An Interview with the Most Attractive Man in the World (no, not Adam Devine)

Los Angeles, August 2017

When I was in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago, I reunited with Zack the Photographer. When we met, he was the most stunningly handsome guy in the world, a 19-year old college freshman, dating Drake the Teddy Bear artist.  That was over 20 years ago!  

He invited me to dinner at his glass-and-steel apartment in a great retro building near the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica.

Zack is now 40 years old, working as an IT manager for a company in Marina del Rey.  Bearded, a little rugged, but with the same stunning face, smooth, pale skin, thick chest, prominent nipples, and uncut Mortadella that I remember from his twink days.  I thought it would be interesting to interview the most attractive man in the world at age 40.

Q: Are you still doing photography?

A: Some.  I've had a few things published online, and I enter my work in contests, but lately I don't really have a lot of time.

Q: How did you manage to move to West Hollywood?

After I dropped out of art school, I bopped around, from New York to Philadelphia to Boston, and then back to San Francisco for awhile.  I got a second degree in computer systems, and this job opened up.  But I don't think of myself as living in West Hollywood -- I go out there maybe once a month -- my life is here in Santa Monica.

Q: Is there a lot of gay culture in Santa Monica?

A: I'd call it post-gay.  The younger generation never knew the discrimination we did, so they don't shun straight people.  They hang out in straight bars, and meet guys on dating apps.

Q: Since you turned 40, have you become a twink magnet?

A: Well, I've just been 40 for a few months, but yeah, I've noticed that at the gym.  20 year olds always coming up to me, asking me questions, staring in the steam room.  I could hookup with a dozen guys a day if I wanted, and that doesn't even include phone apps.

Q: How many hookups do you have per week?

One, maybe two if I'm lucky.  I work 10-hour days and go to the gym 6 days a week.  Not a lot of time left for hanging out on Grindr.

Q: Does your gigantic penis get you a lot of attention?

Not really.  I mean, most guys I meet don't ask, and those who do, don't believe me when I tell them.  I've always been what they call a "pretty boy," desired for my looks, not my cock.

Q: Any long-term relationships?

I was with Tim for three years.  That's the longest, and we didn't actually live together.  I don't think I'm the settling-down, domestic type.  I like my privacy.  I want to be able to eat cold pizza in my underwear while watching Nickelodeon.

Q: Any good paranormal stories?

When I was living in New York, we had this party, and a lot of guys came over.  I thought this guy named Benny was a friend of a friend, but turns out no one actually knew him -- he just showed up.  Well, we had the "biggest penis" contest, and he pulled out this monster.  It was like 6 inches soft!  I went up to fondle him, and he just vanished!  He wasn't there anymore.  Six other guys saw it happen.

Q: Any good celebrity dating stories?

A couple involving my ex-boyfriends.  Drake, who you met, hooked up with Tony Curtis, Ricky Nelson, and John Wayne..or maybe John Wayne Jr.

My ex Tim hooked up with a couple of old teen idols, Scott Baio, Ricky Schroder, and..who was it...Mark somebody from Nightmare on Elm Street -- I can email him and ask.  But I don't have any of my own -- I've only lived in L.A. for two years.

Q: Any interesting fetishes?

I tried BDSM -- some of the young guys expect me to tie them up and order them around, you know.  Not my thing.  Oral and anal are plenty for me.

Q: Speaking of oral, can I go down on you?

I was wondering why you didn't ask before. Getting shy in your old age?

See also: Zack Hooks Up with the Prince of Sweden; The Ghost with the Kovbasa+

Alan and I Cruise in Japan

Osaka, Japan

In March of my first year in West Hollywood, my ex-boyfriend Alan, the former porn star and current student clergy, suddenly announced that he was leaving the MCC: God had called him to start his own gay Pentecostal church.

In Japan.

Ok, there were 100,000,000 people in Japan, 3% Christian, maybe 1% of that Pentecostal, and 10% of that gay.  A target market of 3,000 people.

"Oh, no, there will be a massive revival.  Thousands of Japanese gay men and lesbians will be won to the Lord.  In a few years, there will be gay Pentecostal churches all over Japan."

He invited me to come along and become his co-minister.  I should have remembered moving to Omaha with Fred.  But...

Alan quickly landed a job teaching at an English language school in Osaka, and moved in April 1986, just as the new semester was beginning.   I applied for and received a scholarship to spend the summer at Kansai University.  On May 27th, I flew to Australia to visit a friend, and then joined Alan in Japan.

He lived on a very noisy, crowded street in the Kita Ward of Osaka, in a tiny apartment -- about 216 square feet, the size of an average bedroom in the U.S.

Every day between 8:00 am and 2:00 pm, Alan met with his students -- 8 to 10 per hour, talking about current events and writing essays.  I went to Gold's Gym, then to my class in Japanese Literature or to the Joto Library to study Japanese.

After dinner we cruised. I got the gay bars, restaurants, and discos, and Alan got the bath houses, bookstores, movie theaters, and Sakuranomiya Park. We were ostensibly looking for new converts for Alan's Gay Pentecostal Church, but Alan seems to have been mostly cruising.  Every night he brought a new potential convert back to our apartment: students, salary men, tourists.  For some reason, Asian men found him infinitely attractive (later, when we were roommates, he used this remarkable ability to steal my dates).

But none of the guys he brought him converted.

The Gay Pentecostal Church -- Kamisama no kyokai gei -- met every Sunday morning at 10:30 for Sunday school and 11:30 for the morning service.  With Alan and me, and sometimes whoever stayed over last night.

No one else.

We put up fliers in gay bars, restaurants, discos.  Alan announced the church at a meeting of Kansai Pride.

No one came.

In July we went to a Hadaka Matsuri, a Naked Man Festival.  It was the highpoint of the trip. Unfortunately, we missed the Penis Festival of Kawasaki.

At the end of July, when Alan's school closed for summer break, we returned to Los Angeles.  I knew he wasn't going to go back to Japan, and sure enough, in August he returned to his old job as a middle-school social studies teacher.  But soon he was talking about starting a gay Pentecostal church in Thailand.

"There will be a massive revival.  Thousands of Thai gay men and lesbians will be won to the Lord.  In a few years, there were be gay Pentecostal churches all over Thailand.  You should come...."

I said no to that one.

Cruising the Dwarf in West Hollywood

West Hollywood, March 1992

I have always been attracted to guys who are short, the shorter the better.  Under 5'8" is good, under 5'4" is great.

Dwarf/Little Person? (Members of the group use both terms) -- whoa, here's my number!

But only about 30,000 people in the U.S. are Dwarfs/Little People (according to activist Danny Woodburn, either term is correct).  That means about 1,000 adult gay men.  And since people with atypical bodies often have fewer hangups about their partners' gender, maybe another 3,000 who are bisexual, or straight but "bent around the edges."

4,000 in a country with a population of 300,000,000 The odds against of meeting one are astronomical!

In Los Angeles, the odds increase a bit: due to wide-ranging discrimination, many LP are drawn to show business.  So I occasionally saw a LP at a Hollywood event, or on the street in Century City.  But never in a gay context.

Except one night in the spring of 1992, when my partner Lane and I were at the Faultline on Melrose.

It was always packed with bears, bikers, leathermen, and their Cute Young Thing admirers, but never before or after had I seen Ryan (not his real name) -- about 4'0", shirtless, muscular, with a broad oval face and a quick smile.  He was a little drunk, and heavily cruising a Cute Young Thing (who was trying hard to ignore him).

I wasn't going to let this opportunity pass!  Lane and I had an open relationship, so he agreed to be my wingman.  We sidled up to the spot next to Ryan, and Lane asked, "How's the filming going?"

In West Hollywood, any hint that you worked in show business immediately netted you some fans.  But Ryan glanced over with cool, crisp Attitude, and redoubled his efforts to land the Cute Young Thing.

"Um...filming is going great," I said.  "Next week we're having a wrap-up party on the yacht."

"Are you bringing the Maserati?"

"No, that's still down in my place in Cabo."

 Of course, I didn't have a yacht, a Maserati, or a place in Cabo, but cruising is all about the illusion.  But Ryan remained unimpressed.

Lane and I exchanged panicked glances.  None of my good material was working!  Think, think, think...what did West Hollywood guys like more than showbiz contacts and bank accounts?  

"But you know, I really miss my modeling days." (This was true; I did do some modeling)

"Yeah, I loved your spread in Inches. Didn't you win the Spectacular Pecs award?"

"No, I got runner-up."

An appearance in a beefcake magazine.  Who could resist checking that out?

But Ryan was gazing wistfully as the Cute Young Thing wafted off to cruise a leatherman.  He drained his beer and started walking away.

What did West Hollywood guys like more than showbiz contacts, bank accounts, and pecs?

I walked over, stood directly in front of Ryan, blocking his way, and said "Hi."

He was exactly 2 feet shorter than me, so he was looking directly at my crotch.  His eyes widened.

Penises are more important than pecs, bank accounts, and showbiz contacts. I got his number.

Cruising East of Alvarado

West Hollywood, September 1993

"Where are all the Hispanic guys?' I asked Lane one day. "The population of Los Angeles is about 50% Hispanic, but you never see any here in West Hollywood.  We don't even have a Mexican restaurant."

"I can buy some Old El Paso at the Safeway if you want," Lane said, "And make tacos tonight."

"I'm serious.  We bring home lots of Asian guys, and lots of Anglo leather bears, but no Hispanic guys"

"What do you expect, when you cruise at Mugi, and I cruise at the Faultline?  If you want to meet Hispanic guys, you have to go where they are."

He was right.  The Hispanic gay population of L.A. had its own distinct culture, pre-dating West Hollywood.  If I wanted to meet them, I had to head east of Alvarado.

So on Saturday night, I dropped Lane off at the Faultline for his weekly cruise, and drove a mile farther to the corner of Sunset and Hollywood, and a bar called Basgo's.

It was not like the semi-darkness of Mugi: it was loud and gaudy, the walls painted an effervescent pink.  There were murals of naked Aztecs, plastic palm trees, stuffed parrots.

Pumped-up bartenders in their underwear gyrated to salsa music:

En la vida hay amores
que nunca pueden olvidarse
imborrables momentos
que siempre guarda el corazón

Drag queens made the rounds, flirting and kvetching with their huge brandy snifters sloshing with ruby-red margaritas.

Rent boys slouched by the pool table, displaying sock-enhanced mega-bulges.

The cruising protocol was closer to Catch One than Mugi.  Few Anglos, no English being spoken, few people by themselves except for rent boys and drag queens.  You saw someone you liked and drew him away from his rowdy group of friends to the dance floor, where the pre-hookup conversation occurred.

Con los anos que me quedan
Yo vivire por darte amor
Borrando cada dolor
Con besos llenos de pasion
Como te ame por vez primera

I was drawn to a very handsome young guy with an impish grin, talking nonstop with his friends.   Shorter than me, dark skin, a round face, and black curly hair.  Frayed jeans with an enormous bulge and an yellow shirt with most of the buttons undone, revealing a hard smooth chest.

I approached and asked -- or rather yelled -- "Quires bailar?"  He grinned and nodded.  I took his hand and led him to the dance floor.

We spoke -- or rather yelled -- in  clipped Spanish.  His name was Dario.  He was 23 years old, from Peru.  He came to L.A. last year with his brother and two cousins.  He worked in a warehouse.



Nice background story.  Time to seal the deal.  I led him to the bar and ordered two tamarind-flavored Mexican sodas.   He grinned.

"Que quieres hacer en la cama?" I asked.  What do you like to do in bed?

"Oh, me gustaria que tu me maman!" Dario said, eyes gleaming.  "Y otras cosas, por supuesto.  Y cojerte..." 

Getting oral, topping, and "other things," not bad.

I knew that closeted guys were sometimes only into the act itself, not the preliminaries, so I specified:  "Pero, mi amigo y yo, nos gustan besando y abrazando, tambien."  Kissing and hugging, full body contact, making out.

He nodded.  "A mi me gustan muchas cosas."

And one more thing: "Y es absolutamente necessario que tu duermas con nosotros."  No grab-and-go.  You have to spend the night, or no deal.

He nodded.  "Si, si.  Dormiremos."

Dario didn't have a car, so he drove with me to pick up Lane at the Faultline, then to the French Quarter, and then to our apartment in West Hollywood. 

We sat in the living room.  I ran my hand over his chest, cupped his crotch, tried to kiss him.

No besando.

WTF?

Well, maybe he was shy.

We brought Dario into the bedroom, stripped off his clothes, and put him down on the bed.  He had a beautifully curved, uncut Bratwurst.  I went down on him while Lane fondled his chest.

Were they kissing?  I looked up.  No.
  

I gave Lane a turn at the cock and tried to kiss Dano.   No.

Well, could I at least fondle his balls?  Ok.

 He pushed Lane's head down on his crotch, jerked his hips, and finished with a groan. 

Ok, so how about mamando us?  No.

I wasn't particularly into anal, but he said cojerte, so I turned over onto my stomach and asked "Hay condones?"  Do you have condoms?

Dario was pulling his shorts on.  "Hey, I thought you were spending the night!"  I exclaimed.  "Dormiremos juntos!"

Nope.  "Tengo que venir a mi casa.  Necessito levantarme temprano."  I have to get up early.

So we left Lane in bed and got dressed, and I drove Dario home -- to Silverlake, eight miles away.

"Why did you tell me that you are into besando y mamando?" I asked in frustration.

He stared out the car window at the glittering lights of Santa Monica Boulevard.  "I told you I like many things," he said.

"And spending the night.  You said voy a dormir contigo."

"Dormir...tener sexo, si?"

I smelled a rat.  Dario had played me, agreeing to anything just to get into my bed.

Then we arrived at the address he gave me -- a glass-and-steel building on Hyperion, in the heart of Silverlake's gay neighborhood.

This was the tiny, rundown apartment that Dario shared with his brothers and cousins?

"Could I come in to use the bathroom?" I asked.

It was a beautifully furnished one-bedroom, with hardwood floors and antique furniture.  A framed print of a bullfighter.

A coffee table book about painter Joan Miro.

"Porque me dices que eres pobre?" I asked.  Why did you tell me that you were poor?

"I didn't say I was poor," Dario answered -- in respectable English!  "You heard what you wanted to hear."

The brothers and cousins came to the U.S. with him -- they didn't live with him.

And his job in the warehouse?  He was the general manager, with a salary double what Lane made.

"You wanted a poor little Latino boy who says 'si, señor' and agrees to whatever you say, and I wanted a hot, built Anglo to go down on me.  We both got what we wanted, right?"

The next weekend I returned to Basgo's and met Manuel, from Nicaragua, who spoke almost no English -- I checked.

And I made sure we were besando and abrazando before we left the bar.

See also: The Waiter in the Mexican Restaurant; I Bring Home a Teen Hustler.

The One Thing Kerry Wants in a Guy

West Hollywood, December 29th, 1998

I'm back in West Hollywood for New Year's Eve.  Lane and I are having breakfast at the French Quarter, catching up on the gossip of who dated who, who moved in, who broke up, during the 3 1/2 years I've been away.

"And guess what?" Lane says in a confidential hush.  "Kerry finally found a boyfriend! He moved into his apartment about two months ago!"

We met Kerry at the gay synagogue in West Hollywood several years ago.  He was 21 years old, a theater arts major at UCLA, sharing an apartment off Melrose with two roommates and working in a video store, where he always found a gay-themed movie to promote as his "Pick of the Week."

He stood out in the crowd: tall, a boyish all-American face, smooth sculpted physique, and a shock of red hair beneath a yarmulke decorated with little shamrocks.  One doesn't meet many redheaded Irish Jews.

Turns out that Kerry grew up in an Irish Catholic household in the Boston suburb of Braintree.  On his 16th birthday he shocked his family by going downstairs for breakfast in a yarmulke and announcing that he was converting to Judaism.

AND that he was gay.  In the same conversation.

That's chutzpah!

No wonder he moved 3,000 miles away to go to college.















We bonded over our outsider status, surrounded by guys who grew up kosher.  Lane and I had him over a few times for dinner and sharing: an oral bottom, average sized, surprising for a redhead, but with that face and physique, who cared?

He was very popular at the synagogue, at the gym, and at the twink bars. Some of the most desirable guys  in West Hollywood were asking him out.

There are six traits that make a guy stand out as boyfriend material in West Hollywood: movie industry connections, an extraordinary knowledge of the arts, a handsome face, a bodybuilder's physique, a gigantic penis, or money.   Kerry was being asked out by Cecil B. DeMille, Leonardo Da Vinci, Leonardo DiCaprio, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jeff Stryker, and Richie Rich, or the West Hollywood equivalents.

BUT: lots of first dates, rarely a second, but by the third, he was shouting "Next!"

No matter how hot the guy was, Kerry always found something wrong with him: bad breath, weird tattoo, unmade bed, a yapping dog, ordered the most expensive item on the menu, said something bad about Boston, lived outside the gay neighborhood.

Maybe he didn't really want a boyfriend?  Maybe he just liked meeting new guys, going out, and the bedroom activity after?

But he kept complaining: "I want to find my soul mate, the one I was destined to be with.  I want there to be fireworks the first time we kiss!"

We lost contact after I moved to San Francisco, and then New York.  Finding out that he has a boyfriend -- and they're living together --  is huge!

Who is this Adonis who has risen above all other mortals, with their snoring and farting and eating peanut butter right from the jar, to become "the one" for the extraordinarily picky Kerry?

"I don't know.  Kerry doesn't bring him to synagogue, and he won't tell us anything about him, except his name is Mat with one 't'."

"Well, I've got to meet this Mat with one 't'!  Do you have their phone number?"

He doesn't, but he has a friend from synagogue who does.  I call, and get us an invitation to visit after dinner tomorrow night.

I wonder which of the six traits Mat will have?  Maybe all six!


December 30th

We drive to a rundown apartment building, brown adobe with bars on the window, on Willoughby, where West Hollywood meets the Straight World.

Kerry is a few years older, of course, but still has a boyish all-American face and a pale, tight physique.  Mat is about 30, thin, rather scruffy looking, with unkept black hair and a three-day growth of beard.

I check the six traits, one by one:

1. Wealth.  No -- the apartment is small and cluttered, with no dining room and just one bedroom.  They serve us cake on mismatched plates.

2. Movie Industry Connections.  No -- Mat has a clerical job in an office on Wilshire.  Kerry has given up on his acting ambitions, and is taking classes in human resources management.

3. Knowledge of the Arts.  No.  We discuss Ricky Martin.  the Matrix, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

4. Handsome Face.   No.  His face is long and narrow, his eyes too small.

5. Bodybuilder's Physique.  No.  Mat is rather thin.

Then he must have #6, a Gigantic Penis!

Sharing with two guys is rare, and neither of us find Mat particularly attractive, but we start cruising him anyway, just to see what his beneath the belt gifts are like.

We go into the bedroom.  I kiss and fondle Kerry, and he kneels and goes down on me while Mat goes down on Lane  -- without taking his pants off.

Mat doesn't stand up until Lane finishes.  Seeing my opportunity, I kneel in front of him, unzip him, and find -- average, maybe a little small.

But...Kerry is an oral bottom!  He likes them big!

Kerry kneels beside me.  "Can I help you with that?" he asks.

Ok, I can't figure it out,  So I invite Kerry to lunch a couple of days after New Year's and ask.

January 3rd.  

"What sets Mat apart from the other guys?  What was the initial attraction?"

"Oh, his face, his personality, his wit," Kerry answers.  "And his penis, obviously."

"It seems a bit on the small side to me."

"Who cares about size?  It's uncut!  Didn't you notice when we 'shared' that  was all over you and barely touched Lane?  I love uncircumcized men!"

For Kerry, it all boiled down to a foreskin.

Stranded on the Island of Dogs

London, June 1993

Sorry if you love London, or call it home.  I'm not a big fan, in spite of the architectural marvels and the 15 Public Penises.  I always get lost.  It's cold.  The streets are all dirty.  Everyone is rude all the time;  I've never seen anyone in London ever smile.  And the food's not great.

June 1993: My partner Lane was a delegate to the World Congress of GLBT Jews, to be held in London!  He invited me along as his guest.

This isn't him.  I have lots of pictures, but I'm too lazy to scan them.  But he was a husky, hairy bear with nice arms, like this guy.

I had been to Colombia, Japan, Australia, Turkey, and India, and he had been to Israel and Bermuda, but for some reason neither of us had ever been to Britain before, except to the airport.  So we planned lots of sightseeing: The Tower of London, the Sherlock Holmes Museum, Stonehenge, The Rude Man of Cerne Abbas, Canterbury Cathedral.  Not to mention the Gay Village of Soho.

1. The problems started from the moment I arrived.  At customs I was questioned extensively about my reasons for coming to Britain, who I was staying with, did I know anyone there, and again why was I there?????.

The customs agents simply could not believe that anyone would come to their country as a tourist.  They had never heard of such a thing.  There was nothing in Britain that could possibly be of any interest to outsiders!   Obviously I was a terrorist.


2. If you were planning a World Congress with delegates from all over the world, most of whom have never been to Britain before, wouldn't you pick a hotel that was centrally located?

Nope: The Royal Britannia Hotel was on the Isle of Dogs, an industrial sleugh on the East End of London, surrounded by the Thames on three sides.  No subway.  You could catch a bus into town -- about 6 miles to the Tower of London -- but it stopped at different places, depending on the whim of the driver, anywhere between six and twelve blocks from the hotel.

It stopped wherever the driver wanted.  So you were standing at a bus stop, and it would drive past you and stop two blocks away.

3. And it stopped running at 6:00 pm, and it didn't run on Sunday.

So I spent all day Thursday and Friday chasing after a bus and getting lost trying to find my way back.

4. As a guest, I was not allowed to go to any of the meetings, or any of the dinners, so I was stuck at the hotel's restaurant.

On Thursday night, there was an evening boat tour of the Thames, with box dinner provided.  Except for guests.  I stole one to avoid starving to death.

Saturday was the Sabbath, so not much going on. We went sightseeing, got lost on the way back, and had dinner at the hotel.

5. The Conference hosted a dance that evening (the Sabbath is over at sundown), but as a guest, I wasn't allowed to attend.  I spent the night watching television.

6. On Sunday we walked the six miles into town, but by the time we got there, we were too tired for sightseeing.  We returned to discover that the hotel restaurant was closed on Sunday.  And there's no pizza delivery to the Isle of Dogs.  Lane could go to the Conference dinner, but I couldn't.

I would have starved to death again, but someone with a car drove into town and brought me (and the other guests) some fish and chips.

Is this any way to run a gay Jewish conference?

On Monday the conference was over, thank God, so Lee and I spent a few days in Oxford, Stonehenge, Cerne Abbas, Bath, Canterbury, and York.

7. In Oxford, the shops that were supposed to be open were closed as the owner decided to "pop out."

8. In Bath, we stayed at a gay B&B, where in the lounge an old movie was playing.  I thought I recognized the actress, so I said "Is that Marilyn Monroe?"

"Of course it is, you twat!  What kind of faggot doesn't recognize Marilyn Monroe?"

"Um...the kind who is not interested in women?"

9. We couldn't tell which train was leaving for York.  There were two, on two tracks, with no signs.  So we asked someone.  And he deliberately directed us to the wrong train.

10. In York, we stayed in a straight B&B, where they absolutely would not believe that we wanted a room with one bed.  "Oh, no, duckie, there's been some mistake.  We'll fix it right away!"

I've been to Britain two or three more times since 1993.  Always nothing but problems, impossible rules, buses that go where they want, and incessantly rude poeple,  especially in London.  Give me Paris, or Amsterdam.  Or Osaka.  Or Irkutsk.

Notre Dame, a Catholic Boy, and a Warm Summer Night

Notre Dame, Indiana,

When I was 26 years old, in grad school at the University of Southern California, I had a paper on "Boccacio and the Jews" accepted at a Medieval Studies Conference at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

I flew into Rock Island to visit my parents for a few days.  Then they dropped me off at Notre Dame on the way to visit their relatives in Garrett, Indiana, about an hour's drive away.

I loved Notre Dame!  It was like a Medieval university, with archways, pillars, Gothic buildings, crucifixes, small side chapels, and statues of saints everywhere.

I expected Duns Scotus to walk by at any moment, discussing De consolatione philosophiae with Thomas Aquinas, while St. Hildegard of Bingen sang "O nobilissima viriditas!"

And did I mention the beefcake? Hot Catholic boys walking around, their scapulars gleaming against their hard brown chests, talking about the Bangles and Robocop and last night's baseball game like any students at any secular college.

There were no conference activities scheduled for Saturday night.  Most of the participants went out to dinner with their husbands and wives and boyfriends and girlfriends.  My roommate went to the Linebacker Lounge, hoping for a heterosexual pickup.  My Gayellow Pages listed one gay bar in South Bend, but it was too far to walk.  I was stuck on campus.

Lonely, bored, I wandered into the library, like I used to at Augustana on Saturday nights, when I felt overwhelmed by my friends' chants of  "girls! girls! girls! let's get some girls!  let's look at some girls!" 

Nostalgic for Augustana, I walked into the stacks and browsed through the PD section (Scandinavian Literature).  Nathan was sitting at an isolated study carrell, surrounded by thick books.

No, he wasn't naked.  But he was cute -- 20 years old, short, slim, pale, with curly brown hair and a boyish face.

"Studying Norwegian?" I asked.

He looked up and smiled.  "Oh -- no, Spanish.  This was just a quiet place to study."

"Yo hablo Espanol tambien.  Podimos discutir cosas intimas, si?"

"Whoa, whoa, I'm just first year!"

"Sorry.  I'm in grad school in Spanish.  In Los Angeles."

"Wow, Los Angeles -- that must be great!  All the movie stars everywhere.  Who's the biggest star you've met?"

Every heterosexual guy who found out that I lived in Los Angeles inevitably asked me about "hot girls."  Nathan was gay!

"Met, or saw naked?" I asked with a leer. "I could tell you some things about Tom Cruise..."

Soon we were eating hamburgers in the Student Center, while Nathan told me about growing up in an all-Catholic neighborhood of Buffalo, New York, not knowing anyone who was black, Protestant, or gay.  He came out during his freshman year, but he only knew three gay guys on campus, two students and a professor, and he had never had a boyfriend.

"There's lots of sex at Notre Dame," Nathan said.  "I could get a dozen guys a night, if I wanted.  But just once, I'd like one of them to say hello to me the next day."  He reached under the table and took my hand.  "Is that the way it is in Los Angeles, too?  Lots of secret stuff with straight guys who are thinking about girls the whole time?"

"Oh, no.  Everybody in West Hollywood is gay, so we don't need to trick with straight guys.  We date.  We fall in love. We have permanent partners."

He quickly moved his hand for a brief grope.  "So, wanna make out?"

"Make out?  Um...where?  I have a roommate."

"Me, too.  Let's take a walk."

He led me across the dark, quiet campus to a footpath that led around St. Joseph Lake.  It was heavily wooded, but I could still see the Basilica of the Sacred Heart across the lake; St. Mary, who topped the Golden Dome, had her back turned to us.

Nathan pointed out the Moreau Seminary, a priests' residence.
And the Sacred Heart Parish Center.
And the Our Lady of Fatima shrine.
And the Solitude of St. Joseph, a retreat house for monks.

"This must be the most Catholic place on Earth!" I exclaimed.  "Except maybe the Vatican."

"Yeah.  And the woods are busy all the time.  Not a lot of college kids, but priests, monks, professors.  I swear I had a Cardinal one night."  He grinned in the darkness.  "Creepy old guy, but Italian, you know.  Gigantic."

We started kissing and groping.  Once we had to move aside as a fratboy and his girlfriend passed, giggling with erotic anticipation, but otherwise we were alone.  Soon my pants were down, and he was on his knees.

It felt weird, being semi-naked in the summer night.  It reminded me of when I was a kid, and Uncle Paul showed us how to pee against the side of the barn.

Nathan and I stayed in contact.  The moment he graduated from Notre Dame, he fled to the gay haven of San Francisco, where he went to work in a store on Union Square.  It wasn't exactly the career his parents intended for him, but at least he was home.

Sausage Sighting of Christopher Atkins

When I was living in West Hollywood, I met a lot of actors, some famous ones: Adam West, Cesar Romero, Gregory Harrison, Greg Williams, John Amos, Lou Ferrigno, Michael J. Fox, Richard Dreyfuss.

But only one is a Facebook friend today: Christopher Atkins

Here's why:

West Hollywood, June 1994

In the spring of 1994, my friend Infinite Chazz began dating Kris, a 19-year old baby-faced ginger boy who had been in Los Angeles less than a year, but had already been in some movies and tv shows.

You might know him as Kristoffer Winters, who played the Zilbor in Dude, Where's My Car (2000) and Clayton Gallagher in Shameless (2011-2012), and who is reputedly the boyfriend of  Jeremy Renner.

The full post is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

My Date with Richard Dreyfuss

West Hollywood

When I lived in West Hollywood, I  visited the Bodhi Tree Bookstore on Melrose almost every weekend.  It specialized in New Age books, everything from natural foods and aromatherapy to Buddhism, Hinduism, and the occult. I was mostly interested in the paranormal section: ghosts, vampires, ufos, mysterious disappearances, time slips. 

It got very crowded on weekends.  We often saw actors, mostly the semi-celebrities who starred in tv shows a few years ago and were still recognizable.  Often browsing in the witchcraft section, trying to find a spell that would hasten their success or prevent their decline.

One Saturday afternoon, I found a short, rather husky guy standing directly in front of the section I wanted, immersed in a book.  I glared at him, cleared my throat a few times, and eventually he moved away. My roommate  Derek immediately clomped over.

"Did you ask him out, or what?" he demanded.

"Who?"

"You didn't even talk to him?  Do you know who that was?  Richard Dreyfuss!"

I hadn't even noticed.

Of course I knew who Richard Dreyfuss was:American Graffiti, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Goodbye Girl. Moon Over Parador, and Jaws, my which had the most obvious gay-subtext romance I had ever seen.  I just didn't recognize him in real life.

The next Saturday, same section, same short, rather husky guy, immersed in a book about vampires. This time I looked closely.  Yep, it was Richard Dreyfuss!  "I got my first kiss from a vampire" I said, as an icebreaker.

It didn't work.  He moved quickly away.

He wasn't there the next Saturday, but a couple of weeks later, I saw him in the paranormal section again.  I said "Hello," from one regular customer to another, and to my surprise he responded.  Soon we were chatting about Benjamin Bathurst, the British diplomat who arrived at an Austrian inn, walked around the horses, and vanished forever.

After that, we chatted regularly.  He was friendly, and I thought, a little cruisy, always paying special attention to the cute guys.  Could he be gay?  And more importantly, interested?

Important Clue #1: Cruising cute guys.

 I had already been in a relationship with a closeted celebrity.  I didn't need another. But still...he was Richard Dreyfuss!

One day I got enough courage to invite him to the Abbey, a gay restaurant on Robertson, for coffee, and he consented.

Important Clue #2: Consenting to go to a gay restaurant.

 I told him about some of my own paranormal experiences, like the Naked Man in the Peat Bog. 

"You're lucky that your ghost was a hottie," he said with a smile. "All I saw was a little girl, wearing a pink dress and horn-rimmed glasses.  She stood by my bedside when I was in the hospital after a car accident."

Important Clue #3: The word "hottie" .

I decided to play my trump card.  "My ex-boyfriend saw ghosts all the time," I hinted. "And UFOs.  I felt so jealous."

"My wife is the same way.  I wish I was more attuned to the spiritual world."

Touché

Ok, not gay, not interested -- but super gay-friendly, especially for the 1990s.

No more coffee dates, but we continued to be "chatting at the bookstore" friends for awhile.   Then suddenly he stopped coming to the Bodhi Tree on Saturdays. 

Maybe he walked around the horses and vanished.

Or maybe he moved to New York.

I never got his phone number.

Alan, the Pentecostal Porn Star

West Hollywood, October 1985

When I moved to West Hollywood in 1985, I began to attend the All Saints Metropolitan Community Church, a gay-specific church.  It wasn't very big.  The MCC tends to thrive in communities where mainstream churches are homophobic, but in West Hollywood you had many other gay-friendly congregations.

So every Sunday only 30 or so people gathered in a sort of chapel on the second floor of a building on the corner of Santa Monica and Fairfax, down the street from the French Quarter Restaurant, for a service that borrowed heavily from Roman Catholic liturgy, with robes and incense and chants of "Peace be with you," but old-fashioned Methodist hymns and a conservative evangelical-style sermon.

(Most members of MCC were raised in homophobic denominations, usually either Protestant fundamentalist or Roman Catholic, so the church tried to accommodate both.)

Many newcomers believed that the Bible disapproved of gay people, or that AIDS was God's punishment for being gay.  The pastor had to minister to them, so every sermon was about how God is not homophobic, the Bible is gay-friendly, you can be gay and Christian.

For those who attended every Sunday, it got a little redundant.

There was a pastor and two student clergy, quite a lot for such a small congregation, but the positions were highly prestigious -- ministering in the heart of the Gay World!  -- and therefore sought-after:

I have a thing for clergy.  The pastor was in a long-term monogamous relationship, and one of the student clergy was a bit too old for me (a Baptist minister, married with children, before he came out).

That left Alan, a tall, husky former Pentecostal who had trained to become a missionary.

He had a boyfriend, too, but by mid-October, they had broken up, and I saw my chance to move in.  I wrangled an invitation to his house for dinner on the Saturday after Halloween.

Alan and his two roommates lived in the bottom half of a brown stucco duplex, about 10 blocks from the church, near Plummer Park where all of the male hustlers hung out, and the Formosa Cafe, where Hollywood celebrities used to hang out.

He turned out to be a former theology student and English major who almost went to grad school in Medieval poetry.  He had been in West Hollywood for six years; in his early days he acted in gay porn, alongside such greats as Kip Noll and Jeff Stryker.

So you'd think that we would have a lot to talk about.  Still, the date didn't go well.

1. He served canned ravioli, with no salad or vegetables in sight.  This is what you serve to impress a date?

2. Instead of The Golden Girls, the West Hollywood staple, he wanted to watch The Love Boat.  Geez, my grandmother watched that!

3. An hour of mind-numbing boredom later, I said, "Are you ready to go out?"  Nearly all dates in West Hollywood included an hour or so at the bars, mainly because being in a gay-friendly public place was so new and novel for most of us.

"Ok.  We can go to the baths."

A bath house!  On a date?  Unheard of!  And, for that matter, weren't clergy supposed to be into monogamous relationships, not hookups?

4. "Never mind, we'll just stay here," I said.

"Ok.  Go in the bedroom and take off your clothes.  I'm going to take a shower first."

Huh?

I just sat there, speechless, infuriated.  The student clergy was treating me like a hustler!  I heard the shower run, then go off.  Alan came out in a towel.

"I thought you would be naked in my bed by now."

"You didn't pick me up at Plummer Park" I yelled.  "This is supposed to be a date, not a sales contract!  And you call yourself student clergy!"

"Hold it-- I didn't mean to offend you," Alan said, perplexed.  "I was just trying to speed things up. I'm nervous -- I like you a lot.   Um...do you still want to go in the bedroom?"

"No, I want to go to the bars, and find someone who acts like a gentleman.  Like about a thousand other guys in West Hollywood!"

I stood and moved toward the door.

"Come on, I said I was sorry..."  He rushed toward me.  His towel fell off.  A gigantic Kielbasa+.

Whoa, what do you call that thing?  I stared.  He smiled.  "Did I mention that I used to do porn movies?"

I forgave him.  Turns out that being gifted beneath the belt (see my Sausage List) got Alan out of a lot of faux pas.

We dated for about six weeks, until I went home for Christmas, and a Norwegian con artist moved in.

Why Not Pick Up Russian?

Los Angeles, October 1988

I remember every class I took as an undergraduate at Augustana College (1978-1982), from Fiction Writing, which convinced me not to become a novelist, to Paleontology, taught by the professor with the handcuff parties, to Culture and Civilization of Modern Germany, with the professor who kept denying that modern Germany suffered from "the problem" of  Homosexualitat.

 I remember most of my classes at Indiana University (1982-1984), from Victorian Literature, with the professor who kept giggling "this author was a homosexual!", to Restoration Literature, where Viju and I tried to determine if our professor was gay.

But I remember almost nothing from the University of Southern California, where I was working on a doctorate in Comparative Literature (1985-1989).  Maybe because I was busy with Raul and my bed-switching roommate, cruising Richard Dreyfuss, and bankrupting the porn industry.

Or maybe because I hated everything about it.

Except for the cute fratboys, the statue of Tommy Trojan, and the reading room in the Philosophy Library.

1. The professors were very rich and very elitist, driving Porsches, reading The New Yorker (in Los Angeles), talking about their summer homes in Cabo.  One invited us to her house for pizza, and I thought "Finally, someone with regular tastes!"  Turned out to be goat cheese and arugula pizza.

2. The professors thought that they knew everything.  Unfortunately, what they knew was contradictory. One insisted that that all quotes in academic papers must be in the original language only, and another, that they be accompanied by English translations -- not a problem until they're both on your dissertation committee, ordering you to take the translations out and then put them in again.

3. They thought that graduate students were their personal servants.  One told me to go get him coffee.  Another wanted me to pick up his dry cleaning.

4. They were homophobic, insisting that I omit any reference to gay people from all of my papers.

5. They were insane. One went into a 5-minute tirade, loaded with personal invectives, whenever we said or wrote "the Renaissance mind."  We tried hard to avoid it, but it's such a common expression that occasionally someone goofed, and we had to listen to the tirade again.

6. Did I mention that they were insane?  My degree required a reading knowledge of French, German, and Italian, but my dissertation committee added "an ancient language."

So I spent a year cramming Latin.

Then when I changed my dissertation field from the Renaissance to the Symbolist Movement, the committee chair, Dr. Lazar, said "Oh, you should pick up another modern language.  How about Russian?"

"I don't think it's possible to pick up Russian in six weeks," I said.  "How about if I pick up a Russian instead?"

They stared, not comprehending.

"It's a joke.  Picking up a Russian...."

They stared.

"See, the phrase 'pick up' refers to meeting a stranger for an erotic encounter, so I said pick up a Russian...."

They stared.

I sighed.  "What about Turkish?"

The Top 10 Gay Rumors about Scott Baio

Today Scott Baio is a bitter, right-wing blowhard who regularly makes homophobic and Islamophobic comments and is a passionate supporter of the Orange Fuhrer.  But when I was living in West Hollywood in the late 1980s, he had the goods.

Charles in Charge premiered in 1984, with 24-year old Scott Baio as a rather dorky college student working as a live-in nanny to three bratty kids.  After one season, it was cancelled.

 It returned in first-run syndication in  1987, hipper and sexier, with a new, softcore-porn rendition of the opening song:

Charles in charge of our days and our nights.
Charles in charge of our wrongs and our rights.
I want --- oooh --- I want Charles in charge of me.

 The kids were no longer bratty -- one was a teenage supermodel.  And Charles was a confident A-Gamer.

Who had a chest, and wasn't afraid to use it.

And a bodybuilder boyfriend named Buddy (Willie Aames).

I never went to tv show tapings, unless I had out of town visitors.  They were tacky and touristy.  But I went to Charles in Charge several times, just to gawk at Scott and Willie.

Scott was so fey, and the gay-subtext buddy-bonds were so intense, that everyone  in West Hollywood assumed he was gay.

Well, maybe bisexual: he was linked with Heather Locklear, Melissa Gilbert, Leslie Ann Warren, Nicolette Sheridan, and Nicole Eggert, who stated that she lost her virginity to him in 1989, at age seventeen.

But the gay rumors were ubiquitous.  Most were the standard backstage hookups and closeted dates, but there were others -- vulgar and raunchy, about abuse, domination, and humiliation.  They make you feel sorry for the guy.

Here are 10 most interesting rumors about gay hookups and dates:

1. His first gay experience was in 1976, when he was 16 years old, with Eddie Mekka, who played Carmine on Laverne and Shirley.

2.  Scott had a three-way with his cousin Jimmy and Ricardo Montalban, the star of Fantasy Island.  .Details vary, but they involve oral, anal, or BDSM.

3. When Scott was appearing as Cousin Chachi on Happy Days, Henry Winkler (Fonzie) asked him to "sit on it."

4. He also dated Donnie Most (Ralph Malph).  Donnie was an anal top with an enormous Kovbasa+.

5. Scott hooked up with Jonathan Ward, who played the dorky Douglas during the first season of Charles in Charge.  This was a few years later, when Jonathan was 20 years old.  Scott went down on him and then bottomed.

6. He regularly hooked up with James T. Callahan, who played the elderly Walter Powell.  Callahan often went down on Scott in the dressing room.

7. My friend Mario said that he was set up on a blind date with Scott around 1984.  The bedroom activity mostly involved wrestling and "forced" oral.  No cuddling or kissing afterwards.

8. A volatile, on-off relationship with Willie Aames, his costar on Charles in Charge.  There were constant jealous fights on the set.  Once they got into a fist fight over allegations that Scott was cheating.

9. Cesar Romero told me that his friend Jason dated Scott during the late 1980s.  Cesar often asked to "share," but Scott refused.  He did allow Cesar to watch, though.










10. Will the Bondage Boy's boyfriend Rick told us that Scott answered his personal ad for a BDSM "hard master" in 2002.

Of course, most of these stories are probably made up, but if only a few are true, Scott Baio had a very interesting teen idol career.  Surprisingly, most of them end in 1990, when Charles in Charge ended.  I wonder if it's a coincidence.


See also: Nude Photos of Willie Aames; Rick the Hard Master Tops Scott Baio; and the Boomer Beefcake and Bonding entry on Scott Baio