The Farmboy, the Preacher, and the Security Guard

Louisville, Kentucky, Novembe 1982

During my first year at Indiana University, Roy the Farmboy and I drove to Louisville, Kentucky to go to the Metropolitan Community Church

I couldn't wait!  A church founded by and for gay people!  I had been looking for a MCC ever since I read the Rev. Troy Perry's autobiography a couple of years ago.  There were none in Indiana at the time.

We parked near the Brown Theater in downtown Louisville and walked to the Unitarian Church, an old Gothic grey-brick building.  There was a guy pacing outside the door: African-American, very dark skin, short, solidly built, in a pink shirt and tie. He looked like a pro wrestler.

I didn't have my list of the Five Traits I Find Attractive yet, but in retrospect, he had four: short, dark, muscular, and religious.  And probably the fifth, too -- beneath the belt gifts.


"Hi," I said, holding out my hand.  "I'm Boomer, here for the service.  And this is Roy.  You probably know him already."

"Hi, Roy!  Glad you're back!  How's Bloomington?"  He looked around to make sure no one was watching, then gave Roy a kiss.  I felt a pang of jealousy.

"Boomer, this is Terence.  He's the sound guy and security guard for the church."

"Hi!"  He leaned in for a brief kiss.  "You can't be too careful.  We've had bomb threats.  You never know if a visitor is going to try to kill you.  So, are you guys together?"

"Not yet -- but I'm working on it."

Terence laughed and clapped him on the back.   "Come to brunch with us after the service and we'll talk, ok?"

We walked on into the sanctuary.  It looked like any other congregational-style church -- bare of religious symbols except for a pulpit decorated with a cross.  There were King James Bibles and Methodist hymnals on the pews.

"You and Terence...." I began.

"Oh, no.  I haven't been with anyone in church.  Besides, Terence is Rev. Reid's spouse.   That's what they call them in MCC.  Life-long commitment, rejecting all others, and all that.

My heart sank.  There would be no seeing Terence naked today, or any day.

There were about 50 people in the congregation, mostly gay men, mostly couples.  A scattering of lesbian couples, a few with children.  One heterosexual couple.

To my surprise, the service was all Nazarene -- old-time Gospel hymns, quotes from the King James Bible, hand-clapping, shouts of "Amen!," calling each other "Brother" and "Sister," and a sermon full of "God told me!" and "You got to get right with God!"

The only differences were:
1. The clerical robes.
2. The communion.
3. People typically kissed hello instead of shaking hands.  Same-sex on the mouth, opposite-sex on the cheek.
4. The sermon topic, Galatians 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."  The preacher expanded it to include "there is neither gay nor straight."

The preacher, Brother Reid, was in his 40s, a tall, beefy bear who looked very much like Brother Tyler back home.  He even paced and pounded like that old bulldog.

It was nice, but I was expecting something less -- well, less Nazarene.

Afterwards, Terence, Brother Reid, and a few other guys took us out to the English Grill in the Brown Hotel, which specialized in a sort of turkey Eggs Benedict called a Hot Brown.  Brother Reid sat beside me with his arm draped over the back of my chair, and we shared childhood "horror stories" about repressive church rules.  No swimming!  No dancing!  No movies!  No shopping on Sunday!

He looked, and acted interested.  Meanwhile, Terence was sitting next to me, but totally taken by Roy the Farmboy.  What was going on?  Did they..um..do that sharing thing, like the Episcopal priest I met in Des Moines?

A preacher hooks up with guys other than his spouse?

"What are you doing later?" Brother Reid asked.

"We have to be heading back to Bloomington.  It's a two hour drive."

"Two hours -- that's nothing! Sometimes I drive two hours before breakfast.  You need the grand tour of Louisville, and then the drag show at Nowhere."

Preachers go to bars?  And drink beer?

"Sounds like fun," Roy said.  "I just turned 21 last month -- I haven't gone to the bars yet!"

"Then it's high time you started!  The drag show is at 10:00 pm."

I didn't want to go to a drag show in a bar! "But then we'd be driving on dark country roads all the way up to Bloomington at midnight!"

"Or -- or --"  Brother Reid said with a smile, "You could spend the night, leave at 7:00 tomorrow morning.  We can put you up in the spare bedroom."

Sighing, I agreed.  Another night with Roy, who was nice but not my type, all anal instead of oral, while a Greek god lay sleeping in the next room.

The four of us, behaving very much like two couples on a double date, spent the rest of the afternoon at  Conrad's Castle, which I found only moderately interesting, and Slugger Field, which I found not interesting at all.  We had dinner at a steak house, and then went to Brother Reid and Terence's apartment to listen to depressing country-western music and wait until it was time to go to the bar.

I staked out an easy chair, while the other guys got the couch.

"Plenty of room over here," Brother Reid said, patting the tiny bit of seat next to him.

"Oh, I'm fine here," I said petulantly.

Roy stood, came to the chair, and put his arms around me.  "Feeling neglected?"  Soon we were kissing.  I was vaguely aware of Brother Reid and Terence doing the same.

"Maybe we'll skip the drag show," Brother Reid said.  "It's been a long day.  Roy, you know where the spare bedroom is.  There are clean towels in the bathroom, if you want to shower."


Another night with Roy -- good kisser, but not particularly impressive with anything else.

Later I got up to "use the bathroom."   The other bedroom door was closed.

I returned to our bed. "Sh*t!" I whispered.

"Anything wrong, babe?" Roy murmured.

I didn't know he was awake!  "Oh -- I was hoping to see those guys naked, but their door was closed."

"Why didn't you say something?  I can take care of that.  Hang on a minute."

He disappeared.  I heard the door to the other bedroom open.  A moment later, Brother Reid appeared in the doorway, naked, smiling.  He climbed onto the bed, pinned me down, and pressed his mouth against mine.  I felt his Bratwurst move against me.

When it was over, he returned to his own bed, and Roy returned to ours, having had a similar experience with Terence.

Apparently preachers do, in fact, hook up with guys other than their spouses, but they don't talk about it afterwards.

And I never did see Terence naked.

See also: The Farmboy Butches it Up; Dumped by Richie Rich

Joseph and I Hook Up in a Haunted House

Terre Haute, Indiana

One day the July after my first year in grad school at Indiana University, my friend Joseph called: "You up for a road trip this Saturday?"

"Where to?"  I asked, hoping he wanted to go to one of the gay bars in Indianapolis. 

"I gotta go to Terre Haute to pick up some stuff, then drop it off at my parents' house in Broad Ripple [a suburb of Indianapolis]."

"How much stuff?" I asked suspiciously.  I didn't want to be conned into helping him move.

"Not a lot, just a few keepsakes.  My parents are selling my great-aunt Rose's house, and they want me to go get what I want before everything gets packed up and sold."

"Are other guys coming, too?"

"There aren't a lot of guys around Bloomington during the summer, so it will be just you and me."  He paused.  It's a pretty long trip, so we'll probably have to spend the night in Broad Ripple before heading back."

Spend the night!  I know what that meant!

 Joseph was  one of the first gay guys I met in Bloomington: an undergraduate history major, with black curly hair, a baby face, and a lean tan physique.  And short -- Definitely my type!  But he was also very popular, dating Rick the philosophy major, then Mark the optometrist, then a medical student named Manfred (really!), so I never managed to squeeze in.

Obviously I wasn't his first choice, but who cared?  This was my chance to get intimate!

Saturday after lunch we set out for Terre Haute, about 1 1/2 hours away.  Joseph said that he grew up in Broad Ripple, but they drove out to visit his mother's aunt Rose almost every weekend.  He had fond memories of fishing in the Wabash River, drive-in movies, dinner at the Pizza King, and drinking hot chocolate at Christmastime

"Aunt Rose is in a nursing home with dementia," he told me. "She fades in and out.  Some days she's almost normal, and others she thinks it's 1961, and I'm her brother Oscar.  But she can still name all of the U.S. presidents, in order, up to Richard Nixon."

"Did she know about you [being gay] before her dementia?"

"No.  I'm not out anyone in my family, and I sure wasn't going to come out to a hard-core Methodist lady.   She was always worried that I wasn't dating enough.  One of the last things she said to me before her dementia began was 'You shouldn't be so picky, or you'll never find a girl."

Aunt Rose used to be a professor of American history at Indiana State University.  She lived in a big, two-story house in West Terre Haute, just across the Wabash.  It was painted a depressing shade of grey, but it had a wide porch and a big, carefully mown front lawn.

As we walked up to the house, I saw what looked like a face in the attic window.

 "Who's that?"  I asked. 

"Who's who?"

But it was gone.

I didn't want to turn him off by being leery of an old house, so I said "Does anyone else live here?"

He shrugged.  "No, but about a dozen members of the family have keys.  We drop by to do housework, pay Aunt Rose's bills, and such.  Why?"

"Oh, um...it's just well kept up." 

The living room was mostly packed up and ready to go, all of the pictures taken from the walls and the furniture all carefully marked with the name of whoever had claimed it.  Joseph took a candy dish and a ceramic figure of a dog.

The kitchen was cluttered with pots, pans, dishes, and various obscure implements in piles on the counters and tabletops.  Joseph took a fondue set, a long-ago Christmas present that had never been used, and the cup his Aunt Rose used to serve his juice in.

It was very warm.  He turned on the air conditioner, but we still had to take our shirts off.

Next came the study, heavy laden with books from a career as a college professor: a three-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Bruce Caxton's Civil War trilogy, plus mystery novels, literature, folklore, music, and about a hundred books on gardening.  Joseph and I filled five boxes with books to argue over later.

He left Aunt Rose's bedroom alone.

Upstairs was a storage room that was pack rat heaven.  50 years of Christmas and birthday cards. Stacks of report cards and school papers. Old magazines, carefully bundled.   Old wrapping paper.  Slide carousels.  Souvenirs of long-ago trips.  Joseph took a nativity set, some Christmas tree ornaments, and a painting of the house.

He left the first bedroom alone and zeroed in on the second, where he stayed whenever he slept over.  There were two twin beds with flowered comforters, a night stand between them, an old-fashioned dresser, and a little card table with framed pictures of Aunt Rose's family.

"Help me get this comforter.  And I think I want the lamp, too.  I used to fall asleep with the light on, and Aunt Rose would come in and turn it off.  Sometimes I just pretended to be asleep, so I would know when she came in..."  he stopped short.  He was trembling.

"Are you ok?"

"She joked that I liked this room so much, I should spend my honeymoon here.  I just... wish Aunt Rose could know about who I really am.  I'm sure she'd be ok with it...I'm so much happier now then when I was trying to be straight, with all the friends I've made...and .."  He started to cry.  I rushed to put my arms around him.  Then somehow we were kissing.

More after the break. Caution: Explicit

The Halloween Homophobe

Bloomington, October 1983

When I was growing up, my church deemed alcohol the worst possible sin, worse than murder or reading the Sunday newspaper or talking to a Catholic.  We couldn't eat food that once contained alcohol, like "beer batter shrimp."  We couldn't set foot in a bar, a restaurant that sold alcohol, or a grocery store with a beer section.  Some Nazarenes wouldn't let the doctor swab their arms with alcohol before giving them a shot.

 I've overcome many of the strictures of my childhood, but to this day I can't bring myself to drink anything alcoholic.  I've never had wine.  I've had only one and a half cans of beer in my life.

Why one and a half?

It was 1983, my second year at Indiana University, and my friend Viju and I had just moved into an apartment together.  On the Saturday before Halloween, we invited several of our gay friends and their dates to a party. We provided homoerotic snacks like penis-shaped cookies, plus Cokes and Sprites (and some of the guys brought beer).  We planned some double-entendre laden party games, an erotic Chamber of Horrors in Viju's bedroom, and finally the Halloween costume contest at Bullwinkle's.

I was going as Pan, the Greek god, with shaggy leggings and horns, Viju was a cop, and Jimmy the Bodybuilder on Crutches said he was coming as a vampire,  Joseph from the Gay Student Alliance was a shirtless Zorro, Terry from Eigenmann Hall was a drag queen witch, Mark the optometry major was Superman, and his date, a shy but extremely cute undergrad named Scott, was a gymnast.

Jimmy took a long time to get up the stairs, so I heard him coming, and opened the door to say hello.

My jaw dropped.  His  "date" was his friend Tony, who was straight,  and didn't know that Jimmy was gay.

Apparently Jimmy hadn't realized that it was a gay party.

In the 1980s, you simply did not come out, to anyone, except maybe your family and closest childhood friends, and then only after extensive preparation.  But in a moment a straight guy would be in our tiny living room with six gay men who weren't closeting their behavior.

Thinking fast, I yelled at Tony, "Where's your girlfriend?"

Straight guy! Closet time! Mark and his date, Scott, immediately slid apart.   Joseph grabbed the tray of penis-shaped cookies and rushed them into the kitchen, Terry took off his wig and earrings to transform his costume from witch to Uncle Fester, and Viju ran to slam the door to the erotic Chamber of Horrors. Someone turned on It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.  



Tony helped Jimmy through the door.  "I don't have a girlfriend," he said, glancing around the room, probably thinking "whoa, sausage fest."  "I was hoping to meet some girls here."

Glaring at Jimmy for being such a dope, I said,  "Sure, sure.  We're going trick-or-treating in the girls' dorm later."

You're probably thinking: why bother to closet ourselves?  It was seven against one.  What could he possibly do?

We soon found out.

Tony asked to use the bathroom.  I pointed the way.

A moment later, I heard his shrill voice: "Boomer, get in here!"

Apparently he had opened the wrong door.  He was standing in my bedroom, where there was a replica of Michelangelo's David on my desk, and the wall by the bed plastered with pictures of naked men torn out of In Touch and Mandate. 

"Where are the girls?" he asked.

"What girls?"

For a moment he just stared, speechless.  Then the tirade began.  "Are you trying to tell me that you're queer?  Don't you know that this lifestyle spreads diseases?  Don't you know that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because they were homos?"

"Um...."

Suddenly he became more conciliatory.  "Look, it's probably not too late.  You could rethink your decision."

Rethink your decision!  I was already angry with him for forcing my party into the closet, and this was the last straw. "Oh, gee," I yelled, "I had no idea.  Thanks for the heads-up!  I'll turn back to straight right away!"  I tore down some of the pictures from my wall, wadded them up, and threw them at his feet.

Then I ran back into the living room.  "Boobs!" I grunted.  "Boobs and football and...um, beer!"  I grabbed a can of beer, popped the top, and guzzled some.  It tasted horrible.

Tony followed, no longer conciliatory. "Did you guys know that Boomer is a homo?  He probably wants to take you back into his little chamber of horrors and do nasty, perverted things to you."

Um...yes, I was counting on it," Joseph said.

"You're queer?" Tony asked.  "Maybe you're all queer! Did you invite me and Jimmy up here to try to turn us that way, too?"

Of course, we should have shown him the door.  But we were not "out and proud."  We were coming from the dull despair of the 1970s Midwest, where gay people, when mentioned at all, were portrayed as utterly despicable.  Some of us were still working through feelings of guilt and shame, the nagging doubts: What if we really are sick?  What if God really does hate us?

"Count me out,  I just turned straight," I said, roiling with rage. "Boobs!  Football!  Beer!  Hey, turn the game on! This show sucks -- Charlie Brown is a fag!"  I drained my beer -- it still tasted terrible -- and started another.

Viju glared at Jimmy, "Hey, psychology major, maybe you should tell your buddy something?"

Jimmy hung his head.

"Oh, no, not Jimmy, too!" Tony exclaimed.  "He's handicapped!  Couldn't you perverts leave him alone?  Stick to the schoolyards!"

"Hey, I've never done it in a schoolyard!  Schoolbus, maybe!"  The room was starting to spin.  Was this what it felt like to be drunk?  "When I was six I married the boy next door."

Tony ignored me.  "How can you do those...those disgusting things?" he continued, this time addressing Mark and Scott.  "Do you hate yourself that much, or are you trying to get back at your parents, or do you just hate God?"

Scott the shy undergrad looked like he was about to cry.

Enough was enough!  I walked over to Tony and calmly poured the rest of my beer on his head.

That's why I've had only 1 1/2 cans of beer in my life.

Surprisingly, Jimmy and Tony stayed friends.  It wasn't Jimmy's fault, after all, that he had been "brainwashed" by a pack of "perverts."

And as my reward, I got to spend 7 minutes in the Chamber of Horrors with Scott the shy undergrad.

See also: Sharing the Optometrist's Boyfriend; Joseph and I Get Intimate in a Haunted House.

The Rich Kid and the Muscle Bear: Dumped by Richie Rich

Louisville, Kentucky, April 1984

I was at Indiana University to get my M.A. in English, but on a campus that offered Elementary Lithuanian, Sufi Poets, Mongolian Civilization, and Serbo-Croatian Epics, who could stand still for dull William Wordsworth?

In the fall of 1983, I enrolled in Tibetan Culture (for both graduate and undergraduate students), and one of my classmates was Richie Rich.

Not his real name, of course: In Harvey comics, Richie Rich was a blond in a Lord Fauntleroy costume whose infinite wealth caused an infinite number of problems.

This Richie Rich was a slim, tanned blond who was majoring in Central Asian Studies, mostly to annoy his Dad, a state senator who played golf with President Reagan. and consistently voted anti-abortion, anti-Russia, and anti-gay.

Richie was vehemently opposed to his father's politics, but he didn't mind the infinite wealth.  He spent every summer at the beach house on Cape Cod.  He drove a new Jaguar.  He spend hundreds of dollars on bohemian-chic fashions.  He always looked like he was trying out for a road tour of Fame.

He had just discovered Bullwinkle's, where he chatted up guys but rarely hooked up; no one ever saw him taking anyone home.

Richie wasn't really my type: he was tall, thin, and blond, and even in 1983 I preferred short, dark, and muscular.

But he was interested in religion, and he was...well, rich, two points in his favor.

I wouldn't mind discussing Buddhism, Hinduism, and Zoroastrianism while tooling around in Richie's Jaguar, or spending the week in his summer house on Cape Cod.

So I cruised Richie Rich at Bullwinkle's.  He was attentive, even flirtatious, allowing me to grope him and fondle his chest.  But before I could go any farther, he said "Well, see you in class," and vanished.

I invited him to my Halloween party in October, but he didn't come.

He was a Unitarian, so one Sunday in November, I visited his church -- no Richie Rich.

The next day in class, I said "I went to your church yesterday."

His eyes widened.  "What for?"

I took Russian Folklore instead of Tibetan in the spring 1984 semester, but, having just broken up with Jimmy the Bodybuilder on Crutches, I was even more eager to land a new boyfriend, preferably Richie Rich.

But what would attract his attention?

He was interested in religion.   How about the Metropolitan Community Church?

A church founded by and for gay people!  Richie wanted to see that!

The nearest MCC was in Louisville, Kentucky, about two hours south of Bloomington.  Roy the Farmboy and I visited last year, and I spent the night with the preacher, Brother Reid: a tall, bearded bear in his 40s.

Brother Reid was into Cute Young Things, and would certainly cruise Richie.  To avoid the competition, I rented us a hotel room for Saturday night.

We would drive up on Saturday, have dinner, go to the bars, spend the night, then get up on Sunday, go to church, and head for home.

Foolproof, right?  I would certainly have Richie Rich in my bed, where my superlative physique and expert sexual technique would win him as my boyfriend!

The trip down to Louisville went great, except that Richie insisted that we take my car -- he didn't want his Jaguar to get dirty.   We talked, laughed, discussed Buddhism, flirted with a local boy at a rural gas station.

We checked into the very elegant, very expensive Brown Hotel downtown -- fortunately, Richie paid. I put my arm around him the moment we set down our suitcases, but Richie said "Come on, let's go on a tour of the town, and find someplace to eat."

We had dinner at a Mexican place, and then went to the Discovery, a gay disco.

Mostly gay men, a scattering of lesbians and what looked like one heterosexual couple.

We hit the dance floor, and I tried to hug Richie again, but he moved away from me.

After awhile, I saw him dancing with an older guy, Brother Reid's age, a husky muscle bear with a black beard and a thick mat of chest hair, damp from dancing.

They had no problem hugging -- and kissing!

I went to the bar, bought a coke, and pulled Richie from the clench.   "Here's your drink."

"Thanks," he said, taking it from me while gazing into the eyes of the bear.

"Hi, my name is Boomer.  You guys are really hitting it off."

"Pleased to meet you," the bear said without looking at me.  They went back to kissing.

Hey, Richie is my date!

Jealous, outraged, I rushed to the nearest guy, a balding but buffed sleazoid in his 30s, and started cruising him.  After a moment, I looked over to see if it was having an effect.

Richie and the Bear were both gone!

I waited for an hour.  There were no cell phones in those days, so I couldn't call.

There was nothing to do but invite the sleazoid back to my hotel room and expend all my frustration on energetic, uninhibited oral and even some Greek.  Then I kicked him out.

Richie appeared in the morning, just as I was getting ready to call the police, all blustery and happy about the guy he tricked with last night.

I was furious.  You don't just dump guys at a bar.  Especially your date!

Ever since then, I have had an unbreakable rule: when you go out with someone, friend, boyfriend, hookup, or date, you stay with them to the end of the evening.  You can make dates for later, or you can share, but no abandoning them to pursue some guy.

You're probably wondering how church went.

He cruised Brother Reid.

Do Levis Show Bulges Better than Armani Wool Slacks?

Wolcottville, Indiana, July 1983

When I was a kid, my family was distinctly working class.  Dad worked in the factory, and Mom worked at the mall.

Our house was about the size of small apartment.

90% of dinners consisted of spaghetti, macaroni and cheese, tuna casserole, fried eggs, or -- shudder -- chipped beef on toast.

My parents' relatives were distinctly working class, too.  Not a college graduate among them.  A lot of pick up trucks, country-western music, and Goodwill t-shirts and jeans.

Fundamentalism.

Country western music!

So it came as a shock to discover that I am related to one of the wealthiest families in the world.

In 1982, when I was in grad school in Bloomington, I found out that Dad was adopted.  His biological father was the "black sheep" son of a wealthy northern Indiana businessman.

More research revealed a connection with the McCormicks of Chicago.

You know, Interntional Harvester, the Chicago Tribune, McCormick Place, McCormick School of Engineering, McCormick Theological Seminary, the Art Institute of Chicago, Villa Turicum, the House-in-the-Woods?

A vast dynasty of industrialists, publishers, politicians, and philanthropists descended from the eight children of Virginia inventor Robert McCormick (1780-1846)?

It's a complicated genealogy: I can give you the details if you're interested.  But it turns out that I had a 3rd cousin named Justine McCormick Grossman, 73 years old, daughter of a senator, granddaughter of the U.S. ambassador to Russia and France, living on a farm near Wolcottville, Indiana.

It was only a few miles from Rome City, but Aunt Nora, Dad's older sister, didn't know her.  I guess when you're adopted, you have enough trouble keeping up with your biological father, no time to worry about second cousins.

A relative who was wealthy, sophisticated, a world traveler, who listened to Mozart instead of Willie Nelson, who went to the opera instead of Nazarene revival meetings, who served beef bourguignon instead of chipped beef on toast!  And who, I assumed, was gay-friendly.  After all, weren't rich people tolerant of eccentricities?

So I called.  It took a few minutes to impress upon her who I was, but then she began to reminisce about life in the 1930s:

"My cousin Frank, your grandfather was quite a scandal in our family!" she told me in a scratchy voice.  "He ran off to become a singer in a music hall, of all things!  And then he married his...his housekeeper, who was young enough to be his daughter!  My, how tongues wagged!"

"So -- when his wife died, and he wasn't able to take care of his kids by himself, the Davis family adopted them.  Why didn't... um...a McCormick adopt them?"

That is, Grandma Davis is great and all, but why didn't you become my grandma, and raise my Dad and his sisters in luxury, and give me a car for my high school graduation, and send me to Harvard?

"Oh, your grandpa wanted nothing to do with the McCormicks.  He preferred to spend his time with riff-raff, actors and artists and music-hall singers.  Like that Lloyd Davis."

My Grandpa Davis?  Hey, I thought rich people were accepting of eccentricities and foibles!

I was starting to rile up a bit, but I calmed down when Justine began describing her two children and four grandchildren.  Her grandson Cyrus, named after the original Cyrus, was a theater arts major at Indiana University.  He went by his middle name, Michael.

My cousin, the scion of the ultra-wealthy McCormick family, was walking on the same campus as me?

He was probably more liberal.

Maybe we would become friends.  We would hang out in House-in-the-Woods or Cavigny, sail on his yacht, fly over to London and Paris, chat about caviar...

Or we would become lovers.  He no doubt had a handsome, aristocratic face, dark hair, a gym-toned physique, and an enormous Mortadella beneath the belt.  I knew from my doomed pursuit of Richie Rich that virgin wool slacks show baskets a lot more effectively than our working-class Levis.

I fantasized about going down on him as we lay on the silk sheets in the gild-and-wood bedroom where he once prepared for polo matches and studied his Latin lessons.

Cousin Justine was mistaken -- there was no one named Cyrus Michael McCormick Grossman Hawthorne on campus.

"Oh, maybe he graduated already," she said.  "You know how time flies when you get older.  I think he's in Philadelphia now.  Let me look up the address for you."

The address was around the corner from a Philadelphia gay bar listed in my Gayellow Pages.  Michael was obviously gay!

Still, too far to go for a rich relative, gay or not, so I forgot about it until the summer of 1983, when Cousin Justine died.  Her daughter found my name in her address book, and had her assistant invite me to the funeral.

It was an odd prospect, going to the funeral of someone I'd never met and only spoke to twice. But, I figured, it would be a chance to meet other McCormicks, including my fifth cousin, the gay Philadelphia theater arts major named Cyrus Michael.

In July 1983, I drove from Bloomington up to an Episcopal Church in Elkhart, Indiana for the funeral.  The reception was held at the home of Justine's daughter and son-in-law: an English Tudor with sculpted grounds.

As I mingled among the McCormcks, Grossmans, Hawthornes, Dressers, Jacksons, and Bialis, I heard the same right-wing politics as among my working-class relatives.  Maybe worse.

Cousin Michael was tall, lithe, rather feminine, with glasses and a short beard. In 1983 you didn't come out to strangers (or anyone else, for that matter),  But how could he not be gay?

"I grew up on stories of your grandpa's dirty tricks," he told me.  "I always thought it was so cool to be able to do your own thing, without all the obligations that come with being a McCormick.  In fact, I think that's what gave me the motivation to become an actor."

The grass is always greener....

See also: Was My Grandfather Gay?

Dr. Kirtis Offers Me His Bratwurst

Bloomington, May 1983

At Indiana University,  I was technically studying for a M.A. in English, but the variety of courses available at a gigantic university was overwhelming.  What 22 year old from a small town in the Midwest could resist:
Tibetan Culture and Civilization
Mesoamerican Archaeology
First Year Arabic
Or Russian Folklore?

I was at a definite disadvantage in the Russian folklore class, since I didn't speak Russian or know anything about the scientific study of folklore.

All of the other students were Russian majors, researching the folklore motifs in Dostoevski or Gogol.  I was interested in...um...um..the mythology of the ancient Slavs?

Well, mythology is sort of like folklore, right?

The Professor, Dr. Kirtis, was a Hungarian bear, in his 50s, white haired, bearded, a little chubby, with thick arms and chest hair peeking up over the top of his shirt.  A little old for me, but it was hard not to be attracted to his ravenous energy as he paced the classroom, arms flailing, as he pontificated on the Firebird Suite or Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka or  Afanasyev's folktale collection.

Not to mention his obvious beneath-the-belt gifts, a gigantic Mortadella shifting around inside his black dress slacks.

Noticing that I was a bit out of my league amid the Russian majors, he made me his "project," bringing me articles and books and walking with me after class across the quad to his office.

I told him that I heavily disliked fairy tales as a kid.  "They're always about princes winning princesses, with marriage as the goal of the quest."  I paused, not wanting to accidentally out myself.  "But when you get married, the adventures end."

"But if the adventure continues, the story must go on," Dr. Kirtis said.  "And all stories must end."

All stories must end.  How profound, and rather depressing for someone just starting out in life.  But then I thought, Gay people can't get married.  Our adventures never end.

Like most married professors, Dr. Kirtis mentioned his wife every five minutes during his lectures .  She was in New York, doing some sort of work for the United Nations.  They saw each other once a month.

Separated?

He must have figured "it" out, overcome the brainwashing of our heterosexist society.   Obviously he was gay!



I brought up the subject, vaguely, to see how he would respond.  "Dead Souls, by Gogol, seems to have a homoerotic subtext."

"Homoerotic?"  he repeated, confused.

"Some hints that the characters are gay."

"Oh!"  He didn't display the usual disgusted frown that heterosexuals got when they were forced to think about gay people.  "Perhaps Gogol was writing with his subconscious, yes?  Such scandals he could never think of in his conscious mind, but who knows where the heart will take us?"

Close enough.

During finals week, Dr. Kirtis invited his advanced classes to his house for a pool party.

I expected a large crowd -- he taught Russian Folklore, Hungarian History, and Introduction to Hungarian.  But the classes were very small -- only three students on the campus of 40,00 were studying Hungarian -- so there were only about 15 of us, mostly boys, some very hot Russian and Central Asian Studies majors in swimsuits (Richie Rich wasn't there).




After greeting us, Dr. Kirtis went into the house for a few minutes, and returned in his own swimsuit.  A Speedo!

Gigantic bulge!  Definitely a Mortadella, very thick.

Ok, it doesn't count as a Sausage Sighting, but I swear, his Speedo was so tight that I could see the teeth marks!

There were lots of hot guys my age, but I kept close to Dr. Kirtis all night.

He served sausages and potato salad.  When they were ready, he asked "Boomer, can I serve you my Bratwurst?"

I looked at his crotch and said "Sure!"

He giggled.  He knew what I meant!

Nothing else happened.  After finals were over, Dr. Kirtis flew to New York to be with his wife.

Still -- he knew.

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

The Bisexual Fairy Godfather of the Summer of 1984

Between 1982 and 1984, I was studying for my M.A. in English at Indiana University.  I did not do well.  I couldn't focus on any one topic, or any one department -- I rushed around in the 3,000+ courses taught every semester, grabbing onto things like Mandarin Chinese and Russian Folklore, and ignoring my actual English classes

Besides, who had time to study?  I had just discovered bar pickups.  My friend Viju and I were out at Bullwinkel's, or a a gay bar in Indianapolis, two or three times a week, and we never came home alone.

Sometimes I brought a guy home, had sex with him, then went back to the bar to pick up someone else.

Meanwhile my classes faltered, and I squeaked by with B's and an occasional C+.  In grad school, anything below an A is considered failing. But who cared?   I was going to become a book editor, not a literature scholar.

So I squeaked by, and in the spring of 1984, I sent out resumes:130 publishing companies, 48 newspapers,  34 television stations, and 16 translation agencies.   No openings, no openings, no openings, no openings.

Classes ended. I received my M.A..  No job. I spent ten days visiting India with Viju, then a week in Rock Island, then returned to Bloomington.

I couldn't afford our apartment any more, so I got a room in Eigenmann Hall, and went back to my old job in the snack bar.

It was fun when I was a student.  But as my life's work?.  I imagined myself at age 50, still living in that coffin-sized room with the bathroom down the hall, still selling burgers and fries to undergrads.

All of my friends had graduated and moved away.  And any new friends I made would graduate and move away, again and again, an every-changing blur of faces and cocks for the rest of my life.

That summer was an endless cold, dark night.

53 people died in a mass shooting at a McDonald's in San Ysidro, California, the worst mass shooting in modern American history.

The lunatic in the White House (not as bad as the Orange Goblin, but still a lunatic) almost ended the world by "joking" that the U.S. had launched nuclear missiles at the Soviet Union.

The AIDS crisis was making national news for the first time, and dubbed "a gay disease."  Fundamentalist churches latched onto it to decry the "clinically insane, disease-ridden homosexuals" coming for your children.

All four of the factories in Rock Island closed, doubling the unemployment rate.  My father and brother were both laid off.  I couldn't even fall back on a factory job.

The movies I saw (by myself) are now hailed as classics, but I found them depressing: Ghostbusters, Gremlins, The Karate Kid, The Neverending Story, Revenge of the Nerds, Bachelor Party, Conan the Destroyer

Laura Branigan's "Self Control" was playing on the radio:

I live among the creatures of the night.
I haven't got the will to try and fight.
I must believe in something, so I guess I'll just believe that this night will never go.

Then came my fairy godfather, aka Ben, who worked in the bank downtown.  He was my teller when I withdrew some money (this was before ATMs), and two nights later I saw him at Bullwinkle's.

About ten years older than me, a chunky redhead with a long face, a smooth chest, and no biceps to speak of.  Not at all my type.

And bisexual -- he mentioned watching Family Ties, not for the hot teen idol Michael J. Fox, but for Meredith Baxter Birney, who played his mother!

I couldn't help imagining Ben screwing the lady.  His butt bouncing up and down while he plowed into her lady parts, squeezing her breasts, kissing her.  Gross!  Complete turn-off.

But I was depressed, and I would have gone home with Boy George just to avoid going back to my coffin-sized room in Eigenmann Hall.

Ben had a house in Unionville, about 10 miles of dark, scary country roads from campus. An old-fashioned wood-and-plaster living room, a four-poster bed with black sheets, a drawer-ful of porn magazines, both gay and straight.  Very cold for July.

We didn't start kissing until we were both under the sheets.  He had smooth, soft chest, a bubble butt, and a big cock, about 8", thick and ruddy.  I went down on him, and he finished with interfemoral.  Then he beat me off while we were kissing.  Not bad.

After the sex, it was too early to sleep, and I didn't want to  leave, so we sat up and turned on Saturday Night Live. I told Ben about my master's degree, my dismal job prospects, and my future at the Eigenmann Hall snack bar.  He said that he was working on a Ph.D. in sociology --- very slowly.  This was his seventh year in the program, and he wasn't nearly ready to start his dissertation.  The job at the bank took up most of his time.  But he still planned to finish, and become a college professor.

"I love being in front of a class -- it's an amazing rush.  Hey, why don't you go to work at a college?  They always need teachers."

"Yuck!" I exclaimed.  "I taught during my first year.  Surly students who didn't read their assignments, didn't know even the basics about...well, anything, and made homophobic comments."

"It beats making hamburgers, I bet.  Besides, just think of the beefcake!"

"But it's July.  Won't they have all the teachers they need for the fall?"

"Let's find out."  Ben walked naked into the next room and came back with The Chronicle of Higher Education.  5 English teaching jobs available in the fall that required just a M.A.

A month later, I was heading for Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, an English instructor. It would be horrible, but later, I would teach as an adjunct, then get my Ph.D. (not in English), and spend the next twenty years standing in the front of classrooms.

It definitely beats making hamburgers.

And Ben was right.  The beefcake is amazing.

The Bed-Switching Freshman at the Chocolate Moose

I was saddened to learn that the Chocolate Moose, a landmark ice cream place on Walnut Street in downtown Bloomington, is going to be demolished to make way for a generic office building.  The distinctiveness of local culture vanishes for faceless uniformity, yet again.

The Chocolate Moose was a quirky little building shaped like a chocolate chalet.  You went to the  window to order soft-serve ice cream, floats, shakes, hot dogs, sloppy joes, that sort of thing.  No indoor dining, but there were a couple of picnic tables.

It was only a block from the apartment Viju and I shared during my second year in graduate school at Indiana University.

It was open until 2:00 am, so we often dropped by after cruising at Bullwinkle's, especially if we struck out (if we were successful, we took our hookups to Bob's Burgers instead).

The later it got, the better the sightseeing -- half-drunk fratboys pushing soft-serve cones into each other's faces, shirtless jocks licking on snow cones until their tongues turned blue.

In spite of the beefcake, there  wasn't a lot of cruising going on.
1.Most of the customers were straight.
2. There weren't a lot of places to hold private conversations.
3. Once you're ready for ice cream, you're probably too emotionally raw to handle a hookup.

But I have a good hookup story involving the Chocolate Moose.

Bloomington, May 1984.

Viju and I head out to Bullwinkle's, about five blocks from our apartment.

There's a boy pacing around the entrance, with that deliberate-but-nonchalant look of someone trying to get the nerve to go in.

He's very young, probably just 18 (which would make him five years younger than me), short, slim, pale, not my usual type, but very cute, with black hair, an oval face, very red lips, and a little blush in his cheeks.

We make eye contact.  I start to say something like "It's not so bad inside," but Viju pushes me through the door.

"What's the matter?  Didn't you think he was cute?"

"Oh, yes, definitely worth it!  But I was worried -- he might be an undercover cop.  The minute you say something sexy, bang!  You're finished!"

I wait awhile, but the Freshman never comes in.  Viju and I set out to cruise, but we really don't have our minds on it -- after seeing the super-cute guy at the entrance, everyone seems second-rate.

We cruise for an hour or so, but no one comes to mind.  Finally we leave.

On the way home, we pass the Chocolate Moose.  The line is half a block long.

"Want ice cream?" Viju asks.

"No, I'm not waiting in a line that size!  You go on.  I'll see you at the house."

I leave Viju waiting in line, return to the apartment, and sit down to watch tv and read a book.

A half hour passes.  Then 45 minutes.  How long was that line, anyway?

Did Viju decide to go back to the bar?  Did he get kidnapped?  Should I go out looking?

Then I hear footsteps on the stairs.  Viju comes in -- with the Freshman, still carrying his malt!

"This is Jerry," he says, his arm around the boy.  "He's a freshman, planning to major in economics."

"I saw you at Bullwinkle's," I say, trying to be nonchalant.  "So you finally went in?"

"Um...no...actually, we met at the Moose," Viju says.  "We started talking in line, and...well, you know."  He turns to the Freshman.  "Meet my roommate, Boomer."

The Freshman looks at me.  "Hi," he says softly.

"Do you need to go to the bathroom?"

He shakes his head.

"Then we'll just be going to bed.  Goodnight."

Viju draws him into a kiss right in front of me, almost as if he is trying to make me jealous.

Arm in arm, they vanish (there was no sharing in those days).  Soon I go to bed.

Our bedrooms are right next to each other, down a little hallway from the living room, and we always leave our doors open a crack for ventilation, so I hear everything that happens in Viju's room.

Usually it's fun, a lot of moaning and thumping and "Yeah, like that!" and "I'm getting close!", plus a glimpse of semi-tumescent penises as the hookups walk past my door to the bathroom to wash up afterwards.  But tonight I feel left out and jealous.  If only I had stopped for ice cream, the Freshman would be in my bed right now!

I wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of someone climbing into bed next to me.  The Freshman!

Naked, his tight smooth chest and skinny belly glowing in the pale light from the window, his penis average sized but beautifully shaped.  I can't see his eyes.  He must have gotten up to go to the bathroom, and accidentally picked the wrong door.

"Um...Viju's next door," I murmur.

"Shh," he whispers.  "I'll take care of everything.  Just leave everything to me."

He climbs atop me.  He kisses my chest, my abs.  His hand finds my penis.  I stand, aroused.  I feel his mouth and tongue.  

Bed-switching would be quite common in West Hollywood, but I've never experienced it before.

Will Viju be outraged tomorrow morning?  Will he accuse me of betraying him?  Am I betraying him?

Tomorrow can take care of itself.  I turn the Freshman over onto his back and finish by kissing him and thrusting between his legs.

See also: Bed-Hopping in Japan; The Ex-Con at the Ice Cream Stand

August 1984: Public Sex in Mississippi

Oxford, Mississippi, August 1984

Studying for my M.A. at Indiana University was lots of fun, but an academic failure.
1. Faced with 3,000 possible courses, I went crazy: South Asian Anthropology, Russian Folklore, Mandarin Chinese, Tibetan Culture, Languages of Africa.  Competing with students majoring in these topics, I didn't do well, and eked by with B's (failing grades in grad school).
2. I planned to become a book editor, not a literature scholar, so why did I need to read Ralph Roister Doister, Pamela, The Mill on the Floss, Love's Alchemy, The Vicar of Wakefield, Sartor Resartus, Ulysses, , The Waste Land, and The Duchess of Pembroke's Arcadia?  I got B's in my English classes, too.

So there was no question of going on for a Ph.D. -- it wasn't going to happen. Instead, in the spring of 1984,  I sent out resumes to 130 publishing companies, 48 newspapers,  34 television stations, and 16 translation agencies.

Nothing.

Then one day in July, Ben the Fairy Godfather asked "Why don't you teach?  They always need English professors."

"But...I hate teaching!  Surly students who never do the assigned readings, fall asleep in class, and make homophobic comments!"

"Do you hate it more than making sandwiches?"

He gave me a copy of the Chronicle of Higher Education, which lists academic job openings.  It was mid-July, so there weren't a lot of jobs for the fall still open, and most required a Ph.D.  But I applied for five teaching positions, and in mid-August, I got a phone call from a college near Houston, Texas:  "Classes start in a week: Intro to Literature, Survey of American Literature, and two Freshman Comps.  How soon can you be here?"

Houston, Texas or making sandwiches?

The Lyceum, Ole Miss

On August 19th, 1984, I packed my car with two suitcases and two boxes of books, and drove 1000 miles south through Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and finally Texas.

As I was driving through Tennessee, I saw two country boys with guns (top photo), and thought "This is a good sign."

I spent the night in Oxford, Mississippi, and walked onto the campus of Ole Miss, the University of Mississippi.  The Lyceum was brightly lit in the darkness.

 I wondered if I would see Luster and Quentin from The Sound and the Fury, or Bo and Luke Duke from The Dukes of Hazard, or at least more country boys with guns.

The Lyceum pointed the way to the Mississippi equivalent of the Levee in Rock Island,  a wooded area outside William Faulkner's Rowan Oak, with grassy walkways and secluded groves of oak, elm and magnolia trees, where men met each other in secret, in the dark.

Lots of men -- rugged Ole Miss Rebel football players, well-kept businessmen-types, bears, blue collars, rednecks who drove a dozen miles to stand in seclusion in the warm, humid night. Lots of muscles.  The smell of beer and cigarettes and sweat.

And a cute U. of M. undergrad named Elmer.

Another good sign.  Maybe Texas wouldn't be so bad after all.

See also: 36 Hours of Cruising at Lambert International Airport.

Sharing the Optometrist's Boyfriend

Bloomington, October 1982

When I arrived for graduate school at Indiana University, 21 years old, fresh from a small town in the Midwest, my gay experiences were so limited that I never suspected Mark, the optometry student who lived down the hall from me in the graduate student dorm.

He was short and compact, with a flat face and a high forehead, cute, a little nerdy, not stereotypically swishy.

 I didn't suspect when he joined me in watching The Powers of Matthew Star on Friday nights, a superhero spoof notable only for teen idol Peter Barton.

I didn't suspect when I knocked on his door one Friday night in October, a couple of weeks after my visit to the adult bookstore where I found the Gayellow Pages, and Mark opened with his shirt disheveled, and I saw another guy with his shirt half off sitting on the bed.

I didn't even suspect when I noticed that the two twin beds in the room had been pushed together to make a double.

But I suspected the other guy -- tall, pale, with a slim, tight chest, blond hair, and a round, pretty face.  Effeminate!  Must be gay!

I grinned at the glimpse of beefcake as he quickly buttoned up.  My first gay guy in Bloomington!  "Hi, I'm Boomer."

Obviously unwilling to make introductions, Mark complied out of politeness.  "Boomer, this is Shaun.  My...um...cousin.  Visiting me."

Mark's cousin was gay!  Did he know, or was he oblivious?

I barged into the room, took Shaun's slim hand, squeezed it, and held it for a moment too long. He smiled. I began to feel flushed -- here I was, flirting with Mark's cousin right in front of him!

 "So...um...you guys up for The Powers of Matthew Star? It's stupid, but it has Peter Barton in tights."

"No, not tonight, sorry," Mark said.  I didn't catch his look that meant Get lost!

 "I'll go!" Shaun exclaimed.  Mark glared at him.  "Oh, relax.  It will be fun.  That other thing will keep!"

"Ok, then, you guys go ahead."  I didn't catch Mark's angry tone.  "I'll get some studying done.  But don't stay too long -- we don't want to be late for that other thing."

"Sure, sure.  See you in an hour." He touched Mark's shoulder affectionately, and stood, facing me.  Definitely cruising, I thought.  "Which way to the tv lounge?"

Each of the tv lounges in Eigenmann Hall was dedicated to a different channel (back then there were only six).  On Friday night, most residents were out, or watching Benson on the third floor or Dukes of Hazzard on the sixth.  We had the thirteenth floor lounge to ourselves.

Shaun and I sat on a big crimson-colored couch, so close together that I could feel the warmth of his thighs and glimpse his pale hard chest in the places where his shirt was still askew.

In those days you never just came out to someone -- the results were usually unpleasant, and sometimes violent.  You tip-toed around the question.

"So, are you in college?" I asked.

Of course, Shaun was actually an undergraduate psych major at Indiana, on a date with Mark -- this was their fifth date.  They had gone out to dinner, and they were just getting ready for intimacies when I barged in.  But he couldn't tell me that.  He had to stick to the "visiting cousin" story.

 "Oh yes, I'm a junior at Notre Dame.  My parents insisted -- I think they wanted me to become a priest.  Imagine, me a priest!  They about had a heart attack when I told them I wanted to major in music instead.  Voice."

We were good at making up impromptu stories in the 1980s.

"You'll have to sing for me sometime."

"Oh, I'll do more than sing for you."

I felt even more flushed with the heat of anticipation.  "Um...Peter Barton is quite an actor," I said.

"Yes.  I had a big crush...I mean, all the girls in my high school had a big crush on him."

That was out enough for me!  I checked the door to see if anyone was looking, then reached out and took Shaun's hand.  He squeezed it, and then moved it carefully to his lap.  "I haven't met anyone...you know...at IU yet," I said.

"Me, neither."

There was a gay student organization on campus, and a gay bar in town, but I was afraid to go to either.

"Does Mark know?" I asked.

You never outed a friend in the 1980s, so Shaun didn't say "He's my boyfriend."  He said "Oh, yes, he knows."

"And he's ok with it?"

"Perfectly.  You should tell him that you are -- it would be nice to have a friend on campus, wouldn't it?"  He paused.  "Besides me, of course."

"You'll be going back to Notre Dame soon."

"Oh, yeah.  Right."  The problem with making up stories is, you have to keep them consistent.  "But we have tonight, right?  And the night is young."

I wasn't much for hookups in the 1980s, but Shaun was the first gay person I met on a campus of 40,000, and besides, I hadn't been with anyone for a few months.  "You want to -- come back to my room?" I asked.

Now Shaun had a dilemma.  He had a boyfriend.  He was on a date.  But he  couldn't say so without outing Mark.

So he made a decision: "Let's go back to Mark's room instead."

"What?"

"He's got that big double bed.  We can really get to know each other there."

"But then he'll find out about me."

"Oh, don't worry.  He won't mind.  I'll...um...tell him to come in here and watch tv for an hour."

The prospect of being with Shaun trumped the fear of coming out to his "cousin," so I allowed him to lead me back to Mark's room.

Mark was sitting at his desk, reading a gigantic optometry textbook.  "Hi, how as the tv?" he growled without looking up. Shaun wrapped his arms around his shoulders and kissed him.

"What are you doing!" he yelled, pushing Shaun away.  "Um...Cousin Shaun, stop fooling around!"

"Yes, well, about that."  He carefully shut and locked the door, then put his arms around me. "I invited Boomer along on our date."

Date?

Mark stared for a moment, and then smiled.  "You mean he's....I really had no idea!"

Suddenly both of them had their arms around me. Shaun was unbuttoning my shirt and nuzzling Mark's neck at the same time. Mark was groping me.

"You're not really cousins, are you?"

And we were kissing.

Mark and I "shared" Shaun a few more times before they broke up. But the sharing wasn't as important as knowing that I was not alone at Indiana University.

See also: My First Visit to an Adult Bookstore and The Farmboy Butches It Up

My First Bath House

Rock Island, June 3, 1983

I'm 22 years old, home from grad school in Bloomington, along with my friend Viju.  We've seen most of the sights in the Quad Cities, and I'm running out of ideas.

"We could go to the Amana Colonies, or to Starved Rock State Park...."

"You know what I always wanted to do?" Viju says.  "Go to a gay ghetto!"

I knew the term from The Advocate.  A neighborhood, a place where gay people can live in freedom, not hiding,   With bookstores stocking only gay-themed books!  Community centers!  Organizations!  Gay people walking hand in hand down the street!

According to The Advocate, there are seven gay ghettos in the U.S., in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Houston, and -- Chicago -- the nearest big city to Rock Island, about three hours away.

June 4th, 11:00 am

Viju and I take Interstate 80 to the 94, get off at the Loop, and drive up Lake Shore Drive to the North Side, to a sliver of streets between Clark and Broadway that our Gayellow Pages tells us is clustered with gay places.

We check into our hotel and walk around.  It's a little disappointing.  No gay couples walking hand-in-hand, or newsstands cluttered with gay magazines, or...well, anything.  It looks like a standard suburban neighborhood with small shops, restaurants, gas stations, a drug store. A lot of male-female couples.

You have to look carefully to see the gay presence.  Same-sex couples walk in pairs, close together but not touching.  Young single men are walking dogs, buying groceries, jogging.  

There are bars with closeted names: My Brother's Place, Closet, Carol's Speakeasy.

I want to go into Yosemite, which has a placard outside with  Yosemite Sam pointing a phallic gun in the air.

"Who is that?" Viju asks.  "Is he gay?"

"He's a cartoon character, one of my childhood icons.  On the placard of a gay bar!"  The gay and straight worlds are so complete separate, with such impermeable boundaries, that it is shocking to see an icon of one in the other, like seeing a unicorn on Main Street.

"Sounds stupid.  We'll go to another bar, something hotter, like the Glory Hole."

12:00 pm

It's too early for the bars, so we have lunch at Hamburger Mary's, a restaurant listed in The Gayellow Pages.  It has a picture of a big-breasted woman on the placard, but inside it's crowded with young buffed men, many reading Gay Chicago magazine.

Then we go to Gay Horizons, a community center, actually a small storefront.  There are fliers about AIDS support groups, drug and alcohol support groups, a political club, the Metropolitan Community Church, a gay synagogue, clubs for runners and square-dancers!

I grab Viju's arm.  This is amazing!  A year ago, I had no idea that any gay organizations existed except for bars.  This is a whole gay world, open, out there, only slightly closeted.

Of course, none of the groups meet on Saturday afternoon.  

2:00 pm

Seven hours until the bars get busy.

"Let's go to the Museum of Science and Industry," I suggest.

"No!  We came to see a gay ghetto, and that's what we're going to do."

"But there's nothing open on Saturday afternoons."

"Here --"  he showed me the listing in The Gayellow Pages.  "Man's Country.  A bathhouse, open 24 hours."

I read about bathhouses in gay novels.  "No way!  They're dangerous.  Old guys grab you while you're sleeping."

"So who says we'll be sleeping?"

It's an older 2-story building on Clark Street, far north of the gay ghetto, almost in Evanston.  We pay for two lockers and go through a green door into a vast expanse of black and chrome, dimly lit, with a musky smell.  

2:30 pm

We take off our clothes, wrap towels around our waists, and walk through a maze of small cabana rooms.  Some of the doors are open; we peer inside at guys with their penises or butts in the air, waiting.

Therer's a sauna, a steam room, a small gym, and a room with glory holes.  Guys in towels kissing and going down on each other.  A couple doing anal while a crowd watches.

2:45 pm

An older guy -- way old, probably in his forties, with a hairy chest and beard -- is receiving oral sex from a kid our age.  Viju and I watch.  Suddenly the Kid reaches out, pushes my towel aside, and goes down on me, then both of us in turn.   Hairy Chest pulls Viju close and kisses and fondles him.  

When Hairy Chest finishes, he walks off without a word.  The Kid stands and walks off, too.  

I glance at Viju.  "Not a lot of conversation, is there?"

3:00 pm

I say "hello" to a very young guy, college age or younger, sitting by himself in the lounge.  He says "I'm resting."

3:15 pm

In the steam room, I go down on two guys without learning either of their names.  While I'm working on the second,  an anonymous hand starts fondling me from behind.  I turn and say "Hi!" to a buffed blond in his 30s.

He looks flustered and walks away.

"What's the point of being around a bunch of gay men if you never talk to any of them?" I say in a loud, angry voice. I stomp out.  Viju, who has been working on a thickly muscled Hispanic guy, follows.

"Do you want to go?"

I put my arm around him.  "No.  I came here to meet guys, and I'm going to meet some."

"Maybe they're just here for sex, not talking."

"Well, I'm not leaving until I have a conversation with someone."

3:30 pm

I lower myself into the hot tub, where two middle-aged men are chatting, and introduce myself.  They give me bar-style Attitude.

3:45 pm

I go to the front desk, where an older guy is browsing among the sex toys and lubricants for sale.  He's in his 30s, very muscular, with a hard smooth chest and a military-style buzz cut.

"Hi, I'm Boomer, from Rock Island."

"I'm resting," he says without looking up.

"Me, too.  But my friend and I are visiting, and I was wondering if you could recommend a nice bar?'"

"That depends on what you're into.  Leather, bears, twinks, hustlers?"  

"A bar where you can actually sit down and have a conversation with someone."

"Oh, a piano bar!"  He glances at me, smiling.  "You don't look old enough to be a daddy.  Let me give you a taste of the real Chicago.  You and your friend meet me here at 9:00."  He writes an address down on a slip of paper.  "My name is Mike, by the way."

The address he gives is for Yosemite.  It turns out to be a cowboy bar, actually named after the park.

10:00 pm

Yes, we did go home with Mike, but I don't remember much about the bedroom activity.  My biggest memory is seeing a cartoon character from my childhood in the gay world. 

See also: The Shy Boy at the Bathhouse; Three Days of Cruising in Chicago