My Boyfriend Gets a BFF

Heinz flexes and cooks weiners

In West Hollywood in the 1980s, the boundary between friend and lover was fluid. A friend might invite you into his bed; a lover might cruise someone else. You might have a regular Saturday night date with a friend; you might not see a lover for weeks at a time.

So I'm not sure exactly when Raul and I broke up.

1. Maybe in August 1987, when my roommate Alan moved to Thailand to start a gay Pentecostal church.    I asked Raul to move in to help with the rent, but he refused: "too far from work" (he was now in customer service at a company on Wilshire). So I had to hustle to find a new place, with Derek on Sunset Boulevard.

2. Or in October 1987, when Raul's lease expired, and he moved into an ugly house with a German flight attendant or something named Heinz -- in West Hollywood, only two miles from my old apartment.

Heinz's Horrible House

3. Maybe when Heinz got to be really, really annoying.  He wouldn't let anyone walk in shoes or socks on his white shag rug -- we had to go barefoot.

He listened incessantly to a terrible German pop group -- "Come away wiz me tyu Molly-Byu, tyu Molly-Byu, tyu Molly-Byu."

He forced us to watch the Miss America pageant.  Why would a group of gay men want to watch the Miss America pageant?  "For the outfits!"

And he hung out with women.

In tv and movies, gay guys always have hetero girl bffs.  The writers think they're all feminine, so of course they want to hang out with girls.

But in West Hollywood in the 1980s, most gay men weren't feminine, and -- news flash -- preferred the company of men.  (Besides, a female friend would confound the fluid boundary between friend and lover).  So when Heinz started coming around with female friends, tongues started to wag:

He was trying to pass (Passing, pretending to be straight, was an unpardonable sin.)
He suffered from internalized homophobia.
He had been brainwashed to believe that men were incomplete without women.
He was secretly straight.

4. But most likely when Raul, following Heinz's example, got a female bff.  Gina from work, a secretary-aspiring actress who did two commercials and guest starred on a sitcom.

He brought Gina to Heinz's house several times, then to my house, to the bars, and to the French Quarter Restaurant, where the waiter asked if they were a couple (come on, this was West Hollywood!).

My other friends stopped inviting me places -- guilt by association.

But the last straw came in December, when their office had a Christmas banquet. Gina invited Raul. To be her date.

I was furious.  "Doesn't she know that we're a couple?  Or does she not care?  Gay relationships are meaningless, right?"

"You know I'm not out at work," Raul said.  "Going with Gina would be better than going alone."

"Surely you're not considering it?" I asked, aghast.

He was considering it.

I hate the holidays.

Alan and I Cruise in Japan

Osaka, Japan

In March of my first year in West Hollywood, my ex-boyfriend Alan, the former porn star and current student clergy, suddenly announced that he was leaving the MCC: God had called him to start his own gay Pentecostal church.

In Japan.

Ok, there were 100,000,000 people in Japan, 3% Christian, maybe 1% of that Pentecostal, and 10% of that gay.  A target market of 3,000 people.

"Oh, no, there will be a massive revival.  Thousands of Japanese gay men and lesbians will be won to the Lord.  In a few years, there will be gay Pentecostal churches all over Japan."

He invited me to come along and become his co-minister.  I should have remembered moving to Omaha with Fred.  But...

Alan quickly landed a job teaching at an English language school in Osaka, and moved in April 1986, just as the new semester was beginning.   I applied for and received a scholarship to spend the summer at Kansai University.  On May 27th, I flew to Australia to visit a friend, and then joined Alan in Japan.

He lived on a very noisy, crowded street in the Kita Ward of Osaka, in a tiny apartment -- about 216 square feet, the size of an average bedroom in the U.S.

Every day between 8:00 am and 2:00 pm, Alan met with his students -- 8 to 10 per hour, talking about current events and writing essays.  I went to Gold's Gym, then to my class in Japanese Literature or to the Joto Library to study Japanese.

After dinner we cruised. I got the gay bars, restaurants, and discos, and Alan got the bath houses, bookstores, movie theaters, and Sakuranomiya Park. We were ostensibly looking for new converts for Alan's Gay Pentecostal Church, but Alan seems to have been mostly cruising.  Every night he brought a new potential convert back to our apartment: students, salary men, tourists.  For some reason, Asian men found him infinitely attractive (later, when we were roommates, he used this remarkable ability to steal my dates).

But none of the guys he brought him converted.

The Gay Pentecostal Church -- Kamisama no kyokai gei -- met every Sunday morning at 10:30 for Sunday school and 11:30 for the morning service.  With Alan and me, and sometimes whoever stayed over last night.

No one else.

We put up fliers in gay bars, restaurants, discos.  Alan announced the church at a meeting of Kansai Pride.

No one came.

In July we went to a Hadaka Matsuri, a Naked Man Festival.  It was the highpoint of the trip. Unfortunately, we missed the Penis Festival of Kawasaki.

At the end of July, when Alan's school closed for summer break, we returned to Los Angeles.  I knew he wasn't going to go back to Japan, and sure enough, in August he returned to his old job as a middle-school social studies teacher.  But soon he was talking about starting a gay Pentecostal church in Thailand.

"There will be a massive revival.  Thousands of Thai gay men and lesbians will be won to the Lord.  In a few years, there were be gay Pentecostal churches all over Thailand.  You should come...."

I said no to that one.