Alan and the Kept Boy

West Hollywood, March 1986

When I was growing in the Nazarene church, not only was alcohol forbidden, we couldn't even go into a venue that served or sold alcohol, for any reason.  My Sunday school teacher said, "If a maniac with an axe is chasing you, and the only way to escape is to run into a bar, choose the maniac."

Alan grew up hardcore Pentecostal, with similar restrictions.

So we were never around anyone drinking.  We didn't really understand that people who are drunk behave differently than when they are sober.

Until one night at Mugi.

It was about 10:00 pm, still early.  Alan was chatting up a cute twink from Taiwan, and I had flirted with a few guys, but nothing definite yet.

Then I saw Zack,  sitting at the bar, drinking a green, toxic-looking drink.  I later discovered that it was a Flying Grasshopper, creme-de-menthe, creme-de-cacao, vodka, and mint leaves.  Stunningly out of place amid the coca-colas and beers.

He was a tall, blond twink, wearing a blue suit with a hot pink, frilled shirt unbuttoned half way down  Very tan, smooth chest beneath. Stunningly out of place amid the t-shirts and jeans.

He wasn't actually my type, I thought.  Besides, he wouldn't be interested: white guys came to Mugi only to meet Asian guys.  But I found myself drawn to him anyway -- something about the pink shirt against the tanned chest was extremely erotic.

We talked.  No slurred speech or erratic movements, not obviously drunk.  Zack was from Idaho, came to L.A. three years ago to become an actor.  He had done some modeling, yelled on a roller coaster in a commercial for Knotts Berry Farm, and played a racist high school bully on an episode of Diff'rent Strokes.  I pretended that I had seen it..

I reached inside his shirt to feel his chest.  It was remarkably ripped.  The boy knew his way around a gym.

Zack ordered another Flying Grasshopper, then grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard.  "Can I come back to your place tonight?"

 "I'm....um....with my roommate  right now," I said, shocked.

Warning Sign #1: In West Hollywood in 1986, you didn't bring guys home the first time you met.  You always made a date for later in the week.

"What's he look like?"

"He's over there, tall guy with a beard."

"Yeah -- cute.  Invite him along.  We'll have a three-way."

Warning Sign #2: The custom of "sharing" one's friends and roommates developed in response to the AIDS crisis, under the theory that you should keep your sexual activities within a tight social circle.  But you only shared them with committed partners, not with bar pickups (this rule changed during the 1990s, but in 1986 it was set in stone).

"We don't know each other very well," I said firmly.  "It's a little early to be talking about sharing."

Zack drained his second Flying Grasshopper in a couple of gulps.  "See, the thing is, I had a fight with my boyfriend -- tonight was supposed to be our anniversary -- that's why I'm dressed up.  I'm afraid to go home -- he gets violent sometimes.  So it's your bedroom or the street."

Wile we talked, I had been unbuttoning Zack's shirt, feeling his warm, hard chest and abs, fondling his sizeable package.  I leaned over and kissed him.  I can be a Good Samaritan, I thought.

"I came with my friend," Zack said.  "Just let me tell him that I'm going home with you."

"Wait -- why couldn't you stay with your friend?" I asked.

"Oh, his place is too tiny.  Besides, he's not hot!"

Warning Sign #3: His story didn't check out.

Warning Sign #4: He was willing to get into a car with two guys he didn't know.

Today I would absolutely refuse.  But I was young and naive, and besides, he had an incredible physique..

Alan had just struck out with the Taiwanese guy, so he didn't need much convincing.

When we got to the car, Zack pulled me into the back seat with him, and we began kissing and fondling as Alan drove.

Warning Sign #5: He didn't act like a guy who had just had a fight with his boyfriend, and was afraid to go home.

Warning Sign #6: For all my groping, Zack did not become aroused.

Warning Sign #7: "Let's stop at the liquor store!" he exclaimed.  "Drinks all around."

"I don't know where any liquor stores are," Alan protested.

"I do, I do!  Turn here on Van Ness, then go down to Santa Monica. Studio Liquor, right off Highland!"

Alan glared at me, but stopped, and Zack ran in and bought a bottle of Peppermint Schnapps.

Warning Sign #8: He began sipping at it right in the car.

When we got to the apartment, Zack carefully brought the bottle in with him and put it on the coffee table.  Then he yelled "Showers first!  Who's with me?"

"Sorry, I hate showering with other people."

"I'll go!" Alan said.  They took off their clothes and went into the bathroom.  They were in there for a very long time.  First there was giggling, then no sound at all.  Finally they emerged, naked,  Zack's hard, smooth, tanned physique a sharp contrast to Alan's pale, hairy body.  They compared cock sizes.  Zack was significantly smaller.

"Time for Peppermint Schnapps!" he announced, grabbing the bottle again. "It's the best thing in the world, except for a Sloe Gin Fizz."

We took the bottle from him, went into Alan's bedroom, and climbed into the bed.  Zack and I began kissing, and Alan began working on him beneath the belt.

Unsuccessfully.  No matter what he tried, Zack could not rise to the occasion.

"Well, I'm more of a bottom anyway," he said.  He turned over onto his stomach.  "Who wants to be the first?"

Alan volunteered.  Later he told me that it was terrible.  Zack just lay there like a statue.  Soon I could tell that he had fallen asleep.

We ended up falling asleep, too, with Zack between us.

He didn't want to wake up in the morning.  Finally Alan gave up, got dressed, and went to church.

How was I going to get rid of this guy?

 I let him sleep another hour, and then shook him away.

"God, what a hangover!" he moaned.  "Bloody Marys all around.  Got any vodka?"  He grinned at me.  "Hey, you're cute.  Did we do it last night?"

"Um...well, we tried.  Don't you remember?"

"Babe, I was so blasted, I'm lucky I remembered my name.  Did I give you that old saw about a fight with my boyfriend?  That's my favorite."

 Leaning heavily on me, Zack pulled himself out of bed.  "Well, part of it is true.  I'm going to have a fight with my boyfriend as soon as I get home.  I told him I'd be back by midnight, so I didn't turn into a pumpkin. Got any Vodka?"

"No.  We don't keep alcohol in the house.  You bought a bottle of Peppermint Schnapps."

He pushed himself out into the living room and took a sip.  "Well, at least the night was good for something.  Take me home, ok, babe?  We have Vodka and Tequila there"

Grateful to finally be rid of him, I drove Zack to one of those huge apartment complexes on the Miracle Mile, where he lived with a 40-ish film director who promised to get him some acting jobs.  As far as I could tell during our brief conversation, he was more of a kept boy than a boyfriend.  With a major alcohol problem.

I missed all of the warning signs, blinded by his chest.

See also: Sharing the Optometrist's Boyfriend; Alan Cruises a Cop

Junior High: 77 Signs that You're a Fairy

In my junior high, the worst possible fate was to be a "fairy."  Not a boy who was interested in boys -- we didn't have the slightest inkling that same-sex desire existed, anywhere in the world.  A boy who suppressed his natural masculine instincts and  pretended that he was a girl.

We didn't know why fairies pretended to be girls. Malice, stupidity, sheer perversity?  But they were in deadly peril.  Most obviously, every boy's sole reason for living was to get girls, and girls only liked real men.

But there was another, more sinister peril that the older boys whispered about: if you pretended to be a girl long enough, you might actually turn into a girl, or rather a swish, a nightmarish  hybrid reature.

Fairies had to be convinced to stop it! and act like boys again, by any means necessary.  Friends tried gentle persuasion; enemies, catcalls and jeers; mean boys, public humiliation, and if that didn't work, pummeling in the schoolyard.

Teachers rarely intervened.  After all, it was for the fairy's own good.  He had to be convinced to stop it! and act like a boy again.

There were dozens of signs that you were a fairy, or in danger of becoming one.  Here are the top 77:

Clothes

1. A shirt with a little loop in back (called a fruit loop)

2. An undershirt.
3. A green shirt.
4. A turtleneck sweater.
5. "High water" pants that revealed your socks.
6. Pants with buttons instead of a zipper.
7. Glasses
8. A bow tie.
9. Buttoning the top button of your shirt.
10. Jewelry, especially rings.
11. Being excessively neat.

Language and Deportment

12. Wiggling hips

13.  Hand gestures.
14. Wrist movements

15. An enthusiastic voice (it must be angry or a monotone).
16. Using too many adjectives.
17. Using correct grammar.

Before and After School

18. Talking to/ walking with girls.

19. Carrying books home with you.
20. Carrying a violin case home with you.

21. Refusing to fight when challenged.
22. Fighting ineptly.
23. Crying for any reason.

24. Telling a teacher or parent about bullying.

In Class

25. Carrying a pencil case.
26. Sitting in the front row.
27. Volunteering the answer to a teacher's question.

28. Not referring to the teacher by her last name only ("Mrs. DeSmet" instead of just "DeSmet")

29. Taking French (a fairy language) instead of Spanish.

30. Using a protractor.
31. Having neat homework assignments.
32. Getting good grades on purpose (saying "I studied hard", for instance)
33. Worrying about/asking about grades.

Gym/Sports
34. Not going out for a sport.
35. Pretending to be ignorant of the results of last night's game.
36. Pretending to be ignorant of a player's statistics.
37. Calling gym "p.e. class"
38. Not being able to play a sport adequately.
39. Being selected last for a team.
40. Wearing a towel around your waist on the way to the showers.
41. Having insufficient muscles.
42. Having an insufficient penis.
43. Having insufficient pubic hair.










Leisure/Extracurricular Activities
44. Belonging to an academic organization (Spanish Club or Chemistry Club)
45. Participating in student government.
46. Playing in the band or orchestra.
47. Performing in student plays or musicals.
48. Studying dance.
49. Studying art.
50. Going to libraries, museums, art galleries, or concerts.
51. Not going bowling.
52. Watching The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, or any variety show.
53. Not watching Adam-12. 
54. Listening to David Cassidy, the Captain and Tennile, or Elton John.
55. Not listening to The Eagles.
56. Reading teen magazines.
57. Not knowing about cars.
58. Not knowing about guns.
59. Disliking hunting, fishing, and camping.
60. Having never been on an airplane.
61. Having to be home before dark.
62. Calling your parents to tell them your whereabouts.
63. Hanging out with girls.


Lunch/Food

64. Sitting with girls in the cafeteria.

65. Carrying a lunch box instead of a paper bag.

66. Eating grapes.
67. Eating jello.
68. Drinking chocolate milk.
69. Using a napkin instead of your sleeve.
70. Depositing apple cores in the trash instead of on the ground.
71. Eating in an excessively neat fashion.
72. Knowing how to cook.

Dating/Sex
73. Being a virgin.
74. Having sex with fewer than five girls per week.
75. Being attracted to athletic girls.
76. Dating a girl who is overweight or wears glasses.
77. Walking hand-in-hand with a girl.

Bonus (for Rock Island only)
78. Coming in through the back entrance of the school (past the girls' locker room).
79. Going to Little Caesar's (a pizza place next to a hair salon)

Levi's Date with a Star of "The Dick Van Dyke Show"

West Hollywood, June 1995

It's the night before Gay Pride, so of course Lane and I have a full house: Infinite Chazz, my ex-boyfriend Fred and his boyfriend Matt, Randall the Bear with the Pierced Penis and his date Levi ("like the jeans"), and some other guys.  Most of them will spending the night, six in the beds and four in sleeping bags on the floor, so they can march in the parade tomorrow or get a good place to watch (we're a scant three blocks from Santa Monica Boulevard).

The only one I haven't met is Levi, a Long Beach boy in his late 30s or early 40s, slim, very tanned, and just starting to go bald, with gray hairs among the black in his beard and poking up from beneath his white t-shirt.  Very nice bulge.  I'm hoping to get to "share" later, but chances are he and Randall will invite Will the Bondage Boy into their bed instead.

As usual at West Hollywood parties, we discuss celebrity hookups: Scott Baio, Michael J. Fox, Rob Lowe, Louis Ferrigno.

Randall tells about the time he and Dick Sargent competed over a Disney teen star -- not Tommy Kirk  (that's a story for later).

Then Levi stands.  "All right, boys and girls, it's time for a guessing game.  And to make it more interesting, everyone who guesses correctly wins 10 minutes in the bedroom with me on my knees:

On Gay Pride Day in 1978, when I was a 22-year old Cute Young Thing, fresh off the boat from Alamosa, Colorado, I met and had a swooning night of passion with my boyhood crush, a star of The Dick Van Dyke Show.  You have to guess which one."

The classic Boomer sitcom (1961-1966), about tv comedy writer Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke) balancing his work world with his suburban family!  I'm too young to remember first-run episodes, but I've seen a lot of reruns. Not a lot of gay content, no beefcake, but some of the guys were interesting.

"Was it Buddy?" Fred asks. (The short, spunky Morey Amsterdam)  "He had a wife named Pickles -- you don't get more phallic than that."

"I'm voting for Jerry Paris, who played the next door neighbor," I say.  "He was incredibly handsome, nice hair, great hands."

Maybe it was the son," Will the Bondage Boy suggests.  "Larry Mathews would be all grown up by 1978."

"Dick Van Dyke himself?" Matt asks.  "I always got a little -- je ne peux pas dire -- a vibe from him."

Nine votes are cast, with Randall abstaining: 3 for Jerry Paris, 2 for Dick Van Dyke, and 1 each for  Morey Amsterdam, Larry Mathews, Jerry Van Dyke, and Carl Reiner.

"Unfortunately, no one will be seeing what my mouth can do," Levi says, "Not until later, anyhow.  The famous tv star who set my heart aflutter when I was a boy, and who brought me to my knees that hot day in June 1978, was none other than Richard Deacon, who played Mel Cooley."

Huh?

Mel Cooley, the officious busybody, the easily perturbed stick-in-the-mud, the quintessential square, the brunt of a thousand digs and put-downs?   How could he set anyone's heart aflutter?

Besides, he was bald, bespectacled, and rather homely, with a W. C. Fields nose, a weak chin, and a nondescript physique, even for the 1960s.

Levi explains:






Alamosa, Colorado, 1960s

A small town in the scrub grass at the base of the Rockies, 200 miles from the nearest big city, where the biggest tourist attraction was sand dunes.  It was full of cowboys, Mormons, and hobos, with nothing to do on a Saturday night but go to football games and drink beer: painful for a quiet, non-athletic, bookish boy regardless of your sexual identity, but when you're growing up gay in the police-state 1960s, sheer torture.

Looking for survival strategies on tv, Levi hit upon Mel Cooley.  Obviously gay -- at least, no wife was ever mentioned.  And a master of the passive-aggressive barbs that let you survive and even triumph over bigger, more powerful adversaries.  When fisticuffs would get you pummelled, try a slow burn or a disapproving eye-roll.  When an open objection would get you killed, try a snarky quip.  Genius!

Smitten, Levi watched Richard Deacon in everything he could find: Mr. Ed, The Addams Family, That Darn Cat, The Gnome-Mobile, Blackbeard's Ghost, Get Smart, The Beverly Hillbillies, Here's Lucy, Maude, BJ and the Bear.  

He always played gay-vague, passive-aggressive, snarky sticks-in-the-mud aching to ruin the hero's fun.  But on the talk and game shows -- Dick Cavett, The Tonight Show, Mike Douglas, The Match Game -- he revealed the sensitive, sweet soul beneath the bristly facade.  Levi was intrigued: he wanted more.

Hollywood, June 1978

A few weeks after he graduated from Adams State College with a degree in agriculture (his parents insisted), Levi was living in California (top photo), working in a department store, and watching his first Gay Pride Parade.  Harvey Milk was the grand marshal. There were protests against the Briggs Amendment, which would prohibit teachers from making pro-gay statements.

 And -- sitting on the patio of a restaurant facing the street, Levi saw his childhood crush, Richard Deacon!  He was with Paul Lynde and Phyllis Diller and a couple of Cute Young Things.

He was 57 years old, graying, and kind of chunky -- Levi later discovered that he didn't like the gym, and followed Miss Piggy's rule about jogging: "One should run only when one is being chased."  But he was enormously tall, massive, and vibrant, talking animatedly, waving his hands about.

"Mr. Deacon, I loved you in Dick Van Dyke!" Levi exclaimed, rushing forward.  "And in That Darn Cat!  You're a genius!"

"I'm not a genius," Richard said, looking up with a cruisy smile.  "I'm a craftsman."

Levi instinctively looked around, waiting for an insulting quip like "You mean crap-man."  But the others in his party just smiled.  Richard -- "Deac" -- invited Levi to join them.

Later they all had dinner at Deac's house off Coldwater Canyon Drive, north of Sunset.  He cooked: steak with corn compote and summer squash,  asparagus, and a Napa Valley cabernet, with a chocolate torte for dessert.

After dinner, Paul and Phyllis and the Cute Young Things went home, but Levi spent the night.  And the next.  They didn't become lovers, but they became friends, and shared tricks and recipes and Gay Pride Parades until his death on August 8, 1984.

West Hollywood, June 1995

"During my six years of friendship with Richard Deacon, I learned three important things about him," Levi says.

1. He didn't want to play heroes, or God forbid, romantic leads.  No fisticuffs, no kissing ladies.  He found what he was good at, and used it to his advantage, crafting a respectable Hollywood career, making enough money to indulge in all of the things he loved: good food, good wine, art, theater, travel.

2. He was the nicest, most approachable, most easy-going guy in Hollywood.  He would talk to anyone, from superstars to the counter girl at the deli, and no one had a single bad word to say about him.  

Levi pauses.

"What's third thing?" I ask.

"For some of you, it might be the most important.  Not to me -- I couldn't care less.  But it was very nice on a hot Hollywood night with a glass of Merlot by the bedside."

"What's the third thing?" I repeat, annoyed.

He spreads his hands, spanning at least a Kovbasa+.

3. Richard Deacon was hung to his knees.