20 October Hookups, Dates, and Sausage Sightings

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

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

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

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

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

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






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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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








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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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.

Halloween Horror: Cruising in Lynchburg, Virginia, the Scariest Place on Earth

This story has moved to RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

The Worst Date in Ohio History: Remy the Jerk

Dayton, October 2005

For 20 years all of my friends and neighbors were gay men.  The guy on the next treadmill at the gym, the couple ahead of me in line at the grocery store, everyone I passed on the street was gay.  I got my news from The Advocate.   I bought my books in a gay bookstore.  I went to a gay church.

Now I'm living in Dayton, Ohio, in the midst of the Straight World.  There's one gay bar, on the other side of town, and no gay organizations except The Friends of the Italian Opera, a closeted group of gay retirees.  The nearest gay neighborhood is an hour's drive away.

I'm not adjusting well.  I have no friends except a "straight" Friend With Benefits.  I stop going to the gym, and gain weight.  I'm so depressed that I seek out psychological counseling.  And I have a series of crazy dates with sleazoids and jerks.

But tonight will be different.  It's a blind date, arranged by Clintin (who I hooked up with last February), so I haven't actually met him yet, but he sounds great: Remy, 36 years old, a history professor (specializing in 19th century America), who lives in the gay neighborhood of Germantown in Columbus.

His photo isn't great:  long, weasley face, villain goatee, pale skin, skinny chest matted with black hair.  But I'm willing to overlook those defects.

Ok, I have high expectations: we'll become boyfriends, I'll move in, and commute to my dreary job in Dayton, and get my life back to normal.

The Arrival

I arrive a few minutes early: weird white house, set back from the street, but in the heart of Germantown, a few blocks from the gay bars and restaurants.

Whoops -- one of his roommates is a woman!  Must be a lesbian, but still....

Instead of taking me into the living room, she escorts me upstairs to the bedroom to wait.  Remy is naked, toweling off from the shower.

"You're early!" he exclaims in a nasty tone.

"It's an hour's drive from Dayton, so I couldn't calculate exactly," I say defensively.  "Sorry for coming up here -- your roommate wouldn't let me stay in the living room."

"Yeah, she doesn't like me.  I'm only renting a room -- I had to move out of my house when I broke up with my ex."

Too much information for a first date!

Well, at least I got a good view.

The Dinner

There are a dozen gay restaurants in Columbus, but instead Remy takes me to the Milestone, a big, airy, freezing-cold restaurant that looks out over the downtown skyline.  He insists on a table outside, where we keep getting buzzed by the mist from a gigantic fountain.

The menu is all nouvelle-cuisine tiny-portioned gourmand stuff, with tiny pieces of meat and vegetables artistically arranged amid sprigs of cilantro and dabs of cumin mayonnaise.

There are three things I hate on a date: 1. to be cold; 2. to be hungry; 3. to be insulted.

Remy doesn't seem to realize that he is insulting me:
1. West Hollywood ("it's so superficial!")
2. My degree ("on of those fad degrees that will be useless in ten years")
3. My trip to Paris ("such a cliched destination.  why doesn't anyone ever go to Bucharest or Sarajevo?")
4. My singing voice.  How did he ever get around to that?

I don't have any particular reason to put up the top photo.  I just needed something to take my mind off Remy.

Have you ever noticed that jerks -- guys who are critical, inconsiderate, insensitive, and hurtful -- tend to be physically unattractive?  I certainly don't ascribe to the notion that beautiful bodies go with beautiful souls, but say you are attractive, so everyone is nice to you all the time.  Won't you learn to be nice?  And if you are constantly snubbed and rejected, won't you learn to be nasty yourself?




The Party

Next we're scheduled to go to a Halloween party at an apartment a few blocks from Remy's house.  It seems strange to go to a party on a first date -- too many distractions, too much competition.  But I haven't been to a good Halloween party for years, and I'm still clinging to the hope that we'll become a couple, and I'll get my gay life back.

We should have coordinated in advance.  I'm going as  Zorro, and he's going as Mark Twain, with a white suit, bushy white hair, and a white moustache.  Rather an odd couple, compounded by his rather gross makeup and the lit cigar he carries constantly as a prop.

There are about 30 guys crammed into the 2-bedroom apartment, a lot of hot bodies in skimpy costumes, but a lot of drinking going on.  The West Hollywood parties I used to go to had very little drinking -- when you choose your friends mostly from church and temple, you get a lot of teetotlars and "one glass of wine on my birthday" guys.  This is a room full of sloshing drunks, and stale with with marijuana and cigarette smoke.  And cruising.


Remy latches onto a Cute Young Thing, and before I know it, they're making out.

I've had enough!  "I'm ready to go!"  I tell him.

"Well, I'm not drunk enough yet.  Why don't you go back to the house -- my roommate will let you in.  I'll be back later -- and I may even have a surprise for you."  He nudges the Cute Young Thing.

No way!  In West Hollywood, the guy you begin the evening with, you end the evening with.  Friend, roommate, date, it doesn't matter -- you go out that door together, you come back together.  No abandoning them to pursue a trick.

And who "shares" on the first date?  That's not a date, that's a three-way hookup!

"I want to go home now!" I say, more firmly, squeezing his shoulder.  "Alone."

"Ok, ok," Remy says.  He scribbles his phone number, passes it to the Cute Young Thing, and escorts me out.

We walk back to his house through the crowds of gay-neighborhood partiers, mostly silent.

"You know, it wouldn't have killed you to share me with that Cute Young Thing," Remy said.  "He could do both of us."

"I want you all to myself.  I'm the jealous type."

"That's for sure.  Not your most attractive quality, I must say."

The Bedroom

After all that, why did I agree to spend the night with Remy the Jerk?

Three reasons:
1. I was cold, and wanted a warm bed
2. I was too tired to drive an hour back to Dayton
3. He had a penis.  A nice one -- at least 8".

Once I got past the alcohol and tobacco on his breath, Remy was a good kisser.  He tried to lower me onto his penis while we were kissing, but I refused anal, going down on him instead.  Then he moved into the 69 position to finish.  I finished in the interfemoral position, thrusting between his legs.

We fell asleep in each other's arms.  In the morning he gave me his telephone number, said "Next time with the Cute Young Thing.  I'll bet he can teach you a few tricks," and kicked me out without breakfast.

Still a jerk..

See also: The Huber Heights Horror.; a Hookup During a Job Interview

The Sausage Sighting Prank at the Funeral Home

I was saddened to hear that Larson's Funeral Home in Rock Island is closing.

It may seem strange to get nostalgic over a funeral home, but the gigantic blue-stone structure in downtown Rock Island was an important part of my childhood.

1. It sent out advertising calendars to everyone in town every year, perhaps as a momento mori.  I checked the date hundreds of times on a red-emblazoned calendar from Larson's Funeral Home.

2. It was the site of a major sausage fondling.

In the fall of 1972, when I was in seventh grade, my friend Craig's older brother had a job at Larson's Funeral Home.

Jim was sixteen years old, tall and lean, with sharp features, a thick neck, and hard wiry biceps (I never actually saw him naked).

All he had to do was stay in the office overnight to answer the telephone, take down the information about someone who just died, and call the mortician to arrange a pickup.

Most nights, no one called, so Jim just camped out in the office: there was a television and a couch where he could sleep.  Down the hall there was a kitchen, with lots of leftover hors d'oevres in the refrigerator.

No one said Jim couldn't have friends over.  On more than one occasion, he had just enough time to shoo everyone out and dispose of the pizza boxes and beer cans before the mortician arrived with a pickup.

Seventh graders were all in awe of the boy who had a brother who worked with dead bodies!  Was it gross?  Was it creepy?

Could we see one of the dead bodies?

We asked, but Jim refused:  "I could get into a lot of trouble."

"Come on -- you let your friends visit all the time."

"Yeah, my friends.  Grownups, dig?  I could get into a lot of trouble letting little kids run wild in the funeral home.  What if you knocked over a funeral urn, and scattered some poor guy's ashes all over?"

That only made us more anxious to go.

Finally, one Friday morning around Halloween, Jim gave in.  "We just had a new pickup last night," he told Craig.  "That boy who died in the car accident down in Coal Valley.  He's still in the embalming room. You guys come over tonight around 10:00 pm, and I'll give you a tour."


10:00 pm?  We had to be in bed by 10:00! This would take a little strategizing:

1. Brett, the cute dark-haired boy I danced with at the canteen, invited Craig, Bill, and me over for a spur-of-the -moment sleepover.

2. At 9:00 pm, Brett's older brother and his friend offered to take us all out to Happy Joe's for pizza.  They said "We might be back a little late."

3. At 10:00 pm we parked on a side street and, talking and laughing to cover up our nervousness, walked up to the front door of Larson's Funeral Home.

Jim let us in, told us to wipe our feet, and showed us around.

The lounges, the music room, the library, the coffin room.

Jim demonstrated why Barnabas Collins, the vampire on Dark Shadows, was never filmed getting out of his coffin.  There's no way to do it without looking ridiculous.

That was interesting, but we wanted to see the dead body!

The small chapel, the large chapel, the kitchen, the office.

What about the dead body?

"Ok, I saved the scariest part for last," Jim said loudly, stopping in front of a tan metal door.  "I just want to make sure you're prepared.  Sometimes the eyes are still open, and they follow you around the room.  And do you know what rigor mortis is?"

We shook our heads.

"You know why they call corpses stiffs?  Because their bodies stiffen up.  Everything stiffens, even, you know, down below."

"No way!" I exclaimed.  "Not the dick!"

Jim nodded solemnly.  "Everywhere.  It's pretty gross.  I won't make fun of you if you decide to stay behind."

Are you kidding?

He opened the door and led us into the embalming room.  It looked like a doctor's office, all white cabinets, rubber gloves, and gleaming steel implements, but on the examination table lay a naked teenage boy.

Blond curly hair.  A cute round face, a red mark on his forehead.  Eyes closed.  Smooth hairless chest, pale arms and legs.  Beautiful, thick Bratwurst.  Fully aroused.

I  couldn't take my eyes off it.

"You can go up and touch him if you want," Jim suggested.

The others hung back, hesitating, but I moved forward to the table.  Jim looked surprised when, instead of touching his hand or face, I gently wrapped my fingers around his penis.

It was warm!

At that moment Corpse Boy opened his eyes.

I jerked myhand away.

He sat up and yelled "Uggh!"

We all screamed and ran from the room, out into the small chapel, and into the foyer.   Brett got to the front door first.  It was locked.

Jim and his friends were laughing.  "We got you good!"  he exclaimed.  "Meet my Cousin Boris, from Transylvania."

Corpse Boy emerged, pulling on a pair of jeans.  He was still partially aroused.   "I vant to suck your blood!" he said in a Dracula accent.


I was pretty sure that it was all a prank before I grabbed Corpse Boy's penis.  But not entirely sure.

Years later, I ran into Jim at the Mall.  He asked "Have you felt up any corpses lately?"

I get nostalgic thinking about Larson's Funeral Home.

Tricking with Yuri's Student in Iceland

Reykjavik, October 2016

On Halloween, the second biggest holiday in the gay world, I'm sitting in the Culiacan Mexican Grill in Revkjavik, Iceland, spending $20 for a tasteless burrito.

 Back home there is an endless round of parties, dinners, parades.  You spend weeks deciding on the best costume, putting up decorations, buying candy for the trick-or-treaters (in gay neighborhoods, cute guys, not kids).

They don't celebrate Halloween here.

Why am I in Reykjavik?  And not in West Hollywood, or New York, or even back home on the Plains?



Yuri is so deeply rooted in gay culture, living in the heart of London's gay neighborhood, hanging out only with gay men, discussing masculine beauty and gigantic penises at every opportunity, that it is difficult to imagine him outside that world.  But in fact, he's a well-known atmospheric scientist who has published important research on climate change.

He has brought five of his advanced students to Iceland to see the aurora borealis, and test how they have changed due to global warming. Something about emission spectrography and astronometric oscillations.  I'm along for the ride.

 I was hesitant:  from what I recalled from my college field trip, Iceland was cold and barren, with no gay culture.

""You are joking!" Yuri scoffed.  "It's not cold, it's as nice as New York.  And Iceland is the most gay country in Europe!  Even the prime minister is gay!"

[Actually, the lesbian Prime Minister, Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir, was in office from 2009 to 2013]

Granted, it's not cold: 42 degrees Fahrenheit, about the same as on the Plains, maybe even a little warmer.  The sun rises about 45 minutes later, and sets about 45 minutes earlier, no big deal."

But there's no gay culture.  One gay bar, only open on weekends, one mixed restaurant, no bathhouses, no bookstores, no gay churches, no gay neighborhoods.  Gay people are completely assimilated.

I can't even spend the night with Yuri.  He's out to his students, but not out enough to share his hotel room with me.  After the bedroom activity, I go back to my own room, as if I am a hookup, not a close friend for nearly twenty years.

Anyway, he goes to bed at 9:00 pm, since the scientific studies take place at 3:00 am.  I went once: sitting on lawn chairs at Thingvellir National Park, drinking hot chocolate from thermos bottles and taking radiometric measurements.  Not my thing.

So I'm mostly on my own.  I've been to the National Museum, the National Gallery, the Art Museum, and the Museum of the Penis by myself.  Yuri and I have had lunch and dinner, and hung out at Kiki, the city's mixed gay bar, without picking up anyone -- it's for socializing, not for cruising.

In four days I've only met one local guy, Bjorn, and he was actually Yuri's hookup.  I was just along for the ride.

His students are cute -- five guys in their early 20s, fresh-faced science students, boisterous and energetic.  But I don't even know if they're gay, and besides, I can't cruise Yuri's students.  I'm like a chaperone.

Today I ran into two of them in the lobby of our hotel, texting on their smartphones: Jon is tall, with thick brown hair and a heavy-lidded, Mediterranean look.  Maury is a redhead, short and rather buffed, with horn-rimmed glasses that make him look middle-aged.

"Happy Halloween!" I said brightly. "Fara til rethur safninu?"  Are you going to the penis museum?

They stared, puzzled.  "Sorry, just practicing my Icelandic.  Where are you guys off to today?"

"Haukadalur," Jon said.  "The neovolcanic zone with geysirs and hot springs."

"Not as much fun as trick-or-treating, I'll bet."

Maury grinned.  "Dr. B. told us about you living together in Florida.  I'll bet you had some fun Halloweens there."

I was too nervous to say anything more.

I dump my tasteless $20 burrito and head to Hreyfing Heilsulind, a gym with day memberships.  At least I can get a decent workout in, and maybe get some sausage sightings in the steam room.

Nope.  Only a couple of older guys in the cardio room, no one in the steam room.

Kiki, the queer bar, has a Halloween display.  Rather a low key things, ghosts and Frankenstein monsters surrounded by orange crepe.  Anyway, it's closed today.

I go to Bokavarthan, Reykjavik's used bookstore, and find, of all things, a German book about cowboys.  Then a whale burger at Grillmarkathurinn, and back to the hotel to watch The Simpsons with Icelandic subtitles.   It's the annual Halloween Special.

Suddenly there's a knock on the door: Yuri and Maury, wearing devil horns and carrying plastic bags with pumpkins on them.

"Trick or treat!"  Maury yells.  "I've always wanted to say that."

"We bring you a Halloween party," Yuri says.

They brought "fun sized" Snickers bars and ghost cupcakes that they found in a bakery somewhere.  Yuri and I sit on the bed with Maury between us to watch Hocus Pocus on Netflix on his ipod.

I put my arm around Maury, feel his tight shoulders, run my hand over his earlobe.  He moves his elbow down to my crotch.  I become aroused.

Suddenly Yuri stands up.  "It's late -- I must go to bed.  But you guys stay here, finish the movie, have fun."

After Yuri leaves, Maury says "You don't really want to finish the movie, do you?"

I take the ipod from his hand.  "I know how it turns out.  Omri Katz moves to Israel and goes to work in gay porn."

Maury has a very firm, muscular physique, more buffed than you would expect, and a very thick Bratwurst+.  He's an anal top, but willing to settle for 69, with cuddling and kissing afterwards.

In the morning I go down on him again, and top him between the legs.  Then he says "Rethur safninu í dag?" Do you want to go to the penis museum today?

I stare in embarrassment.  "You knew what I was saying yesterday?"

"Yep, my Mum's Norwegian, and Icelandic is close enough to make out.   How do you think I got the nerve to come to your room for trick or treating?"

See also: Bjorn's Hookup with His Teacher; The Icelandic Penis Museum