My Boyfriend and My Satanist Ex-Boyfriend at Thanksgiving Dinner: A Kelvin/Keefe Adventure

 

"Thanks again for inviting me to Thanksgiving dinner with your family," Kelvin, son of world-famous megachurch pastor Eli Gemstone and youth pastor at the Salvation Center,  told his boyfriend Keefe as the "Welcome to Richmond Hill" sign appeared.  It was an elegant suburb of Savannah, new-looking, with trendy shops and cool-sounding restaurants like the Himalayan Curry Cafe.

"Well, you invited me to dinner with the Gemstones last year,"  Keefe, a reformed Satanist turned assistant youth pastor, said.  "So it's only fair to make you endure my family's craziness.  Have you been studying the family tree?"

"I have it memorized.  Your Mama, Beth.  Don't ask about your Daddy.  Your sister Liz, age 45, and her husband Henry.  She's a child psychologist, and he's a dentist. Henry's son from his first marriage, Austin, who teaches high school English, and his wife...um..."

"Becky."

"Right, Becky.  Liz and Henry have another son, Jimmy, age 8.  Boy, I hope our heart-healthy green bean casserole will be enough."

"It will be fine.  No one in my family eats heart-healthy anyway."

"Ok, who else...Your uncle might be coming.  He's gay, but you only found out a couple of years ago.  He was closeted when you were growing up."  He paused.  "You don't mind letting them think that you're just the assistant youth pastor? I'm not ashamed of us or anything...it's just...well, I'm a Gemstone."  

"I don't mind," Keefe said, lying a little.  It took the family years to accept him -- his sister still didn't like to talk about it much -- and now he had to hide?  Pretend that the love of his life was a buddy?  It felt wrong.  

But Kelvin was always skittish.  He didn't even realize that he was gay until he was over 30. Everyone else knew the moment they saw him in one of his flamboyant outfits.  Keefe suspected that he would prefer to identify as a masculine-presenting demiboy, but they could save the gender-identity conversation for later.  Much, much later.

The full story is on Righteous Gemstones Beefcake and Boyfriends

A Sleepover, Sausage Sighting, and Fondling of My Cousin Phil

When I was growing up in Rock Island, we traveled to northern Indiana once or twice a year to visit my grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins.  Mostly on my mother's side of the family and my Dad's sister Nora.  We evern stayed with her sometimes.  My earliest  sausage sighting was of her teenage son, Joe, when I was 7 1/2 years old.

But Dad didn't get along with his other sister, Aunt Edna, so we never visited her, and saw her only rarely, at an occasional Thanksgiving Dinner.  I knew only a little about her family: her husband, Uncle John, fat and blustering; a grown-up daughter, who moved to California; and Cousin Phil, about ten years older than me.

As far as I can remember, I've only met Cousin Phil five times in my life.  One of them resulted in a sausage fondle.

Thanksgiving 1966

I was six years old, and Cousin Phil was a slim teenager with long hippie-hair, wearing a white t-shirt that displayed two pinprick nipples (I wanted to squeeze them).  He sat at the table looking at his hands.  When Grandma Davis told him to "dress properly and show some respect," he ran into the bedroom and wouldn't come out to eat.

Christmas 1968

I was eight, and Cousin Phil was in high school, old enough to drive a car, still thin and pale and long hair.  He wore a plaid shirt and frayed jeans, and three strands of love beads.  He flashed the peace sign at me, but otherwise we didn't speak.


Thanksgiving 1971

I was eleven, and Cousin Phil was a college man, majoring in one of the sciences (I think physics) at Tiffin University.  A little thicker in the arms and the chest, cute but not "dreamy," with short brown hair and dark blue eyes.   He was wearing an orange leisure suit.

He brought a friend, an Ethiopian guy named Malcolm.  They nudged each other and giggled all during dinner.  I assumed that they were boyfriends, that they had escaped the trajectory of job-house-wife-kids that the adults were plotting for us and found joy in each other.

I kept in contact with Malcolm for a few years, even going swimming with him the following summer, always assuming that he was my cousin's boyfriend.

Thanksgiving 1974

I was fourteen, and Cousin Phil was an adult, a college graduate who had a job working for the city of Montpelier, Ohio (I think in the waste water management plant).   His hair was long again, a little scraggy, and his face was pale.  He was thicker still in the arms, almost muscular.  He had a smooth heavy chest and a little belly.

Malcolm was not in the picture; instead, Phil brought a girlfriend!

I was devastated to discover that they weren't "best men," a gay couple, after all.

After Thanksgiving Dinner, Aunt Edna and her family stayed in Rome City with Aunt Nora, and my family drove back to Grandma Davis's farmhouse, about twenty miles away, to spend the night.  My brother and I were sent up to bed at 9:00 pm, while the adults stayed downstairs, playing Yahtzee and watching tv.

Around 11:00 pm, Dad burst into our room and turned on the light.  "Get your clothes on!" he barked.  "We're going home!"

"To Rock Island?" I asked.  "But we're supposed to stay until Sunday."

"Shut up and get into the car!  Hurry up!"

We pulled on our clothes, dumped our pajamas into our suitcases, and rushed down the stairs.  I stopped to use the bathroom.  Grandma Davis wasn't around.  Mom and Tammy were already in the car.  I could tell that Mom had been crying.

Adults never told kids anything, but I surmised that there had been an argument, and Grandma Davis ordered Mom and Dad out, or they decided to leave.

Dad gunned the engine, and we roared down the dark country roads.

"We can't drive all the way back to Rock Island!" Mom exclaimed.  "We wouldn't get home until dawn!  Besides, I want to visit my Dad and sisters tomorrow!"

"Well, where are we supposed to go?" Dad asked.  "To a hotel?  They won't rent us a room in the middle of the night!"

"Let's go back to Nora's house.  I can't wait to tell her about this.  She'll take my side, I guarantee."

So we drove back to Rome City, where Aunt Nora was conciliatory.   There were eight people in the house already, but she put Dad on the couch, Mom and Tammy in her room, and Kenny and me with Cousin Phil in the attic.


"Don't wake him up," she cautioned.  "Just take off your clothes and climb in bed with him.  He won't mind."

We crept up the attic stairs, carefully closed the door behind us, and undressed, dropping our clothes to the floor.  In the orange glow of the space heater, I could see that Cousin Phil was lying on the bed on his back.  He had kicked off the quilt and the comforter.

He was naked!  I could see his thick, smooth chest, his little belly with an innie belly button.  And his penis lying against the dark mass of his pubic hair.   Very thick Bratwurst+.

"I'll give you a dime if you touch it," my brother whispered.

"No problemo!" I climbed onto the bed and slid next to Cousin Phil.  I brushed my hand over his chest, down his belly, and slowly approached his penis.

But I didn't get there.

"Hey...what..." Cousin Phil murmured.  He opened his eyes and stared at me.  "Boomer...what.."

"We have to sleep here tonight.  Aunt Nora said so."

"Mm......hang on a minute."  He jumped off the bed and pulled on his underwear.  "Ok, hop in.  But no kicking, ok?"

I stayed awake for most of the night,  but eventually I got Cousin Phil to hold me in his arms.  I touched his belly and his hand, fondled his chest and his pinprick nipples, and reached down to briefly caress his warm, thick penis through his underwear.  I don't know if he was awake or not.

That was enough for a lot of fantasies during the next few years.

After breakfast in the morning, Aunt Edna and her family left.  We didn't return to Indiana for Thanksgiving again until 1980, and Cousin Phil wasn't there.  One thing led to another, and I didn't see him again for 40 years.

September 2016

We're both back in Indianapolis for a funeral.

Cousin Phil is 65, gray and craggy, shorter than I remember, and quite round in the belly.

He's retired from his job at City of Montpelier, still living in the house he bought shortly after his wedding in 1975.  His wife died last year.  He has two daughters and six grandchildren.

Job, house, wife, kids, the entire heterosexist trajectory.  I escaped it.  Cousin Phil didn't.

"Do you remember the sleepover, at Thanksgiving when I was fourteen?" I ask.  "Up in the attic at Aunt Nora's house?"

He pauses for a moment.  "Sure, I remember that.  I can't believe we were ever that young.  It was a different world, wasn't it?"

I want to say "No.  It's still my world.  I sleep in a man's arms most nights."  But I just smile.

My Cousin Phil's Boyfriend

Rome City, Indiana, Thanksgiving 1971

A week after my 11th birthday, we are back in Indiana for Thanksgiving.

Grandma Davis, Aunt Nora, and Dad got up at dawn to fuss about in the kitchen, stuffing the turkey, making a scalloped corn casserole, putting little fork prints into pie crusts.  The rest of us watch tv or wander around outside with the dogs, as the house gradually fills up with aunts and uncles, great-aunts and uncles, cousins and second cousins, their boyfriends and girlfriends, miscellaneous friends invited at random.

I have door-answering duty when my Aunt Edna and Uncle John arrive with their grown-up son Phil.

Dad doesn't get along with his older sister, so we don't see them very often, even though they live only an hour's drive from Rome City.   I haven't seen Cousin Phil since I was a little kid.  Now he's grown up, in college: medium height, clean-shaven, light brown hair cut short, kind of cute but not "dreamy."

But waiting at the front door next to him is the most beautiful man I have ever seen!

Afro-American, and not just brown-skinned, but actually black., very, very dark, flawless.  A head taller than Cousin Phil, with a round smiling face and a huge v-shaped torso that pushes out his blue business suit and white overcoat. Huge hands.

As Aunt Edna and Uncle John head toward the kitchen, I stare, thunderstruck.  Cousin Phil looks nervous.

"Um...Boomer, this is my friend Malcolm from school."

"Hi, Boomer," Malcolm says in a beautifully accented English. "What subject do you study in college?"

"What...no, I'm not in college, I'm in sixth grade!"

He laughs.  "My mistake -- you seem so mature."  We shake hands.  My small hand is engulfed in his.

"Are you from Chicago Heights?"  I ask.  It' a stupid question, but I've never met anyone Afro-American before, and I remember seeing a lot of Afro-Americans on the street there.

"No, Little Man.  I am from Ethiopia, a country in Africa."

Africa!  I want to ask him about the languages and cultures and lost civilizations, like the ruins of Great Zimbabwe.  But, trying to be polite, I ask only "What's your favorite thing about America?"

"Hamburgers and french fries, of course.  Very good.  And the people -- very friendly."  He nudges Cousin Phil, who smiles.

Wait -- could Cousin Phil and Malcolm be best men?  Everyone is always telling me that I will someday "discover girls," and start dating girls, and eventually marry a woman -- it's inevitable, it happens to everybody.

But Cousin Phil and Malcolm are both in their 20s, with no wives.  Maybe they have each other!  Maybe they have found a way to reject their future of wives and kids, found a way to live with each other!

I'm anxious to interrogate them, to find out how they did it.  Unfortunately, I have to sit at the Kids' Table during dinner, but afterwards, when the men are watching some sports game and the women are washing the dishes, I tag along when Cousin Phil takes Malcolm out to see Sylvan Lake, a few blocks from Aunt Nora's house.

"How did you meet Cousin Phil?" I asked, hoping to hear about a meet-cute, an instant attraction, an invitation to dinner, a sleepover.

"We are taking physics together."

"A lot of late-night study sessions," Cousin Phil adds, nudging Malcolm.  They both laugh.

"My friend Bill and I are moving to Ethiopia when we grow up," I hint.  "We're going to live together and study lost civilizations.  And we're going to speak Swahili."

Malcolm pats me on the shoulder.  I notice that he and Cousin Phil aren't holding hands, but maybe they're just shy.  "Swahili is an important language in East Africa, Little Man, but in Ethiopia most people speak Amharic.  There are other languages as well.  In the north they speak Tigrinya."

"Tigrinya," I repeat.  "It sounds like Tiger."

He laughs.  "There are no tigers in Africa, but the Amharic word for lion is anibesi."

When it's time to say goodbye, I give Malcolm my address and ask him to send me something written in Amharic.  And he does!  About a week later, I get a letter postmarked Tiffin, Ohio, with a gospel tract in Amharic enclosed.

I write back, and through the winter and spring of sixth grade, Malcolm writes to me every couple of weeks.  Short letters, just a few sentences, but still -- letters!

Strangely, he doesn't say anything about Cousin Phil, but I guess he's just shy.

"Tell me when you come to visit your Aunt and Uncle," he writes.  "Then you will visit me, too.  We will go out for hamburgers."

A date with Malcolm and his Best Man!  Maybe we'll hug.  Maybe we'll have a sleepover!  

I imagine lying in bed between Malcolm and Cousin Phil, both of us in our underwear, their arms wrapped around me, our legs intertwined.   

The only problem is: Dad doesn't get along with my Aunt Edna and Uncle John.  He'll never agree to drive out to visit them.

Montpellier, Ohio, June 1972

I luck out: this year our camping trip is in Canada, and we're taking Grandma Davis with us.  Since we're driving right past Montpelier, it would be impolite to not stop and visit.

We sit on the porch of their big white house on Main Street, talking and drinking lemonade.  Suddenly Malcolm drives up -- by himself!

"Little Man, how are you?" he asks, holding out his hand.  I push him into a hug instead.

"Where's Cousin Phil?"

"He is busy at his job, but I took off.  I won't let my friend come to Ohio without saying hello."  He stops to shake hands with the adults, and answers polite questions about his classes and his job.  Then he turns to me.  "What do you want to do today, Mr. Boomer?  Get a hamburger?  Go swimming?"

"That's a good idea," Mom says.  "Why don't you take Ken with you, too?"

Great -- my baby brother tagging along on my date!

No sausage sighting -- we change at the house -- but at least I get to see Malcolm's strikingly hard-muscled body in a swimsuit, sit pressed next to him in the car on the way to the pool -- and, when we slide down the waterslide together, I lean back against Malcolm and feel his enormous package against my butt.


In the late afternoon we towel off and return to the house to change clothes, and Malcolm says goodbye.  I wrap him into another hug.

We continue to write, but the letters become more and more infrequent, and finally stop altogether.

Rome City, Indiana, Thanksgiving 1974

A week after my fourteenth birthday, we are back in Indiana for Thanksgiving at Aunt Nora's house, and Cousin Phil is there.  With his girlfriend!

I shake hands with her politely, but when I manage to get Cousin Phil by himself, I ask "Where's Malcolm?"

He stares, confused.  "Who?  Oh, Malcolm, from a few years ago.  I don't know.  We aren't really in touch."

"But I thought you were..."

He shrugs.  "We were in the same physics class, and when he didn't have a place to go for Thanksgiving, I invited him here.  Just to be nice.  We weren't really friends."

Or best men, I conclude, my eyes filling with tears.