The Boy Named Angel

When I was in grade school, I had a regular boyfriend, but I liked lots of  other boys: Craig, who sat next to me in class; Joel, who also liked looking at boys with muscles; Robbie, a hookup at the bookmobile one summer: and David Angel.

Not the David Angell who produced Cheers and Frasier.  A slim, shy boy, puppy-dog cute, with dark hair and dark blue eyes and nice hands.  We played occasionally, but never became friends, I think because there were so many bigger, bolder guys around.  It was one of those relationships that might have gone somewhere, but didn't.

I have three good memories of David:

1. One day at recess we all decided to take nicknames.  David wanted "Muscles."
"But you don't have any muscles!" I protested.
"Sure I do. I'm real strong!  Feel."
He flexed a small, hard bicep.  I cupped it with my hand.
"You're right.  It's really big."  Flushed with an warmth that I didn't understand, I moved quickly away.

2. In the spring of sixth grade, shortly after we went to "A Little Bit O'Heaven," Joel invited some of us over for a sleepover.  His small twin bed was only big enough for two; everyone else had to make do with sleeping bags.  We spent the evening wondering who would be the Fifth Boy, the boy invited to share Joel's bed.

At bedtime, Joel said "Everybody else here has been in my bed before, so it's David's turn."

My heart sank.  I wanted to be the one!

"That's ok -- I like the floor," David said.  "Why don't you let Boomer?"

Joel glared at him, and my boyfriend Bill glared at me, but neither of them could say anything as I took my place beside Joel.

3. In junior high, we had gym class together, and I got one of my first sausage sightings of David in the shower.

And three bad memories:

1. We were playing once when a middle-aged woman, presumably his mother, appeared.  "Your father won't let me back in the house," she told David.  "There's food cooking -- I need you to turn the stove off, so it won't burn."  Weird and creepy.

2. David never invited anyone over to his house to play or watch cartoons.  We were intimately familiar with every other house in the neighborhood, but not his. So one day Bill and I knocked on the door, ostensibly to invite him to go to Schneider's and look at comic books, but really to get a glimpse inside.

He came to the door, pale and nervous.  "Are you nuts?" he whispered.  "You can't be here!  My Dad sleeps during the day!"

"We were just..."

"Get out!" he whispered.  "Get lost!"

3. One day in junior high gym class, David was stripping down, and I saw a large red-and-purple bruise on his chest.

"Wow, how did you get that?" I asked.

"What, this?"  He quickly covered it up.  "That's nothing.  We were just playing around.  It happens to everybody."

"Who was playing around?"

"Um...my cousin and me.  Just playing around, no big deal."

I couldn't imagine what kind of playing around might cause a bruise like that.

Ok, I get it now: these are obvious signs of domestic and child abuse.  But what kid in the 1970s would think of that?

And one mixed memory:

During our senior year in high school, Bill told me that  David went crazy.  All of a sudden he forgot to how speak English, and he only knew a few words of Spanish, so he started yelling "Te amo!  Te amo!  Te amo!"

We went to visit him at the East Moline State Mental Hospital.  We were directed to a big, airy room where patients in bathrobes were playing pingpong and foosball.  At the far end, several sat on chairs watching One Life to Live.  

David was sitting on a white couch, in a t-shirt and pajama bottoms, laughing over a paperback edition of Tom Sawyer.  I hadn't seen him, except in passing, since junior high gym class -- my first thought was "He's gotten really muscular!"  He had a hard, smooth chest and thick biceps. He still had a shy, wounded puppy-dog expression.

But he didn't act shy or wounded!

"Hi, guys!"  he exclaimed.  "Rapley let you out early, huh?"

Bill and I glanced at each other.  Mrs. Rapley was our fifth grade teacher.

David laughed.  "I'm just joking with you.  I know what year it is.  Let's have a hug."

He stood and gave us each a bear hug, and sat us down on either side of him.

"So, what's new with you guys?  You still an item?"

"An item?" Bill repeated.  "What...what do you mean?"

"An item -- you know, like giving each other flowers and chocolates and carving your names into trees with little hearts!"

My face burned.  "David, you know that we're both boys, right?"

"Come on, Boomer, you know the soul doesn't have a gender.  We're infinite beings trapped in one-dimensional bodies, so what does it matter if you have the same plumbing?  Get married already, march down that aisle.  God knows you were meant for each other!"

"What are you talking about?" Bill asked in a curt, angry tone.

"David is confused," I told him.  "He doesn't mean to imply anything."

"Hey, just because I'm crazy doesn't mean I can't see what's right in front of my eyes!  Now you gonna kiss, or what?"

"Um..actually, we broke up awhile ago."  I figured that was the only way to end the uncomfortable conversation.

"Yeah.  We're still friends, of course, but we're dating other...um...guys now."

"That's too bad.  You make such a cute couple! Maybe you'll find each other again later on, in your next life."

We chatted for awhile longer, about other things, and then left.  In the parking lot, Bill said "Wow, David is worse than I thought!"

"Completely delusional!  Where'd he ever get the idea that we were...you know?"

"Next he'll be claiming that we're little green men from Mars!"

Two months later, I finally discovered what David had known all along.

The adults are lying -- only real is real.
We stop the fight right now -- we got to be what we feel.

I recently tracked down David again, thanks to Facebook.  He moved to Missouri to stay with his aunt and uncle, graduated from high school a year late, studied biology in college, and worked in a zoo.  Later he moved to Denver and became a dog trainer.  He still suffers from anxiety and depression, but he is taking medication.  He is heterosexual but has never married.  

No post mentions an abusive parent.

My Boyfriend Bill Grows Up

Remember my first boyfriend, Bill, from Denkmann Elementary School?  We were inseparable for three years, walking to and from school, watching Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat, reading comic books, inviting cute boys over for sleepovers.

We had our own gang -- me, Bill, Joel, and Greg -- who liked looking at men with muscles.

I have lots of good stories about Bill:

The naked Indian god at the pow wow.

The time we went to A Little Bit O'Heaven for my birthday trip, expecting statues of naked Greek gods?

The time we got Dad upset by claiming to be a Mama and a Papa.

We stayed friends in junior high, but we drifted apart into other interests and social circles.

The last time I was at his house was for a Halloween party in tenth grade, probably October 31st, 1975.  I spent most of the evening talking to his big brother Mike, who used to call me "Bud" and drive us places.

The last time I saw Bill was during 12th grade, probably March or April 1978, when we visited David Angel in the mental hospital.  He thought we were a couple.  We laughed it off as ridiculous.



The years passed: Augustana College, Indiana University,  Texas, West Hollywood, San Francisco.
I didn't hear anything from or about Bill, though I often spoke of him as my first boyfriend.

The years passed: New York, Florida, Ohio, Upstate New York.  I started a blog about my childhood memories, and recorded all of my Bill stories.

I tried to look him up, but none of the high school or college friends that I was still in contact with remembered him, and he had a common name, impossible to google.

Before I knew it, I was 54 years old.  Nearly 40 years had passed since the day Bill and I visited David Angel.

Then out of nowhere I got a friend request from him on Facebook.

Eagerly I scoped out his Facebook profile.

Where was he living?  Reno, Nevada
What was his job?  Restaurant manager.

Most importantly, was he gay?  Were my memories real, or a misinterpretation of a straight boy's friendship?

Status: single.
Favorite TV shows: Breaking Bad, Lost, CSI.  
Favorite movies: Back to the Future, Men in Black, Star Wars
Favorite music: R.E.M., The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jefferson Airplane

Didn't tell me anything.  But then, my facebook profile is also vague.

Time for our first chat in 40 years.

We exchanged life histories in that stilted, obituary style that you use when reconnecting with someone after many years.  He studied culinary arts at Black Hawk College, then worked as a chef at Jumer's Castle Lodge, across the river in Bettendorf.  During the 1990s, he opened a restaurant near the resort of Wisconsin Dells.  It went bankrupt after the stock market downturn of 2004, and he moved to Reno, Nevada, where he now manages all of the restaurants in one of the casinos.

"But I've dabbled in other businesses, too," he continued.  "In 1999 I became co-owner of a strip club in Moline, out by the airport."

My heart sank.  A strip club?  Straight!

"I insisted that we were equal opportunity," Bill said.  "We had male strippers on Tuesday nights."

"I've been there!" I exclaimed.  "Christmastime 1999 or 2000.  On male stripper night.  I saw my old Sunday school teacher's sons, Mickey and Dom!"

If Bill noticed that I had just outed myself, he didn't let on.  "Sure, I remember them.  College boy act.  Very good, very professional, and they had the goods.  I always auditioned the strippers personally, to make sure they were up to speed."

"Men and women both?"

"Of course!  I have a pretty good eye for beauty, as you saw with Mickey and Dom."

Bisexual?  Or straight and nonchalant about gay people?

"What about romances?" I asked.  "Any long-term relationships?"

"I was married for 15 years.  We had an open relationship, though. We both saw other people.  Since then I've been single."

Bisexual?  Or straight?

"But what about you?" Bill asked.  "Any boyfriends, lovers, husbands?  After Dan at Washington Junior High, I mean."

Boyfriends, lovers, husbands -- he knew about me!  And he interpreted my friendship with Dan as a romance.  

I told him about Fred the Ministerial Student in college, Raul and my celebrity boyfriend in West Hollywood, 10 years with Lane, 5 years with Troy. 7 years with Yuri (we were friends, but closer than many lovers).

"You've been busy!" Bill exclaimed.  "Me too.  I'm single but not lonely.  I can still attract the hotties -- look."

He sent me a nude photo.  

It was eerie looking at Bill's face again after 40 years.  He was a little chunky, with a muscular, slightly hairy chest and big biceps.  

In all of our sleepovers, I never saw Bill nude.  He was a little small beneath the belt, uncut.  

"Hot!" I told him.

"Thanks.  It gets me a lot of action."

Ok, still noncommittal.  Time to ask.

"Action with men or women?"

Bill didn't hesitate.  "Oh, men, of course.  Women are nice and all -- I wouldn't kick Scarlett Johansson out of bed -- but at the end of the day you really want two muscular arms around you and a baseball bat pressing against your leg.  We knew that back in third grade, didn't we?"

"All but the baseball bat part.  I didn't figure that out until after high school."

"Well, I was precocious.  I started getting busy in 10th grade.  Remember Aaron, the Rabbi's son?  And Tyrone, on the football team?  And what about that cutie who played the violin...what was his name?"

"Todd."  Had he gone to bed with everyone I had a crush on?

We should have stayed friends.  It would have made high school a lot more fun.

Bill died recently.  One of our last chats on Facebook was his memory of the day we became a Mama and a Papa at the A&W Restaurant.

My Third Grade Boyfriend

Rock Island, July 1968

When I was 7 1/2 years old, we moved from a nice house in Wisconsin, a block from the beach, to a gross house in Ill-An-Noise, in back of the grade school. Yuck!

This new world was stupid and boring, but I was determined to make the best of it.  The first thing I needed was a boyfriend.  Somebody to show me around, introduce me to other kids, point out the places to get necessities (like cookies and comic books), and the places to avoid (with mean dogs, mean boys, crazy ladies, and escaped killers).

He should be a boy, of course, around my age, and preferably both nice and cute.

In August, when school started, there would be a whole roomful of boys choose from, but that was over a month away, an eternity for a 7 1/2 year old!  I needed somebody now!

Fortunately, 1968 was the heart of the Baby Boom, the biggest generation in history.  There were 77 million kids growing up in the U.S., some in nearly every house on every street in the country.  It didn't take long to compile a list of prospects who lived within a couple of blocks.

Bill, who became my boyfriend in February, wasn't on the list -- I think he was away on vacation at the time.  Joel and Greg, who would become close friends later on, lived three blocks away, too far.

But there were a lot of boys left. You have to figure out who I chose:

1. The Little Kid, aka Mike (top photo), who lived next door.  He was a year younger than me, but he had muscles and a brown smiling face.  We ran under the sprinkler in his front yard, clothes and all, which soaked my shirt and pants and got me in trouble.

2. The Cereal Boy, a cute redhead with freckles, a year older than me (left).  He invited me to watch Saturday morning cartoons and eat cereal -- but it was Froot Loops!  I hate Froot Loops!

3. The Football Player, aka Mean Dave, who punched me in the stomach and called me a "girl," then helped me to my feet and said "I was just kidding.  You want to go to the high school and watch the football players practicing?"  They didn't have football at Denkmann, but he was playing on a summer enrichment team, and he wanted to be a football player when he grew up.

4.  The Parakeet Boy, aka Nice Dave (left), a curly-haired blond boy who had two dogs, a rabbit, a parakeet, and a hamster.  He talked to the parakeet, and made it eat a cracker out of his mouth, which I found gross.  But I liked petting the dogs and the rabbit.

5. The Old Guy, much taller than me, with all kinds of muscles.  But he was eleven -- almost a teenager!  Way too old for me, sort of like a West Hollywood twink dating someone in his 70s.  And he said crazy things, like he already knew how to drive a car and he could stay up until midnight if he wanted.  He had tons of toys in his room, plus a sticker labeled "panic button"; he said if he pushed that, sirens would go off and the whole house would shake.

I tried.  Nothing happened.  He said "It only works for me."

6. The Sick Kid (left), pale, kind of ugly, always looked like he was pain, but he had a round plastic pool in his back yard, and his Mom brought us lemonade in plastic glasses with little palm tree straws.

7. The Angel, aka David Angel (there were a lot of Davids in the neighborhood): puppy-dog cute, but  painfully shy.  When I try to talk to him, he ran to the back of the house.  When I went to the back of the house, he ran to the front.

8. The Rock Star, aka Craig (left), who wanted to be a rock musician.  He had weird hippie hair that turned me off, but he never wore a shirt, which was nice. We went into his basement and played rock stars with his drums and guitar.

9. The Indian, aka Bobby,  a year younger than me, short and slim with black hair and a bright smile.  He wasn't really from India, but he looked like Raji, the boy on Maya.   But it was hard to get close to him, since he lived on the other side of the house where the Killer lived, a crazy-evil blond boy who attacked anyone who came nearby.

Ok, which of these 9 hot guys did I choose to become my summertime boyfriend?

Answer after the break.

The Hookup at the Sleepover

Rock Island, February 1973

When I was a kid, the Baby Boom was in full swing, so we rarely did anything alone.   I invited a friend for dinner, or got invited to dinner, at least once a week.  I invited a friend to stay over night, or got invited to stay over night, nearly every weekend.

And then there were sleepovers.  

At least once a month, starting in third grade and continuing into the first year or two of junior high.

Three or four boys arrive at the host's house after dinner on Friday or Saturday night.

You romp around, playing games (my favorite was Twister), watching tv, eating pizza, and generally roughhousing until bedtime, which is much later than usual.

Then you camp out in the host's bedroom.

You all compete for the honor of sharing the host's bed.  Everyone else squeezes into the other bed (most boys had two), or onto blankets laid out on the floor. Some boys bring sleeping bags.

The beefcake is amazing!  You bring pajamas, but rarely wear them.  You sleep in your underwear.  There are cute boys lying shirtless everywhere you look.

And the touching!  Nothing sexual happens -- by the time you are old enough to think about such things, sleepovers are rare.  But when three boys are lying side by side on the floor, who can help but hug, cuddle, caress?  When you share the host's bed, which is a little too small for two people, you have no choice but to sleep pressed together.

In the morning, you dress, have a nice breakfast, and walk home (if it's Saturday) or get picked up in time for church (if it's Sunday).

Bill, Joel, and I always invited each other to our sleepovers.  When I hosted, the fourth boy was always my brother, invited by default, and the Fifth Boy was someone new, someone I wanted to get to know better.

And see in his underwear.

The other guys did exactly the same thing.  The guest list was always: Boomer, Bill, Joel, your brother or another friend, and the Fifth Boy, a boy you wanted to hook up with.

Sometimes it didn't work out.  Once Joel invited David Angel as the Fifth Boy, but David refused to share his bed, allowing me the honor.  Both Joel and my boyfriend Bill were understandably upset, but they couldn't say or do anything, since the Fifth Boy was an unspoken tradition.

In the spring of seventh grade, I started "liking" Dan,  during my failed attempt to rescue him from bullies who were trying to shove him into the girl's locker room,  He accepted an invitation to my house, but refused to come to my sleepover the next weekend: "Sleepovers are for grade school babies."

So, for the Fifth Boy, I invited Peter, the only Asian kid at Washington Junior High, a tall, tight-muscled baseball player from my chemistry class.  He shared my bed, which was nice, but in the first flush of infatuation, I kept wishing that he was Dan.

Two weeks later, Peter invited me to his sleepover, obviously as Boy #2 or #3, since we had already hooked up.

Peter's Mom opened the door and escorted me to the basement rec room, where he was playing pingpong -- with Dan!

"Hey, I thought you said sleepovers were for grade school babies!" I exclaimed, hurt and jealous.

"Oh...well, Peter told me how much fun he had at yours, so I changed my mind."

"You're good friends?" I asked, afraid of the answer.  "Come over to his house a lot?"

"Not really.  He sits beside me in Civics Class, but I've never been to his house before.  He just invited me out of nowhere."

It was worse than I thought!  Dan was the Fifth Boy!

The rest of the night was a battle royale over Dan.  I sat next to him on the couch when we watched tv; Peter squeezed between us.  I brought him a soda; Peter brought him a piece of cake.  I bragged about how many push-ups I could do; Peter brought out his baseball trophies.

Finally it was bedtime, the moment of truth. There were blankets and pillows scattered on the floor in Peter's bedroom.  And one twin bed.

We all stripped to our underwear.

"Dan, you're with me!" Peter said, grinning as if to say "I've won!"


Think!  I told myself.  Keep Dan out of that bed!  "Um...are you sure?  It's pretty small, and you're pretty big.  There might not be enough room for Dan."

"Plenty of room!"  Peter insisted.  "My cousin sleeps over with me all the time, and he's bigger than me!" He climbed into bed and pulled down the covers.

"Anyway, I hate sleeping on the ground," Dan said.  ignoring my red-faced jealousy to climb into bed beside him.

"But...we listened to Donny Osmond!"  I whispered.  "Um...we can talk about him...."

There was nothing to do but take my place beside the other two boys, and try not to listen Peter and Dan whispering and giggling under the covers.

Later in the night, I was still awake when Dan climbed out of bed, went to the bathroom, then returned and pulled up the blankets next to me.

"Did you lose your way?" I whispered sarcastically.

"Peter kicks in his sleep," he said.

I slept with him two weeks ago, so I knew that Dan was lying.  He just wanted two hookups on the same night.  But I didn't care.

See also:  A Three Way with Danny and His Boyfriend.