Gideon moves out of the friend zone: A Gideon x Keefe romance

 

"This is it," Gideon Gemstone told himself as he stood at the entrance of Woodpecker's Carpentry, watching the workers inside, and trying not to be noticed.  "Enough stalling.  You make your move now, or forget about it."

Suddenly a burly middle-aged man in a blue worker's suit appeared. "Hello.  I'm Bishop, the owner.  Can I help you with something?"

"I was just admiring the wood carvings.  I like that Grinch in a Santa Claus suit, and the bobble-head Trump...."  Thinking fast, he added. "But I was really looking for a birthday present for my Granddad.  Eli Gemstone -- you probably heard of him."

"The pastor at the Salvation Center? Sure, half my crew goes there, or watches the Praise Be to He hour on Sunday mornings. He's retired, isn't he? Who's the preacher now?"

"Jesse Gemstone.  I'm his son, Gideon."

He chuckled.  "How about that!   We're having a run on Gemstones today.  Your Uncle Kelvin was in earlier, probably shopping for the same thing.  He was talkin' up a storm with our new guy, Keefe."

Uncle Kelvin!  Gulp -- maybe it was too late.

For two years, Uncle Kelvin had been bringing Keefe to family dinners, barbecues, Christmas parties, everything: the hottest guy Gideon had ever seen. with shoulder-length blond hair, a short beard, an incredibly muscular chest inscribed faintly with a 666, a remnant of his former Satanism that made him even hotter.  

Were Kelvin and Keefe boyfriends?  The evangelical "don't ask, don't tell" policy meant that they would pretend to be just good buddies, regardless.  Even their social media pages were ambiguous.  But what if they were?  Being screwed by a guy who had screwed his uncle!  Forbidden romance, with a hint of incest -- could he get much hotter?  Gideon began fantasizing about Keefe -- a lot.

Then Keefe announced on his Instagram that he was moving out of the Gemstone compound. Two days later, that he was no longer working as assistant youth pastor: he had returned to his old job as a carpenter.  Obviously they had broken up -- if they were ever boyfriends in the first place. A perfect time for Gideon to move in!

Suddenly Gideon realized that the Burly Carpenter was staring at him, expecting him to say something.  "Sure, I know Keefe.  He used to be the assistant youth pastor at the Salvation Center.  I'll bet Uncle Kelvin wanted to commission a gift for Granddad.  Hey, maybe we could go in on a gift together.  Could I talk to him?"

"I'll go get him." Burly retreated to the work floor.  A moment later, Keefe appeared -- incredibly hot in a work shirt that left his arms and shoulders bare.  He smiled...a good sign, right?  "Hi, Gideon.  How's the family doing?"

The full story is on Righteous Gemstones Beefcake and Boyfriends

The Beach Boy and the "Fag"

Wilton Manors

"I've found him!" Kelly exclaimed over the telephone.  "The One!  We've only had one date, but that's enough to know!"

Kelly was one of the fitness trainers at Barney's Gym: in his 30s, about Yuri's height, with a long face, brown hair, good biceps and excellent abs and a smooth, less-than-spectacular chest.  Beneath the belt he was average, cut, with shaved pubes.  Somewhat shy and quiet, one of those high-school nerds who found self-confidence at the gym.

He would let you go down on him, to be polite, but he reciprocated only if  you were big in the belly.  The bigger the better.  Superchub, no problem.

His dream guy was fat, young, smooth, and supersized beneath the belt.

Not easy to find!  In Florida, where the beach is a few blocks away and guys wear next to nothing year round, the Wilton Manors norm was heavily muscled with 3% body fat.  Husky guys were uncommon, and fat rather rare.  Young fat guys practically unheard of.

And for whatever reason, fat guys tend to be a a little small beneath the belt.  

So who was this Tobias, the Man of Kelly's dreams?

On the night of their third date, they came over for dinner so Kelly could introduce him to his friends: Barney, Yuri, his boyfriend Jim, another fitness trainer, me, and Wade the Beach Boy.  Yuri made his famous moussaka.

Tobias was in his 20s, tall, chubby, with a smooth chest, employed as a bartender at a hotel near the beach.  Obviously smitten by Kelly: he kept his arm around him the whole evening.

But I was turned off by his greasy slicked-back hair, tattoos, rings, and unattractive leer.

And his speech, littered with profanity: "Little Kelly here, he's the best f*king c*ksucker in the business!  Holy f*k, I never c** so hard in my life!"

And the fact that he had been in prison: "There was a little queen at Kissimmee [juvenile detention center] that was on his knees every night, serviced the whole f*ing dorm, I kid you not!"


"What were you in juvie for?" I asked.

"Oh, please, we're queers.  We're all criminals, according to the hetero *holes that run this country.  Now let's get this f*ng party started.  Which of you c*ksuckers wants the first shot?"

He unzipped.  He was already fully aroused.  A perfectly shaped Kielbasa, with a round head and a small vein running up the side.

Well, I didn't mind a little profanity.

Still, I couldn't imagine quiet, shy Kelly getting along with brash, profane Tobias for long.

A week or so later, I flew out to New Mexico to visit Larry and cruise in the Navajo nation.  Then I visited Rock Island and Indianapolis for a few days.

When I got back, I saw Kelly at the gym and asked "So, is it still Paradise?"

"Oh, it's going great!  Wait -- you've been out of town.  Are you talking about Tobias?  He's history!"

"Why, what happened?"

Here's what happened:

A few days after I left for New Mexico, Wade the Beach Boy and Kelly had lunch.

"Oh, it's going great!" Kelly said.  "Great in bed!  I never met a guy with so much stamina.  I must do him like ten times a day!"

"What about outside the bedroom?" Wade asked.  "Do you have the same interests in, like movies?  Or music?  You're the world's biggest gym rat -- does Tobias even work out?"

"Not really.  He says he gets enough exercise in bed! But we go to the beach, we go dancing, we cruise together and bring guys home to share.  It's fun...but...um, have you ever heard of parties where guys have sex?  I don't mean sharing with friends -- I mean complete strangers?"

"Sure -- Bear Parties.  Boomer talks about them."

"Well, Tobias wants me to go to a Bear Party with him, down in Miami Beach. Fifty naked guys, maybe more."

"Sounds like a fun Saturday night," Wade said.  "Can I get an invitation?"

"Here's the thing.  I'm supposed to be the party's official 'fag.'"

"That is way offensive, dude."

"No, it just means a guy who likes oral sex."

Oral bottoms, guys who are into going down, are often denigrated in gay communities, even called "fags," to distinguish them from the "real men," the oral tops.  It's all sexist nonsense, based on the belief that women are oral bottoms, and being "like a woman" is reprehensible.

"But," Kelly continued,  "The 'fag" has to go down on anybody Tobias wants.  But you know I'm not into that unless the guy is chubby."

"Well then refuse, and just go with guys you find attractive."

"Yeah, but Tobias told me to.  He already told everyone I was going to do it.  He's kind of in charge in the relationship.  He calls himself 'the guy," like I'm 'the girl."

"Ok."  Wade thought for a moment.  "Here's what you do.  First, get me an invitation."

The party was held in one of those extraordinarily expensive glass-and-steel apartments with a picture window looking out onto the ocean and the tv hidden away in a teakwood cabinet.  There were about 30 guys, a good mix of older and younger, occupying the living room and two bedrooms.

Tobias stationed the "fag" on a stool in a small alcove.  Wade said he wanted to mingle, but stood close by anyway.

After a few minutes, Tobias returned with a tall, thin older guy, naked, with a sizeable Bratwurst.  "Is this the fag?"  he asked, looking at Kelly.

"No, I am," Wade said, kneeling and going to work.

Tobias glared at Kelly, but what could he do?  He wandered off, found a thin twink, and brought him to the alcove.

"Sorry, Kelly's taking a break," Wade said.  "But I'm free."  He fell to his knees and got to work.

Tobias walked off in a huff.

Afterwards Wade wandered around until he found a chubby guy, and invited him into the alcove, where Kelly eagerly went to work.

Tobias appeared with another tall, thin guy, saw that Kelly was busy, and exclaimed "Hey, what the f*k?  You refuse all the guys I bring over, but when Wade brings someone..."

"Don't worry," Wade said.  "I'll take care of him."

"That's not the point!  Kelly is supposed to be the f*ing c*ksucker, f*ing going down on whatever guy I say!"

"I think that's called pimping," Wade murmured.  "Is Kelly your boyfriend or your employee?"

That was the end of Kelly' romance with Tobias.

But he did meet someone else at the party: big belly, thick uncut Mortadella.

Ok, he was 55 years old, and had a hairy chest.

But at least he didn't call Kelly a "fag."

See also: The Beach Boy and the Giant; Carlos and his Two Secrets.

My First Visit to an Adult Store

Bloomington, Indiana, fall 1982

I "figured it out" during my senior year in high school, but my real "coming out" was at the beginning of my first year in grad school at Indiana University.

As an undergraduate at Augustana College, I had worked hard, very hard, to find gay people, and I found a few -- my ex boyfriend Fred; an Episcopal priest in Des Moines; Prfessor Burton, who held handcuff parties for campus hunks.  You had to go through word of mouth, through a friend of a friend of a friend.

Now I was at a vast university with 40,000 students, and as far as I could tell from conversations and signals and interests, every single one of them was heterosexual.

My friends, classmates, and coworkers all, without exception, maintained the "what girl do you like?" whine of my childhood.  I had to leave Playboy magazines in my room, and think of logical reasons why I didn't have a girl on my arm every second.

My classes were as empty of gay references as they had been at Augustana.  Every writer who had ever lived was heterosexual.  Every poem ever written was written from man to women.  The Eternal Feminine infused all our lives.

And, as far as I knew, this was the way life was everywhere and for everyone.  A vast emptiness, hiding, pretending, unyielding silence.

That Saturday night I had been watching Silver Spoons and Mama's Family in the 13th floor tv lounge of Eigenmann Hall.  At 9:00, my roommate Jon said "Let's go to the grad student mixer.  I'm hot to get laid tonight."

I had no interest in getting laid.  At least, not as Jon understood it.  But I walked with him across the vast, silent campus, past empty buildings, past towers of Indiana limestone erected by heterosexuals long ago, to the Memorial Union, where a party for heterosexual grad students was in session.

Then I said goodbye and went to the campus library.  There were uncountable millions of books in the vast stacks, rooms as long as a football field, but only two listed under "homosexuality" in the card catalog: the memoirs of Tennessee Williams, and Nothing Like the Sun, by Anthony Burgess, about Shakespeare's romance with the Dark Lady of the sonnets.

I walked alone down Kirkwood Avenue, past student bars and little Asian restaurants and hamburger stands.  Just before the Baskin Robbins closed at 10:00, I stopped in and bought an ice cream cone.  Two scoops, strawberry on the bottom and Rocky Road on the top.  30 years later, I still remember that ice cream cone.

There was a gay bar in Rock Island, a dark closet bar with a nondescript name and no windows, where you entered through the back so no one could see you.  But surely Bloomington was too small for such a place.

 I stopped into a weird eclectic bookstore called the White Rabbit. No gay books -- it was illegal to display them openly, as Fred told me when I found his secret bookshelf two years ago.  So I bought a novelization of the 1980 Popeye musical starring Robin Williams, set in the port town of Sweethaven:

Sweet Sweethaven!  God must love us.
Why else would He have stranded us here?

A church tower had a cross that lit up white at night, and I looked up it and prayed "Why did you strand me here?"

I wandered for a long time through quiet residential streets, houses where heterosexual husbands and wives were asleep, their children in the next room surrounded by "what girl do you like?" brainwashing toys and games.  I walked past a public park, but was afraid to go in.  After dark, monsters roamed through the dark swaying trees.

It occurred to me that I was one of the monsters.  After all, being gay was illegal in the United States.  I was a criminal.  (Actually, Indiana's sodomy law was repealed in 1976.)

Somehow I found myself at a small, nondescript building on College Avenue.  The sign on the marquee advertised "Adult Books."

They probably wouldn't stock any gay porn.  But it wouldn't hurt to check.  The most they could do is call me a "fag."

The rest of the story is on Righteous Gemstones Beefcake and Boyfriends

Getting Naked with a Male Witch

Augustana College, Freshman Year

When I was a freshman at Augustana College, I knew a lot of guys who liked guys only at night, and spent their days arm-in-arm with women.  But I had never met a real, actual gay person.  There was a gay bar downtown, but I was too young to go to it. There were no gay organizations, no gay-themed movies playing at the Cineplex, no gay books in the college or public library.

But surely I couldn't be alone in all of Rock Island!  I did extensive research, interrogating my friends, making discrete inquiries of knowledgeable seniors, asking around at the radio station, and eventually got a few names.

 
A middle-school teacher who was discovered, fired, and moved away.
The manager of a flower shop who was discovered, fired, and moved away.
Peter, who attended Augustana for a few years, but was discovered and expelled.

Only Peter was still in town!

"Be careful!" My informant cautioned.  "He's not only a homo, he's a witch."  He went on to describe demons conjured with a Ouija board, pins stuck into voodoo dolls, Tarot cards, crystal balls, potions, incantations, nude rituals in the moonlight.

My Nazarene sensors went off.  Occult -- Evil! Evil! Evil!  Maybe the preacher was right -- maybe gays were all Satanic.

Nonsense!  I chided myself for my irrational fear.  Peter was the only gay person in Rock Island, and I was going to meet him, witch or not!  Near Valentine's Day, I called, said I wanted to interview him for my radio program, and got an invitation to visit.  He lived with his parents in small, normal-looking house near Longview Park.

 He was nothing like what I expected -- and nothing like this photo -- taller than me, very hairy, and quite chubby.   He had long blond hair and a blond beard that somehow made me think of Santa Claus.

We sat in his living room -- which looked perfectly normal -- and chatted about Augustana for a few minutes.  Then suddenly he said "Let's get naked!"

I hadn't said anything about being gay!  "Um...I'm not...I didn't come here for sex," I stammered.

"No, no, I didn't mean that -- frankly, you're not my type -- I just like being skyclad. Close to Mother Earth."

So we took off our clothes, and Peter told me about paganism: a religion of the Earth, older than Christianity, attuned to the spiritual dimension, and not oppressed by a lot of "thou shalt nots": "an it harm no one, do what ye wilt."

"Sounds like paganism is ok with gays."

"Not really.  The rituals are boy-girl-boy-girl. But I'm working to change all that.  There's a group out in California, the Radical Fairies, that's working to bring gay men into the Craft."

"Do you know any gay people in Rock Island?"

"A couple.  Mostly they move out to California.  It gets a little lonely."  He paused.  "How about a skyclad hug?"

I nodded.

I was enveloped in a warm, hairy bear hug.  It was not erotic, though we groped a bit.  It was like we were connecting on the spiritual plane.  Suddenly, without understanding why, I started to cry.

"I'm going to perform a spell for you," Peter said.  "It will help you find what you're looking for."  He chanted something about the God and the Goddess and blew on a small pink crystal, which he pressed to my forehead.  I left with the pink crystal and a book, Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture, which I still have.

The spell worked.  Less than a month later, my friend Mary invited me to visit her family for spring break, and try to determine if her teenage brother was gay.  And  before I graduated from Augustana, I met a number of gay people: a student preacher, an ex-priest with a pushy mom, a bookstore manager, an d little-person postal worker.

During the 1990s, Peter was a guiding force behind the Radical Faeries, and instrumental in opening the pagan movement to LGBT persons.  Renamed Sparky T. Rabbit, he became a nationally recognized writer, singer, chanter, storyteller, pagan activist, gay activist, fairy, and bear.   He died on July 9, 2014.

See also: Tony Cavalero's Magick, with a nude neopagan bonus

My Date with the Estonian Mountain Climber

Long Island, September 1997

I was very busy in the fall of 1997, my first semester on Long Island.  I was taking  three graduate seminars in sociology; teaching an adjunct class at Hofstra University, 2 hours away by train; going into Manhattan every weekend; and being swarmed by undergrads.

Every twink, Cute Young Thing, and newly-out prettyboy on Long Island wanted my phone number, including Yuri, the Russian "teenager", and Jaan the Estonian mountain climber.

Jaan was a graduate student in physics who Yuri brought as a "date" to my 37th birthday party in November 1997: tall and blond, two turn-offs, but very, very muscular, with intense black eyes, and very persistent -- he kept following me around the room, staring shyly.

I hadn'd met anyone from Estonia, the Baltic country with the language similar to Finnish, since 9th grade, when George and Kristjan taught me Graeco-Roman wrestling. Jaan didn't speak English very well, but I managed to get him to tell me about growing up in Johvi, near Narva, on the Russian border (only two hours from St. Petersburg by car), mountain climbing in Scotland, and especially his best friend Arvi.

Eventually I disentangled myself and found Yuri.  "Do you mind if I ask Jaan for a date?"

He frowned.  "You mean like...um, a boyfriend?  No, why do I care?  I don't like guys."  He wouldn't admit to being gay until the Christmas party next month.

"Ok, thanks.  Oh -- by the way, he is gay, right?"

"You know, I didn't ask, but maybe he is.  Here in America, you are always careful.  Anybody might be gay."  He leaned in close.  "If you date him, tell me how big he is, ok?"

"Sure, no problem."

So I made a date to take Jaan to see Brad Pitt in Seven Years in Tibet, followed by dinner at the Curry Club, a very nice Indian restaurant in East Setauket.

I talked about how cute Brad Pitt is; how I always thought of Tibet as a "good place" where same-sex desire was open and free; and about Lee back in West Hollywood.

Jaan agreed that Brad Pitt was very handsome, and talked about how he and his best friend always wanted to go to Tibet to climb Mount Everest.  Our legs brushed together. Then he stared intently into my eyes and said "Do you want to come back to my room?"

Score!  New York was much more conservative than West Hollywood.  Inviting someone home on the first date was practically unheard-of!

Turns out that Jaan lived in a graduate student apartment, and shared his bedroom with a guy named Erik, who was watching tv out in the living room.

After the introductions, I put my arm around Jaan's waist, and led him into the bedroom.  Jaan got me a soda out of the mini-fridge and invited me to sit down on the bed.

At that moment Erik came tromping in. "Sorry, I need this book," he explained.

We sat on the bed side by side.  I took a few sips of my soda to be polite, then put it aside and leaned over to kiss Jann.  Then Erik came tromping in again.  "Sorry, I need a pen."

"He's trying to get a glimpse of us making out!" I exclaimed.  "Can you tell him we'd like some privacy?"

"He has as much right to be here as I do."

I shrugged.  Ok, if Jaan didn't mind, then I didn't either. Maybe Erik was gay and wanted to join in, as was the custom in West Hollywood.

I reached over, put my arm around Jaan, drew him close, and kissed him on the mouth.


Or tried to.  Before I got there, he leapt to his feet and ran to the other side of the room.  His face was ashen-pale.  "Mida sa teed?" he exclaimed "Mida sa teed?" (What are you doing? in Estonian.)

"Um...I was....um...going to kiss you," I said, shocked.

He stared.  "Why?"

"Are you nervous because of your roommate?  Because we can go to my apartment -- I have my own place, where we can be alone."

He stared.

"Um..because, you know, it's the end of our date.  You invited me to your room. That means you want to..."

He stared.

"Maybe I'd better be going."

The next day Yuri called.  "Hey, you really freaked out Jaan.  He doesn't know you are gay, and then suddenly you try to have sex with him!

"He didn't know?" I repeated, rather angry.  "How could he not know? It was a date, we talked about ex-boyfriends, and then he invited me back to his room.  That's a major tease!"

"Estonia is...what do you say...old fashioned."

"But... All during the date, talking about my boyfriends? Same-sex desire being open and free?  How could he be so oblivious?"

 "He didn't even know that there were gays until last night.  I had to explain it to him."  He paused.  "So anyway, he wants to know if you will date him again next Friday."