Billy Booth Comes Out on the Set of "The Twilight Zone"

Billy Booth was playing on his Little League team in LaCrescenta, California, about 20 miles from Hollywood, when an agent approached his mother and asked if he would be interested in doing some tv commercials.  A decade of tv and movie work followed: The Snow Queen (1957), Goodyear Theatre (1959), The Slowest Gun in the West (1960), Donna Reed (1964), and Andy Griffith (1964), plus a recurring role as Tommy on Dennis the Menace  (1959-1963).

But his favorite role, the one he would remember forever, was "Short Boy" on The Twilight Zone, when he was 11 years old.

"A Stop at Willoughby" (May 6, 1960) was one of many episodes about harried business executives who escape to what narrrator/writer Rod Serling thought of as the kinder, simpler world  of the 19th century, with people riding on penny-farthings and bands playing "Beautiful Dreamer" in the park

In this case, harried ad exec Gart Williams (41-year old James Daly) escapes from his obnoxious boss and harridan wife when his commuter train makes an unexpected stop at the small town of Willoughby, July 1888.

For the rest of the episode, he tries desperately to return.  Finally he succeeds.  In the twist ending, it turns out that he jumped out of the train to his death, and "Willoughby and Sons" is the name of the funeral home.

Billy played one of the two barefoot boys walking toward the fishing hole, then returning to town later. The older (Butch Hengen) tells Williams that "the fish are biting."  Williams says "I might go with you tomorrow."

That's all: two walk-ons, shot together on a single afternoon, uncredited, no lines.  But what happened after stayed with Billy forever.

After his scene, he expected someone to take the fishing pole and fish prop from his hands, but no one came.  He started walking, but took a wrong turn and got lost, still dressed like Huckleberry Finn.  The hard ground hurt his feet.  He was getting a little worried, when suddenly Jim Daly was beside him.

"Are those real fish?" he asked, smiling

"Yep. Boy, do they smell!"

"We'd better get them back to props.  Come on, I'll show you the way."  Jim put his hand on his shoulder and steered him in the opposite direction, back across the Willoughby set.

Jim was very big and tall.  Billy felt like a big man just walking next to him, like they were pals.

"Do you think you'd like to live in a town like Willoughby?"

"Naw -- it sounds real square.  No tv, no movies, no comic books!  But I liked working here.  Butch is cool -- me and him, we're going to the beach tomorrow, if his Mom says it's ok."

"That's fine  That's all you need, really, in this life -- one special friend.  They're hard to find."

"Oh, I got lots of friends."

"Sure, but do you have a special friend?  Someone who makes you smile whenever you look at him, who makes you sad when you have to say goodbye."  Jim was staring straight ahead, reciting as if remembering a scene. His words made Billy feel warm and happy inside.  "Who you don't want to say goodbye to, ever -- you want to spend you life with him."

"That's pretty cool, Mister Daly.  Is it from a movie?"

"No, it's from real life.  Or at least, how I wish life could be.  Maybe it will be, when you grow up."

They handed the fish and fishing pole to the prop master, who snarled "It's about time!  I thought you nicked it!"   Then Jim walked Billy to where his mother was waiting.  They shook hands and said goodbye.

Billy never saw him again.  But he remembered the warm hand on his shoulder, the distant, faraway look, the sadness.

One special friend.  

Billy's next job was on an episode of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.  Dwayne Hickman and Bob Denver were both nice to him,  but the only cast member who made him smile just by looking at him was Mike Burns, a cute teenager with big muscles and a hairy chest.  But Mike ignored Billy, or talked like he was just a little kid.

One special friend.

Jay North, his costar on Dennis the Menace?  Nice, but not very cute.

Mickey Sholdar on The Farmer's Daughter?  Cute, but not very nice.

Like many child stars, Billy found acting jobs scarce once he hit puberty.  But he didn't mind: he could go to a regular school with regular kids, and do normal things like ride bikes and go to the beach.  He started fantasizing about cute guys climbing into his bed, hugging and kissing him, touching him down there.

A guy from his biology class; his gym teacher; Robert Vaughn, the Man from Uncle;  Mike Burns; and Jim Daly, who (in Billy's fantasy) had muscles and a hairy chest, big hands, and a gigantic penis.

In high school Billy began dating girls.  His favorite dates ended with him and a friend dropping off the girls and then parking and going down on him, feeling a buff guy's cock thrust against his tongue and throat.  But it was just a physical release -- his friend could never be a special friend.  He was too busy thinking about girls.

Billy graduated from LaCrescenta High in 1967- and enrolled at USC.  Some of his classmates were growing their hair long, smoking pot, and joining in the anti-war protests, but Billy never did.  He was a good boy, quiet, respectful, studious, a square.  Besides, with their long hair and beads, hippie boys looked like girls.  He liked "real men," strong, masculine, powerful.

Like the football jocks he invited to his dorm room to beat off while looking at Playboy.  Sometimes he went down on them, but again, it was just a physical release.  They were both supposed to be thinking about girls.

In 1974 Billy graduated from USC with a degree in political science.  He moved to San Francisco to go to the Hastings College of Law, and met gay people for the first time.  Men who acted like women, flouncing and sashaying down the street.  Not a problem -- he was open-minded -- but with no connection to his life at all.  Instead he started dating Kathy, a Berkeley undergrad majoring in English.

She was certainly a friend -- they had a lot of fun together.  And they had sex - it was simply a matter of closing his eyes and fantasizing about a muscular guy with a hairy chest.  That desire to touch her, to be touched by her, was absent, but it was probably just a childhood fantasy -- it didn't exist in the real world.  Kathy must be his special friend.

In June 1977 they married and moved to Los Osos, California, in San Luis Obispo County.  They bought a house near the beach.  Billy started a private practice in business and real estate law, and Kathy worked on her writing.  In October she announced that she was pregnant.

Billy was 28 years old, with everything he was supposed to want in life: house, job, wife, child on the way.  This was the life everyone wanted.

Wasn't it?

Well, wasn't it?

He had never been so miserable.

One day on a whim, he tracked down James Daly, who remembered their brief conversation 17 years ago!  He got an invitation to visit.

Kathy didn't understand why he wanted to cross the country to visit someone he met once, but she wasn't about to pass up a trip to New York, so in January 1978, shortly after the New Year, they flew out to Nyack.

Daly was 59 years old, graying but still big and tall, still acting in local theater and taking the train into Manhattan every weekend.  They went shopping for antiques, and walked on the beach even though it was in the 20s outside.  Nearly the first thing he told them was: "I'm gay."

He grinned at their shock -- you didn't just come out to near-strangers in 1978!  "For the last six months I've been telling everyone.  You'd be surprised how healing it is. Such a blessing to finally end the lies."

"How long have you known?" Billy asked.

"Oh, since I was a boy.  But when I was young, we thought it was a mental disorder.  [My wife] Hope and I tried all sorts of therapy to 'cure' me before figuring that it was hopeless and divorcing.  Even then, I stayed in the closet."

"Have you ever had a companion?" Kathy asked.  "Someone to spend your life with?  A special friend?"

Billy stared -- he had never used that term in front of Kathy.  How did she know it?

"Lots of lovers, but I'm afraid that the happiness of a special friend has always eluded me.  I think because I came out of the closet too late."

"It's never too late," Kathy said, glancing over at Billy.

They waited until their son Devon was five years old to divorce.  Billy continued to live in Los Osos and practice law, stayed close to Kathy and watched Devon grow up, but he was down in Los Angeles most weekends.

He had brunch at the French Quarter.  He visited the gay synagogue.  He had many boyfriends and lovers, and a partner who lived with him for 12 years.

Billy Booth died on December 31, 2006.  His family suggests that, instead of flowers, you can best honor his memory by calling an old friend.

A Sleepover with the Juvenile Delinquent: A Young Gideon Adventure

 “Hey, Bro,” Pontius called, rushing up to Gideon’s locker at the Riverpointe Christian Academy in Charleston. 

“Hey, yourself.”  Gideon was a bit suspicious: his younger brother rarely talked to him at school.  Sometimes he didn’t even accept a ride home, preferring to call one of the Gemstone drivers to avoid being seen with a “glee club nerd.”  An odd insult, since Gideon didn’t belong to Glee Club.

"Ok, here’s the thing. I want to have a sleepover Friday night, and you have to come."

"No way, José! 16-year olds do not go to slumber parties.”

“You used to like them.”

“Sure, gu5 I used to like Battlebots, too. I grew up.”

From his 10th birthday until last year, when he graduated to the high school building at the Academy, Gideon and Pontius hosted sleepovers at least once a month. They each invited two or three boys, plus their younger brother Abraham by default. They spent the night playing video games, watching tv, eating snacks, and bragging about how late they were staying up.  Then they bedded down in the Kid Guest Room, Pontius and Abraham on the top bunk, Gideon and another boy “on the bottom,” and the rest in sleeping bags.   Gideon always took awhile to choose his bed partner: not necessarily his best friend.  Maybe even one of Pontius’s friends, if he was cute. 

How did I know which boys were cute?  Gideon thought, surprised by the memory.  Why did I care?

The full story is on Righteous Gemstones Beefcake and Boyfriends.

Matt's First Night with Fred and His Brother

West Hollywood, March 1993

Whenever a new boyfriend is admitted to a social group, he always has to tell his coming out story.  It's a rite of passage.

But in the five years we've known Matt, Fred's boyfriend, he hasn't told his.  "I'm like Topsy," he claims.  "I didn't have no birthin'.  I just growed."

One night in spring of 1993, at a party at Will the Bondage Boy's apartment, he finally gives in:  "Oh, all right!  But you have to tell it, Fred, mon étalon.  Tell about the chevalier blanc, the white knight who rescued me from the two dragons of Kansas City."

Kansas City, May 1987

Matt graduated from Harvard with a B.A. in French Literature and a thesis on Raymond Radiguet, the beautiful and fabulously well-hung novelist who amassed an incredible list of lovers -- Picasso, Hemingway, Jean Cocteau, Coco Chanel -- before he died of typhus at age of 20.

"Forget your coming out story!" Will the Bondage Boy exclaims.  "I want to hear about this Raymond Radiguet.  How hung was he?"

Matt smiles. "That would be telling. But back to the horrors of May 1987: Great Caesar's Bust is on the shelf, and I don't feel so well myself."

After eight years of bliss, first at the Phillips Academy and then at Harvard, Matt had to go back home, to that awful castle that his parents stole from his grandmother, to the most jejune, ennuyeux, bourgeois neighborhood in the most stuffy, obnoxious, hébété, redneck city in Kansas.  That's right, Kansas.

"Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas, anymore."

"But ya are, Blanche!  Ya are!"

Back to his big brute Dad, who spent half his time in India, selling widgets and wocks to Brahmins and the other half hurlant, saississant, pressant: "Play football!  Change carburetors!  Don't be a fairy!"

Back to his big brute Mom, who dressed like Donna Reed -- hello!  It's the 1980s! -- and kept picking away at him like Woody Woodpecker: "Do you have a girl yet? Do you have a girl yet?  Do you have a girl yet?  Ha-ha-ha-HA-ha!"

The only member of his family he could stomach was his older brother Buzz, a shaggy blond haired hipster who used to give him wedgies and nipple-twists when they were kids.  Then one summer he and an Italian buddy drove their Fiat off an embankment on the SP325 outside of Bologna and sped off to the afterlife together.

"Was he gay?" Lane asks.

"I don't know.  Mom and Dad won't tell me, and he won't tell me.  He says it's irrelevant in the afterlife."

Buzz followed Matt to Harvard, where he hovered over his bed in the dead of night, scaring his tricks to death and offering unwanted advice:  "You're doing it wrong!  Use your tongue more!"

"Just what you need!" I exclaim. "A big brother ghost butting in."

Mom and Dad didn't know that Matt was gay, but he was going to change all that now, and end all interrogations altogether.

"Coming out to parents is always a nightmare," Lane says sympathetically.

The morning after he returned to the Provinces, he caught them in the breakfast nook.

"There are scrambled eggs and L'Eggos in the kitchen," Mom said.

L'Eggos?  Good Lord!  "Mom and Dad, you're probably wondering why I haven't been on a date with a girl since fifth grade, why I sent away for an autographed picture of Gregory Harrison, and why I wander through the house singing 'I'm Coming Out.'  C'est incroyable, I know, but I'm gay."

They stared for a long moment.  Then Mama Pajama began the pick-pick-picking. "Are you sure?  Are they sure?  Who's your doctor?  Did you get a second opinion?"

Big Daddy stood, brusque, all business.  "You're too old for that sissy stuff.  You're a grownup now."

"Well, not quite a grownup yet," Matt said. "I've never driven a car.  I've never gotten a paycheck.  I've never had a boyfriend.  Oh, I've had sex -- I know my way around a penis, let me tell you that -- but no boyfriend."

"Not the best strategy!" I say.  "Parents really don't want to know what you do in bed, any more than you want to know what they do."

"Bien sur.  But, as you may have noticed, I tend to speak first, contemplate my errors later."

For the next hour, Mom and Dad yelled, argued, recriminated, and spat like wet cats, mostly at each other, blaming Matt's "problem" on toilet training and male babysitters and that unfortunate trip to Spain, and finally on Buzz's death,  until Matt couldn't take it anymore and ran up to his room.  Buzz was hovering over the bed.

"That went well," he said sarcastically.  "You know what's going to happen next?  They're going to send you someplace.  The same place you went after my accident."

"Prairie Ridge Children's Hospital," Matt clarifies.  "For teenage Looney Toons, mixed nuts, and assorted cinglés."  

"What's wrong with that?"  Matt asked Buzz in consternation. "The walls were orange.  Very cheerful."

When he went back downstairs, Mom was still pick-pick-picking.  "Won't you see a psychiatrist?  They're doing marvelous things now with psychiatric drugs.  If you can't be cured, at least you can keep your impulses in check."

And Dad was cogitating.  "He just needs a stable job to keep his mind occupied.  I'm bringing him back to India. He can manage the branch office in Hyderabad.  Better drop the Francais and brush up on your Telugu, boy!"

"The boy don't need a shrink, he needs a useful career!" Will says, quoting from West Side Story.

More yelling, more plans, more co-option, until Matt ran out of the house and kept running through the nameless suburbs, hoping to be grabbed by flying monkeys and taken to the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West.  Oh, right, he just came from there.  Running, running, running.

Where could he go?  He knew absolutely no one in Kansas City, he had no old hangouts.  He had $38 in his pocket, enough for a night in a cheap hotel.

Finally he slowed to a walk.  He recognized this neighborhood, in the rocky hills northwest of town.  Sortor Drive...he was on the way to Prairie Ridge!

Well, any port in a storm.

He didn't know exactly what he was going to do.  Ask to be admitted?    But he burst into the bright orange reception room, and saw the Knight.

Tall, well-muscled, hard pecs visible beneath a white shirt, a brightly-smiling farmboy with a bulge that wouldn't quit.

"Are you ok?" he asked.  "You look out of breath."

His name was Fred, he was from a small town in Illinois, he was a mental health counselor with a degree in theology -- but who cared about the details?  He was Matt's chevalier blanc.

They went out to dinner, and Matt spent the night in Fred's apartment.  Buzz hovered over the bed, saying "Man, what a whopper!  This guy is amazing!  How can you take all that?"

"Buzz most certainly did not comment on your size!" Matt exclaims. "He merely said that you were attractive.  For those of you who have not had the pleasure, mon étalon and I are comparable in circumference, if not in length."

In the morning they paid Mom and Dad a visit.  Fred explained about the psychological, sociological, legal, and religious aspects of gayness.

The next day they returned with a U-Haul to collect Matt's things.

Not to worry, Mom and Dad eventually came around.  When it' a choice between a gay son and no son, most parents come around.

"Let's hear more about Buzz," Will says.  "Was he cute?  Was he hung?  Did you ever see him naked?"

Matt smiles.  "That would be telling."

See also: Fred and the Cute Young Thing.; The White Knight and the Jester; Matt's Black and White Ball

Shawn's Three Way with his Best Friend and His Uncle

London, June 2015

Yuri has broken up with Michael, and is no longer living in Soho, the West Hollywood of London.  Instead, he's in Vauxhall, the South of Market of London, a funky neighborhood of leather bars, tattoo parlors, and dive restaurants.  Fun.

Tonight he invites a bear couple in their 50s and two single guys in their 20s over for dinner, conversation, entertainment, and, hopefully sharing.  The conversation begins with tales of gigantic penises and celebrity hookups (Prince Harry appears  in both categories).

Then, oddly, Yuri suggests coming out stories.

In West Hollywood, every new person you met told you his coming out story, how he had overcome the deadly silence of his childhood, finding evidence that "it is not raining upstairs" as everyone around him proclaimed, loudly, that everyone on Earth was heterosexual.  The stories were all similar, yet we never grew tired of them; it was a way of bonding, of discovering that we were not alone in the world.

But nowadays gay people don't grow up in utter silence anymore. They know at age five; they tell their parents at age eight; they join their elementary school Gay-Straight Alliance at age ten.  There's no coming out; there was never an "in."

Yuri's suggestion of coming out stories must be for the benefit of the young guys, I conclude, to give them a sense of history.  So I tell about going to see the movie Grease in the summer of 1978: "We stop the fight right now, we got to be who we are."

One of the bears tells about finding a stash of straight porn magazines, around 1975, and zeroing in on the men.

The other bear tells about listening to David Cassidy sing "I Think I Love You" on The Partridge Family in 1971.

We're about to move on to other topics, when Shawn, age 28, says "I can top that.  I had no idea until I was gay until just after my seventeenth birthday, when I had a three-way with my best mate and my uncle."

Dundee, Scotland, Spring 2004

Carmostie, a far suburb of Dundee, Scotland, is the world's most boring burg.  It's all about golf -- three golf courses, the British Open, shops like The Tee Caddy, fat, ugly golf enthusiasts wandering around taking pictures.  Dull!   When I was a kid, all there was to do was hang around in the House Grounds, or, if we had the money, stop into Goodfellow and Steven for an ice cream.

I knew what gay people were -- swishy, fruity things, like Jack on Will and Grace.  But there weren't any in Carmostie, or in all of Scotland, as far as I could tell. Certainly not me -- I didn't swish!  I was straight, just too mature to take part in the juvenile dating-and-breaking up fest that was my high school.

My best friend Brian, a cute Paki with a round face, black hair, and swimmer's build, was too mature for the dating game, too.  I never suspected that he might be gay, even though we always rated guys on their butts and baskets.  After all, he was deeply into football.  How could a fan of Dundee United ever be...gay?

One day just past my seventeenth birthday, Brian invited me to go to a movie in Dundee, about ten miles away.  Funny, I didn't ask him what was playing.

But he didn't take me to the Odeon.  We went to a flat in a rather funky neighborhood about two blocks from the statue of Desperate Dan in the City Centre.

He knocked, and to my surprise, my Uncle Jack answered.

Uncle Jack was my dad's younger brother, a black sheep who had all sorts of "quare" friends and did vaguely disreputable things that my parents never talked about.

Even though he lived only a half hour drive away, I had never been to his flat, and he rarely came to Carmostie.  Last time we saw him was at a Christmas party, five months ago.

Uncle Jack answered the door wearing only a towel.  I noticed for the first time his hard hairy chest, his nipple ring, his thick biceps,,,.

"Oh, sorry, mates, you're early," he exclaimed.  "Come in, come in, just let me finish getting dressed.  There's sandwiches and sodas in the fridge, if you're feeling peckish."

We grabbed some sandwiches and sat down on the couch, beside a picture of a semi-nude man in a foundry.  On the coffee table there was a book on male nudes.  Brian began to leaf through it.

"Where's the ladies?" I asked.

"Who needs ladies when you can have him?"

Were you starting to get it? I asked.

Shaun grins sheepishly.  "I feel like a complete idiot now, but no.  Brian didn't swish, so he couldn't possibly be gay, right?"

"How do you know my Uncle Jack?"

"We met at the Christmas party last year -- you remember," Jack said.  "And we've kept in email contact, and sometimes I come up here for dinner."

"Why would you want to be friends with my uncle?  He's ten years older than us, isn't he?"  Which I thought of as middle aged, at the time.

"Are you kidding?  Look at him!  He's brilliant!"

A moment later, Uncle Jack appeared wearing short pants and a tank top.  I'd never seen him like that before.  I had to admit that he was hot.

 "Are you coming to the movies with us?" I asked.

He frowned.  "Well, mate. this isn't really about the movies.  It's what might call an intervention.  Brian and I have been discussing you, quite a lot, really, and we think you have a problem.  We're here to get you sorted out."

My face burned.  "I don't use drugs!" I protested.

"Not that kind of problem.  Here, let's have a hug, then."

I dutifully stood and put my arms around Uncle Jack.  He hugged me tightly, not like an uncle.  I felt his hard chest, his abs, his basket against mine.

He tried to let go, but I hugged him harder.  I could feel my penis springing to life.

"Hey, let me in on that, too," Brian said.  He pushed his way into our hug, his hand on my butt.

Suddenly Uncle Jack and Brian were kissing.  It didn't seem weird.  It was the most natural thing in the world.

Brian moved in to kiss and fondle me.  Uncle Jack pulled my Bratwurst+ out of my pants, stroked it, then fell to his knees and went down on me.  My first time.

Brian took me by the hand and led me to the bedroom.  I was still fully aroused when he pushed me onto the bed into the interfemoral position.

Uncle Jack lay on the bed, too, his enormous Kielbasa standing straight up.  He fed it into me while Brian worked.

Afterwards Brian and I lay cuddling as Uncle Jack got dressed.  "Well, I was just expecting a heart-to-heart talk, but that turned out well," he said.  "I'll get us some tea and biscuts."

London, June 2015

"Did you and Brian date after that?" one of the bears asks.

"No, it was just that one time.  Uncle Jack and Brian were actually dating, and they decided that it was high time I came out."  He smiles.  "The sharing wasn't part of the plan, but I'm glad it happened."

"You're right," I say.  "That beats my Grease story by a mile."

See also: I Lost It at the Movies; Yuri and I Meet the Emo Boy of London