Seeing the Golden Boy in His Underwear

Rock Island, May 1971

I was a horny little kid.  I wasn't thinking about sex yet, of course, but I loved looking at, talking to, hanging out with, and hugging cute boys and men.  I had a steady boyfriend, plus I cruised at the bookmobile, got kissed by a boy vampire, hooked up with boys at sleepovers, and got crushes on any number of grownups.

But the most obviously erotic of my crushes was on Randy.

This is not him, of course.  This model is well over 18.  But it will give you an idea of his face and physique.

He was a Denkmann School celebrity, one of those golden boys who seem perfect in every way.  Tall, lean, muscular, tanned, with wavy hair and bright eyes and a smile.  Good at schoolwork, good at sports, plus friendly to everybody, just plain nice.

How hard is it to be a muscle god and nice at the same time?

But he was way out of my league.  A year ahead of me in school, almost two years older,  with "grown up" friends and activities.

And he was hit  on by everybody all the time: boys, girls, teachers, parents, puppy dogs.  He had a dozen invitations every weekend.

How could I ever break through Randy's army of admirers and incite his interest enough to ask him to play, or get comic books, or go to a movie downtown?

Strategy 1: I joined in his kickball game at recess.  That didn't work -- I was too terrible at sports to impress anyone.

 Strategy 2: Randy and his coterie left the school through the south doors, and walked past Dewey's Candy Store on the way home.  I rushed out of the school before them and stood in front of the store, planning to invite him to get a candy bar.

But you never went to Dewey's without a friend or two for protection -- my bully, Dick, hung out there!  "Hey, wuss!" he yelled.  "Sissy!  Girl!"

I had to run away before Randy passed by.

Strategy 3: Randy lived on one of the few streets in Rock Island with a name, not a number: Berkshire Drive.  Have you ever heard of anything so glamorous?  I rode my bike past his house a few dozen times, hoping he would come out.  No dice.

Strategy 4: Surprisingly, the houses on Berkshire Drive were rather small and rundown.  Randy was poor, so maybe I could impress him with wealth.

My family was lower-middle class, but Moline, the city next to Rock Island (about five blocks east), was well known for its wealth and power.  Bringing Randy to Moline would impress him.  And I could throw in some cute boys to sweeten the deal!

One day in the cafeteria, I stood very near Randy's table and told my accomplice, Bill: "My Dad is taking me to Moline tomorrow night.  To a swim meet at the high school!"

We had no such plans, but I figured I could cross that bridge later.

"Wow, high school boys!" Bill exclaimed. "I'd give anything to go with you!"

 Randy looked up at us. "I bet you'll have fun."

"You can come if..."

But he had already returned to his coterie.

I was about ready to give up when, a few days before the end of school in May, Denkmann held an assembly where all of the little kids got to look at the sixth graders'  projects in history, science, art, and so on.

Randy's project was on the Aztec Empire, how they worshipped the god Quetzalcoatl and performed human sacrifices, and how Tenochtitlan was way bigger than any city in Europe at the time.

Strategy 5:  Every year for my birthday, I got to invite two or three of my friends to go to anywhere in the Quad Cities.  Except my birthday was in November, when all of the fun places were closed, so I postponed it to May, after school let out.

 "Have you been to the Putnam Museum in Davenport?"  I asked Randy. "It has a real Aztec calendar stone, maybe thirty feet high! And the god Quetzalcoatl is in the middle, sticking out his tongue!"

"I never been there," Randy said, his eyes gleaming.  "It sounds cool."

"Well...you know, me and my friends are going there for my birthday next Saturday.  You can come with, if you want."

"That would be great!"

My birthday trip actually wasn't for a few weeks yet, and I had been planning on the Niabi Zoo, not the Putnam.  But it was a simple matter to make the changes.

That Saturday on the way to the museum, I got to squeeze between Randy and Bill in the back seat of the car.  We talked about tv and comic books and Aztecs, like regular friends.  Afterwards we had hamburgers and cake and opened presents.  Randy gave me a Hardy Boys book, which I still have.  Then, when his mother picked him up, he gave me a warm, tight handshake.

Best birthday ever!

But it gets better.

A couple of weeks later, Randy invited me to a sleepover.  I guess his mother insisted.  I didn't get to share his bed, but still  -- hanging out with hot, muscular sixth graders -- and seeing the Golden Boy in his underwear!

We didn't stay friends. A year was an impossible age gap, and we had little in common besides Aztecs.  I saw Randy occasionally in the hallway at Washington and Rocky High, but that's all.

That was enough.

See also: the Hookup at the Sleepover; and Bill and I find a Little Bit O'Heaven

Bob Hooks Me Up with the Wrong Guy

Davenport, Iowa, July 2017

That's the last time I let Bob, the19-year old economics major, arrange a hookup for us.  On the way east to New York, he somehow found the most disgusting guy of all time, and on the way back, he got the wrong guy!

We stayed overnight in Rock Island again, and went to the Figge Museum of Art, across the river in Iowa.

I had never been there before.  It opened in 1997, after my parents moved to Indiana, and on the rare occasions that I returned to the Quad Cities, there wasn't time for much sightseeing.

The second floor had galleries devoted to Spanish Colonial art, Haitian art, Grant Wood, and contemporary art.  The third floor was devoted to a corn maze, and the fourth floor to a collection of black dolls.

Some of the galleries had a nice view of the Mississippi.

No beefcake art to speak of, although I did notice a surprising number of Cute Young Things and twinks among the patrons.  A lot of cruisy smiles and up-and-down glances going on.

I found out why when I heard a lot of raucous noise from downstairs, and left Bob in the Haitian Art gallery to investigate.

The downstairs exhibition room was full of people, very cute college-age boys in grey t-shirts with "Metro Arts" logos, some girls, a few kids, very well dressed adults mingling with glasses of wine and little sandwiches.  Some were already sitting on folding chairs facing a stage.  There were t-shirts for sale, and tables of snacks.

Was this a private function?  In my t-shirt and jeans, I looked more like one of the college boys than an adult.

I milled about, pretending to belong, trying to find someone alone, not in a group, to pump for information.

No luck.  Some of the teenagers were in groups, doing voice exercises and giving each other encouragement.  Some were talking to groups of adults.  No one was alone.

As usual, I got cruisy glances from the twinks, suspicious glares from the adults.

Then the program began: it turned out to be the showcase of the Quad City Metro Arts Summer Youth Program.  Thirty college students from all over the Midwest were selected for the five week program, where they worked on projects ranging from public art to graphic design to comedy improv.

The adults were parents, friends, and community leaders.  Later I discovered that the mayors of both Davenport and Rock Island were there.

First up in the showcase: a comedy improv with three performers.  I milled about, taking photos.

Soon Bob joined me, drawn by the noise. I apprised him of what was happening, and we watched in silence for a few minutes.

My eyes were drawn to a father and son standing alone, with no mother.  Gay?

 Dad was in his 40s, with a rugged face, salt-and-pepper hair, and a tight frame. Son was probably 15, wearing a gray Metro Arts t-shirt, with dark wavy hair and an orange baseball cap, texting furiously on his cell phone.

I am always attracted to guys in business suits.  Maybe because they are designed specifically to hide the physique and bulge, so trying to imagine what he looks like with his clothes off becomes exciting.

And fathers, guys who are nurturing and domestic, yet obviously were naked, intimate, and aroused.

Bob nudged me.  "You like him?"


"Sure, he's hot. And definitely gay.   But I can't get him to make eye contact.  He's too busy concentrating on the show."

"That's funny, I'm getting some major perv from him."

"Maybe you're more his type.  And...there he goes."

The improv show ended, and father and son walked up to shake hands with one of the performers.  All three headed back toward the room with the snack tables.

"Didn't you say that the museum was the best place to pick up guys?" Bob asked.  "Why don't you go after him?  We could have a three-way tonight."

I glanced around, embarrassed to be discussing three-ways so openly.  "I'm not even sure we're supposed to be here, so I want to keep a low profile.  And how do you pick up a guy in front of all of his relatives?"

"No problem.  I'll take care of it. Be right back."

Before I could protest, Bob walked off toward the snack room.

The next showcase began, five artists talking about how they painted murals by the river.

Bob was gone a long time.  I began to get annoyed, and walked back to find him.  He met me.

"It's all set.  They're going to a place called Wise Guys Pizza after the showcase, and we're going to meet them there.  I guess it will be a whole big group.  But if I'm going to hook up, I need to shower and brush my teeth.  Could we go back to the hotel first?"

We crossed the bridge into Rock Island, showered and shaved and hung out for a bit, and then drove across the bridge again to Wise Guys Pizza, far away on the north side of town.

 There was a group of gray-shirt Metro Arts teens occupying a booth, looking at the menu.  Bob waved.

No parents.

Where's the hot Dad?

A teenage boy with dark wavy hair and an orange baseball cap slid over so we could join him.  Bob let me sit next to him.

He hooked us up with the wrong guy!  The son, not the father!

I could have hooked up with a twink on my own.  I wanted Bob to be my wing man in picking up a hot Dad.

It's not Bob's fault -- I'm dating a 19 year old, I get cruised by twinks all the time, and last week when he hooked me up with a teenager, I didn't object.  What would you conclude?

The boy - Ethan -- wasn't 15, he was 20, entering his junior year at Western Illinois University,and totally into hooking up. Smooth, solid physique, 5" cut but easily aroused.   Although he was mostly an anal bottom, he allowed me to go down on him while he went down on Bob, and then do interfemoral in a side position while Bob slid against his butt.

Bob is turning into rather more an anal top than I anticipated when we started to date.

A nice hookup, but not much different from the ones I get on the Plains.  I wanted the father.

See also: Nude Wrestling in Fond du Lac.

Picked Up by the Museum Guard

Indianapolis, July 2015

Instead of going to Europe every year, I now drive from the Plains to the East Coast.  Two weeks, 15 friends and relatives, 9 hotels, 8 museums, 5 guest passes at the YMCA, 4  horrible hotel gyms, 2 state parks, 2 bath houses, 1 baseball game.

And a hookup with a museum guard.

After pizza and Chinese food delivery guys, my biggest fantasy hookup is probably a museum guard.  Maybe because they follow you around with an eagle-eye, suspicious stare that  looks a lot like cruising.

And, though they come in all sizes and shapes, a surprising number are stunningly handsome.

If you live in town and can be a regular, it's possible.  My friend Alan picked up a guard at the L.A. County Museum of Art just by showing up every day until he got a phone number.

But I usually visit museums when I'm leaving town forever in a few hours, so there's no time to make contact. The sheer inaccessibility makes the museum guard the stuff of erotic fantasy.

But one Saturday in the summer of 2015, out of nowhere, it happened!

Troy and I arrived in Indianapolis around noon, planned to have lunch and do some sightseeing, then dinner with my parents and sister, overnight at a hotel, and on to Rock Island on Sunday.

Troy is doing research on the Iroquois, so he wanted to spend a lot of time at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indian Art.  As we walked through the gallery devoted to Edward S. Curtis, who photographed many Native Americans at the turn of the twentieth century, we got a cruisy smile from a guard: in his 20s, tall, broad-shouldered, stunningly handsome, with a square face, bronze skin, and straight black hair, probably Native American himself.

Later, I returned to the gallery on my own.  The guard approached.

"Is your boyfriend writing a book?"  he asked with the same cruisy smile.

Obviously gay, to catch on so fast!  "He's working on a term paper," I said.  "These pieces are marvelous.  I'm Boomer."

"Ryan." We shook hands.

"Curtis was an expert at drawing complex emotions from his subjects.  I'm studying art at IUPUI, and I often come here for inspiration."

"He picked very handsome models, too.  I think he had a thing for Native Americans."

"You think these are hot, you should see some of the stuff that's not on display.  Come with me..."

Ryan led me downstairs.  "I got a special access," he announced to an older guard before unlocking a door that read "Archive."  It was a vast, empty room with statues under tarps and shelves of old books, and on one wall six more Edward S. Curtis photographs, including some very muscular Native American men.

"They don't put these out.  Too risque for the kiddies."

Suddenly I realized that we were alone.  It was very warm in the room, and a stunningly handsome guy was standing very, very close to me.  "Sitting Eagle, Crow Indian, 1905," I read.

"His lover.  Well, one of his lovers.  He slept with most of his male models."  Ryan wrapped his arm around my shoulders.  "Do you and your boyfriend have an open relationship?"

"We're sort of broken up..."  I said.  And then we were kissing and groping.

Then, suddenly he pulled away.  "Wait -- wait.  This isn't exactly private.  Can we get together later?  I work until 6:00."

"Well...we're having dinner with my parents tonight.  We're free afterwards, maybe at 9:00. but our hotel is in Franklin, about 30 miles south of here."

"Perfect!"

"You don't mind driving 30 miles?"

"Babe, I'd drive a thousand miles to get my hands on those pecs."  He brushed his hand against my chest.  "What's the hotel?"

At exactly 9:00 pm, Ryan knocked on the door of our hotel room, carrying a bottle of wine (I neglected to mention that I don't drink).

He didn't look Native American at all -- it must have been the power of suggestion.

And, in a t-shirt and short pants instead of a museum guard uniform, he wasn't stunningly handsome anymore -- cute, with a smooth, solid chest, and nice beneath the belt gifts.  But rather ordinary, not much different from the twinks who cruise me every day at home.

I shouldn't complain.  I fulfilled a fantasy and met a nice guy, who offered to get together again when we go back to Indianapolis at Christmastime.

Still...

See also: A Good Old-Fashioned Trick; My Big, Flashy, Flamboyant Cousin; and Topped by a Vietnamese Twink