Leonard Bernstein, the Rabbi's Son, and the Verge of Coming Out

This story has been moved to RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

The Boy with a Crush on My Dad

When I was growing up, I was fascinated by a photo of my father sitting on a burro in Tijuana.

Dad is tanned, muscular, smiling, wearing a sombrero that invites us to "Kiss My Ass!"

The photo is dated September 8th, 1959, a little over a year before I was born. There are two names written on the back, "Frank" and "Jared."

Frank is my father, but who is Jared?  The burro?

And how did this grinning, bawdy, irreverent 21-year old turn into the Dad I knew, conservative, somber, serious, who rarely laughed and never joked or fooled around?  What changed?

Here is all I knew:

June 1956

Frank graduates from high school in Indiana, and joins the Navy.  He spends the next three years seeing the world, visiting Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Philippines, learning to repair things deep down in the hulls of the big ships, and buddy-bonding.  He calls it the best time of his life.

June 1959

Frank returns to Indiana for a two-week long shore leave and reunites with his high school sweetheart, who is working at the A&W.  They impulsively get married, and drive with her sister and brother-in-law cross country to Long Beach, California.  They move into a tiny apartment.

The next year is a blank space in their lives.  They don't talk about it.  There are only a few mementos and photographs.  I know that they went to Knotts Berry Farm and Tijuana, that a couple of relatives flew out for a visit, and that Mom bought a set of encyclopedias from a fast-talking salesman, and that's all.

June 1960

Frank's four-year tour of duty ends.  His Captain asks him to stay on, with a promotion to Chief Petty Officer, but he refuses.  Instead, he and Mom return to Indiana and move into a house on South Randolph Street.  He goes to work in the factory, which he calls a "hell hole," even when he's not angry: "Well, I'm off to the goddam hell hole, back at 4:00."   and frequently evokes his Navy years as "the best time of my live."

Why did Dad abandon a Navy career he loved for a factory job he hated?  

I could have grow up in Long Beach!  I could have met Randall and Will the Bondage Boy early in my childhood.  I could learned about gay people and been part of the gay rights movement of the 1980s.  Instead I rumbled around Rock Island in utter silence, my same-sex loves ignored, my most casual friendship with a girl applauded as the meaning of life.

Why did they leave Long Beach?

Indianapolis,  May 2016

I'm visiting my parents on the way back from New York. My nephew is digitizing their old photos, and I see the "Kiss My Ass" burro photo again.  Emboldened, I decide to coax as much information out of them as possible.

Maybe the statute of limitations has passed, or maybe after nearly 60 years they don't care about their youthful transgressions anymore, but Mom and Dad both open up, describing their apartment, the corner grocery store, the movie theater where they saw Ben-Hur and Pillow Talk.

"You went to movies?" I ask, shocked.  Nazarenes are forbidden from setting foot inside movie theaters.


"That's not all!" Dad says with a laugh.  "We played cards.  We danced.  We even drank -- just beer, one time, but if the preacher or my parents found out, we'd be in big trouble!"

"We made friends with all sorts of people that would set my Mom and Dad off," Mom adds.  "Blacks.  Jews.  Catholics.  Mexicans.  And...well, you know..."

"Gays?" I suggest.

Suddenly Dad becomes somber.  "It was the Fifties.  We didn't know about things like that."

"Or if we did, we thought it was very rare," Mom adds, "You'd never meet anyone like that in a lifetime, which is good because it was the worst thing possible, like a sin and a crime and a sickness, all rolled up into one.  Then we met that boy, Jared"

"We were supposed to give him a copy of the photo," Dad says.  "That's why his name is on the back.  But we didn't get a chance."

More after the break

The Boy with Soft Hands

When I was growing up in Rock Island, Huey (not his real name) was one of my brother Kenny's friends.  Short, brown-skinned, a rarity among the pale Swedes and Germans of Rock Island, chubby, with black hair and soft black eyes, soft all over.  I especially remember his square soft hands with stubby fingers.

This story has been moved to RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

The Answer to the Naked Man's Question

This story has moved to RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

Mouth to Mouth Resuscitation

Rock Island, July 1970

Looking back to my childhood in Rock Island, it's hard to believe that we crammed so much activity into the 12 weeks of summer:
Camping in Michigan or Minnesota
Nazarene summer camp
Visiting relatives in Indiana
My birthday excursion
Vacation Bible School
The Denkmann School Carnival
The Pow Wow, the Celtic Festival, and the Beiderbecke Jazz Festival
Summer Enrichment Classes in astronomy, Spanish, archaeology, and music.

And when we got a free moment, swimming lessons.

When you live between two rivers, you learn to swim.  I took lessons every summer from 4th grade to 7th grade at the Longview Park Pool.

It was great.  Boys and girls classes met at different times, so my group consisted entirely of cute boys, including my best friend Bill, Greg (the vampire boy who gave me my first kiss), Craig (who joined the swim team in high school, and invited me to "get down" at his graduation party), and eventually my brother and his friends.

And the teacher was always a cute teenage boy, tanned and muscular in red Rocky High swim trunks.

Unfortunately, I never got to see them with their swim trunks off,  so no glimpses of a penis (the adults called it a shame).  We weren't allowed in the bath house (where the showers and lockers were).  After the lessons, we had to sit on towels, sopping wet, while one of our mothers drove us home.

It was fun learning to jump into the pool, float on your back, and kick against those floating surfboards.  Then the dog paddle, the breast stroke, the back stroke, and the side stroke.

But when we had to jump off the diving board into the deep end and swim to the side of the pool, I balked.

"It's over my head!  I'll drown!"

"It's easy," Matt, the hunky teenage teacher, said.  "You already know how to swim.  This is just in deeper water."

"I'll sink to the bottom and drown!"

I watched from several feet away as my friends, one by one, jumped off the diving board, sank into the bright clear water of the deep end, then rose to the surface and kicked their way across the pool to the side, where Matt was waiting to pull them out.

His muscular arms rippling in the sunlight....I wanted muscular arms around me....

But...no!  "It's over my head!"

Matt put a strong hand on my shoulder.  "Tell you what, Boomer.  I'll get into the water with you.  That way if anything goes wrong, I can carry you to the side."

Carry me?  "You promise?"

"Sure.  And even if you do drown, I know mouth-to-mouth resuscitation."

I didn't know what that meant, but I liked the mouth-to-mouth part.  I climbed onto the diving board.  It felt hot in the sun, and a little wobbly.  Matt, floating upright in the water, motioned me in.  He was smiling.

With a gulp I jumped off the board.  Cold, bubbly water enveloped me.  I couldn't hear, couldn't breathe.  The surface was miles away. How could I ever get up again? It was over my head!

Springing to the surface, I yelled "Help!"

Instantly Matt had his arm around me, and with two kicks had us on the side of the pool.  He lifted us up.  I felt a surge of joy as I clung to his chest, my hands clutching his thick hard shoulders.

I wrapped my legs around him.  Our swimtrunks pressed together.  I felt the thick mass of his shame beneath.

"See?  That wasn't so bad," Matt said, disentangling me. "It was actually kind of groovy, wasn't it?"

Flushed with a weird, tingly excitement, I nodded.  "Are you going to do mouth-to-mouth resuction?"

He laughed.  "Not this time, buddy.  You're fine."

I wouldn't figure "it" for years, but in retrospect, that was a major coming out moment.

March 1975: Could a Man Have Sex with a Man?

 

Rock Island, around 1975

I'm 14 years old, growing up in the Midwest, and although Stonewall was seven years ago, nobody knows that same-sex desire, behavior, relationships, or gay people exist.  Or if they do, they pretend not to.  All I see on tv, all I hear in the classroom or in church or from my parents or friends, with anxiety or smug assurance, everbody and everything tell sme that jeterosexual desire is universal human experience.

 Even the "fairies," those poor pitiable boys who pretend to be girls, long for girls.  

Every boy who ever lived, or who ever would live, or who ever would be written about in a book or shown on a tv screen, aches with desire for feminine curves and smiles. 

 I don't not yet, but everyone I know is certain that my "discovery"is  imminent.  One day soon, I will see The Girl walking in slow motion across the school yard, her hair blowing in the wind, and in an instant I will know what everyone else in the world knows.   From that moment on, I will devote my life to the pursuit of the feminine.

But what about the "Best Men" who inform my life, Doug, Dan, Bill.  I imagine us growing up and living together forever, finding a "Good Place."  What about my flurry of excitement over Bomba the Jungle Boy, Peter Brady, David Cassidy, Bobby Sherman?  My Book of Cute Boys from before kindergarten?

They do not signify same-sex desire, to me or to anyone else.  Same-sex desire is simply beyond the boundary of what can be imagined.  No boy ever touches another boy, except for brief ritualistic gestures like shaking hands.  If they touch by accident, they spring away, too disgusted for words.  Boys enjoy and desiredonly the touch of a girl.  

But there have been hints throughout my childhood, looks, gestures that didn't fit into this heteronormative universe.

Hippie leader Charles Manson wanted to get revenge on Terry Melchior, a record producer who had rejected his songs.  So on August 8th, 1969, he sent his is "family" to kill everyone in the house.  Melchior was no longer living there; the hippies killed actress Sharon Tate and her houseguests.  The next night, they killed the LaBianca family to throw the police off their trail.

Manson did not actually commit the murders, but ordering his disciples to do it was enough: he was found guilty of seven murders, and sentenced to death (later changed to life in prison).  

Tonight I'm up late -- my brother is out.  I'm flipping through the channels on the small black-and-white tv -- not difficult, there are only three -- when I chance  upon long-haired, long-bearded hippie in a prison suit being interviewed on a late night news program.

I was only eight years old at the time of the murders, so I didn't hear about them, and I don't recognize the man as Charles Manson was.  Just a long-haired, long-bearded hippie in prison.

"What do you miss most about life on the outside?  The interviewer asks.  "Sex?"

"Sex? No!" The hippie scoffs.  "There's lots of sex in prison."  

Then he stares menacingly at the camera, and the interviewer goes on to the next story.

Sex in prison? But...it's all men.  How could you have sex? 

Could a man have sex with a man?

But...men spring away from the slightest touch.  How could he put his penis in another man without being overcome with disgust?  And where would he put it?  

And why was it never mentioned?  All of the dozens of times I 've heard about "making love" from family, friends, on tv, in movies, it is always men and women.

I decide that women must sneak into the prison to have sex with him, or else there are male prison guards.  Problem solved.

But still the question haunts me.  Could a man have sex with a man?

See also: I Learn About Oral Sex in the Church Parking Lot

The Naked Man in the Haunted House

When I was growing up in Rock Island, the western edge of my world was Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and the eastern edge was Lasalle-Peru, about 90 miles away.  I knew Interstate 80 east to Chicago, of course, but we didn't stop at any of those farther towns.  We visited Lasalle-Peru quite often, for jump quizzes at the Nazarene Church and music contests at Lasalle High School, for orchestra concerts and drama club events at Illinois Valley Community College; and several times a year, usually on Saturdays in the summer, went to Starved Rock State Park.

It's named after a sandstone butte where the Illiniwek (after who Illinois is named) were besieged by the Ottawa and Potawatomie tribes until they starved to death.  The story is probably apocryphal, but there is archaeological evidence of human habitation since the Pleistocene Era.  There was a little museum, a trolley, and a lot of hiking trails down the canyon and to see the waterfalls.

On the way home, we drove into Lasalle for ice cream or hamburgers.  About a block from the Dairy Queen (now a gas station) was a  "haunted house," four stories, dark and spooky, with rotundas and staring windows and a light on in the tower.

My friends told rumors about the place:

At night you could see the image of an old man who hanged himself.

There were secret rooms where cultists performed human sacrifices.

And a tunnel that led directly to the cemetery next door.

One day in April 1973, when I was twelve years old, we came to LaSalle for an orchestra concert and stopped at the Dairy Queen afterwards.  It was about ten pm.  We wandered over to the haunted house, dark except for a porch light and a bright yellow light in a third floor window.

My friend dared me to walk up to the front door and knock.

"The porch light is on -- they're expecting you," he said.

Grinning to hide my fear, I approached the house.  But I only got a few feet.  Suddenly a figure appeared at that third floor window.  A young man, shirtless or maybe naked, with thick wavy hair, a broad face with a sharp chin, and a muscular torso.   He was glaring down at me.

A ghost!

We all ran back to the Dairy Queen.

I passed the house a few more times, but never at night, and I never saw another face in the window.

I didn't think anything of it for years.  Then, while researching my series on small-town beefcake for Boomer's Beefcake and Bonding, I thought it would be fun to do Lasalle-Peru.

And I discovered that the haunted house had a name.



It's the Hegler-Caron Mansion, built in 1876 by Edward C. Hegler, a chemist and engineer whose M&H Zinc Company was the biggest producer of zinc in the U.S.  He also founded Open Court Publishing for free and open discussion of Eastern Religions, especially Buddhism.

Daughter Marie (1861-1936), the first female graduate of the School of Mines in Frieburg, took over the family zinc business.  She married Paul Carus (1852-1919), the editor at Open Court Publishing and an author on religious matters, with 75 books (The Gospel of Buddha, published in 1894, introduced most Westerners to Buddhism). 

During the twentieth century, the family business expanded into the Carus Chemical Company, a major producer of potassium permanganate (a water purifier), and Open Court Publishing into philosophy and ethics (it does the pop culture and philosophy series: The Simpsons and Philosophy, Hannibal Lecter and Philosophy, The Walking Dead and Philosophy),  and into children's publishing (Marie's daughter-in-law Marianne runs a conglomerate of children's magazines named after insects: Cricket, Cicada, Muse, Ladybug, Babybug, Spider.)

Alwin (1901-2004), Marie's youngest son, lived in the house through his life.  He attended the University of Chicago, studied chemistry, and worked for the family company.  He also bought and developed farms across the state, and as far away as North Dakota.  His main leisure interests were astronomy (he traveled to view solar eclipses all over the world) and coin collecting.

At first the house was crowded with aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters, but by the 1930s it had emptied out, and Alwin was all alone -- although he entertained many distinguished guests, including Isaac Bashevis Singer, Carl Sandburg,  and Peter Mathiessen.  He worked out in the two-story home gymnasium, watched movies in the home theater, and wandered the rooms, remembering old times, thinking of the Buddhist precept of the impermeance of life.


In  1995 he moved into an apartment on the third floor and opened the Hegeler Carus Mansion as a museum  He died in 2004, just before his 103rd birthday.

Of course, I've been trying to figure out if Alwin was gay.

Evidence against: Open Court Publishing is not necessarily gay-friendly.  A 1984 article in their journal The Monist is about "Why Homosexuality is Abnormal."  Of course, he didn't write the article, but still....

And in the 1950s and 1960s, he supported the right-wing John Birch Society.

Evidence for:  no marriages, no women other than family members mentioned in his personal papers.

And who was the naked man at the window on that warm May evening in 1973?  Not Alwin -- he was over 70.  Maybe one of his nephews or grand-nephews -- but what would they be doing half-naked in Uncle Alwin's bedroom?

Maybe a boyfriend, or a pickup?

The Secret Message of "Brian Gives Free LBJs"

Rock Island, July 1981

After reading my post on  "The Secret Message" you probably thought that the graffiti "Brian gives free LBJs" referred to some sort of sexual act.  But the real meaning was something much more profound.

I found out in the spring of 1981, my junior year at Augustana.  A student who was from Chicago, like Brian, said that in his grade school, the older boys would force or bribe the younger boys to run errands and do chores for them,  like the "fags" of British boarding school (possibly the origin of the derogatory term for gay men).

 It was called "doing a LBJ" or "giving a LBJ," after President Lyndon Baines Johnson (he didn't know why).

That summer, the famous summer of 1981, I looked up Brian, an undergraduate drama major at Carthage College.  We had a pizza at Happy Joe's, and then parked on the levee and watched the cars glistening by on the Centennial Bridge.  I talked about the day we  found Brian scrubbing at the graffiti on the wall of Washington Junior High, and how I had just discovered that a LBJ meant a chore.

"But I don't understand why a Mean Boy would write 'Brian gives free LBJs.'  What's so bad about doing free chores?"

Brian hesitated for only a moment.  "They weren't bad.  The big boys were cute, and sometimes they would let me hang out with them.  Sometimes we would hug.  I liked the way a big guy's arms felt around me. . .I wanted that. . ."

My face reddened as I realized that he was revealing something very personal.   "Um...did you ever find out who wrote it?"

"You know what? I’ve never told anybody this before, but it was me. I wrote it.”

His face was turned away, toward the  rushing river. “Why would you write 'Brian gives free lbjs’ about yourself?”

“I don’t know. I was a mixed up kid, I guess. That’s why I was trying to erase it."

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“That you’re gay."

Brian stared at me for a moment, small and fragile, alone. Then he was angry. “I am not!” he exclaimed.  “Maybe I was a confused kid, but no way am I gay!”

"Ok, ok, whatever," I said.  "But do you still like it when big guys hug you?"

I didn't wait for him to answer.

Brian and I dated a few times during the very busy summer of 1981, but that night was more about friendship, and recognition, and belonging.