Carl, the Cowboy Cop on My Sausage List

Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, April 1985

You probably know the type of guys I find attractive:

1. Short, the shorter the better.
2. Muscular or husky.  Fat is good.  Bodybuilder too.
3. Dark-skinned.  Black, Asian, Hispanic.  If you're Caucasian, then maybe Italian, Greek, Spanish.
4. Religious, or better yet, clergy.
5. Gifted beneath the belt.

So how did I end up with a guy who was taller than me, thin, a fair-skinned blond, and not religious?

Well, at least he met trait #5: he was the third biggest guy I've ever met.

It was during my horrible year at Hell-fer-Sartain State College in Texas, the worst place in the world.  I drove into the Montrose, the gay neighborhood of Houston, to the Wilde and Stein Bookstore.  While I was browsing in the fiction section, a guy approached me -- very tall, at least 6'8" to my 6'1, lanky, blond, wearing tight jeans and a lumberjack shirt.

"Don't I know you from somewhere?" he asked, in retrospect the oldest line in the book.  But we chatted, and it was a relief to meet someone who wasn't deeply closeted or was overloaded with weird quirks.

 His name was Carl, he was 27 years old, and a real life cowboy -- he grew up on a ranch near Abilene.

We went to dinner at the Hobbit Cafe, which, in spite of its name, served Mexican food, to the mall to buy me a pair of cowboy boots, dancing -- at a regular gay disco, not a cowboy bar, and then back to his apartment.

 It was such a relief to meet someone who wasn't closeted or kooky that I didn't mind his lack of the traits I usually find attractive, or that he lived in Pasadena, on the south side of Houston, a good 40 miles from me.

During the usual date small-talk, Carl told me that he worked in human services.  Now, sitting on the couch in his apartment, he said "You know what?  I'm just going to come out with it.  I'm not exactly in human services."

"What, then?"

"I'm a cop."

I felt the blood draining from my face.  Same-sex acts were illegal in Texas (they would be until 2003), and the police actively sought to entrap "homosexual deviants" in the bars and bookstores of Montrose.  Put your hand on his shoulder, you're under arrest for lewd conduct.  And we had been dancing together, groping, and kissing....

"It's not like that," Carl said, sensing what I was thinking.  "I'm gay.  In the closet, of course."

"Of course."  If he were discovered, he would be instantly fired.  "Um...the gay community doesn't have a very good attitude toward the police."

"I know.  That's why I don't usually tell people until the second or third date.  It scares them off faster than finding out that I'm bisexual."  He conked himself on the head.  "Whoops, I let another one slip out, didn't I?"

"You sure did.  Any more closets you want to open?"

"Yeah.  I'm an atheist. I grew up in a fundy household, and all of that God crap just riles me up!"

Hmm-- I believed in God, and went to church, but I decided to not mention those few details.  I wanted to see this guy in the bedroom!  "Bisexual, atheist, cop," I joked.  "I'm surprised you haven't been lynched!"

We went into the bedroom, and Carl revealed that, although he was missing traits #1-4, he more than made up for it with #5.

On our second date, he came up to my apartment, with a pizza -- 45 minutes late.  He explained that he had stopped to help a lady fix her flat tire.

A good Samaritan, too.  This one might be a keeper.

We sat in the living room, eating our pizza from the coffee table.  Carl started checking around the room.   An Eastern Orthodox icon.  A Catholic crucifix on the wall.  A small bronze statue of The Madonna of Regensburg that I got during my semester abroad.  A bookcase containing Church and Society, Halley's Bible Handbook, Dag Hammarskjold's Markings, Three Treatises of Martin Luther, God in the Dock by C.S. Lewis...

"Don't tell me you're into that God crap!" Carl exclaimed, his mouth full of pepperoni.

"Well...um, I was raised Nazarene, but they're way homophobic, so when I was in grad school I started going to the Metropolitan Community Church.  There's one in Houston.  I don't get there very often, but...."


"Church is church.  It's all about hating homos!"

"No, the MCC is different.   It was founded by the Rev. Troy Perry, who's gay, and most of the members are gay."

"Self-loathing, no doubt."  His voice changed to a squeaking falsetto.  "Oh, I'm gay, I'm so worthless, I need God to wipe my sins away."

"But the MCC teaches that gay is ok.  God loves gay people, and..."

"Enough is enough!  I didn't come here to listen to the whole God spiel!"

I was starting to get angry.  "Well, Carl, if I don't mind that you're an atheist, you shouldn't mind that I believe in God, right?  Difference of opinion and all that?"

"I don't have to respect ridiculous opinions.  What if you thought the moon was made of green cheese?  Should I respect that?"

We went on like that for awhile, and Carl ended up leaving.

Turns out that I was lacking one of the traits that the bisexual cowboy cop found attractive.

16 Texas Toughs, Houston Hunks, and Hell-fer-Sartain Sausages

I endured Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas  for a year after getting my M.A. in English.

It was actually Aldine, Texas, a far, far, far northern suburb of Houston, 20 miles from the beauty and excitement of the Montrose.

And, if you don't count two trips back to Rock Island and spring break in New Orleans, it was actually only seven and a half months, or 210 days.

209 days too long.

 I had a dreary two-room apartment on a dead end street, with an illiterate redneck landlord downstairs and a headbanger neighbor.

Everyone in the rust belt moved to Texas in the early 1980s, which meant that everything was grotesquely crowded, it took an hour to get anywhere in grotesque traffic, and everyone was new at their jobs, so they took forever and made lots of mistakes, which made every chore from banking to going to the gym a daunting enterprise.

Plus, everything was under construction, resulting in constant delays, and more flat tires in nine months than I've had in the 30 years since.

The campus was all ugly concrete slabs and treeless scrub grass.

Everyone was illiterate, surly, and very, very homophobic.  Consequently, all gay men were very, very closeted, giving you fake names and fake phone numbers.

There are a few things I remember fondly:
My Italian class.
A visit from Bruce.
Spring break in New Orleans.
Driving away.

And sausages.  They grow them BIG in Texas, and the guys were readily available.  For hookups, anyway.

Here are 16 Texas toughs, horrors, hookups, and sausages from my 210 days in Hell-fer-Sartain.

September:

1. The Student Who Got Naked in My Class, stripped down to his underwear right in the middle of a lecture on Moby Dick.  No one has ever done that in any class since.  The most beefcake you see is when they take off their sweater, and their shirt pulls up off their chest.

2. Raymond, a black guy with an interest in astrology (he was a Taurus) and an enormous Mortadella who kept saying "if you relax, it won't hurt." It did.

3. Sayid, his friend.  Raymond fixed us up, apparently believing that if I wasn't an anal bottom, I must be an anal top.  At the end of the date, Sayid ran into the bedroom, stripped, turned over on his stomach, and squealed "Take me! Take me!  Do whatever you want with me!"


4. Hank, a recent graduate of the college, now working in a department store, who claimed to want a relationship, but gave a fake telephone number.  He didn't realize that as a faculty member, I had access to all student records.  So I looked him up and called.

"Um...um...I don't...I mean," he stammered, trying to figure out how he managed to accidentally write down his real number.

"You said you wanted a relationship.  So -- dinner tomorrow night?"

He didn't want dinner.



October:

5. Dan, a Vietnamese immigrant who worked at the mall and chain smoked.  During our date, he poured water on a napkin to use as a makeshift ash tray.  After the date, I came down with a case of...well, let's just say it wasn't pleasant.

November:

6. Two Brothers and their Dad. I had a date with the 19-year old, but I made out with the 17-year old, and got a sausage sighting of the aroused Dad in bed.

December:

7. Dick, My Old Bully.  We reconnected at Christmas, back in Rock Island. Who knew that he was gay?  And so buffed?  And so well hung?




January:

8. My Most Embarrassing Hookup, when a middle-aged Mormon guy mistook me for a hustler.

9.The Redneck Boy from the trailer court next door worked out with weights, shirtless, in his yard.  I never made contact, but it was a pleasant sight.

February:

10. The Professor Who Got Away.  I pushed a little too hard, going into detail about the things we had in common.  I may have used the term "soul mate."  He rain.

11. The Russian Major.  I wooed him with my knowledge of Slavic languages, but after the make-out session on his couch, he said "I hate to burst your bubble, but I'm not in the mood to be raped tonight."  Raped?

March:

12. The Footballer.  This guy goes into ecstasies over me being from the Midwest, asked about farms, milking cows, etc., etc.  He asks me to wear a football jersey on our date.  He asks me to stand in front of the window and "Feel myself up."

No!

He arrives and says "Are ya hungry?"

Which is almost as annoying.

13. The Teenage Hustler of Bourbon Street.  The fuzz-headed Cute Young Thing kept following me around, trying to get me to buy him hot dogs, a pizza slice, beer, and Curaçao.  I finally agreed to bring him back to my hotel room, where he was too big to go down on adequately, and at the end of the evening he asked for $5.00.

April:

14. The Most Skittish Guy on Earth.  He arrives, says "There are too many people around.  You didn't tell me you lived so close to other people.  What if they saw me coming in?  What if they hear us?"

I get annoyed and say "Are we going to do it or what?"

He grabs a chair, puts it on the floor in the bedroom, and says "Go ahead and do it, then."

But then he hears a noise and vanishes before I have a chance to "do it," whatever "it" is.


15.Carl the Cowboy Cop  with a Kovbasa+, one of the biggest I've ever seen.  But he was immensely tall, which was a turnoff, and extremely anti-religious.

May:

16. The New Age Devotee who kept talking about the Universe, energy, chakras, crystals, and stuff: "The Universe wants you to find the one you're destined to be with."  He didn't want to do anything in bed except kiss and cuddle, although he stayed aroused all night.

In the morning, I prepared a New Age breakfast of granola and fresh plums.  I tried to hand him the bowl of plums, but he didn't take it, and it shattered all over the floor.

 A fitting end to my 210 days in Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas.

See also: Researching an Ugly Guy Takes Me to the Worst Place in the World

8 Taboos of West Hollywood

After growing up in the repressive wilderness of Middle America, you finally manage to escape to West Hollywood.  You expect perfect freedom, the freedom to be open about who you are and what you feel, the freedom to fulfill your dreams and desires.   Instead, you find dozens of social rules, conventions, norms, and flat-out taboos that can get you ostracized. 

Here are the top ten taboos of West Hollywood in the 1980s and 1990s:

1. Never mention any woman's physical traits.  This is understandable: after hearing "You like girls!  You like girls!  You like girls!" over and over throughout your childhood and adolescences, having a friend say "That woman is attractive" will pull up old traumas. So you never mention women at all if you can help it, and if you must, you use neutral terms like "The woman with the black hair."

2. No friendships with women. You have to overcome the myth that gay men are really women, so they hang out with women.  So you never speak to a woman if you can help it, not even lesbians.

3. Never ask anyone what they do for a living.   It is standard small talk among straight people, of course, but you came to West Hollywood for spiritual and social fulfillment, not for anything as mundane as money. Conversations should be about art, music, literature, and sex, the things that mattered in life.

4. Never go home with someone on the first meeting.  This was a response to the AIDS epidemic, where sex with strangers was risky.  Only sleazoids hooked up; you got his phone number, called two to three days later, and made a date for two to three days after that.  At the end of the date, sex was obligatory.

5. After the date, you must spend the night.  And have breakfast with him the next morning. To leave after sex, or before at least toast and coffee, was an unforgiveable offense.

6. Never refuse to share a friend's boyfriend. One of the permitted ways to have sex with strangers was the custom of "sharing": a friend's partners. No matter if they were not your type, or even repulsive, it was a major affront to refuse.  Just close your eyes and go down on him.

7. Never have sex with a friend, except when sharing or at a sex party.  The boundary between friend and lover was very loose: we often lived with friends and did not live with lovers, went to social events with friends and left lovers at home.But one-on-one sex was going too far.  You can still go down on him, but only at a party where everyone is doing it.

8. Do not have a small penis.  Every penis must be described as "big" or "huge." If you happen to have a small one, lie.  If you happen to date someone with a small one, pretend that you don't notice, and when your friends ask later, say "it was huge."