The Boy with Soft Hands

When I was growing up, Huey (not his real name) was one of my brother Kenny's friends.  Short, brown-skinned, a rarity among the pale Swedes and Germans of Rock Island, chubby, with black hair and soft black eyes, soft all over.  I especially remember his square soft hands with stubby fingers.

Kenny was 2 1/2 years younger than me, so in sixth grade when I was in ninth.  His best friend was Todd, a sports nut with sandy brown hair and blue eyes.

Huey was in a grade below them, a young kid who they tolerated because his Mom made primo snacks, and because he was funny.

He told knock-knock jokes.

While eating orange sherbet, he stuck out his tongue to demonstrate that it had turned orange.

He made his belly talk, long before Jerry Seinfeld did it.

On cool autumn afternoons they played baseball in the school yard, and then burst into the house for snacks and sodas, sweating, laughing, gossiping.

At least once, maybe more, Huey exclaimed "Feel how cold I am!", and lifted my shirt to press an icy hand against my belly.  I jumped back, and he laughed. 

Once I tried to retaliate by tickling him.  He grabbed my hands with his hands, and we did a sort of struggling dance.   Suddenly we were rolling on the living room floor.  But the dog started barking, thinking that I was being attacked, so we had to stop.

I remember them watching Kung Fu (1972-75), about a kung fu fighter in the Old West, and then pretending to do kung fu moves. Huey was shirtless, his belly bouncing as he jumped around yelling "Hai-ya!"   It must have been during a sleepover, but I don't remember the rest.

One spring when Kenny was in high school but Huey was still at Washington Junior High, the whole family went to see him in Oliver!.   He did comedic mugs and pratfalls that stole the show during "Food, Glorious Food."

The whole family went to see Kenny's friend, who was just in the chorus? Why?

Was he closer to Kenny than I thought?

(This model is over 18.)

By this time I had figured "it," out, and I wondered if Huey was gay.   My brother's gay friend, soft and warm and vulnerable, using jokes and pratfalls to hide his desire for men.

There's nothing to stop us from getting a thrill
When we all close our eyes and imagine...
Food, glorious food....

Cocks, glorious cocks....

I don't remember seeing Huey after that.  The years passed, and I met lots of gay men, and forgot about him.  But...

Time to call my brother.

"Sure, I remember Huey.  He was a little goofball, wasn't he?  Always cutting up and making jokes."

"Do you know what happened to him?"

"After junior high we sort of lost touch.  He went to Alleman, the Catholic High School, not Rocky.  Funny -- he just lived like three blocks away,but I don't remember seeing him at all."

"We went to see him in Oliver!"

"Oh,yeah.  I remember that.  It was a big deal, like his acting debut.  Hey, maybe he became an actor, and moved to L.A.,like you did. Have you checked the internet movie database?"

L.A.?  If Huey was in ninth grade in 1979, he graduated from Alleman in 1982, and from college in 1986. He would have arrived in L.A. a year after me.

Did we drive down the same streets?  Was he in the crowd of bears at the Sunday afternoon beer busts at the Faultline? At a table near me at the French Quarter?  Maybe he came to the bear parties in the Hollywood Hills.  Maybe, without knowing who he was, I touched his soft warm belly, squeezed his nipples, moved my hand down to his cock....

Food, glorious food -- what is there more handsome?
Gulped, swallowed, or chewed, still worth a king's ransom.
What is it we dream about?
What brings on a sigh?

He's not in the Internet Movie Database or the Internet Broadway Database.  He didn't become an actor, at least not a professional.

Alleman High School Class of 1982 has a web page.  No Huey.

An internet search reveals Robert with his last name, in his 40s, living in Moline, the next town over.  It's a long shot, but I call.

"Huey's my cousin.  He was a lot older than me, so we were never close.  We actually only met once, at my aunt's funeral -- his mother -- in I think 2003."

"Did you remember where he was living?"

"Um...I think Florida somewhere.  Maybe near Disney World...I can ask my dad.  He would know."

Dad doesn't know for sure, but he thinks Fort Lauderdale.

I lived in Fort Lauderdale after I got my Ph.D. in 2001!   Could we have walked the same streets, cruised at the Filling Station?  Maybe I saw him at the Club, in the glory hole room.  Maybe I went down on him without knowing who he was....

No Huey listed in Fort Lauderdale, but I find someone else with the same name.  It's a long shot, but I check his facebook friends.

There Huey is!

Four years younger than me, so 53, a hot bear daddy with tattoed biceps and probably a pierced penis.  Is he gay?  Did I get a gay hint from the soft, sweet jokester of my childhood?

Is it worth waiting for? If we live to be 84.  Every day we say a prayer....

Over half of Huey's facebook friends are women.  Three have his last name.  Not a good sign.

There are photos of him with kids, him with a graduating woman. Not a good sign.

He likes country-western singer Keith Urban.  Not a good sign.

He lives in Wapello, Iowa, a small town on the Mississippi about an hour's drive south of Rock Island.  Not L.A.  Not Fort Lauderdale.

I'm not going to call or visit.  I'm going to stay in that cool autumn day a thousand years ago, when a brown chubby boy with soft hands and big eyes grabbed my belly.

The Backsliders at the Ponderosa Steak House

When I was growing up, my church had a huge number of prohibitions.  We discussed them and memorized them for prizes in Sunday school class, heard sermons about them on Sunday mornings, heard testimonies about them on Wednesday nights, and received our own black-bound copy of them when we became members of the church at age 12.

Some were harder to follow than others, and therefore caused more guilt when we backslid:

1. No restaurants or stores that sold alcohol.
2. No movies.
3. No work on Sunday, including homework.
4. No buying anything on Sunday, including eating out.

It seemed that my unsaved friends were constantly trying to get me to go to Dewey's Candy Store for ice cream or Schneider's Drug Store for comic books on Sunday afternoons!  Sometimes I gave in, only to feel a combination of intense guilt and fear, as if God was about to strike me dead and fry me in the Lake of Fire for all eternity.

My parents found the rule difficult, too.  On vacation, we usually rented a cabin or stayed with friends so we didn't have to drive far or cook on Sunday.

And at home, Mom usually put a roast beef in the oven to slow-cook while we were in church. If she didn't have time or was out of roast beef, we had to wait until around 2:00 pm for her to cook something else (cooking didn't count as #3).

One Sunday morning in the spring of 1969, when I was in third grade, Mom was out of roast beef, so she said she would make a tuna casserole when we got home.  My brother and I griped and complained, but what could we do about it?

She didn't realize that this Sunday was the start of the Spring Revival!  Instead of Brother Tyler, our usual preacher, who let us out at 11:45 sharp,  we got Brother Smith, an evangelist, who screeched and stomped about how we weren't meeting our Christian obligation to save souls until well after noon, and then led us in endless choruses of :

Faith in God can move a mighty mountain.
Faith can calm a troubled sea
Faith can make the desert like a fountain
Faith will bring the victory.

Repeat, then repeat again, 3,241 times, until you have thought of at least 12 ways to make fun of the lyrics.

THEN he had the audacity to hold an altar call!

By the time we got out of there, it was 12:45!  By the time we got home, it was 1:00.

We changed into our street clothes, and then Mom and Dad pushed us into the car again.

"Wait -- where's dinner?" I asked.

Mom turned around to the back seat.  "We're going to Ponderosa Steak House.

I liked the Ponderosa Steak House.  We usually went on Tuesday nights for their special -- a ribeye steak, baked potato, dinner roll, and salad.  But...

"We can't eat out!  Today is Sunday!"

"There's not enough time to cook," Mom explained.  "Your little brother and sister need to eat."

"But it's a sin!  God will strike us dead!  We'll spend eternity in the Lake of Fire!"

"Just be quiet.  It's an emergency."

Seething in righteous indignation, I was silent all the way down 38th Street to 7th Avenue.  I was Daniel going into the Lion's Den.  They could bring me into that house of abomination, but they couldn't make me eat.  No drop of food, no sip of water, nothing.  I would starve before I disobeyed a law of God!

We parked.  I trudged across the parking lot, so slowly that they told me to hurry up.  Into the jaws of doom.  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...

It was cafeteria style: you paid, got a tray, and grabbed what you wanted from steam tables.

And just ahead of us, waiting to buy on Sunday, was Brother Tyler and Brother Smith, and their wives.

It was like seeing your priest in a meth lab.  It was like Young Goodman Brown, who discovered that all of the good churchgoers in his village were really witches.

Brother Smith didn't recognize us, but Brother Tyler did.  He looked down at his feet, heavily embarrassed.

No specific gay content in this story, but it did allow me to see that sometimes people don't exactly practice what they preach, which made it easier to reject the Nazarene rules later on.

No nudity, either, but here's a naked man to tide you over.

Pedro's Hookup with Philip McKeon

Since putting out the call for celebrity hookup stories, I've had three guys approach me claiming that they hooked up with Philip McKeon.  None before.

Here's the most detailed.  He didn't give a name, so I'll call him Pedro.

His story has been modified for grammar, pacing, and style:

Hollywood, 1986 or 1987

I've been in the business since I was five years old, but one of my favorite jobs was the horror comedy Return to Horror High (1987).  Scott Jacoby, George Clooney, Maureen McCormick -- we were all wild and crazy kids.  We had a blast.

I wasn't out yet, but everybody knew, and I got a lot of offers.  I'll tell you about George Clooney sometime. But the one I really wanted was Phil McKeon.

22 years old, this incredibly tall, incredibly hot Nordic god, with a smile that wouldn't quit, not to mention the huge bulge shifting around in his pants when he walked.  He never talked to a girl off-stage, and no girl picked him up after work -- he must be gay!  So one day I decided to find out.  I asked "Hey, Phil, can I talk to you about something in private?"

I led him to a secluded spot on the set.

"So, what's the big mystery?"

"Just this." I pulled his head down and kissed him without even groping him first!

We kissed for a minute, and then he broke away.  "Every guy in Hollywood has done that," he said, rather belligerently. :What do you have that's so special?"

"Eight inches of primo Latino meat," I said, pressing his hand against my aroused cock.

He scoffed.  "Just eight inches?  Why don't you take on a real manwich?"

That;s right, he said manwich.

I fell to my knees.  He unbuttoned his pants and pulled out a ten incher -- I swear, it was like a garden hose -- pale, cut, with a thick mushroom head.  I opened my mouth as wide as I could, felt the head push past my teeth, but it was all I could do to keep from gagging.  I grabbed his buns to steady myself and let him do all the work, thrusting back and forth.

Finally I beat him off with two hands while sucking his head. That got him off -- he spurted a nice sized load.

Then he buttoned up and pulled me to my feet.  I thought he wanted to kiss again, but instead he said "You got what you wanted, ok?  If you tell anybody about this,  I will have you fired."

And he just walked away.

He was kind of cool on the set after that, as if I had offended him in some way.

Plains, October 2017

You're probably wondering 2 things.

1. Who is Phil McKeon?

Alice (1976-1985) was a "single woman making it on her own" sitcom in which aspiring singer Alice Hyatt finds happiness and fulfillment working as a waitress in a small-town Arizona diner.

11-year old Broadway actor Philip McKeon was selected to play her son Tommy.

As he entered his teen years, Phil's blond-haired, blue-eyed, androgynous good looks made him an ideal teen idol candidate, so he honed his singing talent and sat for a few shirtless and semi-shirtless photo shoots in Tiger Beat.  

But the competition from Leif Garrett, Shawn Cassidy, and Robbie Benson turned out to be too intense.  After starring in a few horror movies, he dropped out of acting, although he still hits Hollywood on occasion to produce or direct.















2. Is Pedro telling the truth?

I have never heard any Phil McKeon hookup stories before, although many people point out that he "acts gay" or they get a "gay vibe" from him.

Phil, who died in 2019, never married or been linked romantically with a woman.  He spent his last years in Hays, Texas, a suburb of Austin, where he hosted the "Breakfast Taco" radio program.

According to his Facebook page, he liked the New York Yankees, Van Halen, Fox News, Sean Hannity, and Westerns.

He was a devout Roman Catholic who goes to confession and participates in "prayer chains"

What do you think?

See also: Philip McKeon after Alice