A Hook Up with Burt Ward on the "Batman" Set

On Tuesdays and Thursday afternoons in the spring of 1991, after my course in Biblical Hebrew at UCLA, I often drove up to Brentwood to visit Cesar Romero, the actor best known as The Cisco Kid in the 1940s and the Joker in the 1960s Batman series.  We didn't become friends, exactly; we sat in his living room drinking lemonade, while he told about the many celebrities he had hooked up with through his career: Johnny Sheffield, Tommy Cook, Desi Arnaz (father and son both), Cary Grant, Walter Pidgeon, Raymond Burr, Tony Perkins,  Tab Hunter, Rock Hudson.

And Batman and Robin both!

He had gone down on Adam West (Batman) several times at all-male parties before he began playing the Joker.  No big surprises there.

But Burt Ward was 21 years old, a sheltered, conservative college jock who was not even aware that same-sex acts exist until  Adam West explained.  He allowed Cesar to go down on him once ("Huge!  A Kielbasa!"), but was never really comfortable around gay people.

So this story leaves me with a few questions.

Warning: there is a bisexual scene.

Hollywood, Spring 1967

Call me Scott.  I was one of the writers for the Batman series in the 1960s.  I wrote for the villains, making them as camp as possible.  My favorites were the women: Catwoman; Black Widow; Olga, Queen of the Cossacks; Marsha, Queen of Diamonds, played by Caroline Jones (Morticia of The Addams Family).  

But the male villain had their charms.  Many of them were gay: Cesar Romero (The Joker), Burgess Meredith (The Penguin), Victor Buono (King Tut), Liberace (Chandell).  After filming we used to go out to the bars, or to Cesar's house for an all-male party.   Adam West (Batman) and one of the costume designers came on occasion, but not Burt Ward (Robin).

I definitely wanted an opportunity to make it with Burt.  Have you seen the bulge in his tights?  Well, I've seen it close up!

Everyone said he was a sheltered, shy kid who didn't even know that gay people existed.  Even Cesar Romero struck out, and he made it with every guy in Hollywood.

Well, one day I got my chance.

Remember all those cliffhanging scenes, with the Dynamic Duo tied up?  We filmed the start and finish at the same time, to ensure continuity, which means that they sometimes had to stay tied up for a couple of hours.  Often they were left alone on a secluded stage for 20-30 minutes, with nothing to do but get hit on.

Some of the girls in the crew were notorious for taking that opportunity to kiss and fondle the helpless victims.  They would even bring in their friends to get a handful.  I never saw any penis actually come out, but there was a lot of groping and tenting -- I've seen both Adam and Burt fully aroused.

Ok, maybe they weren't entirely helpless -- most of the props were rather flimsy, so if they really worked at it, they could escape.  And, one yell would bring a stage hand running.  Maybe they enjoyed the attention.

In an episode we filmed just before the 1967 summer hiatus, Burt was tied up alone, spreadeagle on a table.  I walked past during the staging, as usual, and saw two girls working on him, #1 kissing him and #2 rubbing his crotch.

I walked up, said "Let an expert show you how it's done," then pulled out his cock.

Burt didn't protest -- he was busy kissing Girl #1.  I don't think he even noticed me.  I licked his balls, then his shaft, then drew all 8" into my mouth, sucking on the head while masturbating him.

He moaned, probably thinking that Girl #2 was going down on him.  Then she said "Who invited the fairy to the party?"

Burt looked up. I immediately moved my mouth away from his cock, but continued to masturbate him.

"Hi," I said.  Not much else to say in that situation.

"Oh, hi."  Burt looked at me for a long moment.  I couldn't tell if he was mad or not.  "Say, can you get Dick a girlfriend? [Dick Grayson, Robin's alter ego]. Fans are starting to talk."

"Sure, buddy, no problemo."  I returned to his cock.  Girl #2 shrugged and moved up to kiss him.  A few moments later, he spurted into my throat -- enormous load!  I wiped him off with my handkerchief, and moved on.

I tried to keep my word, but my "Dick's Girlfriend is Kidnapped" idea didn't make it.  But I did manage the next best thing: The premiere episode of the third season introduced Yvonne Craig as Barbara Gordon, Batgirl!

And no, I never had the opportunity to go down on Burt again.

Cartoon Superheroes in Peril

Robin the Boy Wonder was introduced into the Batman comic books to give the Caped Crusader someone to rescue, and ever since, a tied, tormented, and threatened Boy Wonder has been a comic book mainstay.

Regardless of whether he is Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, or any of the other incarnations.

Fan artists have certainly noticed, and produced any number of X-rated pictures of Robin in chains.

[All pictures are the property of their respective artists, and depict adults.]

But why stop with Robin?  Why not depict Spiderman, Peter Parker, being tormented by the Green Goblin on a dildo bench, with a vibrator attached to his penis?

Superman is invulnerable to most ropes, but insert a kryptonite dildo or two, and you'll have him right where you want him.  In this case, on a milking machine.

Did you know that Kryptonians have no pubic hair?

More after the break

Lane's Hookup with Batman, Robin, and the Joker

West Hollywood, March 1991

Everybody in West Hollywood had a good celebrity dating story.

Older guys claimed to have dated Marlon Brandon, Cary Grant, or Rock Hudson.

Younger guys claimed hookups with Scott Baio, Johnny Depp, or Keanu Reeves.

Everybody claimed sausage sightins of Rob Lowe, Tom Selleck, and Sylvester Stallone.

Since nearly every actor was closeted in those days, and vehemently denied any "accusations," it was hard to tell which story was real, which an exaggeration of a casual meeting, and which just wishful thinking.

But Lane didn't have any good stories.  Oh, he had dated some actors: a minor cast member of M*A*S*H,  the star of a Saturday morning tv show, a guy who played a Klingon on Star Trek.  But nobody really famous.

For someone who grew up a stone's throw from Paramount Studios, it was downright embarrassing.

"You can have my Celebrity Boyfriend," I told him one day.  "We broke up a while ago, but I'm sure I can arrange some sharing."

"The guy who starred in one tv show that nobody watched?  I'd rather stick to my M*A*S*H story."

"How about Michael J. Fox?"

"I don't want a getting-coffee story.  If I'm going to do this, I want at least a sausage sighting out of it!"

Then I had an inspiration:  "How about Cesar Romero?"

Lane frowned.  "The guy who played the Joker in the old Batman show?"

"You mean Sophia's boyfriend on The Golden Girls," I corrected him.  "And also the Cisco Kid.  And a Latin lover in about a hundred movies.  He was a big heartthrob, back in the day."

"How do you know the Joker?"

"You know that love seat in my room that's impossible to sit on?  I got it from him."

A couple of years ago, I answered an ad in Frontiers and bought a gold-and-white loveseat from Cesar Romero.  It turned out to be horribly uncomfortable, hard and scratchy -- I never sat on it; mostly it held clothes that I was to lazy to throw in the hamper. But I kept in contact with the barely-closeted Hollywood legend.

"Isn't Cesar Romero like a hundred by now?" Lane asked.

"He's a distinguished older gentleman," I answered, "But still in good shape -- I've seen him at the gym, walking on the treadmill or cruising in the steamroom.  Besides, when you tell the story, you can push it back a few years.  You can be a naive teenager asking for his autograph on the set of Batman in 1968.

"Um...in 1968 I was twelve.  But ok, I like Daddies.  We can go out, and if something happens, I'll tweak it a little into a celebrity dating story."


I arranged for us to have lunch at the Greenery, an al fresco restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Cesar was taller than me, white haired, and heavily tanned, an affluent retiree wearing a pink shirt unbuttoned a few buttons, and white shorts that displayed a considerable old-guy bulge.

Lane and I prepped by renting two of Cesar's old movies, Lost Continent (1951) and The Castillian (1964), assuming that he wouldn't want to talk about Batman.  But he said the Joker was his favorite role.

"I had a blast!  I played the Joker 20 times, and every time I got to 'accidentally' fondle Adam West (Batman) and Burt Ward (Robin).  Sometimes more than that.  Not that they minded -- we all became good friends.  I think Burt looked up to me as a role model."

After dinner we drove back to Cesar's apartment in Brentwood, on the other side of UCLA.  It didn't look like an old person's apartment -- all black leather and ultra-modern chrome.  He must have remodeled (that's why he sold the loveseat, I concluded).

Cesar sat between us on the couch with glasses of lemonade and, getting a little frisky, told us about the guys he had been with:

A long-term relationship with Tyrone Power.  Dating Cary Grant.  Hookups with Walter Pidgeon, Tony Perkins, and William Holden.

"Usually I went down on them.  That was the main thing gay guys did in those days.  And the guys receiving, they didn't think of themselves as gay.  It was just a friendly gesture.  Desi told me, 'Come on, Cesar, let's just get it over with, and then we can be friends."

"Desi Arnaz?"  I asked.  "Junior or Senior?"

Desi Arnaz (1917-1986) was the star of I Love Lucy in the 1950s.  His son, Desi Arnaz Jr. (1953-) was a former teen idol, with a band and some movie roles.

Cesar grinned.  "Why, both of them, of course."

This was so interesting that I was forgetting to cruise.  Then I saw Lane's hand rubbing against Cesar's bare thigh.  Cesar smiled and moved it to his crotch.

"So, anyone recent?" Lane asked.

"Tony Randall.  Raymond Burr.  And..."

Suddenly the doorbell rang.  Cesar brushed Lane away and stood, tenting, to ring in...Burt Ward!

He was in his 40s, chubby and squinty, but still recognizable as Robin the Boy Wonder from the Batman series.  Later we found out that he was still acting, appearing mostly in low-budget sexploitation movies like Cyber Chic and Beach Babes from Beyond. 

"Hey, I just wanted to return the book," Burt said, staring at us with surprise.  "I see you're busy."

"Not at all," Cesar said.  "Just entertaining some friends.  Care for some lemonade?"

He stared at the two of us for a long moment, as if trying to figure out what was going on. Then it dawned on him. ."Oh...thanks, but I can't stay.  Nice meeting you, though."  He vanished.

"I have to apologize for Burt," Cesar said, returning to his place between us.  "He's very nice, really, but not really comfortable with my lifestyle."

"But you've been with him?"  Lane asked.

"Just once."

"How big is he?  I mean, he had a huge bulge on the show.  I can't believe it got past the censors."

"He's quite the Boy Wonder. Kielbasa+."

"I can do better than that,"  Lane said, unzipping and pulling it out (I'm not allowed to reveal his size).

Cesar got on his knees and went down on him.

Soon they were on the floor in the 69 position.  Cesar had a Bratwurst+, very thick.

I didn't participate -- I wanted this to be Lane's story, not mine.

Lane finished very quickly -- Cesar brought sixty years of experience to the task.  But Cesar took awhile.  Finally Lane tired of using his mouth and switched to his hand.

When he finished, Cesar said "Thanks" rather brusquely and pulled his shorts back on. "More lemonade, anyone?  I always drink lemonade or something acidic after sex.  It kills the germs."

When Lane told the story later, he started with "I'm going to tell you about my date with Batman, Robin, and the Joker," even though Burt Ward was just there for a moment, and Adam West, not at all.

As if Cesar Romero wasn't impressive enough.

See also: Batman and Robin; The Satyr's Hookup with Sylvester Stallone.

Boy Wonder Bondage

The problem with Batman is that he never ages, but his teen sidekicks do.  So he has to keep changing his Robins.

1. Dick Grayson (1940-1983) graduated to become Nightwing.
2. Jason Todd (1983-88) either was murdered or graduated to become Redwing.
3. Tim Drake (1988-2011) graduated to become Red Robin.
4. Damien Wayne (2011-).

This gives fan artists a lot of subjects for their fantasies.

The original Dick Grayson was tied and threatened constantly, becoming the traditional "Damsel in Distress" for Batman to burst in and rescue.

When I was a kid, you could get bubble gum cards with Robin being threatened in various ways.

More recent Robins aren't threatened quite as often.

But still, fan artists have been quite busy with depictions of Robin in bondage.  There's a group on deviantart.com devoted to just pictures of Robin in Distress.

If you're going to show arousal or sexual activity, you have to make sure that Robin is over 18.

There are far fewer pictures of Batman himself being threatened, and those that exist tend to be humorous or bizarre, or both.  Batman being basted?

I can't even speculate on why Robin is more popular as an object of bondage fantasy.



















Even as an adult superhero.

The First Boy I Tied Up

Racine, Wisconsin, April 1968

I was eight years old, in second grade at Hansche Elementary School in Racine, Wisconsin, and I wanted to tie up a boy.

Guys were being tied up all the time in the mass culture of the 1960s: on Batman, The Green Hornet, The Wild Wild West, in Tarzan and Bomba the Jungle Boy movies, in comic books.  It was a standard means of putting the hero in peril.

But I didn't want to put anyone in peril.  I wanted to tie a boy up so he could strain against the ropes, so his muscles would stand out, and I could see and feel him as much as I wanted.

Maybe we would even kiss.







I didn't know the name of the boy I wanted to tie up: I only saw him in the schoolyard at recess.  We were probably the same age, but he was bigger than me, with hard shoulders and biceps.  He had a strikingly handsome face, heavy eyebrows, high cheekbones, and black hair, long and unruly in the 1960s style.

He didn't play with the other kids.  He sat by himself.

He never smiled.

I wasn't sure, but I might have seen him at the beach, too.  Lake Michigan was only a couple of blocks from our house, so we were there almost every warm day, and once last summer I saw a very cute buffed boy splashing around in the cold water with his parents.

He wasn't smiling then, either.

That's why he was so attractive: he was dark, brooding, a lost soul.

I knew exactly how I wanted to tie him up: on a chair, with his shirt off, his hands tied behind his back, and his legs tied to the chair posts.  That way, I would be able to kiss and touch his chest and biceps, his belly, maybe even his private area, and feel his "shame."

Mom said we should never touch our own "shame," except to wash and go to the bathroom, so it would be especially intimate to touch another boy's.

As I devised the plan, problems arose.

1. It couldn't happen in the house: Mom and Dad would be there.  This was too intimate for them to know about. Finally I decided on a park a couple of blocks from Hansche School, where there were some benches amid the trees.  I could tie the boy to one of the benches.

2. I didn't have any rope, at least not the nice, thick kind they used in the movies.  I hoped kite string would work.

3. I didn't know how to tie knots, except on my shoe.  So I would have to use those bow knots.

4. How could I get the boy to agree to be tied up?


When you're seven years old, you can make friends easily: you just
walk up to the guy and start talking.

 It took me a couple of weeks to screw up my courage, but one day in the spring, I walked up to him at recess and asked "Do you want to play after school?"

"Sure," he said.  "I have to ask Mom if it's ok though."

That part was easy.  After school we walked to his house to get his Mom's permission, then to my house.  He probably thought we would play in my back yard, but after I got my Mom's permission, I led him toward the park instead.

"There's nothing to do there," he complained.  "Let's go to the beach and throw stuff into the water."

"I want to play Batman" I told him.  "The Joker has Batman tied up, and he has to escape before an atom bomb explodes on Gotham City."

He shrugged.  "Ok.  Do you want to be the Joker or Batman?"

"You can be Batman," I said politely, as if I was giving him an honor.

It was a gray, cloudy Friday in April, and the park was mostly deserted, just a couple of old people, who wouldn't bother us.

I steered the boy toward an empty bench.  "This is my secret lair," I said.  "I have you in my clutches, Dynamic Dodo!"

He looked dubious.  "Shouldn't we have Robin, too?"

"The Boy Blunder can't save you this time, Batman!"  I sat the boy on the bench and whispered "You got to take your shirt off."

"What?  No way -- it's too cold."

No shirt off? How disappointing!  "Ok, then, I'm here to tie you up!  You can't escape me!"  I pulled the boy's arms behind the bench, and used the string to tie his wrists together.

"What are you doing?  That's too tight!"

"It will get even tighter than that for you!"

I had just enough string left to tie his arms together.  Then I sat on the bench next to him and ran my hand over his chest.  "Your muscles won't save you this time, Batman!"

The boy started jerking.  He wasn't supposed to do that!

"No!" he yelled.  "Let me out!  Let me up!"

Startled, I jumped over the bench and tried to untie the string.  He was jerking so much, I couldn't do it.

"Hold still!  I can't get a grip!"

"No!  Ow!" He was starting to cry.   An old guy started walking toward us.  I was going to be in big trouble!

Finally I got the knots undone.  The string fell to the ground.  The boy jumped to his feet and ran away.  I ran as fast as I could in the other direction, then circled around, went back to my house, and hid in my room.

Soon the boy's parents would call, demanding to know why I hurt their son.  Or maybe the police would arrest me and send me to jail!

But nothing happened.  No parents, no police.

The next day was  Saturday.  I stayed close to home, worried that I might see the boy out on the street, and he would try to beat me up, or send his big brother over to do it.

About 2:00 in the afternoon, the knock on the door I had been fearing finally came.  I stayed in my room, hiding.  I heard Dad answer the door, some muffled voices, and footsteps toward my room!

Maybe I could hide under the bed, pretend I wasn't there?  No -- Dad knew I was in my room.

He swung the door open without knocking.  "Your friend is here," he announced, leaving me alone with -- the boy.

All by himself.  No Dad, no big brother, no police.

I looked down at my feet, embarrassed to face him.

"I'm..."

"Do you want to play Batman again?"  he said.  "If we do it in the house, I'll take my shirt off."

He was smiling.

See also: My First Indian Sausage Sighting and BDSM Scene.