My Textbook Representative is a Gay Porn Star

Philadelphia, March 2013

Every academic is pestered by textbook company representatives pushing for you to assign your students their latest frightfully over-priced, generally gay-free textbook instead of some of the thousands of articles and e-books available for free at the campus library.














I'm usually immune to their pleas, but the rep that knocked on my office door last month, Mark from ___ Company, was jaw-droppingly handsome, and knew it: wavy brown hair, square jaw, piercing green eyes, huge hands, and a bodybuilder's physque crammed into his too-tight white shirt and grey slacks.

He flashed the smile that had been getting him special privileges his whole life and began pushing the new textbook with interactive e-book that meshed directly onto our online learning management system and...

"Um...sure, sure," I said, grinning like an idiot.  "But how is it with gay content?  I never order a textbook unless it covers the Stonewall Riots of 1969 that started the Gay Rights Movement."

He didn't flinch at the "controversial" topic.  "Well, let's take a look."  He came over to my side of the desk so I could see his laptop and leaned over me, so close that I could feel his body heat and, if I looked down, check for a basket.

There were several references to gay people: Stonewall, Anita Bryant, Matthew Shepard, the AIDS Quilt, gay marriage -- a lot more than the none in most intro texts.

"Ok, let me send you a link to the supplemental materials, and give you my card."  His huge bear-paw hand enveloped mine.  He flashed that smile again.

The moment Mark left, I dropped everything to look him up on the internet: Linkedin, twitter, instagram, and Facebook.

Mark was 26 years old, grew up in Pittsburgh, spent his junior year in high school in Japan, graduated from Duquesne University, had been to Europe and Canada, had a DUI arrest, had a brother named Clay.

He wrote a google review of a restaurant in Philadelphia.

He wrote an Amazon review of the tv series Sherlock.

There were a lot of newspaper articles about tennis -- his various matches and awards in high school and college.  He was signed on to a professional tennis recruitment website.

Facebook and Instagram had some pics of Mark with his arm around an older man and a guy he tagged as Mohammed, wearing a graduation gown, holding a fish [the models in the illustrations are not really him].

Shirtless.

I saved the shirtless pic to look at his thick, smooth chest, his shoulders and biceps, and his sixpack abs later.

He had a profile on a professional modeling site: interested in print and tv assignments, photos in a suit, in a sweater, in a swimsuit.  His resume listed some catalog work and local commercials.

How did this guy have time to work as a textbook rep?

Mark was back in my office the next week to see if I had gone over the supplementary material.

I was a little embarrassed that I had done so much internet stalking, so I decided to come clean.

"I looked you up online.  Quite an impressive list of accomplishments: decathlons, tennis, modeling."

He grinned.  "Oh, you saw my portfolio?"

"I lived in California for eleven years, so I've been around models' portfolios a lot.  Have you done any tv or movie work?"

"I have some youtube videos, if you'd like to see them.  Look under Markster348."

He moved on to discuss another textbook that my students might like.

As soon as I got home that night, I checked youtube for Markster348, and found a lot of streaming videos of Mark singing and flexing.

Then on a hunch I looked for Markster348 on some gay dating sites.

Jackpot!  Single, bisexual, into anal, oral, frottage, rimming, into jocks and preppy types.  A nice nude photo, semi-aroused cut Kielbasa.  But he hadn't accessed his account in "over two months."

No way I was going to date him -- he lived in Harrisburg, a two hour drive away (textbook reps have a wide territory).  And a hookup seemed inappropriate, given our professional relationship.

But I saved the nude pic to look at later.

The next week, Mark was in my office again.

"Have you made any decision about the textbook?"

"I'm about 75% in favor of ordering it."

He grinned, "What can I do to get you to 100%?"

Let me see you naked!  "Let me look over some of the supplemental materials, the pre-tests, the videos. and so on.  Speaking of videos, I saw yours online.  Very impressive.  And not just on youtube.  Some of the dating sites."

He glanced around nervously, probably afraid that I was going to out him.  There were five other offices right next to mine, and you could hear conversations in any of them.

  "Oh...um...thanks.  How did you find them?  I didn't think I had my screen name published anywhere."

"You told me -- Markster354, on youtube."

"Oh -- those videos.  I thought you meant my..."

"Your..."  I continued.

"Some stuff I did in college.  No big deal, but I'd rather not have my girlfriend find out about it.  Or my boss."

"Of course."

He took out a piece a paper, scribbled a few words, and pressed it into my hand.  "To look at later."

I obligingly put it in my pocket, and looked at it after he left: "Frat Boy Rim Job."

Boystube had a clip: five "fratboys" have a sex party, with oral, anal, rimming, and barebacking.

My friend Alan in West Hollywood starred in some porn movies in the 1980s, so I know a little about the industry.  This was strictly amateur, and rimming -- gross!

If you don't know what it is, look it up.  I'm not going to explain.

Still, it was interesting to watch Mark in action.  How often do you see someone that have a professional relationship rimming a guy while being topped?

He was in my office the next week.  "Ok, I've decided on your textbook," I announced, to spare him endless drives out from Harrisburg.

"Great.  And if there's anything else I can do..."

"I'll send you an email.  And, by the way, I saw that movie you recommended."

He flashed a broad smile.  "What did you think?"

"Very talented performer.  Very versatile."

He glanced around and leaned in close.  "If you'd like -- you know, a private showing -- I'm staying at the Days Inn."  He passed me a card with his phone number.

In case you were wondering: oral only, no rimming.

The Bisexual Fairy Godfather of the Summer of 1984

Between 1982 and 1984, I was studying for my M.A. in English at Indiana University.  I did not do well.  I couldn't focus on any one topic, or any one department -- I rushed around in the 3,000+ courses taught every semester, grabbing onto things like Mandarin Chinese and Russian Folklore, and ignoring my actual English classes

Besides, who had time to study?  I had just discovered bar pickups.  My friend Viju and I were out at Bullwinkel's, or a a gay bar in Indianapolis, two or three times a week, and we never came home alone.

Sometimes I brought a guy home, had sex with him, then went back to the bar to pick up someone else.

Meanwhile my classes faltered, and I squeaked by with B's and an occasional C+.  In grad school, anything below an A is considered failing. But who cared?   I was going to become a book editor, not a literature scholar.

So I squeaked by, and in the spring of 1984, I sent out resumes:130 publishing companies, 48 newspapers,  34 television stations, and 16 translation agencies.   No openings, no openings, no openings, no openings.

Classes ended. I received my M.A..  No job. I spent ten days visiting India with Viju, then a week in Rock Island, then returned to Bloomington.

I couldn't afford our apartment any more, so I got a room in Eigenmann Hall, and went back to my old job in the snack bar.

It was fun when I was a student.  But as my life's work?.  I imagined myself at age 50, still living in that coffin-sized room with the bathroom down the hall, still selling burgers and fries to undergrads.

All of my friends had graduated and moved away.  And any new friends I made would graduate and move away, again and again, an every-changing blur of faces and cocks for the rest of my life.

That summer was an endless cold, dark night.

53 people died in a mass shooting at a McDonald's in San Ysidro, California, the worst mass shooting in modern American history.

The lunatic in the White House (not as bad as the Orange Goblin, but still a lunatic) almost ended the world by "joking" that the U.S. had launched nuclear missiles at the Soviet Union.

The AIDS crisis was making national news for the first time, and dubbed "a gay disease."  Fundamentalist churches latched onto it to decry the "clinically insane, disease-ridden homosexuals" coming for your children.

All four of the factories in Rock Island closed, doubling the unemployment rate.  My father and brother were both laid off.  I couldn't even fall back on a factory job.

The movies I saw (by myself) are now hailed as classics, but I found them depressing: Ghostbusters, Gremlins, The Karate Kid, The Neverending Story, Revenge of the Nerds, Bachelor Party, Conan the Destroyer

Laura Branigan's "Self Control" was playing on the radio:

I live among the creatures of the night.
I haven't got the will to try and fight.
I must believe in something, so I guess I'll just believe that this night will never go.

Then came my fairy godfather, aka Ben, who worked in the bank downtown.  He was my teller when I withdrew some money (this was before ATMs), and two nights later I saw him at Bullwinkle's.

About ten years older than me, a chunky redhead with a long face, a smooth chest, and no biceps to speak of.  Not at all my type.

And bisexual -- he mentioned watching Family Ties, not for the hot teen idol Michael J. Fox, but for Meredith Baxter Birney, who played his mother!

I couldn't help imagining Ben screwing the lady.  His butt bouncing up and down while he plowed into her lady parts, squeezing her breasts, kissing her.  Gross!  Complete turn-off.

But I was depressed, and I would have gone home with Boy George just to avoid going back to my coffin-sized room in Eigenmann Hall.

Ben had a house in Unionville, about 10 miles of dark, scary country roads from campus. An old-fashioned wood-and-plaster living room, a four-poster bed with black sheets, a drawer-ful of porn magazines, both gay and straight.  Very cold for July.

We didn't start kissing until we were both under the sheets.  He had smooth, soft chest, a bubble butt, and a big cock, about 8", thick and ruddy.  I went down on him, and he finished with interfemoral.  Then he beat me off while we were kissing.  Not bad.

After the sex, it was too early to sleep, and I didn't want to  leave, so we sat up and turned on Saturday Night Live. I told Ben about my master's degree, my dismal job prospects, and my future at the Eigenmann Hall snack bar.  He said that he was working on a Ph.D. in sociology --- very slowly.  This was his seventh year in the program, and he wasn't nearly ready to start his dissertation.  The job at the bank took up most of his time.  But he still planned to finish, and become a college professor.

"I love being in front of a class -- it's an amazing rush.  Hey, why don't you go to work at a college?  They always need teachers."

"Yuck!" I exclaimed.  "I taught during my first year.  Surly students who didn't read their assignments, didn't know even the basics about...well, anything, and made homophobic comments."

"It beats making hamburgers, I bet.  Besides, just think of the beefcake!"

"But it's July.  Won't they have all the teachers they need for the fall?"

"Let's find out."  Ben walked naked into the next room and came back with The Chronicle of Higher Education.  5 English teaching jobs available in the fall that required just a M.A.

A month later, I was heading for Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, an English instructor. It would be horrible, but later, I would teach as an adjunct, then get my Ph.D. (not in English), and spend the next twenty years standing in the front of classrooms.

It definitely beats making hamburgers.

And Ben was right.  The beefcake is amazing.

Nude Wrestling in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin

Rock Island, July 2017

Bob and I are on a road trip from the Plains to New York. We spent the night in Rock Island, Illinois, my home town.  Now we're having egg white omelets and fruit cups at the Quad Cities Pancake House.

"So, what's on the schedule for today?"  Bob asks.

"Chicago, about three hours from here.  We'll hit a couple of the museums, spend the night, and then drive on to Cleveland tomorrow."

"Would you mind if we take a little side-trip first?  I have a cousin I haven't seen since we were kids.  It's a couple of hours out of the way."

"Where?"

"Fond du Lac, Wisconsin."

4 hours out of the way!  But this is Bob's trip, too, so he should have a say in the itinerary.  Besides,  I have a history with Fond du Lac.


During my senior year in high school, although I was still Nazarene, I became obsessed with all things Catholic.  I read The Seven Story Mountain and The Dark Night of the Soul, learned to say the Rosary, and even went incognito into a Catholic Mass. I didn't actually convert, but I was considering it.

 And I considered applying to Marion College in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.

Dad even drove me up for a tour.  I remember a vast snow-covered campus with round white buildings, pristine, pure, as quiet as a cloister.

You could feel the presence of God everywhere.

I imagined living in an austere dorm room, all white, empty except for a bed with white covers, some statues of saints, and a shelf of contemplative classics: the Little Flowers of St. Francis,  The Cloud of Unknowing.  Of walking among buildings of brilliant white other-worldly splendor every day, en route to my classes in medieval philosophy, Catholic theology, Ecclesiastical Latin, and Koine Greek.


Saying the rosary, walking the Stations of the Cross, going to Novenas, blessing myself with holy water before daily Mass.


Spending every day in communion with the Divine.

I decided to go to Augustana instead, but ever since, Fond du Lac has remained entrenched in my mind as a place of peace and serenity, as close as you can get to heaven in this life.

"Could we go to a Catholic Mass while we're there?" I ask.

Bob blinks.  "Well, it's Wednesday, and I'm not Catholic, but...ok, if you want.  I'll text my cousin."

On the four hour drive to Fond du Lac, Bob tells me more about Cousin Tark (short for Tarkington).  He's older than Bob, a big brother who used to babysit him and sneak him into R-rated movies, until he went away to college in Wisconsin, and then got a job in Fond du Lac.

"Was he cute?" I ask.

Not an athlete, but big and tall, with a thick beefy chest and nice biceps.

"Any sausage sightings?"

"Man, we used to wrestle in the nude.  I remember it getting hard once!  Really big -- and thick!  Man, that thing was like a beer can!"

 A beer-can penis somehow seems out of place in a world of quiet contemplation.  Surely trivial matters like sex fade away when you are in the presence of the Divine.

Fond du Lac, Wisconsin

We arrive in Fond du Lac at around 2:00 pm.  Tark doesn't get off work until 5:00 pm, so we go to Lakeside Park and walk along the lake.

I try to imagine how different my life would have been if I had gone to Marian, and stayed in Wisconsin, instead of going to Augustana, then Indiana University, and then West Hollywood.  Would I have been to 10,000 daily masses by now?  Said the rosary 20,000 times?  Spent my life in quiet contemplation of the Divine?

Next we go to St. Paul's Cathedral.  No Mass is going on, but I bless myself with holy water and light a candle in front of a statue of the Blessed Virgin, while Bob texts on his cell phone.

Then Marian College itself, which is a disappointment: an Erbert and Gerbert's sandwich shop in the student union, a jazz concert coming up on Friday, a sports team called the Dockspiders, and "A Beginner's Guide to Star Wars" in the student newspaper.  Hardly contemplative or otherworldly!

At 5:30 we go to Joe's Fox Hut, a rather scary dive bar next to the army induction center, with a Schlitz Beer sign out front.

The server takes us into a dark, dismal room with country-western music blaring, and hands us menus: pizza! corn dogs!  garlic bread!

Nothing healthy on the menu.  Even the chicken breast comes with french fries and cole slaw.

Suddenly a very tall, chubby guy with short hair and a reddish-brown beard sneaks up behind Bob, motions for me to keep quiet, and grabs him.  Bob yells.

"Gotcha!"

Bob hugs him.  "Hi, Cousin Dweeb. This is my boyfriend, Boomer."

Tark slides into the booth next to me and shakes my hand.

"Cousin Dork, you're all grown up -- sort of.  You're still scrawny -- and dating your professor!  How did you pull that off?"  He nudges me.  "I'll bet the little guy gets all A's, huh?"


"He's not actually in any of my classes."

"Well, there's always next semester."

He orders a sausage-mushroom pizza with mini corn dogs on the side, and tells us about his job as an auto detailer.

"It's great -- they bring the cars right to my house, and I do the work in my driveway.  No overhead.  Sure beats working in a stuffy office all day -- or teaching a bunch of whiny brats."

"True," I say.  "But some of those whiny brats are cute."

"I heard that.  Man, if I was a professor, I'd be inviting every gal in sight for some extra tutoring in my office.  Maybe a little oral exam, huh?"

I don't like him.  In a world of quiet contemplation, all he can think of are corn dogs and oral sex.

Eventually his girlfriend Diane joins us: a music professor at Marian specializing in jazz history.

Jazz?  Not Gregorian chants?  

We go to a place called the Backstage Bar and Grille to drink beer (soda for me and Bob) and listen to live music, more pop than jazz.  Loud!

Then we go back to Diane and Tark's house to drink more beer, listen to more music -- loud! -- and play with their dogs and cat,.  Finally it's time for bed: they put us up in an upstairs bedroom with race car posters and stuffed animals.

Bob and I strip down.  "They seem nice," I say.

"Yeah.  He hasn't changed.  A little fatter, but still like a big brother."

We start kissing and fondling.  Bob pushes me down onto the bed.

I look up to see Tark.  Grinning, naked.

He motions me to keep silent.  Bob is kissing my chest.  Suddenly Tark grabs him from behind.

"Nude wrestling!" he yells, dragging a giggling Bob to the floor.  "Rowdy Roddy Piper versus the Dynamic Dork!"

No, we didn't "share."   But I did get a sausage sighting of his beer-can penis.

Yes, that makes up for the absence of quiet contemplation in Fond du Lac.

Troy Returns to Hell-fer-Sartain

Upstate, March 2011

Troy, my boyfriend in Upstate New York, was a high school French teacher and soccer coach -- rather an anomaly in a town obsessed with baseball --  25 years old, tall, slim, athletic  very handsome, except for the big black earrings and a pink triangle tattoo.

He had never been farther west than Buffalo, so in the spring of 2011, I offered to fly us to West Hollywood and San Francisco.

"That sounds cool," he said, "But you know where I'd really like to go?  Texas.  Cowboys, sage brush, cattle ranches, oil barons, all that glitz and glamour.  You know what they say: 'they grow them big in Texas."

"But...after 210 miserable days in Hell-fer-Sartain -- um, I mean Houston -- I vowed to never set foot in the state again!"

"I know -- you've told me lots of horror stories about your year in Texas.  But that was in 1985, before I was even born.  I'm sure it's changed a lot since then. Being gay is even legal now."

It took several conversations, but finally I agreed: three nights in Austin, Texas, a liberal, bohemian college town nowhere near Hell-fer-Sartain, and then March 15-19 in West Hollywood.

When the plane landed at Austin International Airport on March 11th, and the blue sky of Texas enveloped me, I began to feel anxious, almost panicky.  What if we were trapped here?  What if we could never escape again?

"Relax!" Troy said, taking my hand.  Wary of homophobes, especially in redneck Texas, I jerked it away.

The highway into town had tall barriers on either side.  I couldn't see anything.

We stayed at a gay bed and breakfast on Lavaca Street, just south of the State Capitol, near the Mexi-Arte Museum, a gay bar called Rain, and a sushi restaurant.  Adequately Bohemian.  I could stand spending three nights here.

But then Troy had another surprise: "I want to drive out to Houston.  It's only 165 miles."

"What?  Why?"

"The Montrose is one of the oldest gay neighborhoods in the country.  And besides, I've heard so many stories about Hell-fer-Sartain that I want to see it for myself.  We'll drive up tomorrow, spend the night, and drive back the next day, ok?"

"No way, Jose!  You talked me into coming to Texas, but no way I'm going near that place!  I haven't been there in 25 glorious years, and I'm up for at least another 25 years without setting foot in Hell-fer-Sartain."

"Ok, ok!  But would you mind if I go myself, just for curiosity's sake?  I'll keep a complete log of what happened.  Oh -- and carte blanche for cruising?"

"Sure, whatever.  You won't find anybody in Hell-fer-Sartain, anyway.  Lord knows I tried."

So I spent all day Monday and Tuesday by myself in Austin.  Troy returned in time for dinner Tuesday night.  As promised, he kept a log:

Monday 

11:00 am.  I arrive at Lone Star College, where Boomer taught bonehead English to rednecks.  I meet with Cammie, the head of the Gender-Sexuality Alliance, who prefers not to use gender pronouns.   "It's not a gay club," they tell me.  "Most of our members are transgender or genderqueer.  We have cisgender straight members, too. And a couple of gay guys."

12:00 pm.  Several members of the GSA -- two gay, two genderqueer, and one straight --  take me to lunch at the China Bear, near the campus.  They're going to be on a panel in a sociology class at 2:00, and ask me to go along.

2:00 pm.  The panel.  We sit on chairs in the front of a room with about 30 students -- not all rednecks (there's a Muslim girl in a hijab).  Each of us tells our "coming out" story (as gay, transgender, and genderqueer). Then the students ask questions, mostly about "what causes it?" and "how did your parents react?"  One asked me if I was attracted to buttholes the way straight guys are attracted to boobs.


3:00 pm.  The other gay gay on the panel, a biochemistry major named Mason, offers to take me on a tour of the area.  We try to find Boomer's old address, but the house is gone.  The streets are now paved, by the way, and have sidewalks.

5:00 pm.  Back to Mason's house.  I expect dinner, but instead he invites me to "share" with his partner Donovan, an older guy, balding but otherwise cute, firm hairy chest, big dick.  I go down on him while Mason is going down on me, and then he tops Mason.   Hot!

7:00 pm.  We shower (together) and then drive into Houston, where I check into my hotel and (finally!) go out to dinner at Baba Yegg, which disappointingly doesn't serve Russian food.  But there are lots of gay guys there, in groups and couples.

9:00 pm.  Time to hit the bars.  There are a dozen within walking distance of my hotel: South Beach, JR's, Blur, Ripcord.  Mostly dancing and drag queens, but there's one leather bar, the Eagle (naturally).

11:00 pm.  Mason and Donovan say goodbye and go back to the suburbs.  I  hit the Eagle, which is in full cruise mode.  Apparently bar life is still important in Texas.

12:00 am.  No luck at the Eagle, and I'm a little tired (and hungry), so I go to Boheme, an artsy wine bar with a pizza menu.  Naturally, I get cruised when my mouth is full of artisanal eggplant-kalimata olive pizza.

1:00 am.  Rolf is a little older than me, in his 30s, with too many scents and too much gel in his hair.  But otherwise he's hot, very muscular, bare hard chest, cut Kielbasa+, into "worship" (where you kiss and lick him all over the body).  I am glad to oblige! For sex, he's an oral bottom.  As Boomer knows, I'm mostly an oral bottom, too, but I don't mind getting a blow job every now and then, especially if the guy is hot.

Tuesday

8:00 am.  Breakfast with Rolf, then jogging through the Montrose.

10:00 am.  The Museum District: Museum of Fine Arts, Natural History Museum, then cruising at Rice University.  A cute college guy seems to be flirting with me, but I don't have time to stop.

1:00 pm.  Lunch, then a stop at the gay sex shop to buy Boomer some souvenirs, a 9" dildo and some nipple clamps (he'll use them on me, hopefully).  They have video booths with glory holes, so I stick around for awhile.  Soon a 9" penis comes through the glory hole at me.  I don't know who it belongs to -- it's dark, maybe Hispanic.  Who cares?

Later a college-aged guy puts his very hard average sized penis through.  Is it the same one who flirted with me before?  I can't tell for sure.

2:00 pm.  Time to leave Hell-for-Sartain.

"What about you?" Troy asked.  "What did you do during your two days alone in Austin?"
 
I visited the State Capitol and  the State History Museum, which was kind of boring.  I cruised at Oilcan Harry's but didn't meet anyone, worked out at the Gregory Gym at the University of Texas but didn't seen any Texas penises, bought used books at a public library book sale, not very interesting ones.

"Meet any hot guys?"

"No.  I saw Alvin Rangel's biceps and bulge at a dance recital.

I should have gone back to Hell-fer-Sartain...um, I mean Houston.

See also: Troy's First Video Booth

Wade the Beachboy Cruises for Hawaiian Men

Wilton Manors, Summer 2004

"I read an interesting article in the Gay News,"  my ex-boyfriend's hookup tells us.  "It was about the gay traditions of kanaka maoli, traditional Hawaiian society. "

With three housemates dating and hooking up regularly, you never know who will be sitting at the breakfast table, especially on weekends.  This morning there's seven, including my housemate Yuri, my ex-boyfriend Wade,  and Ricardo, the Cuban-American dance instructor who Yuri and Wade "shared" last night.

"The aikane, or male bedmate, was a standard part of the culture," Ricardo continues.  "Every guy had a wife and an aikane." 

"I always thought of Hawaii as a 'good place,'" I say, "Where same-sex desire is open.

"Me, too!" Wade exclaims.  "I applied to the University of Hawaii for my undergrad degree, but my parents talked me into staying home in Canada.  I should have gone!  Hawaiian men are so hot!"

"And I'd love to hear the Hawaiian language spoken," I add.

"You could get your chance," Ricardo says.  "According to the article, there are 400,000 native Hawaiians on the mainland, most of them right here in Florida."

"That's 200,000 men," Yuri calculates, "100,000 adult men, 10,000 adult gays."

"Nice odds!" Ricardo says.  "You could get an aikane easily, if you plan your strategy right."

"And when you do, bring him around," I add.  "I want to talk to him."

"Or use your mouth, anyway," Wade says.  Everyone laughs.

Where do you find gay native Hawaiians in Florida?

The Polynesian restaurants in Fort Lauderdale, the Big Kahuna and the Mai-Kai, are tacky, touristy, and very heterosexual, with "shows" featuring gyrating women in grass skirts.

There is a Hawaiian Civic Association in Melbourne, but its brochure lists "family friendly," that is, heterosexual-only events.

But: Florida International University in Miami.  10% of the 50,000 students are Pacific Islanders, mostly native Hawaiians.

 5,000 of them, 2,500 male, 250 gay male.

Ok, where to find them?

Wade checks the schedule of classes for something on Pacific Island anthropology, languages, cultures...and finds Hawaiian Language 101, offered through the Asian Studies Department!

Surely lots of native Hawaiians would enroll in such a class!

It's a long drive on terrible Florida highways, but at least his job at the hotel will pay the tuition, if he tells them that language study will come in handy in speaking to tourists.



Week 1

Hawaiian 101 was held on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the Deuxieme Maison,  "The Second House," actually a long, low concrete building.

Wade loved the language.  Only 8 consonants, including a glottal stop: H, K, L, M, N, P, W. And no dipthongs.  So Merry Christmas becomes Mele Kalikimaka.

The professor was a woman of Irish, Japanese, and Hawaiian ancestry, not a native speaker; she said that there were only about 2,000 native speakers left, but 200,000 people have learned some Hawaiian to get in touch with their roots.

What about your classmates?

11 women, 8 other men.  Of the men, one was haole, one black, the rest native Hawaiians trying to fill the "foreign language" requirement and get in touch with their roots at the same time.

Are any of the six native Hawaiian men gay?

It was hard to tell.  They all came and left in a group, and didn't interact much with the haole boys.



Week 2

Class is cancelled due to the hurricane.

Week 3

The Hawaiian for "I have a big stick" is i loaa he nui lāʻau

Week 4

"I finally managed to get a cruisy conversation with one of my classmates," Wade tells us.  "David.  He's majoring in Mass Communications.  He was excited to find out that I'm from Canada."

Week 5

"Made it!" Wade exclaims.  "David is gay, but closeted.  We went out for coffee, and then back to his dorm room."

"How big is he?" Yuri asks.

"You know I'm usually into older guys, but David is super-hot.  Very handsome face, smooth chest, xylophone abs, thick Smooth chest, tight pec muscles, very affectionate. We kissed, cuddled, he went down on me, I went down on him."

"How big?" Yuri repeats.

Wade smiles.  "I kept choking."

Week 6

"Ok, you've been out with David three times," I say.  "Time to introduce him."

"And share him," Yuri adds.

"He hasn't been out very long," Wade says, "And he's a little on the shy side.  I'm not sure he'd be up for sharing with both of you. Maybe Yuri could share, and I could talk him into letting Boomer watch."

"Fine with me."

"Bring him on Thursday night," Yuri says.  "For dinner."

Week 7

Yuri is not really interested in sharing Wade's boyfriend -- he's into bodybuilder types, not twinks.  He'll do it, of course, just to be polite.

But I'm thrilled.  I spend the week remembering the Pacific hunks of my childhood: Call It Courage, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, the tales of Robert Louis Stevenson.  Dusky, muscular Hawaiian guys fill my fantasies.

Finally Thursday night comes.  Barney is out, so it will be just the four of us.  Yuri makes moussaka, with a green salad and dolmas, stuffed grape leaves.  I rent a new porn movie to set the mood for later.

The doorbell rings promptly at 6:00.  I open it to Wade, carrying a fruit compote for dessert, and his new boyfriend David, from Hawaiian class.

A curly-haired haole.

Actually of English, Portuguese, and Japanese ancestry.

Well, Wade never actually said the guy was native Hawaiian.

At least he was not as shy as Wade thought, open to "sharing" with both of us, and very well hung.

There's a story about searching for native Hawaiian men in Hawaii on The Gay Guide to Small Town Beefcake.  See "The Haole Hunks of Kauai, Hawaii"

A Naked Man Behind the Door

Speaking of sausage sightings, here's one for the record books:

There are several unisex bathrooms on campus, three in a row in a corridor of the Business School, three in a row in the Art Building, two in a row in Social Sciences.

They're designed for the disabled who can't negotiate the m/f restrooms, but also used by:

Non-binary and transgender people who might not feel comfortable in the m/f restrooms.

Guys who are shy about pulling it out in front of other guys.

And anyone who dislikes the gunkiness of the toilets in the m/f restrooms after about ten hours worth of students have been parking their behinds on them.

They are big, with big, square doors that can accommodate wheelchairs.  When you walk in, there's a sink directly in front of you and a toilet and sometimes a urinal five paces to the side.

No "occupied" indicators, like on airplanes.  You just try the door.  If it's locked from the inside, you move on.

That's a lot of buildup, but the payoff is worth it.

The other night I was walking through the Business School on the way back from the gym, and I decided to use one of the bank of unisex bathrooms. I chose the middle one for some reason.  Symmetry, I suppose. 

The doors are unexpectedly easy to open, and I had to go.  I swung it wide.

There was a man facing me!

Too old to be a student, probably in his 30s.  Tall, pale skin, buzz cut. Wearing a gray business suit.

Except his pants were down or off. I saw his bare, hairy legs, his thighs, his crotch, and a long, thick uncut cock hanging down.  About 4" soft.

I said "Excuse me" and swung the door shut again.

They don't slam.  It took a second.  He just stood there, motionless, staring.

Obviously he had not realized that the door was unlocked.

But one thing is bugging me:  he was nowhere near the toilet.  He was about three steps from the sink, facing away from it.  Facing the door.

What was he doing?

Maybe he was an exhibitionist, waiting for someone to expose himself to, with the safety of claiming "I didn't know the door was unlocked."

If so, he would have a long wait. There are several bathrooms in the Business Building, and not many people around.

Could he have been waiting for someone specific -- a bathroom hookup that I accidentally interrupted?

It beats shoving your cock under a toilet stall.

Fangorn's First Hookup, with Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky

San Francisco, November 2010

I'm living in Upstate New York, but back in San Francisco for a conference, staying with my friend David.  We meet some guys at the Red Jade Restaurant on Church Street:  Matt my ex-boyfriend's ex-boyfriend, a South Asian Daddy named Tutor, Seth the Chemist, and his new boyfriend Fangorn.

(I'm not kidding -- he was named after the forest in The Lord of the Rings.)

They live in Santa Rosa, about an hour's drive north of San Francisco.  Seth teaches at Sonoma State, and Fangorn grows onions.

They make quite a pair.  Seth is slim, blond, sharp-jawed, clean-cut, and Fangorn a big, hairy, husky nature boy with long hair and a beard.

We discuss the usual gigantic penises, dates from hell, and celebrity hookups.  Matt tells about his date with Bronson Pinchot, star of Perfect Strangers.  David tells about hooking up with Skyler Stone, who we know from Raising Hope.  I stick to Michael J. Fox.

"Do poets count?" Fangorn asks, "Or do they have to be on the boob tube?"

I hate anti-tv elitists!  I start to roil.

"Sure, poets are fine," I say through gritted teeth.  "As long as they're famous."

"How many famous poets are there, that were alive in the last fifty years?" David asks.

"William Carlos Williams?" Matt suggests.

"Allen Ginsberg.  Back when I was a college kid, still named Dennis.  In fact, my first gay experience was with Ginsberg and his lover, Peter Orlovsky."

We all know Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997), the Beat poet whose Howl was required reading for anyone coming out in a homophobic society:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked....
who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword

He became a guru to the youth counterculture of the 1960s.  

He was gay, in a life-long and presumably monogamous relationship with fellow writer Peter Orlovsky (1933-2010.  I've seen them both naked in many films and photographs, and read their homoerotic poetry, but I've never met anyone who hooked up with them.

Boulder, Colorado, July 1975

Dennis was 20 years old, tall and slim, a Creative Writing major at the University of Iowa, a would-be poet desperate to see his stuff published in chapbooks and in little magazines.  

"What a coincidence!" I exclaim.  "I'm from the Quad Cities, just down the road from Iowa City. Did you ever go to the gay bars in Rock Island?"

"No, I wasn't out yet."

He was a lapsed Lutheran, not a pagan yet, and, as far as he knew, straight, although his sexual experience was limited to fumbling around in the car with his date on the night of the senior prom.

He loved the Beat poets, especially Allen Ginsberg, so in the summer of 1975 he enrolled in the Jack Kerouc School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

It was a primitive school with no classrooms, no dorms, no buildings at all, meeting in various rented spaces in Boulder, including an old bus depot and an apartment over a Chinese restaurant.  But the intellectual and spiritual energy was amazing: not only Allan Ginsberg but Chongyam Trungpa Rimpoche, Anne Waldman, Ram Das, Gregory Bateson, John Cage, and Gary Snyder were lecturing, performing, and holding classes on such topics as Buddhism, Earth religions, social movements, and poetry. 

There were 1,500 students from all over the world, all ages, staying 8 to a room in hotels and apartments, and sleeping in tents in North Boulder Park.  

Dennis enrolled in Allen Ginsberg's class in the History of Mahayana Buddhism, and Peter Orlovsky's class in Poetry Writing.

Ginsberg was 49 years old, balding, bearded, chubby.  Orlovsky was 42, slim, with long hair and intense eyes.

"They never said anything about being gay.  I didn't even know that they were lovers until someone told me." 

The classes were something of a disappointment.  Ginsberg lectured on historical sources like any professor, except that he was cross-legged on the floor, and occasionally chanted a Sanskrit text.  Orlovsky had students sit in a circle and discuss each other's submissions, the standard creative writing class you could get in any university.

And Naropa wasn't all about spiritual enlightenment and the unspeakable visions of the individual.  There were fist-fights and drunken brawls.  Two naked hippies rushed into a classroom and began tearing off a girl's clothes, screaming about "breaking free from the shackles of capitalism."  The Rimpoche invited a dozen girls and a handful of boys to his house every night for Tantric orgies that lasted until dawn.

In contrast, Ginsberg and Orlovsky seemed positively sedate. They didn't participate in the drinking or the orgies.  Every night they returned to their quiet, nondescript home near downtown Boulder, exactly like a middle-aged heterosexual couple.

Dennis had never met anyone gay before.  He expected flamboyance, camp, and nonstop sexual come-ons. But neither Ginsberg nor Orlovsky ever propositioned him.    

Not that Dennis would accept, of course -- he was straight.  But...from everything he had heard, gay men weren't picky -- they would try to get into the pants of anyone with a penis!  Didn't they find him attractive? 

What was wrong with him?

He started coming to class with his shirt off, hoping his bare chest would draw their attention.

Nothing.  

He stuffed a sock into his crotch.

Nothing.

He positioned himself next to Orlovsky in the writing circle, and casually rubbed his foot against Orlovksy's calf.  

Still nothing.

Finally Dennis decided to take a more aggressive approach. He caught up with Orlovsky and Ginsberg as they walked home for the evening, pushed between them, and put his arm around Ginsberg's waist.  Ginsberg didn't push away.  Instead, he wrapped his arm around Dennis.  Orlovsky looked over, smiled, and wrapped his arm around Dennis, too.

But were they propositioning him, or just being affectionate?  Dennis had to know for sure!

"I have a question.  I hope it's cool.  How did you guys know that you were...um..gay?"  He had never said the word aloud before.

"I think you already know the answer to that question," Ginsberg said.

"What -- no!  I'm just asking.  I'm straight.  I never been with a guy before, and I don't want to."

"Then why are you here?"

"Please master can I touch your cheek," Orlovksy recited.  "Please master can I kneel at your feet.  Please master can I loosen your blue pants.  Please master can I gaze at your golden haired belly..."

Dennis had never heard that Ginsberg poem before.  The image it evoked was tantalizing.  But he said "No!"  and broke away.

"We're going to go home and get naked," Ginsberg said.  "You can join us, if you like.  Or you can wait.  We live thousands of lives -- you have plenty of time."

A few moments later, he was going down on Ginsberg's average sized penis -- still, it made him gag -- and then trying Orlovsky's thin Bratwurst.  Then he bottomed for Ginsberg while Orlovsky went down on him.  They giggled and pawed, and cracked jokes -- to them it was just play.  

But to Dennis it was a transformation.  

San Francisco, November 2010

"Many gay men still think of sex as play, a form of recreation," Fangorn says.  "They don't understand how much spiritual power it has.  It can transform you."

"So...," David says... "I guess you and Seth won't be sharing our out-of-town guest tonight?"

"Let's not be hasty!"  His hand falls into my lap.  "Sex can transform you, certainly, but it can also be a pleasant ending to an evening of dinner and conversation."

Seth laughs.  "Fangorn likes three-ways better than one-on-one sex.  I guess you're always trying to replicate your first experience."  

"Great!" I exclaim.  "My first experience was with an incredibly well-hung high school violinist.  Fangorn, can you live up to his lofty standards?"

He did.

See also: On My Knees in the Teaching Assistant's Office; Desperatly Seeking Kevin the Vampire; The Gay Beat Generation.

Trapped in a Dormitory with College Freshmen

Long Island, August 1997

On August 26th, 1997, at 10:00 pm, I got on an airplane with two suitcases, leaving friends, my boyfriend, most of my stuff, and memories of home, to go to graduate school at Setauket University in New York (not its real name)

Eight hours later, after a layover in Chicago, I arrived at LaGuardia.  I had never been to New York before. I expected skyscrapers and subways.  Instead, I found the suburban sprawl of the Straight World.

The admissions guy said that Setauket was 30 minutes from New York City.  He lied!  From LaGuardia Airport it took 2 hours by train, with a change at Jamaica station.

Exhausted after a night with no sleep, I got to the campus at a little after noon, only to find the Housing Office closed for lunch.

When I returned at 1:15, they had no idea who I was.  There was no application for graduate student housing on file.

I was standing in the middle of Long Island with two suitcases, a day before classes started, with no place to stay!

"Don't worry," the housing clerk said.  "We can move you into emergency housing until a graduate student apartment opens up.  It shouldn't be longer than a week or two."

She gave me a key to a room in the freshman dormitory!

Two bunk beds, four desks and chairs, two shared closets, bathroom down the hall. With three freshman boys as my roommates.

I know what you're thinking -- were they cute?  Did you get a sausage sighting?

The answer is, it never occurred to me.

1. I was not yet a twink magnet, not used to the idea of guys who were substantially younger.

2. I was already feeling self-conscious about my age, being the oldest graduate student in my program by about ten years. And now I was surrounded by 17 and 18 year olds.  They would think I was a freshman, too.  I was too humiliated to think of biceps and bulges.

3. Twinks were uncommon in San Francisco -- the money and energy it takes to live in Gay Heaven were beyond the means of most 20-year olds.  So I had spent the last two years surrounded by guys in their 30s, 40s, and 50s.  From my perspective, a 17 year old looked a little kid.

Sniveling homesick babies crying into their pillow and getting various fevers that made them go to the nurse constantly.

Rambunctious Bart Simpsons wearing "Dare to Misbehave" t-shirts as they skateboarded down the hallways at 2:00 am.

 The staff treated us like kids, too.  Nightly room inspections to make sure we don't have any contraband -- including free weights, musical instruments, open food containers, and porn magazines.

Daily "hall meetings," required even for me and the 10 or so other grad students put in emergency housing.  With required ice breaker activities like "You're going on a picnic.  Everybody has to bring something starting with the first letter of your last name."

I'm bringing dynamite.

The next day I went to the housing office to see if an apartment had opened up.  And the next.  And then it was Saturday; I took the train into Manhattan, but had to be back by the 11:00 pm curfew.

Yes, freshman dorms had curfews, even for 36-year olds.

Monday was Labor Day.  Campus offices are all closed.

On Tuesday I went to the housing office again -- nope -- and then started my classes: two graduate seminars and teaching assistant for an intro class.

Two of my roommates were my students!

Then I went back to the freshman dorm to sit at a table full of rambunctious kindergarteners for dinner, followed by a required "hall meeting" with  ice breaker activities for little kids.

"Write down three things about you, two lies and one the truth.  We have to decide which is true."

I had a four-way with Brad Pitt.
I went down on a guy with 11" backstage at the Hollywood Bowl.
I can suck a golf ball through a garden hose from 50 feet away.

No, I didn't use those.  I said something about having studied 10 languages, owning a pet iguana, and having starred in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

After the ice breaker they served ice cream sandwiches, but I wanted to high-tail it back to my room to hide from the humiliation of being treated like a 17 year old. But on the way, one of the freshman coat-tailed me.

His name was Jesse, and his true statemnt had been "I spend summers on a ranch."  He was tall and slim, with thick black hair, pale skin, and a snarky grin.

"Hey, sir, do you really speak 10 languages?"

"Studied, not speak.  Ni hau bu hau?"

"That's cool.  Want to play pingpong, sir?"  He emphasized the "sir" in a snarky way.

Why not?  It beat hiding in my dorm room, with no computer and no tv, for the next four hours, until lights out.

Still, as we played, I couldn't help thinking of the humiliation.  Having lived in my own apartments for 14 years, I was playing pingpong in the lounge of a freshman dorm with a little kid.

"If you don't mind my asking, sir, how old are you?" Jesse said.

"17, Sonny.  I stopped counting birthdays in 1978."

He did the math.  "You're only two years younger than my Dad.  Cool!"

Jesse also found it "cool" that I was from California, that I had studied Comparative Literature at USC, and that I knew a lot of celebrities, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise, and Brad Pitt (ok, so I made some up).

"I never met anyone yet.  I'm just a farmboy from Ulster County."

"How old are you?" I asked.

"42.  I'm young looking for my age.  So I guess you have to call me Daddy.  So, what brings you to college, sir?  Senior citizen tuition remission?"

"I like little boys, and this is the best place to find some," I said with a leer.

He stared at me for a moment, then laughed.  "You got a good sense of humor on you, sir.  Hey, do you want to see something cool?  I've been here for a week -- baseball practice -- so I know my way around.  Meet me in the 3rd floor bathroom at 11:30.  They don't do dorm checks until 1:00, so we'll have about an hour."

At age 36, having lived on my own for 14 years, I was in a freshman dorm, having a late-night adventure.  I just hoped Jesse wasn't taking me on a panty raid.

Jesse was carrying a blanket and a pair of binoculars.  He led me to a stairwell, up two flights of stairs, down a hall, up another stairwell, and we were on the roof.

It was a warm, clear night.  We lay side by side on the blanket, and Jesse handed me a pair of binoculars and pointed.

We could see directly through most of the windows of the dorm next door.  It was for upperclassmen, who had no curfew, so most of the windows were lit.  College guys sitting at desks, lying on bunks, roughhousing.

Bare chests, once a bare butt.

"It's like a dozen little live theaters. I keep hoping I'll see someone beating off, but it hasn't happened yet."

"The night is young."

I overcame my humiliation long enough to go down on Jesse (the age of consent in New York is 17). Small with a mushroom head, cut, big load.  He called me "sir."

But mostly from that night I remember the "live theater" of a dozen lit windows.

The next day an apartment opened up, and I met the roommate from hell.

See also: My Date with the Teenager and his Mom; Gay Panic and the Obnoxious Roommate; My Most Embarrassing Date

A Twink Parade at the Gym

Plains, October 2017

I don't know what's going on.  Yesterday an amazing success rate in hooking up on the world's worst hookup venue, and today a cruising paradise in the world's worst place for cruising.

Gay gyms are good for cruising: lots of pumped-up guys trying to attract attention and phone numbers.

Straight world gyms, not so much: straight men get insulted by the idea that another guy might think they're hot, so they are constantly checking to make sure no one is looking at them.  Any random glance is perceived as a threat, so cruising has to be subtle.  It's easier just to let it go altogether.

The YMCA on the Plains doesn't usually have much to offer anyway: a lot of old, out of shape heteros who spend too much time in the sauna discussing sports matches and the grandchildren's college plans, until they turn into red, sweat-soaked out of shape heteros.

Hardly anyone under age 70, except for groups of little kids -- the ones who have to sign the "under 15" list to work out.

They are cruisy., for some reason, but who wants some 14-year old following him around with a goofy grin on his face?  Seriously, what does he expect me to do, invite him out to dinner?

 But today the stars must have been aligned just right, or maybe karma was rewarding me for passing up that pie at lunchtime, because the staid old YMCA suddenly became a cruising paradise.  Wall to wall hot guys in their 20s and 30s, with as much face-crotch-face glancing as at the Faultline ten minutes before closing.

1, Reddish brown hair, long face, very thin, wearing a t-shirt from a school I had never hard of.  Constant eye contact.

2. Black, thin, diamond earring, sort of fey. Kept watching me on the incline press.  Later I worked on a pulldown and got a good view of him on the exercise bike.  What he had in his pants kept bouncing up and down.

I got a "Hi, how's it going" from him.

3.  Buffed guy in his late 30s, very hairy chest, big biceps, military haircut, working out with a college boy.

"Is that your son?" I asked.

"I'm his coach.  We're in town for a game with the local university."  He mentions a college in Minnesota, about 200 miles away.  That explains the twink parade.

4. Time to make a selection and seal the deal.  I spy a tall, thin guy in his mid 20s with thick brown hair, a handsome face, not much of a physique, wearing a "We are liberal arts" t-shirt.

"What liberal art are you studying?" I ask.  "I majored in modern languages."

He gives me the standard face-crotch-face glance.  "Um...actually it's the College of Liberal Arts at ___ university.  They were having a fundraiser.  I'm a health science major."

"Oh, ok."  I am disappointed -- I wanted to go out with a nice history or philosophy major.  On to the next guy!

"But...I have nothing against the liberal arts," he adds, doing another set of calf raises.  "I've taken classes in languages and philosophy.  This semester I'm taking African Culture and Civilization.  It's just hard to find a job with something like that.  What work do you do?"

"Professor at your rival university."

"Cool!  I'll look for you in the stands tomorrow afternoon."

"Oh, I can't make the game, I'm busy.  But afterwards, if you're not going home right away,  I know a place that serves Ethiopian food.  You can report back to your African Culture Class."



His name is Hunter, by the way.   I'll report on the date.

But karma wasn't finished with me yet.  In the locker room, I stumbled upon:

5. A tall, thin twink with a nondescript physique but a thick cut sausage that hung down about 5" soft.