's room.  But a wiener is a wiener.  And maybe he did have a big one.

July 1972

During our visit to Indiana in July 1972, when I was 11 years old, we had a picnic at my Grandpa Prater's farmhouse.  Uncle Gus was there, of course.

The farmhouse didn't have a bathroom, just an outhouse in the barn, with old Sears catalogs to use for toilet paper.  Uncle Gus was a city boy....so.....

When he got up without explanation and walked toward the barn, I saw my chance.  I rushed to catch up with him.

"You got to go too, huh?" I said.

"Yep."

"The outhouse is gross, isn't it?  I mean, it stinks, and if you look inside, it's all gross down there.   I know a better place.  Outside."

"With all these people around?" Uncle Gus said doubtfully.

"They won't be able to see anything."  I led him to the backside of the barn, where a little alcove jutted out, making an L-shape.  The red paint was scratched and stained, suggesting that generations of boys and men had gone there to avoid the stench of the outhouse.

I unzipped my pants and held my wiener out.  Uncle Gus hesitated for a moment, stood beside me and started to unzip.  But before he got his wiener out, he looked over.   Of course, I didn't actually have to go, so nothing was happening.

"Stage fright?"  he asked.

"A little, I guess."

"I can wait until you're done."  He zipped back up and walked around to the side of the barn to wait.

Grr...

I definitely, definitely, definitely didn't like him.


Thirty years later, I had a similar problem trying to get a sausage sighting of Gus's son, my Cousin Graydon.

I Learn About Oral Sex in the Church Parking Lot

When I was a kid, our Nazarene church had only one preacher, whose main job was screaming and banging the pulpit for an hour three times a week (researching and writing sermons is more time-consuming than you may think).  

But when I was in ninth grade, we got a Youth Minister, in charge of kid and teen activities like Junior Joys, Nazarene Young People's Society, the Afterglow (a party after the Sunday evening service), and Canvassing (going door to door to witness).

The Preacher might be elderly, but the Youth Minister had to be young, cool, and attractive enough to keep kids interested.  Ours was Brother Bob, fresh out of Olivet, in his early 20s, tall, with enormously broad shoulders, a barrel chest, and gigantic hands.

Unfortunately, I never saw him shirtless -- he always wore a suit and tie, the Nazarene equivalent of a clerical collar.  But when I went down to the altar to get saved or sanctified, he came down and wrapped his huge hard arm around me, and I could feel his hard barrel chest against my back.

You could hardly miss the gigantic Mortadella+ swinging around in his pants every time he moved. Particularly in NYPS, when we were kneeling to pray, and he walked from person to person to see if we needed help: his crotch was exactly at eye level.  And at least once, when he hugged me after altar call, I felt it press against me like a salami stuffed in his pants.

One Sunday night during the summer after ninth grade, I walked out into the parking lot during altar call to escape from the frenetic shouting, and saw Terry and Dave, twelfth grade best buddies, talking in the shadowy area by the church bus.

The full story is on Rigtheous Gemstones Beefcake and Boyfriends

Fall 1991: Outing a Medieval Knight

Ever since my junior high boyfriend Dan and I plotted to escape to Saudi Arabia, I have been plagued by sudden obsessions with countries or historical periods: Russia, China, Renaissance Italy, the Middle Ages, and so on.   Suddenly it's all I can think of.  I buy 1,000 books, start learning the language, plan trips, and decide to devote my professional life to it.  For 3 months, 6 months, maybe a year, and then it fades away.

In 1991, I became obsessed with Ancient Israel. I bought 1000 books on the topic, studied Biblical Hebrew, planned a trip to Israel, and applied to university programs in Old Testament Studies.

Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, Tennessee admitted me, so I drove out in August 1991, got a small apartment near the campus and an adjunct teaching job, and registered for classes.

My partner stayed in West Hollywood, but we had an open relationship, so I started dating.  The first guy I dated was a Medieval knight.

In the mundane world he was a buffed, bearded high-school history teacher named Larry, but in "real life" he was Lucien de Peletier from the Shire of Galedenfeld in the Kingdom of Meridies (the Society for Creative Anachronism, which "recreates the culture of Medieval Europe," divides the U.S. into regional "kingdoms").

Vanderbilt Divinity School

Lucien signed his letters "1191" instead of "1991," listened to Medieval music instead of rock or country-western, and pretended to know nothing of current events.

That was all fine with me.  The problem was, he was strictly closeted, not only at work (which was understandable), but among his SCA friends.

"But you dress in Medieval costumes and joust each other," I pointed out.  "Surely they would be ok with gay people."

"It's not historically accurate.  There weren't any gay people in the Middle Ages, so my character is straight."

No gay people in the Middle Ages?  Of course there were some. Lots.

In October he invited me to the SCA Harvest Banquet, but cautioned that we had to bring female dates.

After six years in West Hollywood, I wasn't going to stand for closeting!

The banquet was held in a private room at F. Scott's Restaurant and Jazz Bar, about 20 people in costume and a dozen in street clothes.  I came stag, and sat next to a heavily-embarrassed Lucien and his "date", a middle-aged English professor named Dame Lucille.




When it came time to dance, I walked up to a young, cute bard and said something like "Prithee, in my land of West Holly-Wood, it is customary for men to wont their troth upon whoever they find smokin', be they swains or maids.  Wouldst dance with me?"  (They don't really talk like that.)

The bard grinned.  "T'would be a scandal, milord!"

"If it be scandal, then let the tongues wag."

There were, indeed, a lot of stares and whispers as we joined a roundelay, breaking up the boy-girl-boy pattern.

I glanced over at Lucien.  He was staring ashen-faced.

When the dance ended, I approached Lucien and Dame Lucille.  "Ah, another goodly squire, pleasant of mien, hot of bod.  Lady, prithee allow me to borrow him for a dance?"

Giggling, she nodded, but Lucien growled, "Are you crazy?"

"If this be madness, then send me to bedlam, milord.  I die for a single dance."

"Stay in character!  There weren't any gay people in the Middle Ages!"

"Then, perhaps a kiss, such as that Sir Gawain bestowed upon his swain."

"He speaks sooth, milord," Dame Lucille said.  "It's in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight."

All eyes were trained on me as I bent down.  For a moment I thought Lucien was going to permit the kiss.   Then suddenly he pushed me roughly away, jumped up from his chair, knocking over a wine glass, and ran from the room.

The bard and I had to give Dame Lucille a ride home.  That was the last I heard of Lucien.

The story of my semester in Nashville continues here, with my date with the country-western singer.  At least, I thought he was a country-western signer.

Today gay people, "the blue feathers," are fully accepted in most kingdoms of  SCA.  In 2011 the Board of Directors ruled that barons could have same-sex consorts, but crown contenders "must be fighting for a consort of the opposite gender."

The Top 10 Gay Rumors about Scott Baio

Today Scott Baio is a bitter, right-wing blowhard who regularly makes homophobic and Islamophobic comments and is a passionate supporter of the Orange Fuhrer.  But when I was living in West Hollywood in the late 1980s, he had the goods.

Charles in Charge premiered in 1984, with 24-year old Scott Baio as a rather dorky college student working as a live-in nanny to three bratty kids.  After one season, it was cancelled.

 It returned in first-run syndication in  1987, hipper and sexier, with a new, softcore-porn rendition of the opening song:

Charles in charge of our days and our nights.
Charles in charge of our wrongs and our rights.
I want --- oooh --- I want Charles in charge of me.

 The kids were no longer bratty -- one was a teenage supermodel.  And Charles was a confident A-Gamer.

Who had a chest, and wasn't afraid to use it.

And a bodybuilder boyfriend named Buddy (Willie Aames).

I never went to tv show tapings, unless I had out of town visitors.  They were tacky and touristy.  But I went to Charles in Charge several times, just to gawk at Scott and Willie.

Scott was so fey, and the gay-subtext buddy-bonds were so intense, that everyone  in West Hollywood assumed he was gay.

Well, maybe bisexual: he was linked with Heather Locklear, Melissa Gilbert, Leslie Ann Warren, Nicolette Sheridan, and Nicole Eggert, who stated that she lost her virginity to him in 1989, at age seventeen.

But the gay rumors were ubiquitous.  Most were the standard backstage hookups and closeted dates, but there were others -- vulgar and raunchy, about abuse, domination, and humiliation.  They make you feel sorry for the guy.

Here are 10 most interesting rumors about gay hookups and dates:

1. His first gay experience was in 1976, when he was 16 years old, with Eddie Mekka, who played Carmine on Laverne and Shirley.

2.  Scott had a three-way with his cousin Jimmy and Ricardo Montalban, the star of Fantasy Island.  .Details vary, but they involve oral, anal, or BDSM.

3. When Scott was appearing as Cousin Chachi on Happy Days, Henry Winkler (Fonzie) asked him to "sit on it."

4. He also dated Donnie Most (Ralph Malph).  Donnie was an anal top with an enormous Kovbasa+.

5. Scott hooked up with Jonathan Ward, who played the dorky Douglas during the first season of Charles in Charge.  This was a few years later, when Jonathan was 20 years old.  Scott went down on him and then bottomed.

6. He regularly hooked up with James T. Callahan, who played the elderly Walter Powell.  Callahan often went down on Scott in the dressing room.

7. My friend Mario said that he was set up on a blind date with Scott around 1984.  The bedroom activity mostly involved wrestling and "forced" oral.  No cuddling or kissing afterwards.

8. A volatile, on-off relationship with Willie Aames, his costar on Charles in Charge.  There were constant jealous fights on the set.  Once they got into a fist fight over allegations that Scott was cheating.

9. Cesar Romero told me that his friend Jason dated Scott during the late 1980s.  Cesar often asked to "share," but Scott refused.  He did allow Cesar to watch, though.










10. Will the Bondage Boy's boyfriend Rick told us that Scott answered his personal ad for a BDSM "hard master" in 2002.

Of course, most of these stories are probably made up, but if only a few are true, Scott Baio had a very interesting teen idol career.  Surprisingly, most of them end in 1990, when Charles in Charge ended.  I wonder if it's a coincidence.


See also: Nude Photos of Willie Aames; Rick the Hard Master Tops Scott Baio; and the Boomer Beefcake and Bonding entry on Scott Baio