The Gay Psychic Angel

Wilton Manors, October 2002

I was teaching Sociology of Religion at Florida Atlantic University, and I invited representatives from various religious groups to speak to the class: Pentecostal, Eastern Orthodox, Buddhist, Muslim, Neo-Pagan.  For the New Age, I contacted the Center for Spiritual Living in Fort Lauderdale, and they sent me Raphael.

At least, I assumed that's why he and a friend appeared at my house one evening, and said "Hi, I'm Raphael, and this is Jordan. You called for us?"

I stood in the doorway, speechless, stunned.  Raphael  was a Cute Young Thing, in his twenties, a few inches shorter than me, with a nondescript physique but a face I can only describe as angelic: bright, shining, ever-smiling, mesmerizing.  I can't find any pictures of men that even approach his brilliance.  Jordan was a Cute Young Thing, too, but I can't remember what he looked like.

Finally I managed to stammer, "Hi...hi, nice to meet you."  I held out my hand.  Only Jordan shook it.

I invited them into the house and offered them sodas.  Raphael asked for his with a straw.

Then I noticed that his arms were hanging down limply from his shoulders.  They were paralyzed!

Jordan chose an easy chair and buried himself in a Tom Clancy novel.  Raphael began talking, I assumed about the tenets of his religion.  It was standard New Age stuff --  matter is an illusion; all of life is spirit; we have lived many times before.  But I was fascinated.

"Was I gay in all of my past lives?" I asked, surprised that I had come out so easily.

"Probably not. We're all gay, straight, male, female.  But we're surrounded by the same people in every life, Want me to check?"

"Sure."

"Press my hand against your Svadhishthana Chakra -- your abdomen."

I lifted up my shirt, took his hand -- surprisingly, it was warm, not cold -- and pressed it flat against my abs.  "This guy just wants to feel me up," I thought.

"No, that would be the Muladhara Chakra," Raphael said with a bright laugh.  "Your crotch."

Had he just read my mind?

"What does touching that tell you?" I asked.  "How much I like you?"

Raphael began to blush a little.  "Ok, I've got something.  I see you as an old man.  Very old, wearing overalls.  You are fascinated by a new invention."  He paused.  "Um...called a magic lantern.  I never heard of that -- do  you know what it is?"

"Early films in the 1890s were called Magic Lantern Shows," I said, shocked.  But then my inner skeptic kicked in.  There were posters from old movies on the wall -- obviously he surmised that I was a movie buff in this life.



I didn't care.  Raphael was the hottest guy I had ever seen!  I couldn't take my eyes off him.  I had to get him alone, away from the stern, Tom Clancy-reading Jordan.  "Can you read my future, too?"

"Yes, but for that, I need to touch an object of yours, something that you've handled often."

"Sure...um...let's go into the bedroom, and I'll find something."

I was still holding his hand.  I led him into the bedroom, and pressed his hand around the Kensington Runestone that I got in Alexandria, Minnesota when I was a kid.  "I see that you travel quite a bit," Raphael said.  "I've never been outside the country."

"Someday I'll take you to Paris," I said.  Then I felt my face burning.  I had said too much.

"You're going to Paris yourself in a few months, I see."

"Yeah, every year if I can."

"You'll get an opportunity there.  A job offer, maybe. But don't take it."

"Are you kidding?  I'd give anything to live in Europe!"

"No, you won't be happy there.  We need you here in America."

"We?"  It was time to make my move!  I carefully removed the Kensington Runestone from his hand, then wrapped my arm around him and kissed him.

It was a warm, innocent kiss, like they show on first dates on tv.  But it didn't stay innocent.  I became more aggressive, pressing our bodies together, pressing my hand against his crotch, unbuttoning his shirt...

His body stiffened, and he pulled his face away. "Wait, wait," he murmured.  "It's too soon."

"Oh...sorry," I said, heavily embarrassed.  "I thought..."

"It's ok."  I helped him button his shirt back up.   "We'll see each other again.  Let me give you my phone number.  Do you have a piece of paper?"

I put a scrap of paper on the desk, and watched while he took a pen in his mouth and deftly wrote down the number.

Then he kissed me again, briefly, and yelled out to Jordan that it was time to go.

Alone in my room, staring at the phone number, I started thinking.

1. I was interested in the paranormal, but did I really want to date a professional psychic?

2. Raphael's arms didn't work.  He must do things with his mouth and his feet, with Jordan as supplemental assistance.  I tried to imagine how he dressed, ate, brushed his teeth, went to the bathroom.  And as the boyfriend, the supplemental assistance would be my job.


I didn't call the next day.  Or the next.  Or the next.  The phone number stayed on my desk, staring up at me.

On Sunday, I planned to go to the services at the Center for Spiritual Living and surprise Raphael.  But I lost my nerve.

The phone number stayed on my desk for a long time.  Then one day it was gone.  Maybe it evaporated.

It's been 12 years, and I'm still kicking myself for letting the Psychic get away.

Well, maybe in my next life.

By the way:

1. Raphael was right: a few months later, in Europe, I met a guy at the Horseman's Club who invited me to stay.  Except it was a small town in the Netherlands, not Paris.

2. I didn't realize it until later, but Yuri was in his room the whole time, and he didn't hear a thing.

3. In the Catholic Church, the archangel Raphael is the patron of the handicapped.  His feast day is October 24th.  Just before Halloween.

Edward's Hookup with an Angel or Demon

This story happened to my roommate Edward, the art appraiser I lived with in the East Village.  When I knew him, from 1998 to 2001, he was in his late 50s and early 60s, tall, husky, tanned, white-haired, slightly feminine, and eccentric.

But back in 1958, he was Eddie, a 18-year old high school boy growing up in Houghton, on the isolated Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Not aware that he was gay yet -- not even aware that same-sex desire existed.

But he knew that he was different: he was in the drama club and the musicale, he loved painting and sculpture, and he especially loved looking at the semi-naked men in muscle magazines like Physique Pictorial.

He tried to get intimate with girls, twice.  The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak.

When he graduated from high school, his father insisted that he join the military Maybe the all-male environment would make a man out of him.

He was fluent in German -- his parents fled Nazi-occupied Austria when he was four years old -- so he was stationed at an air force base near Kaiserslautern, West Germany, and given a job as a translator.

One evening his friends talked him into walking to a popular tavern on Kindsbacher Street, where they would meet some hübsche Mädchen.  He was less than enthusiastic about the prospect of Mädchen, hübsche or not, so after about an hour, he wandered off into the night.

He was not drunk -- I repeat, not drunk.

He started walking north and west, until he was on a country road, now the L363, on the way to Steinwenden.  Open fields broken by an occasional groves of trees.  There were no streetlights, but it was a clear night, with a very bright full moon.

Suddenly a shape burst up from a new field and flew across the night sky.  It swooped down so close that Edward instinctively threw himself to the ground and rolled into a ditch.

A bomb?  No.  A bird?  Maybe -- but enormous -- he estimated the wing span at ten feet.

A condor?  A hawk?  How big did hawks get in Germany?

It swooped down again, this time more slowly, its wings fanning the air.  It hovered over his prostrate body.

It was a human!  A man, about 5'5" tall, Caucasian, hairless, very muscular. His wings were like eagle wings, with feathers. They were vibrating but not flapping -- apparently he didn't need them to fly.

"How did you see such detail in the dark?"  I asked.

"The moon was very bright. But still, I couldn't see everything.  I couldn't make out a facial expression."

Edward tried to scream in terror, but no sound came out of his mouth.  The winged man hovered only a few feet over him.  His gigantic penis -- easily 10" soft -- hung down.  It was uncircumcized.

"You could tell that it wasn't circumcized, in the dark?"


Lower, lower.  Edward tried to scramble out of the way, but he couldn't move.  The fanning wings -- had they paralyzed him?  He had just seen The Horror of Dracula (1958) with Christopher Lane.  Was this a vampire, getting ready to feed?

Lower, lower. The winged man had beautifully sculpted muscles and a Kovbasa+++++.   Edward was terrified, but also aroused.  He unzipped, pushed down his pants, and displayed his own erect penis.  It was big by human standards -- all the guys at the base admired it -- but tiny compared to the winged man's.

"Wait...you said you couldn't move!"

"Who's telling this story, me or you?"

Lower, lower.  They were only inches apart.  Edward still couldn't make out a face, but he felt the winged man's penis, now erect, a rod of iron, brushing  against his legs, then pushing against him, between his thighs.  He thrust over and over and over, wordless, savage.

Edward tried to scream.  The pressure was tremendous.  But he was also elated, hot with passion for the muscles, for the penis.  He wished he could move his hands to hold the winged man, draw him close.

The winged man shuddered with an explosive orgasm.

Then, without a sound, he flew off.

Edward lay there, drenched, waiting to see if he would return.  After awhile, he finished off himself, cleaned up, and walked home.

He returned to the spot where he saw the winged man many times over the years, most recently in 1990.  But he never saw it again.

He kept the handkerchief that he used to clean himself off with, a memento of the moment he realized that he was gay.

"Wow, quite a dream!"

"It wasn't a dream.  I was wide awake.  I remember every moment."

My friend raises his glass in a toast.  "You win!  That's the best coming out story I've ever heard!"

It certainly beats my coming out over John Travolta in Grease.

"Next I'll tell you about me and the Romanian vampire-hunter...."

See also: The Football Player Who Got Unstuck In Time.