My Uncle and His Boyfriend in the Kentucky Hills

Eastern Kentucky, Summer 1973

It's the summer after seventh grade.  We're visiting my Uncle El, the only one of Mom's family to stay behind when the rest of them moved to Indiana.  Dinner is over, and we're telling stories of long-ago times, before I was born, when Mom was a little girl.   Sometimes the adults laugh at jokes I don't understand.

Uncle El's wife tells about the time she rode her bicycle all the way into Salversville to see a boy, but when she got there he was spooning with someone else.  (she obviously did not mean "sleeping front-to-back."  It was probably something like "making out.")

An elderly lady I don't know tells a story about witches.

Now it's Uncle El's turn.

"I'm going to tell about my brother, Manus, and his friend Graydon, two boys with the same soul."

I've been dozing off, but now I perk up -- sounds like this will be interesting!



Eastern Kentucky, Fall 1939

Manus and Graydon, the boy from down the holler, were born at the same moment, and some said they shared the same soul.

Oh, on the outside, they was as different as night and day:

Graydon was tall and dark, with thick arms and a tight chest, fond of wrasslin' and huntin' and fishin'.

Manus was short and slim and pale-skinned, a moody boy, always readin', but a good singer, with a clear tenor voice.

They was different down below, too.  You don't have much privacy in the hills, when you sleep three to a bed, and I saw them many times jumping nekkid into the creek, or lying on the soft grass.

Lordy, did that Graydon have a whopper!

"Eliot!  There are children present!"  the elderly lady snaps.

"Why, Marcy, surely they know that boys have something down there!"

Yet for all of their differences, Manus and Graydon were never separated, from sunup to sundown, when their parents forced them into different cabins for dinner.  Even then, they sometimes sneaked out to have secret adventures in the darkness.

Life was hard in the hills during the Depression.  Eight people in a four room cabin.

Kerosene lamps for light, a wood-burning stove for heat, and the woods outside for an outhouse.

They raised chickens and grew corn, beans, taters, and maters.  For everything else, they depended on Dad's job at a factory in Hueysville, eight miles away.

Still, they had fun. There were church socials and square dances.  In the evenings the neighbors came around to tell ghost stories and sing songs.  There'd be no dry eye in the house when Manus  sang "Barbara Allen."

Oh mother, mother, make my bed,
Make it long and make it narrow.
Sweet William died for me today,
I'll die for him tomorrow.

"I always hated that song," Mom says.  

In the summer of 1939, Graydon bought and fixed up an old clunker car.  Now they could drive all the way to Salyersville, 20 miles down the pike, to get malteds and go to the movies.

They liked Little Tough Guy, with the Dead End Kids, and Out West with the Hardys, with Mickey Rooney.

In late October of 1939, Graydon and Manus took ill, maybe from going swimming nekkid in the cold Brushy Fork Creek.  

They gave them herb medicine and mustard plasters and poltices, and Manus got better, but Graydon got sicker and sicker, and he died on November 5th, the day of the first snowfall.

His dad and older brother built a pine box to put him in, and they buried him in the graveyard up atop  the hill.

Well, needless to say, Manus was inconsolable.

He cried and cried, and after he stopped crying he wouldn't eat, he wouldn't sleep, he just sat on the bed in the room he shared with me and Edd, staring out the window, up at the hill where Graydon was buried.

Then one night he yelled to the family, "Hey, there's a light up on the hill!"

It was a swaying yellow light, like from a kerosene lamp.  But who would be up there in the middle of the night?  It was pitch dark, with just a narrow trail through the brush and trees.  

"I'm going up!"  Manus yelled, pulling on his coat.


But Mom and Dad forbade him.  It was too dangerous. He could wait until morning to investigate.

"No, I gotta go now!  I gotta!"  He tried to push past them out the door.  Dad grabbed him by the arms.  He fought.

There was no help for it: they had to lock Manus up in the room, where me and Edd could look over him.

Well, Manus paced and rumbled, and yelled, and cried, and finally sat down in a chair, still staring up at the light on the hill.  Finally Edd and me fell asleep.

The next morning, when we woke up, Manus was gone!

The door was still locked from the outside.  The window hadn't been touched.  There was no way Manus could have gotten out!

Some say one of his sisters let him out, and he went dashing up the hill and fell in a ditch, and got eaten by a bear.

El glances pointedly at my mother.  But she was only two years old at the time.

Some say a neighbor sneaked him out, and drove him to Salyersville, where he bought a bus ticket Out West, like the Hardys.

Some say Graydon came for him.

Whatever happened, no one ever saw Manus again.

But that night, up on the hill, we saw two glowing lights.

See also: My Kentucky Kinfolk; The Naked Man at the Crossroads; Erotic Story about Me and My Grandpa #1

20 October Hookups, Dates, and Sausage Sightings

It's October,, my second favorite month of the year!  The days get longer, tv and theater seasons are in full swing, the air is brisk, running outside is a pleasure rather than a sweaty chore.  You get apple cider and pumpkin pie.  And the scary, paranormal events that are rare in July happen every day.

Ray Bradbury calls this The October Country: where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and mid-nights stay. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain. 

In honor of our journey past the border into the October Country of 2018, here are my top October hookups, dates, and sausage sightings.

1. October 1968: My first date.  In third grade, a cute boy invited me to a movie, which was a sin to Nazarenes.  I was certain that God was going to strike me dead with a thunderbolt. He didn't.  Instead, I got to hug a hippie.

2. October 1969: My first kiss.  From Greg, the boy vampire (also an astronomer, geologist, naturalist, and psychic), while we were watching the Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows.  It was a compromise; he really wanted to bite me on the neck.

3. October 1972: Why corpses are called stiffs.  In seventh grade, my friend's brother who worked in a funeral home invited us to come in and look at the corpse of a teenage boy who died that day.  I didn't know that men become aroused after death....






4. October 1974: The preacher pops a boner.  At a pre-college weekend at Olivet Nazarene College, we sat on a lounge in the student union watching a ministerial student make out with his girlfriend. Gigantic boner, the stuff of fantasies.

5. October 1979: The German Choirboy.  During my sophomore year at Augustana College, I spent a quarter abroad in Regensburg, Germany, and got my first real boyfriend, Wolfgang the Choir Boy at St. Peter's Cathedral.  We went out about a dozen times, but never actually spent the night together, since we both had roommates.

6. October 1983: The Halloween Homophobe.  Aka the night I drank 1 1/2 beers.  In grad school at Indiana University in Bloomington, my roommate Viju and I invited some guys over for a Halloween party.  Jimmy the Bodybuilder on Crutches invited his homophobic friend, who didn't know that the rest of us were all gay.  He had a meltdown!

7. October 1987: Heinz and His Crazy Obsession.  In West Hollywood, my sort-of-boyfriend Raul was living with a crazy old guy named Heinz.  I still can't eat Jimmy Dean's sausage biscuits or listen to the song "Come away wiz me to Malibu...."  I agreed to sharing, just to be polite, until I discovered Heinz's obsession.  Hint: Nasssty!

8. November 1990: The Rocky Horror Picture Show Virgin.  I had seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show in theaters twice and memorized the soundtrack, and the moment it came out on VHS, I bought a copy.  So I didn't consider myself a RHPS "Virgin,"  Nor did I think that the audience would demand a "virgin sacrifice."

9. October 1992: The Lawnboy.  What's scary about a lawnboy?  When he lies about his age, and you don't find out until after you've made the date.  Fortunately, I managed to call it off before the jail-bait scalawag arrived.  We finished the date in 1995, after he turned 18.

10. October 1996: My Date with the Vampire.   I may have exaggerated the oddities of Kevin the Vampire, but he definitely had a paranormal aura.  If he stared at you the right way, you would lose your free will.  That's how he got most of his dates.  He got the others with cool Bohemian looks and enormous penis.

11. October 1997: The Fireman Fantasy.   I've dated two firemen, and they've both been rather small in the penis department. Maybe that's one of the reasons they want to work with those big long hoses.  This guy came to our apartment after my crazy straight roommate put some water on the stove to boil and then left for six hours.

12. October 1999: The Boy Who Refused to Leave.  Not only did Ozzie tell an unsettling story about hooking up with John Kennedy Jr. after his death, the next day, after a hookup with me and Yuri, he refused to leave Yuri's room.  Unsettling.








13. November 2000: The Football Player Who Got Stuck in Time.  I really believe (sort of) that the University of Alabama football player I hooked up with that cold Novmber day was on a field trip from 1941.

14. October 2002: The Gay Psychic Angel.  Raphael showed up unexpectedly at my house in Florida, did a past-life regression, told me not to move to Europe, and gave me his phone number.  He was ungodly cute, an angel, but his arms didn't work, and I wimped out on calling him.  I've been kicking myself for it ever since.  I tried looking him up again recently, but I don't remember his last name, and he doesn't appear in the directory of professional psychics in Florida.

15. October 2005: Remy the Jerk.  I've had dates with Creepy Old Guys, Sleazoids, elitists, idiots, and jerks of all kinds, but this guy was a complete, utter *hole, so nasty that it was scary.  It's a good thing we had our date on Halloween.


16. October 2008: The Satyr.    A massive guy, massively fat, with the biggest Kovbasa++++ I've ever seen, before or since.  I'm pretty sure he was a mystical being, Priapus the God of Virility, just manifesting in our reality as a super-hung chub.  His houseboy was cute, too.

17. October 2012: Assaulted in the Locker Room.  I've been yelled at and called names, but the only time I've actually been attacked was in the locker room of a gym in the gay neighborhood of Philadelphia, where a guy accused me of "looking at him" and rushed in to attack.

18. November 2012: The Dark Room. I went to the guy's house to pick him up for a date, and he opened the door naked.  Things went downhill from there.

19. October 2014: My Dad's Old Navy Buddy.   My weirdest paranormal experience to date: my Dad's old navy buddy shows up. Except my Dad was in the Korean War, and this guy is still in his twenties.  Ok, maybe it was his grandson.

20. October 2015: The Twink Who Wasn't Interested.  That's not actually scary, just perplexing for a twink magnet.  Turns out he was interested, he just didn't think I was.  Go figure.

Joseph and I Hook Up in a Haunted House

Terre Haute, Indiana

One day the July after my first year in grad school at Indiana University, my friend Joseph called: "You up for a road trip this Saturday?"

"Where to?"  I asked, hoping he wanted to go to one of the gay bars in Indianapolis. 

"I gotta go to Terre Haute to pick up some stuff, then drop it off at my parents' house in Broad Ripple [a suburb of Indianapolis]."

"How much stuff?" I asked suspiciously.  I didn't want to be conned into helping him move.

"Not a lot, just a few keepsakes.  My parents are selling my great-aunt Rose's house, and they want me to go get what I want before everything gets packed up and sold."

"Are other guys coming, too?"

"There aren't a lot of guys around Bloomington during the summer, so it will be just you and me."  He paused.  It's a pretty long trip, so we'll probably have to spend the night in Broad Ripple before heading back."

Spend the night!  I know what that meant!

 Joseph was  one of the first gay guys I met in Bloomington: an undergraduate history major, with black curly hair, a baby face, and a lean tan physique.  And short -- Definitely my type!  But he was also very popular, dating Rick the philosophy major, then Mark the optometrist, then a medical student named Manfred (really!), so I never managed to squeeze in.

Obviously I wasn't his first choice, but who cared?  This was my chance to get intimate!

Saturday after lunch we set out for Terre Haute, about 1 1/2 hours away.  Joseph said that he grew up in Broad Ripple, but they drove out to visit his mother's aunt Rose almost every weekend.  He had fond memories of fishing in the Wabash River, drive-in movies, dinner at the Pizza King, and drinking hot chocolate at Christmastime

"Aunt Rose is in a nursing home with dementia," he told me. "She fades in and out.  Some days she's almost normal, and others she thinks it's 1961, and I'm her brother Oscar.  But she can still name all of the U.S. presidents, in order, up to Richard Nixon."

"Did she know about you [being gay] before her dementia?"

"No.  I'm not out anyone in my family, and I sure wasn't going to come out to a hard-core Methodist lady.   She was always worried that I wasn't dating enough.  One of the last things she said to me before her dementia began was 'You shouldn't be so picky, or you'll never find a girl."

Aunt Rose used to be a professor of American history at Indiana State University.  She lived in a big, two-story house in West Terre Haute, just across the Wabash.  It was painted a depressing shade of grey, but it had a wide porch and a big, carefully mown front lawn.

As we walked up to the house, I saw what looked like a face in the attic window.

 "Who's that?"  I asked. 

"Who's who?"

But it was gone.

I didn't want to turn him off by being leery of an old house, so I said "Does anyone else live here?"

He shrugged.  "No, but about a dozen members of the family have keys.  We drop by to do housework, pay Aunt Rose's bills, and such.  Why?"

"Oh, um...it's just well kept up." 

The living room was mostly packed up and ready to go, all of the pictures taken from the walls and the furniture all carefully marked with the name of whoever had claimed it.  Joseph took a candy dish and a ceramic figure of a dog.

The kitchen was cluttered with pots, pans, dishes, and various obscure implements in piles on the counters and tabletops.  Joseph took a fondue set, a long-ago Christmas present that had never been used, and the cup his Aunt Rose used to serve his juice in.

It was very warm.  He turned on the air conditioner, but we still had to take our shirts off.

Next came the study, heavy laden with books from a career as a college professor: a three-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Bruce Caxton's Civil War trilogy, plus mystery novels, literature, folklore, music, and about a hundred books on gardening.  Joseph and I filled five boxes with books to argue over later.

He left Aunt Rose's bedroom alone.

Upstairs was a storage room that was pack rat heaven.  50 years of Christmas and birthday cards. Stacks of report cards and school papers. Old magazines, carefully bundled.   Old wrapping paper.  Slide carousels.  Souvenirs of long-ago trips.  Joseph took a nativity set, some Christmas tree ornaments, and a painting of the house.

He left the first bedroom alone and zeroed in on the second, where he stayed whenever he slept over.  There were two twin beds with flowered comforters, a night stand between them, an old-fashioned dresser, and a little card table with framed pictures of Aunt Rose's family.

"Help me get this comforter.  And I think I want the lamp, too.  I used to fall asleep with the light on, and Aunt Rose would come in and turn it off.  Sometimes I just pretended to be asleep, so I would know when she came in..."  he stopped short.  He was trembling.

"Are you ok?"

"She joked that I liked this room so much, I should spend my honeymoon here.  I just... wish Aunt Rose could know about who I really am.  I'm sure she'd be ok with it...I'm so much happier now then when I was trying to be straight, with all the friends I've made...and .."  He started to cry.  I rushed to put my arms around him.  Then somehow we were kissing.

More after the break. Caution: Explicit

The Naked Man in the Peat Bog

Garrett, June 1969

When I was a kid, we visited my parent's family in Indiana once or twice a year, for a week in the summer and sometimes at Christmastime.  We always stayed with my Grandma Davis or Aunt Nora, my father's family.  We visited my mother's family, too,  at my Grandpa Prater's farmhouse in Garrett, but it was sort of boring -- impenetrable Kentucky accents, smoking and drinking, endless discussions of things that happened 100 years ago back in the hills.

And no one to play with, except for my Cousin Buster.   Sometimes my Uncle Paul  would play -- until the summer after 3rd grade, when he got married and turned into an adult.  I have only a few solid memories: swimming in the pool down the road, catching frogs, fishing, having milkshakes with his friends, learning how to "pee in the wind" (with the wind blowing away from you, so the stream is carried a long way).

And the Naked Man in the Peat Bog

There was a peat bog beyond the cornfields, a swampy, mossy expanse that looked like a good place to catch alligators.  But Paul -- he never liked to be called "Uncle" -- told us never to go near it: "There's a Naked Man who lives in there, and he eats kids.  If you get too close, he'll pop out and grab you and cook you for his dinner!"

"Why doesn't Grandpa tell him to move out?" I asked, already aware of property rights.

Paul thought for a moment. "He's been living here a lot longer than we have, more than a hundred years."

"Well, if he's that old, he can't run very fast.  I can get away, I bet!"

Frankly, I didn't believe him.  Besides, I really wanted to catch an alligator, and the thought of seeing a Naked Man just sweetened the deal. Maybe I would even see his "shame"!

So one day in the summer of 1969, when we were visiting for the wedding, I decided to go exploring.  I brought my cousins Graydon and Dayton (Kentucky Kinfolk).

We walked quickly through the back yard, where Paul and three of his friends were playing horse shoes -- they didn't see us -- then past the barn and the vegetable garden.  We pieced our way through the high corn row for maybe a quarter mile, until it opened up into a little grove of trees, with the peat bog beyond.  It was mossy-gold, with little specks of shimmering water.  There was a musty, earthy smell.  I thought I heard splashing.

"Are you sure there are alligators in there?" Cousin Graydon  asked.

"I just heard one!"

We got some sticks and started poking around in the moss, swirling the muddy water that oozed up. I thought I saw a gold glinting shape -- maybe an alligator, or maybe lost pirate treasure, which would be just as good!

Then suddenly the Naked Man came lumbering out of the cornfield.  Pale, muscular, kind of hairy, his chest and belly smeared with mud. Gigantic penis.  An orange mask over his face.  He held his arms up like Frankenstein and lurched toward us, moaning "Ummmmm!"

Shrieking in terror, we ran as fast as we could back to the house, where Paul and friends were quietly playing horse shoes.

"Why...what's the matter, kids?"  he asked in surprise.  "Did you see a rattlesnake?"

I didn't notice at the time that he was grinning.  Or that one of his friends was missing.

For a long time, I thought I had a real paranormal experience.  But recently my boyfriend suggested that Uncle Paul might have set the whole thing up to scare us away from the dangerous peat bog.

It worked.  We never went back.

But why did he think a naked man would be especially frightening?  The gigantic penis became one of my favorite childhood memories.

See also: My Best Man

The Gay Ghost of Ocracoke

Ocracoke, a community of 900on the Outer Banks of North Caroline, is so isolated that it has its own dialect,  the Ocracoke Brogue, with terms and usages leftover from Shakespeare's day.

buck: friend
mommick: to make a mess of
offshore: crazy
quamish: queasy
scud: a short trip

And it is full of ghosts.

Springer's Point, where Blackbeard the Pirate was beheaded, is haunted by a burly man with matted hair and red glowing eyes, who chases trespassers with an axe before disappearing.

The British Cemetery features a lady in Victorian costume who tells visitors that she lost her way en route to a party.

After closing, the employees at Gaffer's Bar often see an elderly man sitting at a booth by himself.  When they approach, he vanishes.

But the most unusual ghost lurks in Tarik's attic.

When Martin and his then-lover Paul bought the house in 1990, they expected the usual haunted house noises: footsteps, slamming doors, mysterious voices.  Maybe some things moved around.  But they didn't expect a horny ghost, a sex-crazed demon, or whatever it was.

The attic was once used as a library -- there were about a dozen thick, heavy bookshelves which absorbed all of the light and made the sloping rafters look forlorn and abandoned. They planned to use it as an overflow bedroom, so they put a in a futon, a nightstand, a lamp, and a couple of chairs.
One weekend a few weeks after they moved in, there were 7 guys in the house, so they put up their old friend Josh in the attic bedroom.

He came downstairs the next morning and said "I don't know which of you did it, but thanks.  That was the best blow job of my life!"

Everyone denied climbing up to the attic to give Josh a blow job.

"I actually didn't get a good look -- it was too dark.  Now that I think about it, I never even opened my eyes.  I didn't reach down to touch the guy's head or shoulders, either."

"How do you get a blow job without touching the guy?" Martin asked.

He shrugged.  "It just never occurred to me.  So, come on, 'fess up, guys -- which of you is the culprit, and can you come back tonight?"

Josh eagerly waited for his mysterious visitor the next night, but nothing happened.

The second guy to encounter the ghost or incubus, Michael, was not so pleased. After a long trip from the mainland, he went right up to bed.

He was lying on his back with his eyes closed, having a sexual fantasy, starting to masturbate, when suddenly he was frozen in place.  He couldn't even open his eyes.  It was like being paralyzed!

Then someone went down on him.  He couldn't feel a body, just the mouth bobbing up and down on his cock, the tongue licking his head, the suction of a demonic throat.

He didn't even like oral -- he got too sensitive -- and this was torture!  It seemed to last for hours.

Finally Michael had a painful orgasm.

He looked up to see a dark male figure, naked, vanishing into a bookcase!

He bolted downstairs, and slept on the couch for the rest of his visit.

Martin and Paul avoided placing guests in the attic room after that.

Martin tried to research the house, to see who the horny gay ghost might be.  Someone with unfinished business, who died without acknowledging that he was gay, or without having a sexual experience.

The house was built in 1906 as a summer home for a Dr. Carroll, a physician from Raleigh. One day in 1910, the village constable broke up a party there with "only men present."  Probably a gay party.

Dr. Carroll died in 1941 -- but not in the house.  And if he had been having sex parties for 30 years, it's unlikely that he died with unfinished business.

Next Dr. Carroll's married daughter took possession, but she and her husband lived in Norfolk, and rarely stayed in the house.  There was a series of summer tenants.

In the 1960s a psychic name Sandor bought the house, and saw hippie clients in the attic library, which at that time had its own private entrance.  He wasn't married -- gay?  He died in 1990 -- but in a hospital on the mainland, not in the house.  Could he be the horny ghost?

The only other possibility was a hippie who was staying in town for the summer in 1971.  He may have known Sandor, or he may have been a stranger -- the newspaper article was unclear.  One night, high on LSD, he was attracted by something in the attic window, and tried to climb up the wall instead of going up the stairs.  He lost his footing, fell, and broke his neck.

Whoever or whatever was giving nonconsensual blow jobs in the attic room, Martin and Paul thought it best to keep him under wraps.

They broke up in 1998.  Martin could no longer afford two mortgages, so he sold his house in Chapel Hill and moved to Ocracoke permanently.  To help with the loneliness, he got two roommates, both gay men, of course.  One of the roommates eventually got a boyfriend, Tarik.  Now there were four gay men in the house, with boyfriends and dates staying over, and mainland friends visiting all the time, and often there was no choice but the attic or a sleeping bag on the floor.

Martin and his roommates always warned the guys about the gay ghost.  Sometimes they hoped to get a ghostly blow job, but nothing happened.  Sometimes they laughed off the warning, only to run down the stairs ashen-faced with horror.

They tried sending couples up to the attic, but one of them got a blow job while the other slept, oblivious.

As the legend grew, gay men volunteered to be ghost busters from as far away as West Hollywood.

The neighbors started talking -- they were already famous as "the gay house," and now "the house with the gay ghost."

You don't need notoriety in a small town.

Then one weekend Tarik invited his Norfolk friend, Bammy, for a visit.  They called Bammy "Monster" because he was hung -- way hung.  8" long, thicker than a beer can -- and that was soft.  When aroused, he was 11" long, with a head as big as a baseball.

He was an oral and anal bottom, but not by choice.  No one had been able to give him a blow job  since he was 16 -- the most they could do was lick the shaft. Lots of guys wanted him to plow their butt, but he didn't get hard enough to enter -- his arousal was more like a spongy tumescence.

"Let me at this so-called ghost," Monster said.  "If he can take it, he's welcome to it."

So he spent the night in the attic room, naked, lying on his back, with the covers down, inviting.

Nothing happened.

About 2:00 am, Monster grew tired of waiting, and started to masturbate.  He displayed his aroused cock.

Nothing happened.

Finally he dozed off, and turned over onto his stomach.

Monster awoke to the feel of an erect penis pushing against him.  Figuring that Tarik had come up during the night, he lifted his head and opened his mouth.  The cock pushed up against his throat.  Average size, very hard, uncut, not cold or anything, just like a regular cock.

He bobbed up and down on it, feeling the pubic hair against his face.  reaching up to grab two butt cheeks.  He saw nothing but a dark form.   Still thinking that it was Tarik.

The spurt came a few minutes later, a huge mouthful.  Bammy swallowed, and the dark form moved away.

"Thanks, man," Monster whispered. "Always happy to take your load."

Then the dark form moved off the bed.  Monster watched as it moved toward the bookcases -- and vanished!

With a shout he ran downstairs to Tarik's room, and jumped into the bed like a little boy afraid of the dark.

"That darn crazy ghost!  He couldn't go down on me, so he made me go down on him!"

That was the last anyone saw -- or felt -- of the horny gay ghost of Ocracoke.

The Football Player Who Got Unstuck in Time

New York, November 2000.

You often hear stories about people who get unstuck in time.

Two British ladies touring Versailles slip into the era of Louis XIV.

A man makes a wrong turn in a department store and finds himself in an earlier version of the store from the 1930s.

A man in 19th century costume falls out of the sky.


Here's a photo of  a hipster dude, wearing a t-shirt and modern sunglasses, looking tremendously out of place amid the old people in fedoras witnessing the opening of a bridge in Canada in 1941.

He's probably not unstuck in time, just unstuck. .

There are a lot of unstuck people wandering around on Christopher Street in New York.

It's not exclusively or even predominantly gay: the few gay bars and restaurants are scattered amid weird boutiques, kids' clothing stores, pet supply stores, and the Finnish Lutheran Church.

But it's where Gay Liberation began, a sacred place, a site for pilgrimages for gay people from around the world.

Especially those who have been traumatized by homophobic hatred.

Lost, lonely, confused.  Ghosts. Revenants. Time travelers.

Like the guy who was wearing only white shorts and a black Amish hat, on a cold day in October.

And the Man in Black who just appeared, walking next to me, one day.

And Carey from Tuscaloosa.

I saw him in Christopher Park, staring at the Gay Liberation Monument as if he had seen anything so strange: in his 20s, medium height, solidly built, a little nerdy, with a square face, dirty blond hair, and thick eyebrows.  He was wearing brown slacks, a red sweatshirt with giant letter A on it, and a brown fedora, and carrying an old-fashioned knapsack rather than a backpack.

First rule of living in big cities: don't stop to talk to anyone you don't know.  They will con you, or rob you, or both.

But I am particularly attracted to "lost souls," so I stopped.  "Pretty great, isn't it?"

"Murder!"  he said with a smile.  " I knew the Big Apple was up-to-date, but so out in the open and all!  You sure couldn't get away with that jazz back home."  He turned to me and held out his hand.  "Hiya, kid.  I'm Carey, Tuscaloosa U. of A.  Go Crimson Tide!"

Later I figured out that he meant the University of Alabama football team. "Boomer.  You're a long way from home."

"Don't I know it!  We're on field trip to see the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State.  I sort of got side tracked on the Staten Island Ferry.  Say, you wouldn't know any eateries around here, would ya, Jackson?  I could eat a horse, hooves and all!"

I took him to a Thai place, where he was amazed by both the food and the prices.

Carey said he had always been attracted to guys, but he wasn't out to anybody, and he would probably get married, because "that's the way we do things in the South."  He had no idea that there were books on gay topics or gay characters on tv: "we don't look at a lot of television in the South."

I took him back to my apartment -- yes, my roommate was that way, too --  and showed him my tv set and bookcase full of books on gay history and culture.

"What's Stonewall?" he asked, pulling a book off the shelf. "Stonewall Jackson?  Was he that way?"

"It's the bar across from Christopher Park, where Gay Liberation began."

He stared at me, blank, confused.

"The Stonewall Riots?  Gay Pride Day?"

He put the book down and wrapped his arms around me. "I'm not much for history --  I like the present.  Two guys together, right here, right now, that's all that counts, dig?"

Nothing spectacular about the hookup.  Very nice physique, smelled of cologne.  Uncut, average sized, complained about having to use a condom.

Then he got dressed and said "Thanks, Boomer.  It's been swell, but I'd better be getting back."  And he vanished into the night, leaving me thinking.

His slang, his costume, his lack of familiarity with tv or the basics of gay history -- was Carey unstuck in time?  Or just a clueless Southern boy?

I looked up the roster of the Alabama Crimson Tide football team in the 1930s -- yes, those records are available -- and found a William Cary Cox from Bainbridge, Georgia, who played center from 1937 to 1939.   He looked kind of like my Carey.

After college, he served in World War II, and then ran an auto dealership in Alexandria City, Alabama.  He died in 1991, survived by his wife and two children.

A life lived fully, excessively in the Straight World.

Unless he took a  "jump to the left" one day in 1939 and ended up in the West Village.

My Friday the 13th Date with Kevin the Vampire

Plains, Friday, January 13th, 2017

It's my second date with Wagner the Music Major, who I picked up in the Student Union earlier this week.  We're seeing Hairspray at the University Theater -- in the first row, of course.  I always sit in the first row, when possible.

At intermission I look around the audience.  No one I know, which seems strange -- I know lots of theater buffs.

Then suddenly, about 10 rows back, I see Kevin the Vampire!

 "That's impossible!" I exclaim.

"What?"

"My old boyfriend from San Francisco. I haven't seen him since -- um, 2003.  Nearly 14 years ago.  What would he be doing here?"

I look back again.  No Kevin.

 When we met in San Francisco in 1996, Kevin the Vampire was in his 30s, tall and buffed, with pale skin, a hairy chest, and a Satanic goatee.  We dated for almost a year, although I didn't care for his elitism, his smoking, or his exhausting  bedroom calisthenics.

"Why do you call him Kevin the Vampire?  Did he like biting you on the neck?"

"No, but he had weird paranormal powers.  He could control people's minds..  He could get hookups by going up to a cute guy and saying ''You want to come home with me, don't you?'"

"That's a nice power to have," Wagner says.

"And he could make himself invisible.  You couldn't drop by for a visit -- if he wasn't expecting you, his apartment was impossible to find.  But he wouldn't just show up on the Plains."

I've been posting stories about him on my blog, most recently in December.  Could that have summoned him?

No -- just my imagination!

After the musical, as we are walking out to the parking lot, Kevin is suddenly standing beside me! He doesn't walk up -- he just appears, like Jesus on the road to Emmaus.

"Um...hi, Kevin," I say, pretending to be nonchalant.  "Nice to see you again."

It's been nearly 14 years, but he doesn't look any different.  I guess vampires don't age.

"Wonderful to see you, too, Boomer!"  He wraps me into a hug.  His body is cold, as if he's been running around outside without a coat.  "You have no idea how difficult it was to track you down!  Florida to Ohio to Upstate New York to Philadelphia, and now to this charming little town on the Plains."

"Why didn't you just get my email address from David?"

 "And who is your very attractive companion?: Kevin asks, ignoring my question. "If this is an example of the beefcake on the Plains, I'll be scanning the real estate ads!"



"Beefcake is very common here, and readily available."

He shakes hands with Wagner.  "How long have you and Boomer been an item?"

"This is our second date."

"Oh, my, the second date, a pivotal moment in a new romance!  I wouldn't dream of interfering.  Boomer, let's meet tomorrow to catch up.  I'll be at your apartment at -- say 10:00 am?"

And he vanishes.  He doesn't walk away -- he's just sort of not there.

"I see what you mean," Wagner says.  "Appearing and disappearing like that is kind of creepy."

"But fun," I say with a bit of sad nostalgia.

Saturday, January 14th

Kevin appears at my apartment at 10:00 sharp.  I take him to the gay-friendly coffee house for brunch -- vegetarian quiche for me, only coffee for him.  Vampires don't eat.

He is noncommittal about what he'd been up to since 2003.  "Oh, I puttered around, bought books, went to beer busts, invited men into my bed.  You know what life was like in Gay Heaven: we were busy all the time, but nothing really happened.  Every moment was an eternal now."

"So...what do you want to do during your visit?  Anything special you'd like to see?  Want me to arrange a hookup for you?  I know some guys, or I can go on Grindr."

"Sampling the cornfed beef of the Plains?  That does sound tempting, but I'd really rather have some time alone with you. After all, our relationship was one of the most important in my life -- perhaps the most important -- and I couldn't bear the idea of shuffling off this mortal coil without holding you in my arms again.  If Wagner doesn't object, that is."

I know Kevin --  no quick blow jobs for him!  Exhausting two hour sessions involving weird oils, massage,  licking and sucking everywhere, Tantric edging, multiple positions, multiple orgasms, leaving you drenched with sweat and other fluids, ruining the sheets.

But he has mind control powers.  How can I refuse?

We spend the day sightseeing and cruising, have dinner with some gay guys from the Unitarian church, and then return to my apartment.  We go into the bedroom and start kissing and fondling.

I kneel and go down on Kevin -- he's bigger than I remember, a Bratwurst+, cold and hard as iron.  Then he pulls me onto the bed.  He lies atop me, chest against chest, thigh against thigh, mouth against mouth.  His body is cold and hard, too.   His aroused penis goes between my legs.

Interfemoral -- my favorite position!  We never did this while we were dating!

He puts his arms around me and thrusts while we kiss, his tongue darting in and out of my mouth.  I grab his butt.  We finish at the same moment.

Apparently Kevin is still the same age as he was in 1996, but I'm 20 years older, and one orgasm per evening is enough.  I soon fall asleep.

Sunday, January 15th

When I wake up, Kevin is gone.  No note, no phone number, nothing.  He vanished.

I feel a little frisson of dread.  Did I imagine the whole thing?

No -- the sheets are definitely soiled with bodily fluids.

Wait -- what life "was" like in Gay Heaven.  It "was" an important relationship.  Shuffle off the mortal coil.  Cold skin.  Vanishing even more abruptly than when we were dating...

Was Kevin a ghost?  A ghost vampire?

I rush to my computer and start emailing people.  David. Zack.   Kevin's ex-boyfriend Seth.  His former best friend Marius.

The responses trickle in.  No one has seen Kevin or talked to him in years.

Desperate, I think of the number Marius gave me in 2003.  It didn't work then...

I find it in my old address book, and call.

This time it works -- Kevin answers!  "Boomer, what a surprise!  Did I leave my underwear in your apartment?  I've just arrived back in San Francisco, so I'm afraid you'll have to keep it as a souvenir."

"Um...no, no.  I was just wondering...you left so abruptly... if you were angry or upset."

"Oh no, not at all.  I simply had a plane to catch!  Well, there's the BART.  It was wonderful seeing you again -- I'll be sure to stop by the Plains next time I'm flying across the country."

Kevin is not a ghost. He's not a vampire.  He's just an ordinary guy, a bit eccentric, like everyone lucky enough to live in Gay Heaven.

Or maybe....

See also: Desperately Seeking Kevin the Vampire.; The Sunday Morning Orgy; I Go Home with the Amazing Invisible Boy.

My Date with Richard Dreyfuss

West Hollywood

When I lived in West Hollywood, I  visited the Bodhi Tree Bookstore on Melrose almost every weekend.  It specialized in New Age books, everything from natural foods and aromatherapy to Buddhism, Hinduism, and the occult. I was mostly interested in the paranormal section: ghosts, vampires, ufos, mysterious disappearances, time slips. 

It got very crowded on weekends.  We often saw actors, mostly the semi-celebrities who starred in tv shows a few years ago and were still recognizable.  Often browsing in the witchcraft section, trying to find a spell that would hasten their success or prevent their decline.

One Saturday afternoon, I found a short, rather husky guy standing directly in front of the section I wanted, immersed in a book.  I glared at him, cleared my throat a few times, and eventually he moved away. My roommate  Derek immediately clomped over.

"Did you ask him out, or what?" he demanded.

"Who?"

"You didn't even talk to him?  Do you know who that was?  Richard Dreyfuss!"

I hadn't even noticed.

Of course I knew who Richard Dreyfuss was:American Graffiti, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Goodbye Girl. Moon Over Parador, and Jaws, my which had the most obvious gay-subtext romance I had ever seen.  I just didn't recognize him in real life.

The next Saturday, same section, same short, rather husky guy, immersed in a book about vampires. This time I looked closely.  Yep, it was Richard Dreyfuss!  "I got my first kiss from a vampire" I said, as an icebreaker.

It didn't work.  He moved quickly away.

He wasn't there the next Saturday, but a couple of weeks later, I saw him in the paranormal section again.  I said "Hello," from one regular customer to another, and to my surprise he responded.  Soon we were chatting about Benjamin Bathurst, the British diplomat who arrived at an Austrian inn, walked around the horses, and vanished forever.

After that, we chatted regularly.  He was friendly, and I thought, a little cruisy, always paying special attention to the cute guys.  Could he be gay?  And more importantly, interested?

Important Clue #1: Cruising cute guys.

 I had already been in a relationship with a closeted celebrity.  I didn't need another. But still...he was Richard Dreyfuss!

One day I got enough courage to invite him to the Abbey, a gay restaurant on Robertson, for coffee, and he consented.

Important Clue #2: Consenting to go to a gay restaurant.

 I told him about some of my own paranormal experiences, like the Naked Man in the Peat Bog. 

"You're lucky that your ghost was a hottie," he said with a smile. "All I saw was a little girl, wearing a pink dress and horn-rimmed glasses.  She stood by my bedside when I was in the hospital after a car accident."

Important Clue #3: The word "hottie" .

I decided to play my trump card.  "My ex-boyfriend saw ghosts all the time," I hinted. "And UFOs.  I felt so jealous."

"My wife is the same way.  I wish I was more attuned to the spiritual world."

Touché

Ok, not gay, not interested -- but super gay-friendly, especially for the 1990s.

No more coffee dates, but we continued to be "chatting at the bookstore" friends for awhile.   Then suddenly he stopped coming to the Bodhi Tree on Saturdays. 

Maybe he walked around the horses and vanished.

Or maybe he moved to New York.

I never got his phone number.

My Date with the Vampire

When I was living in San Francisco, a newcomer showed up in church one Sunday: mid 30s, very tall and pale, with a long face, long hair, and a weird Satanic goatee.  He was wearing sunglasses, but otherwise dressed normally, not like a vampire.

He didn't join in the singing, but that wasn't unusual: many former Catholics and Lutherans didn't care for the rousing, evangelical-style hymns at MCC.

During the coffee hour after the service, he adopted the "stand and model" procedure of a cruise bar.  That wasn't unusual, either.  Lots of newcomers tried to cruise in church.

What was unusual was his approach: he walked up to me and said, without preliminaries, "I would like very much to f___ you."

My mouth dropped in shock.  "Um...but I don't even know you."

"My name is Kevin, and life is too short for trivial small talk.  I would like very much to f___ you."

I stared.

He took off his glasses.  His eyes were very dark blue, almost purple.  Creepy.  "You find me attractive, don't you?"

Not at all.  Tall, pale, long faced, with a potty mouth, definitely not my type --  but I found myself saying "Of course.  But shouldn't we have dinner first?"

He sighed.  "If you're intent on pursuing bourgeois courtship rituals, I suppose we can stop for a hamburger on the way."

No way was I going home with this guy!

But I found myself following him out the door.

Kevin took me way up to the Richmond District, 45 minutes from the Castro, to a place called Bazaar.  It served nouvelle cuisine Japanese-Italian synthesis sandwiches that left me hungry.

I admit that he was interesting to talk to.  We were both into the paranormal, and he had a wide repertoire of stories about ghosts, aliens, and the Illuminati, rumored to be controlling human history behind the scenes.

But he dismissed nearly everything else as "bourgeois" or "infantile," and when he kissed me, his mouth tasted of cigarettes and booze.  I nearly gagged.

After lunch we walked down to the Green Apple Bookstore on Clement, where Kevin bought Jung's Psychology and Anarchy and Ego and Archetype by Edward Edinger.  I had my eye on some gay comix, but I didn't want to look stupid, so I bought Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus trilogy.

Then he said, "Now that we've satisfied your infantile need for preliminary social activity, I believe we have an appointment to f____."

Kevin was unattractive, elitist, creepy, and vulgar.  No way was I going home with him!

But I did.

You're probably expecting a weird ghost house with walls panted black, but it was an ordinary apartment near the Green Apple, with a very bright dormer window and prints of French impressionist painters.

Kevin was impressive beneath the belt, but still, the f___ was unpleasant.  Lots of oils and weird-smelling incense and Tantric sex rituals (look it up).  And he smoked and drank throughout.  Kissing him was like kissing a bar at last call.

It was nearly dusk when I finally left Kevin's apartment: the unpleasant f___ and cuddling afterwards took three hours. No way was it going to happen again!

But it did.

Every three or four days, Kevin called out of nowhere and said "I would like very much to f___ you."  Then somehow I found myself at his apartment for three hours of oils, incense, Tantric sex rituals, and cigarette breath.  We sometimes went out to dinner or a movie first, "since you're so hung up on bourgeois dating rituals."

In retrospect, I could have easily said "No, thank you" or "I'm busy just now."  But instead, I dropped everything, cancelled plans, and went over.

Once he knocked on my door at three a.m.  I let him in.

It was like I was hypnotized.

Some other weird things about Kevin that I didn't think about until later:

1. I rarely saw him eat anything. When we went out to dinner, he ordered an appetizer and just picked at it.  His refrigerator contained nothing but soda and beer, seltzer, and cream for his coffee.

2. I rarely sleep, either.  When I spent the night, we cuddled for awhile, and then he turned on the light and picked up a book.  In the morning, he awakened me with a cup of coffee.

3. I've never needed an alarm clock.  I wake up at 6:00 every morning, regardless of when I go to bed or what I was doing the night before. But after spending the night with Kevin, I slept until 8:00, 9:00, or even later.

4.  He talked about his childhood, his coming out story, his family, and his job, but afterwards I didn't remember any of it.

5. People couldn't see him unless he wanted them to.  When he saw someone attractive approaching us, he stood perfectly still, and instead of walking around, the guy would slam right into him!  "It's a good way to sneak a grope in," Kevin said with a grin.

Unattractive, elitist, vulgar, and invisible!

If I couldn't break up with him, I could scare him away.  I tried the scariest thing I could think of: meeting the relatives.

"My parents are flying out for a visit.  I'd love for you to meet them."

"I'd be happy to," Kevin said.  "You'll introduce me as The Man I'm F__ing, of course."

Ok, then, how about commitment:  "Isn't it about time we moved in together?"

"Certainly, if you wish.  Perhaps that would assuage your bourgeois guilt over f___ing for its own sake."

Wait -- Kevin wanted me to move in with him?

Before I knew what was happening, we had been "dating" for six months.  I was being asked "How's the boyfriend?" about ten times a day, and anyone who invited me anywhere said "And Kevin, too, of course."

If I wasn't careful, we'd be attached for life!

Kevin the Vampire's Date with Satan

 

When I was living in San Francisco, my friend Kevin the Vampire told us the story of his meeting with Anton Lavey. founder of the Church of Satan

Kevin grew up in Tulsa and then Enid, Oklahoma, two of the most dreary, depressing towns in the Bible belt, with nothing to do but watch sports and talk about girls.  His parents belonged to the ultra-fundamentalist Bible Missionary Church, where everything but breathing was a sin.  He went through life terrified that he would commit a sin without knowing it.  He used to pray for God to kill him, so he wouldn't have to die unsaved, and spend eternity in hell.

It was especially terrifying once he recognized that he was gay ("thou shalt not lie with mankind as with woman; it is an abomination") and that he was a witch ("thou shalt not suffer a witch to live").

Oh, he couldn't zap himself across time and space, or turn mortals into toads, but:

He knew what people were thinking

He could see what was going to happen in the future

He could make himself invisible. People would walk right past without noticing him, very handy for dealing with bullies and getting out of chores.

His favorite power was mind-control.  It didn't always work, but sometimes, if he looked at you the right way, you would do what he wanted.  His mother let him have two desserts; his teacher changed the grade on a paper; a high school jock agreed to a blow job.

A lot of high school jocks agreed to blow jobs.

As a teenager, he struggled to overcome his fundamentalist guilt. He forced himself to "sin," to go to movies and watch tv, to smoke and drink alcohol, to stay home from church on Sunday, to use profanity, to go to Catholic churches and Buddhist temples.

At the University of Oklahoma, Kevin majored in biology, partially in order to commit the "sin" of believing in evolution (a few professors changed his exam grades from C- to A+).

He dated a football star who later went pro, and who heterosexuals have probably heard of, but he was never sure if the jock really liked him, or if it was just his mind control.

After college Kevin couldn't settle on a career: he dropped out of medical school after one year, tried graduate school in biology but hated it, and worked as a hospital orderly, nursing home attendant, and phlebotomist.  Finally he trained as a medical technician, a job which allowed him a lot of free time to read and hook up with men.

In his ongoing attempt to rid himself of fundamentalist guilt, Kevin committed even more "sins."  He tried hashish and cocaine.  He read books on paganism, atheism, and New Age philosophy.  He attended a Wiccan ritual.  He deliberately blasphemed God, the Trinity, and Jesus Christ.

In 1996, Kevin finally achieved the life-long dream of gay men everywhere: he managed to move to San Francisco.  He found a job at St. Mary's Medical Center, and an apartment nearby in the Richmond district, a bit far from the Castro, but still Gay Heaven.

But even in Heaven, he worried about hell.  The nagging doubt just wouldn't go away: "Is there a God who is passing judgment on me?  Am I doomed to an eternity in hell?"

He determined to engage in one great, final gesture of defiance against the religious oppression of his childhood.  He was going to have sex with the Devil.

That is, Anton Szandor LaVey, who founded the Church of Satan in 1966.  Rituals were held in the famous Black House at California Street and 23rd in the Richmond District -- just around the corner from Kevin's apartment.

The Church of Satan was very popular among the youth counterculture of the 1960s.  Over a million people bought copies of The Satanic Bible, and there were dozens of famous converts or well-wishers, such as the Beatles, underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger, and actress Sharon Tate, who was killed in the Charles Manson murders in 1969.

In 1975, most members of the Church of Satan left for the rival Satanic Temple of Set, and LaVey fell from the limelight.  But he was still living in the Black House, still promoting his philosophy through books and magazine articles, still conducting rituals for a small group of loyal followers.

Still Satan.

 In December 1996, just at the start of the Christmas season, Kevin got an invitation through a friend, and made his way, trembling with fear but also eager, to the Black House.

To his disappointment, Anton was not at all scary.  He looked like someone's doting grandfather, tall, gaunt, bald, and smiling.

They sat in a perfectly normal-looking living room. A coffee table with a pile of People magazines.   Pictures of family members on the mantle.  There was even a Christmas tree, though Anton called it "a memorial to the Dying God."

He told Kevin that Satanism was about being true to your animal nature: "We are animals, not gods.  We should do what pleases us, what gratifies us.  Everything else is bullshit."

"What about helping others?" Kevin asked, playing the devil's advocate.

"If that's what pleases you, fine.  But never do anything just because someone expects it of you. Not your mother, not your boss, not some old guy sitting on a cloud.  More tea?"

"So, by that logic," Kevin said, "Satanism itself is basically bullshit."

"Exactly.  I'm a stage magician, a flim-flam man.  But name me one religion, philosophy, spiritual system, or ethical system that isn't bullshit.  There are no gods, there are no spirits, there is no heaven and hell.  There is here and now.  Eating, drinking, fighting, f**king.  Especially f**king."  

They eventually got around to the sex.  Anton wanted to top Kevin, but he settled for a blow job.  On his knees in Anton's bedroom, thrusting up and down on his thin spearlike dick, Kevin was surprised to find no sense of guilt at all.  Not even when Anton yelled "Ave Satanas" as he came.

No gods, no monsters, no heaven, no hell.  Nothing but the here and now.

Anton didn't reciprocate.  There was no cuddling or kissing afterwards.  But still, Kevin was elated.

 He left the Black House and walked through the misting rain, and looked at the Christmas lights shining red and green on California Street.  Never had anything looked so beautiful.