My Brief Modeling Career

Chicago, April 1979

One of the highlights of my freshman year at Augustana was my brief -- very brief -- modeling career.

I had my own radio program, the "International Pop Hour," where I played pop songs from Europe.  In between, I interviewed anyone who might have the slightest international connection, from the political science professor from China to the Italian-American manager of Langomarcino's Chocolates.

 One day in April, shortly after I got back from determining that my friend Mary's brother was "straight," I interviewed Lars Lundquist (not his real name), who came to Augustana as a foreign student in 1968 and now had his own photography studio in Chicago.

"I do everything -- kids, dogs, weddings, even passport photos," he said, "But I'm specializing in fashion.  I want to get some clients and go into talent management."  He paused.  "You know, you've got a nice fresh-scrubbed all-American look.  Did you play football in high school?"

"No, I was an athletic trainer.  But I saw more moldy towels and stinky athletic supporters than any football player."  I cued the laugh track.

"Can you come out to Chicago next week?  We'll do a shoot, and see what happens."

It's a scam!  My inner skeptic told me.  But then..."He's got a studio in Chicago, on Michigan Avenue!"  Besides, my listeners -- all 5 of them -- wanted to know what happened.

So the next weekend I drove out, and he took some shots of me wearing an orange leisure suit, a polo shirt and jeans, and a yellow turtleneck sweater with green pants (bright colors were "in" that year).

I quit my job at the Carousel Snack Bar, and through the spring and summer of 1979, except for my 10 days in Colombia,  I drove out to Chicago every few weeks and let Lars photograph me.  I got some work: see if you can find the Christmas 1979 catalog for the Marshall Fields department store, or Chicago Magazine in the spring of 1981.  I didn't keep any copies -- the photos were too embarrassing.

The money wasn't very good, and I was too busy with classes, clubs, and my job to drive out to Chicago every five minutes, so I was getting tired of it by the fall of 1979, when Lars asked, "Would you consider working for the gay market?"

"What?" I asked, stunned.  "What kind of market is there for gays?"

"All you have to do is pose nude -- there's no sex involved.  And the pay is good."

Was it legal?  And where could you go to buy nude pictures of men?

Apparently there were several gay porn magazines available in the adult bookstores of big cities.  Plus a mail order industry of nude male photos, marketed to gay men who couldn't get to big cities, and didn't want a porn magazine delivered to their home.

I could be a beacon of light to gay men in small towns!

But I would be out to millions of people.  Ok, hundreds.  They wouldn't be seeing my real name, but still...what if my mother saw the photos...or my friends at school....

A few days later, I met Fred, my ministerial student boyfriend.  I was sure that he would disapprove, so the nude photo shoot never happened, and my modeling career fizzled out (except for the adult movie I made, sort of, a few years later).

My Textbook Representative is a Gay Porn Star

Philadelphia, March 2013

Every academic is pestered by textbook company representatives pushing for you to assign your students their latest frightfully over-priced, generally gay-free textbook instead of some of the thousands of articles and e-books available for free at the campus library.














I'm usually immune to their pleas, but the rep that knocked on my office door last month, Mark from ___ Company, was jaw-droppingly handsome, and knew it: wavy brown hair, square jaw, piercing green eyes, huge hands, and a bodybuilder's physque crammed into his too-tight white shirt and grey slacks.

He flashed the smile that had been getting him special privileges his whole life and began pushing the new textbook with interactive e-book that meshed directly onto our online learning management system and...

"Um...sure, sure," I said, grinning like an idiot.  "But how is it with gay content?  I never order a textbook unless it covers the Stonewall Riots of 1969 that started the Gay Rights Movement."

He didn't flinch at the "controversial" topic.  "Well, let's take a look."  He came over to my side of the desk so I could see his laptop and leaned over me, so close that I could feel his body heat and, if I looked down, check for a basket.

There were several references to gay people: Stonewall, Anita Bryant, Matthew Shepard, the AIDS Quilt, gay marriage -- a lot more than the none in most intro texts.

"Ok, let me send you a link to the supplemental materials, and give you my card."  His huge bear-paw hand enveloped mine.  He flashed that smile again.

The moment Mark left, I dropped everything to look him up on the internet: Linkedin, twitter, instagram, and Facebook.

Mark was 26 years old, grew up in Pittsburgh, spent his junior year in high school in Japan, graduated from Duquesne University, had been to Europe and Canada, had a DUI arrest, had a brother named Clay.

He wrote a google review of a restaurant in Philadelphia.

He wrote an Amazon review of the tv series Sherlock.

There were a lot of newspaper articles about tennis -- his various matches and awards in high school and college.  He was signed on to a professional tennis recruitment website.

Facebook and Instagram had some pics of Mark with his arm around an older man and a guy he tagged as Mohammed, wearing a graduation gown, holding a fish [the models in the illustrations are not really him].

Shirtless.

I saved the shirtless pic to look at his thick, smooth chest, his shoulders and biceps, and his sixpack abs later.

He had a profile on a professional modeling site: interested in print and tv assignments, photos in a suit, in a sweater, in a swimsuit.  His resume listed some catalog work and local commercials.

How did this guy have time to work as a textbook rep?

Mark was back in my office the next week to see if I had gone over the supplementary material.

I was a little embarrassed that I had done so much internet stalking, so I decided to come clean.

"I looked you up online.  Quite an impressive list of accomplishments: decathlons, tennis, modeling."

He grinned.  "Oh, you saw my portfolio?"

"I lived in California for eleven years, so I've been around models' portfolios a lot.  Have you done any tv or movie work?"

"I have some youtube videos, if you'd like to see them.  Look under Markster348."

He moved on to discuss another textbook that my students might like.

As soon as I got home that night, I checked youtube for Markster348, and found a lot of streaming videos of Mark singing and flexing.

Then on a hunch I looked for Markster348 on some gay dating sites.

Jackpot!  Single, bisexual, into anal, oral, frottage, rimming, into jocks and preppy types.  A nice nude photo, semi-aroused cut Kielbasa.  But he hadn't accessed his account in "over two months."

No way I was going to date him -- he lived in Harrisburg, a two hour drive away (textbook reps have a wide territory).  And a hookup seemed inappropriate, given our professional relationship.

But I saved the nude pic to look at later.

The next week, Mark was in my office again.

"Have you made any decision about the textbook?"

"I'm about 75% in favor of ordering it."

He grinned, "What can I do to get you to 100%?"

Let me see you naked!  "Let me look over some of the supplemental materials, the pre-tests, the videos. and so on.  Speaking of videos, I saw yours online.  Very impressive.  And not just on youtube.  Some of the dating sites."

He glanced around nervously, probably afraid that I was going to out him.  There were five other offices right next to mine, and you could hear conversations in any of them.

  "Oh...um...thanks.  How did you find them?  I didn't think I had my screen name published anywhere."

"You told me -- Markster354, on youtube."

"Oh -- those videos.  I thought you meant my..."

"Your..."  I continued.

"Some stuff I did in college.  No big deal, but I'd rather not have my girlfriend find out about it.  Or my boss."

"Of course."

He took out a piece a paper, scribbled a few words, and pressed it into my hand.  "To look at later."

I obligingly put it in my pocket, and looked at it after he left: "Frat Boy Rim Job."

Boystube had a clip: five "fratboys" have a sex party, with oral, anal, rimming, and barebacking.

My friend Alan in West Hollywood starred in some porn movies in the 1980s, so I know a little about the industry.  This was strictly amateur, and rimming -- gross!

If you don't know what it is, look it up.  I'm not going to explain.

Still, it was interesting to watch Mark in action.  How often do you see someone that have a professional relationship rimming a guy while being topped?

He was in my office the next week.  "Ok, I've decided on your textbook," I announced, to spare him endless drives out from Harrisburg.

"Great.  And if there's anything else I can do..."

"I'll send you an email.  And, by the way, I saw that movie you recommended."

He flashed a broad smile.  "What did you think?"

"Very talented performer.  Very versatile."

He glanced around and leaned in close.  "If you'd like -- you know, a private showing -- I'm staying at the Days Inn."  He passed me a card with his phone number.

In case you were wondering: oral only, no rimming.

20 October Hookups, Dates, and Sausage Sightings

It's October,, my second favorite month of the year!  The days get longer, tv and theater seasons are in full swing, the air is brisk, running outside is a pleasure rather than a sweaty chore.  You get apple cider and pumpkin pie.  And the scary, paranormal events that are rare in July happen every day.

Ray Bradbury calls this The October Country: where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and mid-nights stay. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain. 

In honor of our journey past the border into the October Country of 2018, here are my top October hookups, dates, and sausage sightings.

1. October 1968: My first date.  In third grade, a cute boy invited me to a movie, which was a sin to Nazarenes.  I was certain that God was going to strike me dead with a thunderbolt. He didn't.  Instead, I got to hug a hippie.

2. October 1969: My first kiss.  From Greg, the boy vampire (also an astronomer, geologist, naturalist, and psychic), while we were watching the Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows.  It was a compromise; he really wanted to bite me on the neck.

3. October 1972: Why corpses are called stiffs.  In seventh grade, my friend's brother who worked in a funeral home invited us to come in and look at the corpse of a teenage boy who died that day.  I didn't know that men become aroused after death....






4. October 1974: The preacher pops a boner.  At a pre-college weekend at Olivet Nazarene College, we sat on a lounge in the student union watching a ministerial student make out with his girlfriend. Gigantic boner, the stuff of fantasies.

5. October 1979: The German Choirboy.  During my sophomore year at Augustana College, I spent a quarter abroad in Regensburg, Germany, and got my first real boyfriend, Wolfgang the Choir Boy at St. Peter's Cathedral.  We went out about a dozen times, but never actually spent the night together, since we both had roommates.

6. October 1983: The Halloween Homophobe.  Aka the night I drank 1 1/2 beers.  In grad school at Indiana University in Bloomington, my roommate Viju and I invited some guys over for a Halloween party.  Jimmy the Bodybuilder on Crutches invited his homophobic friend, who didn't know that the rest of us were all gay.  He had a meltdown!

7. October 1987: Heinz and His Crazy Obsession.  In West Hollywood, my sort-of-boyfriend Raul was living with a crazy old guy named Heinz.  I still can't eat Jimmy Dean's sausage biscuits or listen to the song "Come away wiz me to Malibu...."  I agreed to sharing, just to be polite, until I discovered Heinz's obsession.  Hint: Nasssty!

8. November 1990: The Rocky Horror Picture Show Virgin.  I had seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show in theaters twice and memorized the soundtrack, and the moment it came out on VHS, I bought a copy.  So I didn't consider myself a RHPS "Virgin,"  Nor did I think that the audience would demand a "virgin sacrifice."

9. October 1992: The Lawnboy.  What's scary about a lawnboy?  When he lies about his age, and you don't find out until after you've made the date.  Fortunately, I managed to call it off before the jail-bait scalawag arrived.  We finished the date in 1995, after he turned 18.

10. October 1996: My Date with the Vampire.   I may have exaggerated the oddities of Kevin the Vampire, but he definitely had a paranormal aura.  If he stared at you the right way, you would lose your free will.  That's how he got most of his dates.  He got the others with cool Bohemian looks and enormous penis.

11. October 1997: The Fireman Fantasy.   I've dated two firemen, and they've both been rather small in the penis department. Maybe that's one of the reasons they want to work with those big long hoses.  This guy came to our apartment after my crazy straight roommate put some water on the stove to boil and then left for six hours.

12. October 1999: The Boy Who Refused to Leave.  Not only did Ozzie tell an unsettling story about hooking up with John Kennedy Jr. after his death, the next day, after a hookup with me and Yuri, he refused to leave Yuri's room.  Unsettling.








13. November 2000: The Football Player Who Got Stuck in Time.  I really believe (sort of) that the University of Alabama football player I hooked up with that cold Novmber day was on a field trip from 1941.

14. October 2002: The Gay Psychic Angel.  Raphael showed up unexpectedly at my house in Florida, did a past-life regression, told me not to move to Europe, and gave me his phone number.  He was ungodly cute, an angel, but his arms didn't work, and I wimped out on calling him.  I've been kicking myself for it ever since.  I tried looking him up again recently, but I don't remember his last name, and he doesn't appear in the directory of professional psychics in Florida.

15. October 2005: Remy the Jerk.  I've had dates with Creepy Old Guys, Sleazoids, elitists, idiots, and jerks of all kinds, but this guy was a complete, utter *hole, so nasty that it was scary.  It's a good thing we had our date on Halloween.


16. October 2008: The Satyr.    A massive guy, massively fat, with the biggest Kovbasa++++ I've ever seen, before or since.  I'm pretty sure he was a mystical being, Priapus the God of Virility, just manifesting in our reality as a super-hung chub.  His houseboy was cute, too.

17. October 2012: Assaulted in the Locker Room.  I've been yelled at and called names, but the only time I've actually been attacked was in the locker room of a gym in the gay neighborhood of Philadelphia, where a guy accused me of "looking at him" and rushed in to attack.

18. November 2012: The Dark Room. I went to the guy's house to pick him up for a date, and he opened the door naked.  Things went downhill from there.

19. October 2014: My Dad's Old Navy Buddy.   My weirdest paranormal experience to date: my Dad's old navy buddy shows up. Except my Dad was in the Korean War, and this guy is still in his twenties.  Ok, maybe it was his grandson.

20. October 2015: The Twink Who Wasn't Interested.  That's not actually scary, just perplexing for a twink magnet.  Turns out he was interested, he just didn't think I was.  Go figure.

Mitch Dates George Clooney and a Former Teen Idol

Rosemary Clooney's nephew George rubs me the wrong way.  I like his liberal politics and the fact that he's a gay ally.  But he has a marginally attractive face, a nondescript physique, and no basket, yet he keeps being voted "Sexiest Man Alive" and "Most Handsome Man Alive."

And that annoying smug smile: "Hi, I'm George Clooney! You may worship me."

His movies are unwatchable.  I've actually only managed to sit through From Dusk to Dawn (1996), Batman and Robin (1997),  and The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), which, I didn't realize, was about genocide.  The others are stupid caper movies, with that smug smile intact.

I could only find one photo of a young Clooney with his shirt off.  The resolution is too low to tell whether he still had a smug smile back then.

Apparently he's had his share of gay rumors, although I can't imagine how he would find the time after bedding every lady in Hollywood.  However, I don't recall hearing a single George Clooney hookup story when I lived in West Hollywood.  He wasn't really famous until the late 1990s, so maybe no one who hooked up with him thought to mention it.  Or maybe I just zoned out.

But I got one in my handy email box yesterday.  I've modified some of the details and added dialogue.

.

Hollywood, March 1991

You can call me Mitch.  In the 1980s, when I was still in my 20s, I was a make-up artist in Hollywood.  I worked on all of the great teen idols of the era, Mark-Paul Goesselaer, David Faustino, Scott Wolfe (yes, I've seen him in his underwear) -- but I'm most proud of my work on horror and sci fi.

In the summer of 1990 I got a job on ABC's Baby Talk, a sitcom based on the movie Look Who's Talking (1989).   Julia Duffy played Maggie Campbell, a single mom with a talking baby, and Clooney played Joe, incongruously a construction-worker boyfriend.  Tony Danza provided the baby's voice.  With canny placement between Who's the Boss and Roseanne, it was a modest success.  However, the network suits felt that Duffy and Clooney weren't clicking in the role, so after 11 episodes they were replaced with Mary Page Keller and Scott Baio.

Clooney was not a big star: he was 29 years old, still struggling with walk-on jobs, recurring roles on The Facts of Life and Roseanne, and studying at the Beverly Hills Playhouse.  Nor did we think of him as particularly hunky.  He had big 80s hair, no physique, and no basket.  He played what we called a "goofball," a quirky, nerdy type.

I knew he was a newlywed: his wife Talia was also making the rounds of guest-spots and recurring roles.  But he was definitely a man's man, always hanging out with Tony Danza, going out for drinks with the guys in the crew.  Everyone thought that was further proof of his heterosexuality, but it made my gaydar go off.  Tony Danza had a lot of gay rumors at the time, too, as you recall.  Could they be boyfriends?

I tried to invite myself along on one of their dates, but was unsuccessful.  So I decided that I had to catch them in the act.  Maybe they would invite me to join in...

My hopes were dashed when they had some kind of an argument or falling out and began ignoring each other.  That may be why Clooney wasn't invited back for the second season -- Danza had a lot of clout in Hollywood at the time.

Not to worry, Clooney soon found a new "boyfriend."   Erich Anderson, who played Rob in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) and had a recurring role as Billy Sidel on Thirtysomething (1990-91), had a guest spot in one episode ("The Fever," air date April 16, 1991).  He was in his 30s, very buffed, with black hair and a classic movie-star face.

They apparently hit it off.  Soon Erich was coming to the set every day to pick Clooney up.  One day he even showed up at breakfast -- surely they had spent the night.

I cozied up to Erich -- he was far more my type than Clooney anyway -- and soon landed a date with him.  Standard West Hollywood date -- dinner at the Cafe Etoile, cruising at Mickey's, back to his place for making out and oral.  Erich had a smooth hard chest, very hairy legs (a big turn on for me) and a thick Bratwurst, uncut.  I went down on him twice.

But when I asked about Clooney, he said "Oh, we've never done it.  He's straight, or maybe bi -- I didn't think it was polite to ask."

"Too bad.  I was fantacizing about 'sharing' him with you."

Erich and I only dated a couple of times, but stayed friends.  At one of his parties in the fall of 1990, I met former teen idol Peter Barton, and asked him out on a date.

It was Chinese take-out and a VHS movie, very low key, but I really liked Peter: thick hair, beautiful face, smooth hard chest, hairy legs, average size down there (but you never felt anything so hard in your throat, literally like an iron rod).  I asked him for a second date that weekend.

When he came to the studio to pick me up, Clooney was walking by, so I introduced them.

His jaw practically dropped to the floor.  He was totally thunderstruck by the 34-year old former teen idol.

"Um...we were going out to dinner," I said.  "Would you like to join us?"

I know, inviting someone else along on a second date -- crazy!  I could tell that Peter wasn't happy about it.  But I didn't care --  I was obsessed with finding out if Clooney was gay or bi.

We went to dinner at a place on Wilshire -- Clooney paid, Peter looked uncomfortable.  We both came out -- he was perfectly nonchalant about being with two gay guys, but said nothing about his own sexual orientation.  He didn't even mention his wife.

Finally I said "I guess we'll say goodnight, unless you want to go back to my apartment for a cup of coffee."

Peter glared at me.  Clooney said "Sure."

The moment we got inside the door, Clooney said "Gentlemen, I'm sure you know I love the ladies.  But I also love blow jobs, and it's hard to find a lady who will oblige.  I would be more than happy to have one or preferably both of you working on my dick at this moment."

Peter frowned and said "Leave me out of this.  I'll be in the bedroom when you're done with your trick."

I was tempted -- I reached down and groped Clooney -- not hard yet.  He unzipped and pulled it out.  I began working on it with my hand while staring at him, wondering if I should kiss him -- average length, thick around, starting to get aroused.  But I was feeling very guilty about inviting him home on my second date with Peter, so I said "Thanks, but not tonight," zipped him back up, pushed him out the door, and went into the bedroom to apologize.

Peter and I dated for the next two months.  I never interacted with Clooney again.

Wouldn't you be embarrassed if a guy rejected you after fondling your cock?

See also: Pedro's Hookup with Philip McKeon.