William Faulkner and his Boyfriend Paint Robert's Penis Green

Call me Artie.  Your story about visiting Lynchburg, Virginia, the "scariest place on Earth," made me laugh.  I grew up in Marion, Virginia, about a hundred miles away, and Lynchburg was our beacon of culture and enlightenment!

This was long before Stonewall.  I graduated from high school in 1951  (don't do the math: I know how old that makes me!).   But we knew all about gay people; every town had its resident "queer," and there were private men-only parties where guys from 100 miles around would gather.

In Marion, the parties were held at the home of the high school drama teacher.  One of the regular guests was Robert Anderson: about 40, with a slim, slight build, a little moustache, a hairy chest, and a rather big cock, but a complete bottom.  In those days, young guys were always the "trade," going down on older, so it was quite a kick watching Mr. Anderson reverse the roles, going down on the twinks and Cute Young Things.

Mr. Anderson was the mayor and the editor of the local newspaper, plus he had a wife and daughter at home.  You may wonder, wasn't it dangerous, in Virginia in the late 1940s, with gay sex being a crime?  You see, if anyone told on Mr. Anderson, he would report on them, so we were all safe.

It wasn't just about sex.  We were a circle of brothers, a bulwark against the homophobia of the outside world.  We joked, gossipped, and told stories about gigantic penises and celebrity hookups, just like you did in West Hollywood parties years later.  Mr. Anderson liked to tell the one about his first three-way:

New Orleans, June 1925

New Orleans in the Jazz Age!  What could be more exciting for a teenager with an adventurous spirit, a famous father, and a stepmother who was trying to buy his love with endless gifts of clothes and cash?

Robert (never Bob) was fascinated by the new social and sexual freedom of the 1920s.  Women had the right to vote, and could drive autos, smoke, and wear pants, with barely an eyebrow raised.  Men wore perfume and marcelled their hair, and called it the latest style.  Black, white, Creole, Italian, Jew: all races mixed with equality and passion.  There were proponents of free love, birth control, anarchy, Bolshevism, vegetarianism, and Buddhism.


Robert's father was Sherwood Anderson, the literary flaneur whose Winesburg, Ohio (1919) is still required reading in schools.  Their apartment in the Pontalba Building, off Jackson Square, was a bona fide literary salon, a gathering-place for writers and artists of all sorts, from Carl Sandburg to F. Scott Fitzgerald.  But the writer who most fascinated him was Bill Faulkner.

William Faulkner is famous today for Southern Gothic classics like The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom!, but in the spring of 1925 he had only published poetry, and only in college magazines.  He was working on his first novel under Sherwood Anderson's tutelage.

He was 28 years old, a short, small man, not a Charles Atlas "physical culture" type, soft-spoken, rather fey; yet his dark eyes and intense energy were immensely attractive.  Robert assumed that he was queer.  He wondered what queers did in the bedroom, and resolved to find out.

When Faulkner first moved to New Orleans in November 1924, he stayed with the Andersons, but by March 1925 he had fallen in love with Bill Spratling, a 23-year old instructor of architecture at Tulane University.  He moved into Spratling's apartment in Pirate's Alley, about a block away [now it's the home of Faulkner House Books], where they held court with a large group of artists, writers, bon vivants, and intellectuals, most of them queer men or women.

Robert barged his way into some of their soirees, and was disappointed to find no sex going on, just a lot of drinking, piano-playing, and discussions of Valentino, Kandinsky, Thomas Mann, and "Rhapsody in Blue."

Maybe if he caught them alone, they would be in the middle of an act, and he would be invited to watch -- or join in.  He had heard about the "French vice: that the New Woman liked to practice on her lovers -- what we call oral sex now -- there was no reason why a queer couldn't do that, too!

Robert was definitely interested in going down on Bill Faulkner, and maybe Spratling, too.  Maybe both together?  He started practicing on bananas, so he wouldn't gag on their enormous penises.

He began knocking on their door with various excuses at odd hours -- 8:00 am; 10:00 pm; noon.  But they were never "in media res."  They were sitting down to breakfast, or working in the garden, or one of them was out.

In June they announced an upcoming trip to Europe.  Robert knew that he had to act fast.  One evening around 10:00 pm, he knocked on their door, as usual, but when Spratling answered, he screwed up his courage and kissed him on the mouth.

"Hey, now!" Spratling exclaimed, startled.  And then he called back into the house "Bill, did you order a boy to be sent over?"

Faulkner appeared wearing only pajama bottoms.  "Him again?  After all this time, you'd think the agency would send us a new one."

"I just...I mean..." Robert began.  He expected them to be all over him, kissing and touching his body.  Instead, they were joking, distant.  "I wanted..."

"It's been quite obvious what you want for some time," Faulkner said.  "The question is, why would I be disrespectful to my dear friend Sherwood Anderson by corrupting his first-born son?"

"It's not corrupting.  Not if I'm willing."

Spratling laughed.  "I think we can accommodate the pest...I mean, the young queer in training.  Shall we all adjourn to the boudoir?""

"No, your studio would be much more exciting than a boring old bedroom," Faulkner said.  "Don't you agree?"

They both put their arms around Robert and escorted him into the next room -- to Spratling's studio (he was an aspiring artist as well as an architect). 

Robert nodded mutely.  The Bills both stripped out of their clothes -- Faulkner was average sized, uncut, and Spratling very big.  Neither were aroused.  Following their lead, Robert took his clothes off -- he was most definitely aroused -- and approached Faulkner and groped him, and leaned in for a kiss.

Faulkner swung him around and pinned his arms behind his back.

"Wait...what...."

Spradling grabbed a brush and pallet and began painting his cock!

"Wait...this isn't..."  Robert said, straining against Faulkner's arms.

"Calm down, my dear.  Soon you'll be a work of art." Spradling pushed up Robert's still-aroused cock to paint the underside.  The brush felt like a tongue licking at his shaft, not at all unpleasant.  "You'll be in all the museums.  Your dick will be famous world-wide -- and much more impressive than Michelangelo's David, I might add."

"Do the balls, too," Faulkner suggested.

"Oh, no, the penis alone will be my masterpiece.  Besides, it's such a monstrous specimen, I'm sure I'll run out of paint."  He dabbed Robert's cock head with green.  "All done.  Now, shall we introduce young Master Robert to his adoring public?"

Before he knew what was happening, Robert was pushed, naked and dripping green paint, through the kitchen door into Cabildo Alley.  He banged on the door, but they didn't answerr.  The only thing to do was walk home, ignoring the stares and jeers of the evening crowd, without being arrested for indecent exposure.  At home, he told his parents that he had been the victim of a fraternity initiation.

Robert never visited the Two Bills again -- he sent a friend to retrieve his clothes.  But he did hook up with Spradley alone one night, after Faulkner moved away, and the next summer, in France, he and his brother "shared" Paul Robeson.  But those are stories for another time.

See also: Beefcake and Boyfriends of the Jazz Age

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

This story has moved to RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

The Colonial Williamsburg Boy Finds Out What Gay Means

My friend Barry in New York, the short, blondish muscle guy who was exorcized from a homophobic demon, grew up in Colonial Williamsburg, the historical park in Virginia where people live full-time in 18th century houses, wear historic costumes, and pretend that they're living in the 18th century.

He went to a regular school, but had to sneak into his house through the back door afterwards.  The front of the house had to maintain the illusion in detail.  No modern appliances.  No window decals.  No air conditioners.

 And, whenever they went out onto Duke of Gloucester Street, he and his family had to put on wigs and tricorner hats and say "Aye" a lot while thousands of tourists gawked at them.

All heterosexual husbands and wives towing dozens of kids.

He never saw a same-sex couple.  This was his destiny.  No hope for the future.

To make matters worse, his parents were conservative Catholics who didn't want him to know that same-sex desire existed.  He was not permitted the minimal gay content on tv and in movies in the 1980s.  He never heard about gay people at school, at church, or among his friends, either.

"Wait -- you never heard about gay people, at the height of the AIDS crisis?  Not even in homophobic diatribes?"
"I heard that AIDS was God's punishment on 'bad people" for having sex outside of marriage.  I thought it meant heterosexuals."

No gay people existed.  Instead, he was told, over and over again, a hundred times a day,  "You will grow up, meet the Girl of Your Dreams, get married, and have kids.  Every boy does.  It is universal human experience."

His destiny.  No hope for the future.

Sounds like my childhood, only 14 years later.

I survived through the orchestra, running, and paradoxically, the church.

Barry played music, too, but he was too shy and awkward for sports (he bulked up later), and he hated church.  So he turned inside.

By the time he was 15, he was smoking cigarettes and getting drunk once or twice a week.  He was soon experimenting with marijuana and other drugs.  He got high while listening to Madonna and Duran Duran in the darkness of his room.

"Good choices -- Hungry Like a Wolf.,,"

But eventually he had to go downstairs again, to Prince George Street, where he wore a tricorner hat and got gawked at by the tourists, husbands, wives, and kids.

His destiny.  No hope for the future.

The story of how Barry got his life back on track begins with his first sexual experience.

One day in high school he was "on," marching down the Duke of Gloucester Street with the Fife and Drum Corps, when he noticed a tourist outside the Courthouse, watching him intently.

Older, probably in his 30s, dark haired, bearded, his yellow t-shirt revealing a muscular physique and a hairy chest.

Hot!  Barry smiled at him.

Why did he seem so out of place?  Suddenly Barry figured it out -- he was alone.  Tourists always came in groups of husbands, wives, and a bunch of kids.

Was his wife somewhere else, with the kids in tow?  Or was there a possibility that some men avoided the wife-and-kids trap, lived free?

They marched down three blocks, turned in formation, and marched back.  The older man was still there, watching him.  Barry smiled again.

When they finished their performance, the other guys scattered, to put on their street clothes and hit Rick's Diner, their hangout, but Barry walked back toward the Courthouse.  The tourist was walking east, toward the Raleigh Tavern.

Not really understanding why, Barry ran to catch up with him.

"Good morrow, sir," he said politely, tipping his hat.  "Did you enjoy our performance?"

The tourist turned and flashed a smile that made Barry melt inside.  "I liked it, but I'm not sure you did.  You looked kind of uncomfortable."

Stay in character!  "Perhaps I'm not accustomed to such a throng of spectators.  Although this is the capital of Virginia Colony, it has only about 1,000 residents."

"Do you want to study music in college?"

"Well, there are no music faculties in colonial universities, but indeed one day when I am married, I hope to play for my supper and thereby support my wife and children." 

The tourist frowned.  "You don't have to talk like that," he said, staring intently as if he could see into Barry's soul.  "You don't have to pretend."  

Surely he meant "You don't have to pretend to be a Colonial," but Barry heard "The adults are lying.  You can be who you are."

His whole world came crashing down around him.  His whole life was a lie, as empty as the Colonial facades, with nothing behind  it but darkness.

Horrified, Barry ran away -- not home, but to a secret place he knew, a little copse of trees behind the Public Gaol, where he went to hide from the world, from his heterosexual destiny.

He stopped, breathing heavily, overcome by sadness and rage.  He saw that the tourist had followed.

"What's wrong, kid?  You ok?"

Barry was most definitely not ok. 

"I'm...I'm..." he stammered.  Then he started to cry.

The tourist put his arms around him.  Barry had never been embraced by a man before, not even by his father.  He had never known that a chest could be so hard.

He clung to the tourist, running his hands over his chest and shoulders. Then they were kissing.

Men could kiss each other?

 They fell onto the soft summer ground, and the tourist undid the buttons of Barry's colonial breeches and went down on him.


He had never felt such an explosion of desire.

Afterwards they walked down Francis Street together.

"I didn't know there were other guys in the world who...you know...wanted to kiss."

The tourist laughed.  "Oh, there are thousands of gay people.   Maybe millions."

He had never heard the word "gay" before.

"There are bars for us down in Norfolk.  And whole neighborhoods where we can hold hands and kiss in public."

"I don't believe it!" Barry exclaimed.  "Where?"

"New York.  There's the East Village, Chelsea, Fire Island...."

They said goodbye somewhere around the campus of William and Mary.

It would take years, and a lot of work, to overcome his childhood of silence and despair.

But now, at least, he had a name.  And he had a future.

See also: A Hookup with Barry and the Poz Boy; David's First Sexual Experience.