Nude Photos of John Davidson

John Davidson (not the actor) was "everyone's favorite model," even though he only worked for about six months.

"Butchie" (nobody called him John) was born in Bronxville, New York in December 1945, and grew up near Baltimore, Maryland.  After graduating from high school in 1964, he moved to New York and puttered around, making money by hustling and modeling. His first professional photos were taken by Walter Kundcziz's  Champion Studios.

In March 1965, Butchie joined the Marines and was sent to L.A. for a 12-week boot camp.  He found time to model, too, posing for Pat Milo, Spartan Studios, and Bob Mizer of the Athletic Model Guild.

He got a USMC tattoo, and he also may or may not have befriended Tony Dow, the 20-year old actor who previously played Wally on Leave it to Beaver.

Mizer said that Butchie was "one of the liveliest, most energetic models we have ever had," and  filmed him eight times, giving him starring roles in The Improvident Immigrant (with his Marine buddy Al Emonds, who he brought along for the day), Vicious Guard (where he did a jail-house card game scene with Pat White), Gladiator and the Slave, and The Sassy Seaman and the Officer.

He also put Butchie on the cover of the June 1965 issue of Physique Pictorial.

The secret symbols Mizer used reveal that Butchie was Greek passive (an anal bottom), French active (into oral), "a ball" (fun to work with), and "an experienced hustler."

In June 1965, Butchie shipped out to Vietnam, but he never made it.  While on shore leave on the island of Okinawa, he contracted  Japanese encephalitis from a mosquito bite.  He died on July 4th, 1965, only 19 years old.

But he managed to cram a lot of great experiences into those 19 years.

The Tony Dow connection is on Boomer Beefcake and Bonding

David and I Brave the Wilds of Sebastopol

San Francisco, November 1996

"Do you feel like taking a drive up to Sonoma County the day after Thanksgiving?" My friend David, the former Baptist minister, asked.

"What for? We're already here." 

 In San Francisco, that was the common response to an invitation to go somewhere else.

"Come on, the whole world doesn't revolve around Castro Street."

"No, just the gay world."  San Francisco was Gay Heaven, the impossible dream of gay men trapped in homophobic small towns around the world.  Those few who managed to live there were honor-bound to spend every moment in a whirl of activity.  To leave even for a day seemed like a betrayal.

"Believe it or not, there are gay men outside of San Francisco. I met one online in a chat room."

"Computerized cruising!" I exclaimed.  "What will they think of next?  Still, Sonoma County is a long way to go for cock.  Does he live in a town, or out in the woods somewhere like a hermit?"

"Sebastopol."

Hmm..Sebastopol sounded Russian.  I knew that the Russians were the first European settlers in the region.  Could they have left traces in Sebastopol, like a Russian Orthodox Church?  Golden onion-dome towers, walls of icons of Cyrillic saints, priests in black robes...

"Ok, I'm in.  But only if we get a tour of the city before or after the cock."

"No problem.  I'm sure Rick will be happy to accommodate us."

This was before wikipedia, so I couldn't look up the history of the town.  And finding a phone book meant going all the way downtown to the public library, so I didn't bother to check whether there was actually a Russian Orthodox Church.

Sebastopol was an hour's drive up the 101, just an ordinary wine country town, known for its Gravenstein apples.  And its traffic.  Clogged streets, no parking lots or garages, just very tight parallel parking.  We passed two Thai and a Nepalese restaurant on the way to the place Rick wanted to meet, the Gypsy Cafe, which you could only get to by driving down a one-way street and turning left onto another.  We circled three times before finding a parking space 10 blocks away, and tried to maneuver the rental car into place while an endless line of cars honked at us or zoomed around.

We still managed to arrive early, and wait around for 30 minutes in the greasy spoon, which was uber-crowded with rich heterosexuals touring the wine country, in spite of the fact that they just served sandwiches and french fries (and wine).

To this day, I have never had Nepalese food.  But I've had sandwiches and french fries.

Rick was not really my type: tall and thin, with a long face, dirty blond hair, and a blond beard.  But he had two things I wanted in Sebastopol:  a cock, and a knowledge of the town.

"So, was Sebastopol founded by Russian immigrants during the days of the Tsars?"  I asked.

He frowned.  "I doubt it.  I think it was after the California Gold Rush in 1849."

"Then where did the name come from?"

"I don't know." [Wikipedia: it was named after the British siege of Sevastopol, Russia, during the Crimean War.

"So...any interesting sights?  Any old churches?"

"Sure, I can take you on a tour.  But you'd better move your car -- they're very pick about the two hour parking limit."

No Russian heritage.  No Russian Orthodox Church.  We drove right past a used bookstore and the Sebastopol Center for the Arts without stopping.  Just driving through endless bumper-to-bumper traffic while Rick said "I think it's over here...oh, wait, I missed the street, we'll have to circle around.

We finally inched our way to the Barlow, a sort of permanent farmer's market.  I bought some apple butter.

Then we had to go back and move our car again.

After many twists and turns and "Wait...this isn't the right way," we ended up at Gold Ridge, the farm where Luther Burbank experimented on plants.  David was an Arkansas country boy, and knew something about plants.  I had bought flowers maybe twice in my life.

If I wasn't so stressed out from the endless traffic, and claustrophobic from the narrow streets, I'd be bored.

Finally, after a day of traffic and boredom and no Russian heritage, we retrieved our car and followed Rick back to the house he shared with an older gay couple (not at home).  After driving around fot 20 minutes looking for a parking space, we played with his dogs for awhile, then went into the bedroom and got naked.

Rick had a soft, hairy body with a thick, hairy 8" cock and low-hanging balls. David and I took turns going down on him, and then David topped him while we kissed.  I finished with interfemoral.

Not bad, but the sort of friendly sharing that David and I could do any day.  Without having to rent a car and drive all the way into Sebastopol.

Rick asked us to spend the night, but we refused.  San Francisco beckoned, with its street cruising and bear parties.

And better parking.

And a Russian Orthodox church.

Summer 1965: The Muscles of Morris Street

Indianapolis, Summer 1965

A few days ago, one of the readers of this blog told me that he grew up in Morris, Illinois, about 120 miles from Rock Island.

Reading the name instantly aroused the conmingling of joy, anxiety, and erotic energy that I associate with a "good place," a country or city where, as a child, I imagined same-sex love to be open and free.  Like Tibet, or Middle Earth, or even the Los Angeles of The Lucy Show.

The name brought back the memories of:
1. A very, very old man sitting in a rocking chair with a collie next to him.
2. The collie whining softly like Lassie.

3. Muscles!  Hundreds of men and boys, maybe thousands, more than I had ever seen before, shirtless, in swimsuits, their bodies gleaming in bright sunlight, flexing their biceps, adjusting themselves, running, jumping, hugging.

Could that beefcake paradise have been Morris, Illinois?  But I didn't remember ever visiting.

We passed often.  At least once a year, often two or three times, we took Interstate 80 from Rock Island across the Illinois prairie on the way to visit my relatives in Indiana.  I got to know the route intimately, I can still list the towns along the way: Geneseo, Kewanee, Princeton, Lasalle, Peru, Ottawa, Morris, Joliet, Chicago Heights.

Sensitive to the problem of kids getting bored on car trips, and probably getting bored themselves, Mom and Dad always found new, interesting places to stop on the way: Starved Rock State Park, Culver's Frozen Custard; a haunted theater in Chicago Heights; the glass octagon of the Valparaiso University Chapel.

Could we have stopped in Morris?

I got a map and checked the possibilities: Norwegian Settlers Memorial, Gebhart Woods State Park, Morris Diner & Pancake House, Boz Hot Dogs.  Nothing seemed particularly homoerotic.

Anyway, the old, old man didn't seem like a random encounter.  We visited his house.  We knew him.

He was too old to be one of my parents' friends.  He must be a relative.

I emailed my mother and asked if we ever visited any relatives in Morris, Illinois.

"No," she wrote back. "All of your Dad's family are in Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio, except for your Cousin George in South Carolina.  And my family is in Indiana and Kentucky."

Maybe I had the wrong Morris?  There's a Morris in Indiana, a Morris Township in Ohio, and a Mount Morris in Michigan.

Eva Marie, my Cousin Joe's sister, is big on family genealogy. She helped me track down the gay connections of our biological grandfather, and she has gedcoms that trace our ancestry through a dozen different lines back to Canada, England, Ireland, and France, all the way back to Charlemagne.  I emailed her and asked if anyone in our family lived in a town called Morris between 1960 and 1970.


"No," she wrote back.  "You had a third-cousin on a Morris Street.  Does that help?"

Yes!

David Scholle, grandson of Grandpa Davis's  sister, lived on Morris Street in Indianapolis in the 1970s.  But my memory is from the 1960s, and he's too young to be the old man of my memory.

"David moved into his grandfather Otto's house after he died," Eva wrote.  "Otto Scholle, your great-uncle.  He turned 75 in July 1965, and we all went down to Indianapolis for his birthday party. Mom, Dad, your parents, Grandma Davis.  But you were only four years old.  Could you be remembering that?"

Back to Google Maps.  I didn't recognize the house Eva mentioned.  But two blocks north was Rhodius Park, which has a softball field and a swimming pool.

Now I can figure out what happened:

A hot day in July, before we moved away from Indiana.

  A birthday party for an old, old man on "Morris Street."  A house full of strangers.  After the cake, Eva, Joe, and Larry get bored.  Their parents suggests that they go to the park, and take their 4 1/2-year old cousin Boomer.

They walk past the crowded swimming pool.  Through the chain link fence, Boomer sees dozens of half-naked men and boys,splashing, flexing, hugging, adjusting themselves, a stunning homoerotic spectacle that stays with him forever, even after he forgets everything else about the day.

Except for the old, old man, the collie whining, and the name "Morris."