Cruising in New Mexico: The Twink, The Redneck, or the Gordito?

New Mexico, Summer 2004

Remember my trip to visit Larry in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the summer of 2004? After four deplorable days, we had a gigantic argument, and I packed up my stuff and drove away, never to speak to or hear from Larry again.

During the next three days, I met three guys, and hooked up with one.  You have to guess which.

Hint: I hate losing friends, so I was quite upset, and not following my usual rules about public cruising or hooking up with complete strangers.

Day #1:  The Tucumcari Twink 

Tucumcari, an iconic town on Route 66!  The stuff of James Dean, Sal Paradise, Peter Fonda in search of America!

I arrived just before noon, had lunch  at the Pow Wow Restaurant, and explored.  Very run down, a lot of vacant lots and boarded-up buildings, old hotels with faded signs, a thrift store, a Chinese buffet, a boarded-up theater.  A community college, a single low adobe building.  I didn't see a downtown; there was no there there.

I stopped in Tee Pee Curios, a tee-pee shaped store that sold Route 66 merchandise: t-shirts, books, Stuckey's candy (whatever that was), license plates that read "Bad Girl" or "Billy the Kid," right-wing patriotic slogans, religious slogans.  Whatever.

But...the guy behind the counter was remarkable: in his 20s, thick brown hair, handsome face, tight muscular frame barely hidden beneath an orange t-shirt.  He was reading a Harry Potter book.  I approached.

"You must hear about Route 66 so much you get darn sick of it."

I'll bet he never heard that from a tourist before.  He looked up with a big smile.  "You have no idea, sir!  Route 66 this, Route 66 that.  We've had an interstate through here since the 1970s.  Get with the 21st century!"

"Like Harry Potter?"

Embarrassed at reading a "kid's book," he tried to hide it.

"Oh, I'm a big fan.  I especially like how Harry and Ron are so devoted to each other, like a romantic couple."

"Hm...you know, I never really thought about it, but maybe you're right."

"Fan fiction is loaded with Harry-Ron shipping."

Day #2: The Roswell Redneck

The town made famous by the 1947 UFO crash was about three hours south of Tucumcari.  I was surprised by the contrast: a beautiful, vibrant downtown with trees and green spaces.  Restaurants, shops.  A used bookstore.  Mexican restaurant for lunch.

The Museum and Art Center, with an excellent selection of Southwestern Art.

Around 4:00 pm, I visited the International UFO Museum. As a long time devotee of the UFO phenomenon, I didn't see much that I hadn't seen a hundred times before.

There were only a few tourists.  Later I discovered that a big UFO festival had just ended, so all of the true believers were gone, leaving a nuclear family, a teenage boy and girl holding hands, and a guy by himself, looking at an exhibit with some very muscular classic grey aliens.

"Who knew that aliens worked so hard on their delts?" I asked.

He laughed.  "And their abs."  He was his 30s, shorter than me, round face, a little beard, solidly built with respectable biceps and a smooth chest visible beneath his half-unbuttoned short-sleeved shirt.

"Maybe there's a Gold's Gym in outer space."

"They've got to do something to pass the time., what with no willies and all."

"I'd think I'd rather have a willy.  Especially on Saturday night," I added suggestively.  This was definitely a cruising conversation!

"This is Sunday," he pointed out.

"Even worse.  Sunday night is the loneliest night of the week."  That came out a little more depressed than I intended.

"I hear you, buddy.  You traveling by yourself?"

"I was visiting my friend in Santa Fe, but we kind of had an argument."

"Well, maybe it's time for you to make some new friends."

Day #3: The Alamogordo Gordito

Around 11:00 am, I arrived at Alamogordo, a "big city" of 30,000, including the nearby air force base.  An old army town with broad streets and low mountains in the distance.

I went to the New Mexico Museum of Space History, stopped for lunch at the Country Kitchen, and then headed out to the White Sands National Monument, a vast sea of sand dunes with nature trails for hiking.

And, apparently, cruising.

I was staring at a multicolored snake, wishing I was back in nice, safe Wilton Manors, when a tall, husky older guy approached (top photo).

"He's harmless -- as long as you don't get too close."

"Don't worry, I have no intention of saying hello."  I turned -- he had a flat clean-shaven face, a little double chin, a barrel chest and thick biceps.  Hair was peeking up over his t-shirt.

"Pretty cool, huh?  I've been hiking all over the state, but this is my favorite trail.  Near dusk you can see bobcats and coyotes."

"I just hope they've had dinner before they see me."

"It's all about the adventure, isn't it?  I'm retired Air Force, enjoying life and trying out new things.  Meeting new people, too."  He held out his hand to be shaken.

Day #4

On to Albuquerque!  I was feeling better, having seen some interesting sites, met three guys, and spent the night with one.

Can you figure out which?

a. The Tucumcari Twink
b. The Roswell Redneck
c. The Alamogordo Gordito

Answer after the break.

Gay Ghosts, Vampires, Aliens, and Paranormal Bogies

I love the paranormal. Alien abductions, mysterious disappearances, time slips, vampires, ghosts.  Those few paranormal experiences I've had in real life can usually be explained as misinterpretations and exaggerations, but still they're fun, suggesting a world beyond the fields we know.

Childhood

1. The Naked Man at the Crossroads.  Ok, this happened to my great-grandmother, not me, but it was still a spooky story, especially hearing it in a house trailer in the deep woods of Indiana, late at night, with the wind howling outside.

2. The Naked Man in the Peat Bog.  My Uncle Paul always told us to never go near the peat bog, because a naked man lived there, and he would eat us.  But one day we went to the peat bog anyway, and sure enough, a naked man wearing a weird mask chased us.  Maybe it was Uncle Paul's friend, trying to scare us.  Maybe not.

3. Greg the Boy Vampire gave me my first real kiss.  At least he said he was a vampire.

4. The Naked Indian God.  At the annual Pow Wow in Rock Island, Bill and I saw an Indian youth, one of the dancers, peeing in the woods.  Or doing something else.  When he saw us, he vanished.  Are you starting to notice a pattern here?  Sublimated same-sex desire is visualized.

High School

5. Davenport House, where the first European settler to the Quad Cities lived, has a reputation for being haunted.  When we were in high school, we decided to check.

College

6. The Ghost Artist in the Basement. I didn't like going down to the basement, where the previous owner kept an art studio.  It hadn't been touched since he died; I kept thinking that he was just upstairs getting a drink of water, and he would be back  One day I saw him hunched over his easel, drawing pictures of naked men.

7. The Bell Tower at Augustana: if a virgin was kissed there, the bell would ring.  I tried to kiss Adam, the bookstore manager, but we were detained.

8. Getting Intimate in the Haunted House. Joseph from the Gay Student Association at Indiana University asked me to help him help clean out his great-aunt's house.  We got intimate in his old room.







California

9.  West Hollywood was oddly bereft of the paranormal, unless you count my date with Richard Dreyfuss, which was actually more about discussing the paranormal.

10. But San Francisco was overbrimming with ghosts, bogies, and the unexplained, like Kevin the Vampire.

11. And I went home with the Amazing Invisible Boy, who no one could see except me, and who vanished before we can get into the bedroom.  Maybe he just left, but then why was my apartment door locked from the inside?

12, And when David and I were driving home from the Gilroy Garlic Festival, and we saw a UFO.  Or maybe it was the planet Venus.

New York

13.  New York was full of paranormal experiences, too, like the exorcism of the homophobic demon.

14. And the Man in Black who cruised me on Christopher Street.  I still think he was an alien, not a priest.

15. Sometimes you couldn't tell if a guy was a paranormal entity or just eccentric, like the time traveler from the 1930s.

16. And at our 20th class reunion, Erik told me about his encounter with a naked Icelandic god.

17. Ozzie tells how he met John F. Kennedy, Jr. at a bathhouse.  On the day he died.











Florida

18. I'm going to count the gay psychic angel, who told me about my past lives. I'm pretty sure he wasn't an angel, just a very cute guy.

Upstate

19. The Satyr.  Was he just a name-dropping bear with a priapic Kovbasa++++, or a mythical being who transcended time and space?

The Plains

20. The Plains is all windswept prairie, tailor-made for weird revenants.  Like Phil the Truck Driver, #20 on my Sausage List, who looks exactly like my Dad's best friend from the Navy -- 50 years ago.

21. The Hookup with the Hobbit.

My Hookup with the Egyptian God and His Boy

San Francisco, April 1997

There wasn't much street cruising going on in West Hollywood, since everyone drove everywhere.  But San Francisco was a walking city, so you could easily stop and talk to someone on the street, and invite them out for dates or hookups.  

But the competition was fierce.  Forget walking around in a muscle shirt with a gym-pumped physique -- there were a dozen bigger guys on every block.  If you wanted to attract men, you needed a gimmick.

There were cowboys and ballet dancers, guys riding unicycles and skateboard, guys carrying pies and leading dogs. An Edwardian gentleman.  Santa Claus.  

But probably the most creative of the street cruisers was the Martian.

At least that's what we called him.  He was a very tall, very muscular black guy, dressed all in white and gold, a gold medallion hanging around his neck.  He looked exactly like an emissary of the Galactic Council as envisioned by a "Space Brothers" UFO cult.

None of my friends had dated or hooked up with him -- he tended to give Attitude, not speak to or make eye contact with anyone.  But according to gossip, he gave his name as Darvon, with various last names: Zipp, Klaa, or Euripides.  He  claimed to be from either "a small planet very, very far away" or  "a small galaxy near Neptune" (the nonsensical answer that Betty Hill received during her 1961 abduction).

And his apartment was full of photos of alien spaceships, strange plants that were probably extraterrestrial, a cat that responded to telepathic signals, and a regeneration booth.  

This I had to see.



Although I was sure that Darvon was just spoofing, I am interested in UFOS and aliens.

And in black men.  

Of course, you can't just walk up to a guy on the street and say "Your place or mine?'  You need a hook of your own, something that sets you apart.

I decided to use language.  Not klaatu barada nikto, the alien phrase that Michael Rennie used in The Day the Earth Stood Still -- too ordinary.  Certainly nothing in the Klingon of Star Trek or the Elvish of The Lord of the Rings.

Maybe he was interested in his African heritage.  How about Swahili?

A helpful anthropology student at Berkeley gave me a few phrases:

You have a nice body: Una mwili nzuri
I want to see your penis: Nataka kuona uume yako
I want to go down on you: Nami kupiga magoti

One night after the gym I saw the Martian on 18th Street, walked up to him, and tried the third phrase, which actually means "I want to kneel before you."

He smiled broadly and responded: "Wewe kuzungumza lugha ya wafalme," which I later discovered means "You speak the Language of the Kings!"

Switching to English, we discussed the origin of Swahili as a lingua franca of east African fishermen and Arab traders in the 16th century, then the great Bantu migrations, then the Cushitic languages of Ethiopia (over dinner at the Ethiopian restaurant on Valencia Street).  

To my disappointment, Darvon never claimed to be an alien: he was plain old Darvon McKinley from Detroit, 32 years old, with a degree in African Studies from Wayne State University.  He lived in San Francisco for two years.

"I was going for an Egyptian look," he said, "Ancient Egypt was the earliest Black civilization.  But everyone thought I was an alien, so I went with it.  Darvon Klaa, from a small galaxy near Neptune."  He laughed.

Back at his apartment in the Mission, there were no pictures of alien spaceships or regeneration booths.

The plants were spindly and spidery, with some weird colors, but native to the tropics of central Africa, and for sale in any greenhouse.

The cat was cool.  All black, with a diamond collar, named Giza.  I never saw a cat before who would come when called.

The living room had no furniture except big pillows on the floor, a long, low coffee table, and a big throne-like chair.  Darvon sat on the throne.  I had no choice but to sit on a pillow at his feet.

"My boy will be home soon," he said, stroking Giza.  "Then we can go to the bedroom."

"Your boy?"   He hadn't mentioned a partner.

"Tanner.  He gets off at the restaurant at 10:00.  He hasn't been to college, but don't worry, he knows his place as well as you do."

Huh?

"He's read his history," Darvon explains.  "He knows that the Blackman built all the great civilizations while whitemen were still huddling in caves.  He understands that his place is at the foot of the Blackman, like you do." 

Ok, Darvon wasn't an alien -- he was a Black Supremacist!  Tarik, who I visited in Norfolk last summer, was raised Black Muslim.  But they disapprove of dating white men.  Darvon obviously didn't mind.

What else?  While Darvon changed the subject to racist portrayals of Blackmen in movies, I tried to think of other black supremacist groups.  The Hebrew Israelites.  The Moorish Science Temple...

No way I was going to hook up with a guy who thought white people were inferior, or with Tanner, his brainwashed "boy."  I believe in racial equality!  I stood to make an excuse and leave, but first I had to go to the bathroom.

While I was in the bathroom, I heard the door open and close, and a muffled conversation.  Tanner!  I took my time finishing, and returned to the living room to find Tanner sitting on one of the pillows at Darvon's feet: a short, slim white guy in his 20s, with a handsome round face, curly hair, and a smooth chest.  

His street clothes were scattered on the floor.  He was naked, except for an Egyptian-looking vest.  

"I thought you got lost in there," Darvon said.  "Tanner, welcome our guest."

Tanner stood, put his arms around me, and groped and kissed me. I reached down and groped his very thick Bratwurst, already aroused.  Then Tanner knelt, unzipped me, and started going down on me.

Wait -- this was a weird Black supremacist cult!

"Sorry.  I...um..I have to go."

"You can't leave until Tanner has finished showing you his proper place."

"Um...well..."

"I know my place," Tanner said.  "At the foot of the Blackman."  Saying that liturgical phrase made him even more aroused.  He sat at Darvon's feet, with his legs spread so his penis was still accessible, opened the drawstring of his pants, and started kissing and licking his Kielbasa+.

"I should be going..." 

Darvon leaned back and closed his eyes.  "Boomer, are you sure you have to rush off? You're welcome to help Tanner with his evening duties, or if you wish, you can borrow him for awhile.  He's an excellent kisser, and as you can see, quite eager to please."

Tanner looked up.  "I made cookies for later."

I knelt in front of Darvon and started working on his shaft while fondling Tanner.

"Wait," Darvon said.  "You forgot to..."

"I know my place, at the foot of the Blackman," I said quickly..

For penises and cookies I'll say anything, no matter how nauseating.

See also: Pushing a Shopping Cart Up Castro Street; Tarik's First White Cop

The Martian Boy Invites Me to "Play"

Rock Island, September 1969

My parents used to have a barbecue every Labor Day, and invited all their friends and neighbors.  This year Greg and his father came.  After our hot dogs and hamburgers and Lays potato chips and apple cobbler, they wanted to play croquet.

Greg and I were in 4th grade, too old for baby games, so we escaped. We walked across the deserted schoolyard, peeking in the windows of Denkmann School, then crossed the street to Dewey's Candy Store.

Dick the Mean Boy was out of town, so we were free to explore south of Denkmann without being attacked.  We found a scary bizarro-world where the normal rules of time and space didn't apply.

Streets had names instead of numbers.
They doubled back on each other like a space warp.
They dead-ended at nothingness.
We saw the end of the world: 46th Street then 1st Street, the beginning of a new universe.

It felt very dangerous, as if we might run into a mysterious threat around every curve.

Then, standing in a front yard all by himself, staring into space, we saw a boy!

A couple of years younger than us, very cute: black hair, black eyes, olive skin, wearing a red shirt and short pants.

But strikingly out of place: alone, silent, unmoving.  And Asian!

In Rock Island, "minority" meant Belgian, Italian, or Greek.  African-Americans were strictly segregated, below the hill, and I had never met or seen anyone Asian.  Not even a face in the crowd at Longview Park or Mother Goose Land.


[Even in 2016, the Asian population of Rock Island is only 0.75%]

He couldn't be real! He must be a ghost.  Maybe a Vietnamese boy who died in the War.  Or a Martian!  Maybe he came here in a spaceship!

"Can he see us?" I whispered.

"I dunno.  Is he even here?"

We approached.  He smiled invitingly and said something in a strange musical language.  Martian or Vietnamese!

"Do you speak English?" I said loudly, enunciating every word.

He smiled, not comprehending, and said more.

"My name is Boomer.  This is Greg.  What's your name?"

He pointed to himself.  "Chi Ehr Ma."

"Ma?" Greg joked.  "Whose Ma are you?"

More words in his musical language, a bright smile, and then, in English, "Play."  He turned and walked around the side of the house and into the back yard.

Was that an invitation?  Did the Martian want us to play with him in the back yard?

Then suddenly he came out the front door!

There's no way he could have gone through the back yard, in the back door, and all the way through the house in just a second or two!


Screaming in fear, we ran back down the curving street and side streets with names instead of numbers, back to Denkmann School where things were safe, where things made sense.

A while later, when we calmed down, we decided that there were probably two boys, twins, trying to scare us.

On another day when Dick wasn't around, we ventured south again, and tried to find the Asian boys, Chi Ehr Ma and his brother, but all the houses on that weird curved street looked alike.  We couldn't be sure which one they lived in.

If they lived anywhere.  They were old enough to be in school.  Why had we never seen them at Denkmann?  Or at Dewey's, or anywhere else in the neighborhood?  Maybe they were ghosts after all.

Days and weeks and months passed, and Chi Ehr Ma, the cute boy -- we concluded that he was probably Vietnamese -- became increasingly attractive in my mind  -- and increasingly mysterious.  What would have happened if Greg and I followed him into the back yard to "play"?  Would we have been transported to a new, magical world?   Or would we just have become friends, with long, lush afternoons playing, walking hand in hand, clinging together during sleepovers?

Chi Ehr Ma, with his dazzling, seductive smile became one of the icons of my childhood, combining with Jonny Quest and Hadji, with Kurt Russell in The Secret of Boyne Castle, with John Christopher's Tripod books as a clue to the unraveling the Big Lie.  Telling me that, in spite of the adults' hysterical screaming of "You like girls!  Every boy likes girls!", some boys like boys.

It is not raining upstairs.

In junior high and high school I met a few other Asian men and boys -- my judo instructor, Peter who invited me to a sleepover, the Vietnamese refugee who worked at the pretzel place in the mall --  always with a subtle, nearly unconscious desire, as if I expected them to flash a dazzling, seductive smile and invite me to secret places in the back yard.

Rock Island, February 1979

During the spring of my freshman year at Augustana College, I enrolled in a course in East Asian Culture and Civilization, taught by Professor Ma of the Political Science Department.

I loved it.  I wantd to change my major to Asian Studies, to immerse myself in the exploits of ancient Chinese emperors, The Dream of the Red Chamber, Taoism, Buddhism, and that mysterious, musical language.

"Chinese has four tones," Professor Ma said.  "Ma is my family name, but depending on the tone, it could be horse, mother, to scold, or a question mark.  Let me demonstrate:  Ma ma ma ma -- 'did mother scold the horse?'"

Ma!  The boy from my memory was speaking Chinese!  Not Vietnamese, not Martian.  He must have been asking us a question.

I stayed after class and asked Professor Ma what "Chi Ehr" means.

"Depending on the tone, it could mean 'The life force is strong' or 'He eats cabbage.'  It's also my son's real name, but he likes to be called Chip."

My mouth dropped.


Professor Ma moved to the United States in August 1969 to teach  political science at Augustana, bringing his wife and twin sons, Yung Yu and Chi Ehr.  They bought a house in Davenport, across the river. In September 1969 his colleague, who lived in Rock Island, invited them over for a Labor Day picnic.  

A few days later, Professor Ma invited me to dinner, and to reunite with my old friend Chi Ehr, or Chip, now a 16-year old high school junior. (The model is over 18.)

He escorted me to an upstairs bedroom: unmade single bed, stereo, books, clothes, and sports stuff scattered about, posters of Van Halen and Farrah Fawcett.  The smell of marijuana.

"Farrah Fawcett -- gross!"  I thought.

Chip was sitting on the bed, a calculus book open in front of him.  Very tall and slim, with long hair and a long face, not at all cute.

This was the icon of my childhood, a clue that gay people exist?

"Sup?" he said. "Dad told me that we met before, when I was a kid."  Suspicious scowl, American accent.  Not at all what I was expecting!

"Yeah.  Me and my friend Greg, in 4th grade.  We said hello, and then you went to the back yard, and your brother came out the front door.  We got spooked and ran away."

He laughed, and flashed that dazzling, seductive smile of my childhood.  "Oh, yeah -- I remember that!  When you vanished, I got spooked, too.  The first guys I met in America were a couple of ghosts!  I always wondered what would have happened if you stuck around."

We didn't hook up, or even become friends.  The smile was enough.

By the way, I just looked up "Chi Ehr Ma" on the internet. He's a professor of mathematics at a university in California (not the famous mineralogist).

Not married. 

See also: 20 Asian Dates, Hookups, and Sausage Sightings; Kurt Russell's Secret.; The Son of Mr. Blowfish