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.

August 1984: An Ole Miss Undergrad Named Elmer

Oxford, Mississippi, Summer 1984

I've just finished my M.A. degree, and I'm on my way south to Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, a far northern suburb of Houston, where I will be teaching English.  I stop for the night in Oxford, Mississippi, the home of Ole Miss.

I tour the university and the William Faulkner house, get take-out fried chicken from Lenora's Family Restaurant, and check in to my hotel to settle down for an evening of Family Ties, Cheers, and Night Court.

I'm not planning to go out.  I have to take occupancy of my new apartment by 5:00 pm tomorrow, or I'll be stuck in hotels all weekend.  That means getting up at 5:00 am.

Besides, I'm in Mississippi, the heart of the heart of the most horrifyingly homophobic state in a horrifyingly homophobic country.  Where is there to go?

My Gayellow Pages listed only 1 bar in the whole state, in Jackson.

And I definitely am not going to go to a straight bar!

Still, I'm restless.  I have to go somewhere.

In the gathering darkness, I leave my hotel, walk down Lamar Boulevard, past Lenora's again, around the courthouse.  The same coffee houses and pizza places you would find in college towns anywhere,  Down University Boulevard, toward the campus.  

Elegant but rundown Victorian houses, gas stations, clothing boutiques, a lot of churches, a Christian Science Reading Room.

I see a cute guy heading in my direction, coming from the campus -- about my age, light brown hair, clean-shaven, slim, smooth chest.  His shirt is tucked into the right pocket of his jeans.  He gives me a long cruisy stare and turns south, onto 11th Street.  Curious, I follow.

He turns right onto Lincoln Avenue, a residential street that dead-ends at a traffic barrier.  He walks around -- there's a dirt path into the woods.

I follow him into the dark woods lit only by twilight and an occasional street light glimpsed far away -- and cigarettes.  The woods are populated!

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.

This must be an outdoor cruising area, like the one Viju took me to in India earlier this summer.

The guy I followed in stands with his back to a tree and drops his pants.  Average beneath-the-belt-gifts, but already standing at attention, pale in the moonlight.  I kneel on the damp earth and go down on him.  

It takes him a long time, but he finishes with a barely suppressed moan.  Then he pulls me to my feet and zips up.  I try to kiss him, but he moves his head away  

"My name is Boomer," I say.

He looks startled, but says "Howdy, Boomer.  I'm Elmer."  He extends his hand.  It seems odd to be shaking hands with someone after we've been intimate.  Sex first, introductions later.  "Thanks, that was awesome."

He vanishes into the darkness.


A few guys have gathered to watch our performance.  I go down on a slim, blond guy in his 20s, with a Bratwurst+.  Then another Bratwurst is pushed into my face, and I try to go down on them both at once.

I can't see who it belongs to.

Sex first, introductions later.  If at all. 

One finishes and walks away; the other pushes my head off and walks away..

I wander through the woods. 

Someone is trying to go down on a middle-aged guy with a hairy chest, a little belly, and a gigantic Kovbasa, a  foot-long baseball bat  It's too big, so mostly he is using his hand.  I stand beside them, and he goes down on me as well.

I try to kiss the middle-aged guy, but he pushes my head down to his chest instead. I kiss and lick his nipples.

After a few moments, he leaves, and the guy on his knees goes down on me alone.

I don't finish; it's hard to concentrate in the semi-darkness, with the bugs and the heat and the sweat.  Besides, I don't know anything about the guy I'm having sex with.  At least in the bathhouse in Chicago last year, you could see their faces and physiques.


Some guys have gathered around to watch.

Finally I pull him to his feet, so at least I can see his face.  It's Elmer!

"Oh, hi, Boomer, I didn't know that was you."  

"You can't get rid of me that easy," I joke.  I try to kiss him, but he pulls his head away.

"You got a room?"

"Yeah, I'm at the Graduate, up on Lamar."

"Let's go there, ok?  The mosquitoes are getting pretty intense out here."

On the way out of the woods, he stops to go down on a tall, muscular redhead with a military crew cut.

Then we go back to Lamar Boulevard.  Elmer stops at a small grocery store to buy a toothbrush.  

"Do you know any of these guys?" I ask.  "Like, last name basis?"

"I know some of the faces of the regulars, but we don't talk much. We're mostly just there for the sex.  I think you're the only guy who ever told me his name."

It sounds horribly depressing, something out of a Truman Capote novel.  At least Rock Island has some gay bars.  "Is that all there is for gay guys to do, here in Oxford?  Have quickies in the woods, with mosquitoes and muddy knees?"

Elmer slaps me on the back.  "You gotta be kidding me, boy!  Them woods are just for sex.  I got a lot of gay friends in town.  I got two boyfriends.  We go to movies, to football games, out to eat, that kind of thing.  There's a professor that throws real fancy parties once a month  30 gay guys, with dancing and hors d'oeuvres."

"But it's like...Mississippi!  Are you out to people and everything?"

"No, coming out is a Yankee custom.  We keep a low profile down here, no camping it up and calling each other 'Mary,' and if somebody asks, you just say you haven't met the right girl yet."

When we get back to my hotel room, Elmer goes immediately into the bathroom.  I hear the sound of tooth brushing and gargling.  He returns: "Ok, you go brush your teeth, too.  And use mouthwash."

I comply.  When I come out, he is lying naked on the bed.  "Now I'll kiss you."

Sex first, intimacy later. Last names, not at all.


See also: Cruising Rednecks in Oxford, Mississippi

The Georgia Boy Hooks Up with the Waiter

Wilton Manors, February 2004

When I was living in Florida, Gerry was a fixture at Barney's gym.  He arrived around 6:00 am, and spent the next five hours lifting weights, on the treadmill, and hanging out in the sauna and whirlpool. Sometimes he returned again in the afternoon.

Before you get excited: he was quite elderly, small, slight, and wrinkled, with arthritis and back pain that limited his mobility.  His visits were strictly therapeutic.  And to look at the cute guys.

He had been out for only a few years. When you are living in Georgia, working as a third grade teacher, and married to a Baptist minister's daughter, you don't come out.  You would be fired and divorced instantly, and the court would deny you visitation rights to your children.

So he waited until he retired and the kids were grown up, served his wife with divorce papers, and moved into a condo in Wilton Manors.

Newly out, free to date for the first time since the Eisenhower Administration, he wanted to try everybody and everything. And older was attractive in Florida.  But you had to be robust, active, and dominant, a leather Daddy or a priapric satyr (look it up).  Like 63-year old Troy, who stole my boyfriend two years ago.  Gerry was short, small, and frail.

And you had to be out there  -- at organizations, on the gay beach, in the clubs.  Gerry didn't have the mobility or the stamina.

He occasionally met someone online by doctoring his photo and saying he was 55.  But they always made an excuse right away, or engaged in some desultory "pity" acts.

I shared his bed once, when he made a "hookup" date with a guy in Miami.  Neither of them had cars, so I drove Gerry down for the hookup, with the proviso that I got to watch or participate.  Unfortunately, the guy seemed to be mostly into me.  I had to keep physically pushing him toward Gerry.

Gerry was despondent.  He wanted a boyfriend, but he couldn't even find a decent hookup.

So Barney and I decided to play matchmaker.  We invited Gerry to brunch at the Courtyard Cafe, the Wilton Manors equivalent of the West Hollywood's French Quarter.

We each brought a "date" to introduce to Gerry.  Barney brought a retired football coach who worked out at the gym. I brought a professor of Asian Studies who I met at the Club.

Both were robust, active, and dominant.

Both ignored Gerry.

But the waiter didn't.

He was in his twenties, taller than me, rather slim, rather flamboyant, with a long face and a shock of brown hair. His nametag read "Rick: Georgia."

Waiters at the Courtyard Cafe always flirted for tips, but Rick seemed particularly flirty, and he immediately zeroed in on Gerry.

When Gerry ordered the Eggs Benedict, Rick exclaimed, "You must be a Georgia boy, too!  I can tell from your accent!  What you doing hanging out with all these Yankees?"

He asked Gerry's name, and said "Why, darlin'!  My drag name is Geraldine Delicious!  We're twins!"

Then he pointed out the side dishes by wrapping his arm around Gerry's shoulders.

When he brought our food, he wrapped his arm around Gerry again and said "Careful, darling, the plate's hot."

Then he brought us some sweet rolls for the table.  "On the house," he said, touching Gerry's shoulder again.   "Can't have too many sweet things in your mouth, can you?"

Gerry was grinning broadly.  He had never been the subject of so much attention before, not even when he was married.  "Hey, do you think he's really interested, or just a flirt?"

I decided to find out.  I said I had to go to the bathroom, and grabbed Rick on the way to the kitchen.  He smiled at me.  "Ready for the check?"

"The check and your phone number," I said, as if flirting.

"Sure thing, Daddy.  But only if you share it with that cute Georgia boy!"

"Gerry is your type?"

"You have no idea!  I've always been into older guys, and to meet one from back home, and a cutie-pie to boot!  I could just melt!"  He pulled the check from his pad and scribbled down his number.  "Excuse me, Daddy, I have to deliver the check right to the table, if you know what I mean?"

Three weeks later, Rick moved in with Gerry.

The relationship was a rocky one: within a period of six months, they broke up, got back together, broke up, became roommates, got back together again, and broke up again.

Gerry had the time of his life.

Larry is Spanked by an Alabama Boy

Huntsville, Alabama, November 1991

It's the weekend before my 31st birthday, and I'm in Nashville, Tennessee, 2,000 miles from West Hollywood,  taking classes in Biblical Hebrew and Protestant theology at Vanderbilt Divinity School.

Back home I would go to a museum during the day and then have a party, but I have no gay friends here except Larry, who just came out at age 35.  So he has no gay friends, either.

"At least we can do the museum," Larry said.

"Ok, well, I've already been to the Parthenon, and I'm not really interested in the Country Music Hall of Fame...."

"Something a little less country-western:  I'm thinking the Space Center down in Huntsville."

"Alabama?" I said dubiously.  "Isn't that a little redneck?"

"It's fine -- I go down there all the time for work.  And while we're in Alabama, I thought we could try to fulfill my biggest fantasy."

"What, a bondage scene?"  Larry had only just recognized an interest in BDSM a few weeks ago.

"Being spanked by an Alabama boy."

Beg pardon?

He explained:  For years his job had taken him through the small towns of Alabama.  He saw the hot Southern boys on the side of the road, with their slim chests and sweat-soaked t-shirts and bulging jeans, and he wondered what it would be like to be dominated by them.

In his fantasy, Larry was the stuck-up Northern boy who took a wrong turn through the woods, and came across three Alabama boys working on an old pick-up truck and drinking beer.  One was in his 30s, very muscular, with a hairy chest.  The second was in his 20s, smooth chest, short beard.  The third was a teenager with big hands and a big basket.

He stopped and asked for directions to Chicago.  They didn't know the way, so he insulted them, called them "ignorant barbarians wallowing in filth."

"Now that's not very neighborly," the older one said.  "I reckon we're going to have to teach you some manners."  The two younger ones grabbed him and tore his clothes off and tied his hands behind his back.  He tried to run away, but they tripped him and threw him down into the dirt.

"You're a naughty little boy," the teenager said in his hot Alabama accent, "So now you're going to get spanked."

He spanked Larry's bare butt while the other young guy fondled his cock, insulting its size.  Then they forced him to rim them and go down on them, shoving their gigantic Mortadellas savagely down his throat while he gagged and sputtered.

They tied him to a tree, gagged him, and took turns plowing into him while pinching his nipples, squeezing his balls, and slapping his cock.  Each of them screwed him twice, the teenager first.  Then they forced him to masturbate while they drank beer and watched, and left him tied to the tree to be discovered with dried semen all over him.

"That's quite an elaborate fantasy," I told Larry.

"I know -- I've been thinking about it for quite some time.  But maybe we could do the basics, just get an Alabama boy to spank me."

So we drove south two hours to Huntsville and took a tour of the Space Center -- not very interesting, driving past rockets 500 yards away.  We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant, waited around a few hours, and then hit Huntsville's only gay bar, Deja Vu.

Larry had no experience cruising and was too skittish to try, so he sat at one of the small red booths while I tried to find someone to fulfill his fantasy.

It was crowded, so there were a lot of prospects.  I figured that older guys were more likely to be BDSM tops, or at least open to the possibility.  So I systematically tried to make eye contact with the guys over 40, mostly gathered by the pool table and the jukebox.

No luck -- until finally an older black guy returned my eye contact.  In his 40s, taller than me, shaved head, sort of chunky.

Black guys were unlikely to be into BDSM, but I approached anyway, introduced myself, pointed out Larry, and said we were visiting for the weekend.

His name was Smith ("Yep, that's my first name. My mama found it in the phone book").  He worked at a restaurant on the west side. While I was groping him -- 8" -- he complained about the governor, Guy Hunt. We needed a man like George Wallace -- "He got things done!"

A black guy was praising George Wallace, the white supremacist Dixiecrat, who said "segregation forever" and ran for president on the "Make America White Again" platform?  Ok, that was like a gay guy praising Jerry Falwell, just crazy!  But I figured it wouldn't make a difference for a night of "sharing."

Unfortunately, the only way to determine BDSM interest for a hookup that night was to ask during the initial conversation -- rather risky!  You weren't supposed to discuss sexual activities at all, and the thought of BDSM turns many guys off.  But I dutifully hinted that Larry was a bad boy, and needed some discipline.

Smith's eyes lit up.  "Sounds like he needs a good old fashioned ass-whomping."

I described Larry's fantasy, as well as I remembered it, and Smith said he would oblige.  We drove out to Smith's tiny one-story house on the run-down west side, went into the bedroom, and ordered Larry to strip.

We tied his hands behind his back with a belt, and forced him to go down on us.  Then Smith bent him over his knees and spanked him.  Larry refused anal, so I went down on Smith until he finished.  Then we tied Larry to the bed by one hand, and forced him to masturbate with the other, and left him tied up for an hour while we watched tv.



After all that, it seemed anticlimactic to spend the night, so we got dressed, said goodbye, and headed back to our hotel.

"Did you enjoy having your fantasy fulfilled?" I asked.

"It was fine," Larry said.

That was a surprising reaction!  "We did the force, the oral, the spanking, and the humiliation with an Alabama guy.  What did we do wrong?"

"No, it was fine.  It's just that -- well, my fantasy involves Alabama boys.  Young guys.  Three of them, a teenager, a twink, and a guy in his 30s.   And...well...."

"What?"

"White.  I like black guys, of course, but for my fantasy they have to be white."

It was a very specific fantasy.

See also: Finding Larry's Fetish

My Kentucky Kinfolk Grow Up

Maysville, Kentucky, January 2004

My mother's family moved to Indiana when she was seven years old.  She was born in Magoffin County, Kentucky, in the Appalachians, where the Hatfields and McCoys feuded, where ultra-fundamentalist churches handle snakes, where everyone goes barefoot and listens to Country-Western music and rides around in red pickup trucks.

Really?

My Uncle El was old enough to stay behind, working on the farm, then for the gas company, marrying, and having a huge number of children -- 12 in all.  Three were my age or a little older, El, Graydon, and Dayton.

We met in Indiana, at my Uncle Paul's wedding, where we saw the Naked Man in the Peat Bog.

 During the summer after 7th grade, my parents and I drove down to visit.  I liked hanging out with them so much that for years I thought of Kentucky as a "good place," where same-sex desire was open and free.

I didn't see them again.  When I was a kid, we always went to Indiana to visit our other relatives instead, and when I was living in West Hollywood and New York, I flew back to Illinois twice a year to see my parents and brother and sister. There was no time for Kentucky.  And the years passed and passed and passed.

I got my Ph.D.  I moved to Florida.  I hadn't seen them for 30 years.

At Christmastime in 2004, I was back in Rock Island for the holidays, when the phone rang.  My Uncle El had died on January 1st, his birthday. Did I want to drive down for the funeral?

I had only met him twice, but I wanted to go.  I wanted to see Kentucky again.

Uncle El had 12 children, 31 grandchildren, and 14 great-grandchildren, plus brothers and sisters, cousins and second-cousins, and third cousins, and some friends who weren't even relatives, all filling up the Maysville Baptist Church, the Howard Family Cemetery, and then the white frame house on a mountaintop that I remembered from 30 years before (except now it had running water, an indoor bathroom, internet access, and cable tv).

Was Kentucky still a "good place"?  Not hardly.

It was heterosexuality as far as the eye could see.  There were Howards, Shepherds, Praters, Gearhearts, and Handshoes, all reuniting over casseroles and pies and cakes, all introducing boyfriends and girlfriends and husbands and wives and kids,

Graydon, now 43, was working for the power company in Michigan.  Dayton, 45, and El, 47, ran an auto repair place in Mayville, Kentucky.  They were all married with children, and some grandchildren.

My parents cautioned me to not "talk about guys"  (their code for "gay topics"), lest the Bible Baptists lynch me, so when I was asked "Where's your wife?" and "Did you leave your wife back in Florida?", I replied with a vague "Oh, I'm not married."

When I was asked "How old are your kids?", I replied with a vague "Oh, I don't have any kids."

When men gave me an inclusive nudge and exclaimed "You know how women are!" or "You know how wives are!", I responded with a noncommittal shrug.

Was there even a glimmer of gay potential in this paeon to heterosexual marriage and reproduction?

Maybe a glimmer.

1. Cousin Graydon and his wife were big fans of Will and Grace.  "That Jack always cracks me up!"

2. I told Cousin El about Angels in America,  the HBO miniseries about gay people that aired a couple of weeks ago, and he smiled politely.

3. Cousin Dayton introduced me to his 15-year old son,  Joel, "a real lady's man!"

"Dad, that's lame!" Joel protested.

"But it's true!  He's always hanging around with girls.  He even joined the drama club at school, just so he'd have his pick of the girls."

"Dad!  I joined drama club because I want to be an actor!"

Wants to be an actor?  Always hanging around with girls?  

"I lived in West Hollywood for 13 years," I said.  "I know quite a bit about the movie business. When I get home, I'll send you some of my old books."

"That'd be cool," Joel said noncommittally, anxious to be rid of the oldsters.

When I got back to Florida, I sent Joel a box of books: a history of Hollywood,  my old textbook from acting class, some Shakespeare and Ibsen, and "accidentally," Geography Club by Brent Hartlinger, about a teen who starts an undercover gay club at his high school.

He sent me a nice card, thanking me, but not mentioning Geography Club.

Some glimmers of gay potential.