The Friend I Didn't Have Sex With

 This month I will have lived in the Straight World for seven years.  Granted, there's a gay-friendly coffee shop with a huge rainbow flag in the window a few blocks away, and every year during Pride Month about half the shops nearby have "Happy Pride" signs up.  But heterosexism, heternormativity, and overt homophobia is commonplace.

  I get asked about "my wife" by nearly everybody I meet.  

You hear homophobic slurs at the mall.  

On campus, out LGBT professors are commonly denied tenure (except in the music and drama departments), and LGBT students are commonly denied admission to some programs, like law enforcement and social work.  

But I expected that.  It's just life among heterosexuals.  

Almost all of the gay men in town are under 30.  As soon as they can afford it, they move to a gay neighborhood in Chicago or Minneapolis (no one chooses West Hollywood anymore).  

I know only one gay male couple over age 30, but I don't socialize with them; they are too deeply immersed in the lives of the ex-wives and kids they had before coming out.

Almost every guy who came to my pre-COVD sex parties was married to a woman, bisexual or on the downlow.

But I expected that, too.  Gay men growing up in the Straight World have two options: conform to social expectations by marrying a woman, or get out. (I got out, but then the necessity of getting a job pushed me back in.)

What I didn't expect about life in the Straight World:

You don't have sex with your friends.  Even your gay friends.  They draw a strict line between friendship and romance.  Ex-boyfriend?  Stay out of my bedroom!  Sharing?  Unheard-of!

In gay neighborhoods, your ex-boyfriends continued to share your bed on occasion, and your friends invited you to "share" their boyfriends on the third or fourth date.  Failing to invite was considered extremely rude, as was refusing the invitation.  

Friends went cruising together and brought home a third person to "share."

At the parties we held almost every week, oral sex was a party favor.

I can only think of one friend in West Hollywood whom I didn't have sex with: Mickey.

Mickey was a short, round chub of indeterminate age, soft and smooth, extremely fragile; you felt like if you hugged him too hard, he would dissolve.  But that would not, in itself, be sufficient cause for refusing to share.

He  latched on to us somehow in 1992 or 1993.  I don't remember how; one day he was just there.  No "coming out" story, no growing up stories, no background at all.  It was as if he was just conjured up out of the dew at that moment.  This was not unusual in West Hollywood: many guys had experienced such trauma in their homophobic small towns that they wanted to forget everything and start afresh.

After a friendship of six or seven months, he vanished.  No goodbye, no note; he just stopped showing up.  This was not unusual in West Hollywood, either: when you moved home or to a new gay neighborhood, you were immersed in a new social circle, and forgot about all but your very closest friends.  

He may have been living in his car; his financial situation was unclear.  But that wouldn't be a cause for refusing to share.  Most jobs, even in gay neighborhoods, required you to stay in the closet; being out often led to poverty.  

 I remember watching our usual Monday night tv lineup (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Blossom, Murphy Brown), going out to dinner (he didn't know how a buffet worked, and piled his plate embarrassingly high).  I remember buying comics at the Book Circus, getting Pollo Loco after the gym, Shabbat services at the gay synagogue.  But we never invited him to any party where sex was going on, or to spend the night in our bed.

A few random conversations: cats (liked), baked beans (yuck!), the Holocaust (horrified by), and BDSM (would like to try it). 

So why didn't I offer to tie him up, at least?

Some other conversations:

"I wish I could find a relationship like you guys have, with a lover who was faithful to me, who never even looked at another guy."

"Guys in Weho are such sleazoids!  I met someone at the Gold Coast last night, and he wanted me to go home with him!  Not even a date, just sex.  Disgusting! I'm so glad you guys aren't like that."

During the whole six or seven months of our friendship, Lane and I had to pretend to be monogamous!

Moving to West Hollywood #1: Is It Still There?

June 1985

During my year in Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, all I could think of was escape.  I hated everything about Houston: the endless construction, the ridiculous traffic, the suburban sprawl, the humidity, and especially the rampaging homophobia.  I wanted a place where:
1. I wouldn't have to drive.
2. I wouldn't have to deal with constant homophobia.

That meant a Gay Neighborhood, and I had only heard of five, in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Boston.

How to get to one?  Applying for jobs in publishing or translating never worked; I would have to go to graduate school.

So I applied to Ph.D. programs in
1, Renaissance Studies at Berkeley
2. Comparative Literature at Columbia
3. Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California
4. Romance Languages at Chicago
5. Romance Languages at Harvard.
(I was obsessed with Renaissance Italy that year.)

Only USC admitted me.  That meant moving to West Hollywood!

But I had a question: was it still there?

AIDS was announced to the world in an article in The New York Times in July 1981, but I don't remember hearing anything about it during my senior year at Augustana (1981-82).

During my two years at Indiana University in Bloomington (1982-84), I heard a few homophobes shrieking about a "gay plague!!!!" that was "God's punishment on homos!!!", but homophobes were always shrieking about something, so I ignored them.

It wasn't until  I got to Houston (1984-85) that I heard anything substantive, through the Montrose Voice and pamplets that the AIDS Foundation distributed: AIDS got its start among gay men, and 6,000 of them had died, but it was not a punishment, it was a disease, a virus transmitted through unprotected sex.

So I began using protection, and I gave up activities deemed particularly dangerous.

But what about the millions of gay men who had unprotected sex before they knew, who cruised as a form of recreation in gay ghettos, where thousands of partners were available?   Maybe the gay ghettos were deserted, the residents all dead or dying.

Was West Hollywood still there?

When classes ended, I packed my car and drove the 1000 miles from Houston to Rock Island without stopping.  I spent the next month watching tv, walking the dogs, lifting weights, and visiting friends.  None of them were sick.

My friend Tom, who I visited in Los Angeles in 1980 (top), offered to let me stay with him in Van Nuys while I looked for an apartment.  Dick, the former bully who I met at a gay bar (left), offered to drive along as far as Denver.

We left on June 28th, 1985, the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.

Next: Moving to West Hollywood #2.

Moving to West Hollywood #2: The Move

June 1985

After spending a year in Hell-fer-Sartain, I managed to escape by being admitted to the graduate program in Comparative Literature at USC: so I would be moving to West Hollywood.  My friend Tom, who I visited in Los Angeles in 1980, offered to let me stay with him in Van Nuys while I looked for an apartment.  Dick, the former bully who I met at a gay bar, offered to drive along as far as Denver.

But I was worried.

I heard so much about AIDS decimating gay communities. Maybe West Hollywood was a ghost town, its residents all dead and dying.

Was it still there?

On June 28th, the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, we left Rock Island.





We spent the night in Omaha, with Thomas, the priest with three boyfriends.  He had only one now, and they didn't invite us to "join them."

June 29th: To Denver.  We stayed with Dick's straight, married cousin.

June 30th:  We went to church at the gay MCC of the Rockies, on Evans Street (they've moved; the building is now a gym).  It was packed.  But of course a church would be packed during an epidemic.

Afterward we went out to lunch with some guys we met, and to a beer bust at the Denver Eagle, a leather bar.  It was packed, too, wall-to-wall denim and muscle.  But there was not a lot of cruising going on, and everyone looked rather subdued and worried.

July 1st: Fishing with Dick's cousin (I liked to use fishing as bait to meet cute guys), then back to the Denver Eagle.  Not packed on a Monday night, but a muscle bear invited us back to his house  (safe activities only). He told us that Colorado hadn't been hit hard by AIDS; there were only about 100 cases.

It was the gay ghettos that were turning into ghost towns.

July 2nd:  Dick was staying in Denver to look for a job, so I was on my own.  On the way through Utah, I stopped at the Delano Inn where I met the Mormon missionary during my trip back from Los Angeles in 1980.  He wasn't there.  A casualty, I wondered?

 I drove on to Las Vegas, and went to a casino and a drag show.  They were having an AIDS benefit.  It was packed.

Michael, a cute guy my age, escaped to West Hollywood from Montana two years ago, only to flee to Las Vegas.

"Most of the guys here are refugees," he said.  "They can't stay in West Hollywood anymore, with all of their friends dying."  I remembered the courtiers who fled plague-stricken Florence in Boccaccio's Decameron, and sat around telling stories.

"Is it still there?" I asked.  "Or is it a ghost town?"

"It's nothing like what it was.  People are dying."

Michael invited me back to his apartment, but only to cuddle.  He planned to be celibate until they found a cure.

July 3rd: I left at 9:00 am, and by noon I was over the mountains, zooming through the sprawl of Pasadena and East L.A..  I should have kept going, into the San Fernando Valley to Van Nuys, where Tom lived.  But I wanted to take a detour into West Hollywood first.

I wanted to see if Michael was right.  If it was a ghost town.

I got off the freeway and drove down Santa Monica Boulevard to La Brea, the border of West Hollywood. It looked grim and industrial, with parking lots and nondescript, windowless buildings.  No one on the street.

 Like a post-Apocalyptic America.

At La Cienega, Santa Monica Boulevard veered left.  The first thing I saw was AIDS prevention poster starring Zelda Rubenstein of Poltergeist.  

Then a huge gym, with musclemen churning on exercise bikes.

Two guys in tank tops buying cookies at an outdoor Mrs. Fields.

A guy walking out of the Different Light Bookstore carrying a gay magazine.

A banner advertising an AIDS Benefit at the Rage

Male couples sitting al fresco under the awnings at The Cafe Etoile

Gay men shopping, eating, working out, buying groceries and books, coming home from work, dozens of them, hundreds.  West Hollywood was still alive, still vibrant.

I was home.

See also: Moving to West Hollywood #1.