Halloween Horror: Cruising in the Scariest Place on Earth

We're only 30 miles from Hell.

I'm spending fall break in Charlottesville with Jonathan Peng Lee, my hustler/engineer/paranormal enthusiast/gym rat friend who I met at Alan's funeral.  It's two days before Halloween, and he has promised to bring me to the scariest place on Earth.

I expected a haunted house, but no: we're spending two nights in Lynchburg, Virginia!

How did I let Jon talk me into this foolhardy trip?  Over an hour driving through the Shenandoah Valley that General Sherman burned, through towns named Arkham...I mean Amherst...Stonewall -- no connection to the birthplace of the modern Gay Rights Movement -- Greif (grief misspelled by rednecks).

Now it's only 20 miles to Lynchburg.

The site of Thomas Road Baptist Church, where Jerry Falwell, the biggest homophobe in the world, spewed his venom.  The site of Homophobia University, where the top homophobes in the country send 15,000 of their kids to learn how to hate us more.

We're going undercover as fundamentalists, but still, I doubt we'll make it out alive.

""Why would anyone name a city after the mob murders of thousands of African-Americans in the years after the Civil War?" I wonder.

"It was named before that, after its founder, who ran a ferry in the 1780s," Jon reads off wikipedia. "Hey, guess what?  He was an abolitionist.  Progressive, huh?"

"Oh, very.  I'll bet he was pro-gay, too."

We cross nameless suburbs, then the River Styx (I mean James).

My first view: Eerie yellow lights, a dark stormy sky, the dark tower like something out of Mordor.

We have a reservation at Craddock Terry Hotel on Commerce Street, "steeped in history."  There's a giant woman's shoe over the lobby.

"Fabulous, isn't it?"  Jon says sarcastically.

"Don't use that word.  Remember, undercover -- one room, two beds, and call me 'Brother.'"

"Whatever you say, darling."


We have dinner at a place called Bootleggers, a couple of blocks away.  You enter from the basement: "like you're entering a speakeasy."  There's a gigantic mural of old-time rednecks.  I order a turkey burger and truffle-laced french fries.

Rather elegant for Homophobia Central, I have to admit.

Afterwards we return to our hotel room and go on Grindr to look for a hookup.  I expect a lot of married closet-case-angst types, but we end up inviting over a student from one of the local colleges -- not Homophobia University.  Tall, slim, thick black hair, about 7", into oral.  He's a Humanities major, and on the swim team.

"You must be closeted among your teammates," I say.

"Oh, no, not at all.  The team camptain is queer, majoring in Human Services with a concentration in LGBTQ Advocacy."

LGBTQ Advocacy?  WTF?

"Not everybody in town is as backwards as that other university," he says.  "Too bad you won't be here next spring.  They're doing The Laramie Project at the Renaissance Theater."

He spends the night, but doesn't go out for breakfast with us: waffles at the White Hart Cafe, which is also a used bookstore. No gay books per se, but I do find a biography of Truman Capote.

"What do you want to do today?" Jon asks.  He reads the possibilities from Trip Advisor: "A children's museum, the city museum, a historic mansion, the old cemetery with a Confederate Monument, the Pest House Medical Museum..."

"Have a lot of pestilence in Lynchburg, do they?"

After breakfast we visit the old mansion, the Point of Honor, and go hiking at Blackwater Creek, where I could swear I am being cruised by a cute twink  AND I see what looks suspiciously like a couple of gay dads with their kid.  

Lunch is Szechuan Shrimp (surprisingly not terrible) and Collector's Lair to look at new comics and graphics novels.

Then we hit Randolph College, a fine old brick college where the news magazine has an article about an alumnus who has returned to teach mathematics.  He's "involved with LGBTQ Advocacy Programs like the Change Project."

Change?  Uh-oh.  Sounds ex-gay.

Turns out the organization is meant to "elevate the voices of LGBTQ people throughout the Deep South."

The campus bookstore has a calendar of shirtless firemen.  WTF??

"Twelve local firefighters posed shirtless for this calendar, to raise money for cancer research." {Photo by Allison Creasy]

"Hmph!  For ladies only, I suppose. Heterosexist tripe!"

We just have time for a tour of the campus gym, to gawk at the muscular, bulge-worthy college students lifting weights and playing basketball.  

Then it's "Mindfulness in Practice" at the Maier Museum of Art, led by a practitioner in Buddhist meditation.

Several of the regulars look like they could be Friends of Dorothy, including a tall, ripped guy in his 30s.  He introduces himself as Zeke, an IT director for a health care service in town.

"My...um...friend from the Midwest and I are visiting for the day," Jon says. "Maybe you could recommend someplace that's active on a Wednesday night?"

He grins.  "There aren't any bars in Virginia, really, but a lot of the restaurants draw an eclectic clientele.  Have you heard of the Kegney Brothers?  I'll be happy to show you..."

It's another brew pub in yet another historic building downtown (established 1879).  Practically deserted, and the few patrons are all male-female couples.  Our waiter is wearing a rainbow flag lapel, though.

I order the shepherd's pie.  Zeke, who is vegetarian, surprisingly, orders the curried vegetables.

"Sorry," Zeke says.  "I thought it would be more active.  Maybe later."

We decide that it's safe to out ourselves.  "Any gay activities in town?"

"They have a LGBT queer-e-oke at the Unitarian Church on Friday nights," Zeke says, "And I don't know if you're into it, but there's a sex party at a guy I know's house every other Saturday."

"We're leaving tomorrow, unfortunately," Jon says.  "But if you want to call the guy you know, we can have a mini-party."

So we visit the guy Zeke knows, an organist at the Holy Cross Catholic Church -- there are Catholics in Lynchburg?  In his 40s, rather portly, collects spoons, of all things.  With a rather hot twink boyfriend.

After a five-person mini-party, we stumble back to our hotel room and go to bed.

In the morning, we have breakfast in the hotel and a brief workout in the hotel gym before it's time to head back to Charlottesville and a gay Halloween party.

"Boy, am I glad to be out of Lynchburg!" I say.  "I couldn't have stood it for another minute!"

I Cheat on My Boyfriend with a Goblin

Davenport, Iowa, March 1980

In December 1979, when I was a sophomore at Augustana College, I got my first actual boyfriend: Fred, 27 years old, a graduate of McCormick Theological Seminary taking his internship year at the First United Methodist Church in Rock Island.

After Christmas I started spending two or three evenings a week with Fred -- dinner (he cooked), tv, and sex, then rushing home at 11:00 pm to tell my parents I had been studying late at the library.

By March  I had introduced them to Fred, and was openly spending the night on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday.

In June we moved to Omaha together.  After an execrable six weeks, we broke up, but stayed friends for the rest of his life.

Fred actually was from the Quad Cities, or nearby; he grew up in the small town of Aledo, about 30 miles south, and got his undergraduate degree in psychology at Knox College in Galesburg.  He was still in contact with several of his Quad Cities friends, some that knew he was gay, some that didn't.

One who did was Dale Schaefer-Shit (his real name, except for the shit part), a nasty little goblin, about 3 feet high, with a very thick, heavy torso, very long, hairy arms, long sharp claws, an ugly, warty face, pointy ears, green skin, prehensile toes, a tail...

 Ok, he looked more like the top photo: Fred's age, tall, buffed, with a black beard and a hairy chest. But I always imagined him as a goblin.

I arrived at Fred's apartment, across the river in Davenport, about 4:30 pm -- dinner was at 5:00 pm, standard for the Midwest -- and at least once a week, often more than that, Dale Schaefer-Shit was there.  Apparently he  had some sort of late-night goblin job with the city, so he got up around 2:00 pm, and came to visit Fred in the late afternoon to do morning-type activities.

Sometimes he was sitting at the kitchen table, slurping on Cheerios.

Sometimes he was on the couch, watching Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat.  

Sometimes he was coming out of the bathroom, toweling off after a shower, naked, his hairy chest glistening, his cock and balls dangling between his legs.

I should have been turned on, but I wasn't.  Seeing Dale Schaefer-Shit made me angry.  I could be in a perfectly good mood, on top of the world, but when I walked in and saw the goblin, my hackles raised.  There was just something about him that seemed unclean, disturbing.  Evil.

I do not love thee, Doctor Fell.
The reason why, I cannot tell.
But this one thing, I know full well.
I do not love thee, Doctor Fell.

Apparently the feeling was mutual.  Dale Schaefer-Shit rarely spoke to me.  Usually he pretended I wasn't in the room.  And he never stuck around long after I arrived.  He said "See ya, Flintstone" to Fred, flashed me an evil smile, and slithered off to do nasty goblin things.

Where did Fred, the ministerial intern, the theologian, the trained pastoral counselor, even meet that creepy little gremlin?

"He's my oldest friend.  We grew up together.  We were both in the same Cub Scout troop.  We went to sleepovers together, and trick-or-treating on Halloween."

With that face, he must have gotten a lot of candy...

"We called each other Flintstone and Rubble, because my name is Fred.  He's the first one I told when I realized that I was gay."

I get it...he was your shadow-self, the yang to your yin, the darkness to your light, the squirrelly  snivelly Gollum to your Frodo.

"Well, he strikes me as...um.."  A nasty little gremlim!  "As sort of creepy."

"He's a little on the shy side, but he's a good guy, really."

One wet, blustery day in March, before we took our trip to Des Moines to visit the Priest with Three Boyfriends,  I arrived at the apartment to find Dale Schaefer-Shit sitting on the couch under a blanket, shirtless, eating cereal and...reading one of Fred's Playgirl magazines!

"Um...hi..."  I said tentatively.

"Fred's not here -- something held him up."  He laughed at a secret joke.  "Sit down.  Want some blanket?"

I couldn't think of any way around it, so I kicked off my shoes, threw my raincoat on the floor, and sat down next to Dale Schaefer-Shit.  I pulled the blanket over my legs. He slurped down the rest of his cereal and put the bowl aside.

"Hey, Boomer maybe you can help me.  I've always wondered about something, and Fred's too square to talk about it.  What do gay guys do in bed?  Like rub your cocks together?"

I should have said "None of your business," but Dale Schaefer-Shit had dark mystical powers.  I don't think I had a choice.  "Sometimes we do that. Fred's favorite thing is Greek, which is plowing into your butt, but he's too big for me.  I like French, which means giving the guy a b.j."

He flashed an evil grin.  "No kidding?  You suck his cock? Well, I see why Fred likes that, but what do you like about it?"  I felt a hairy leg brush against mine.  Schaefer-Shit was wearing short pants -- or naked...

Startled, and inexplicably getting aroused, I stammered "Um...I get a lot out of it.  It's totally erotic...getting a guy off."

"Yeah?  Cool!  I've got blow jobs before, with girls, but I never gave one."  He grabbed my hand under the blanket and pushed it against his naked, hairy cock.  I instinctively began masturbating him.

"I'll bet gay guys do it better, though.  You know what it feels like."  He grabbed me by the neck and pushed me down toward his crotch.

I hadn't yet learned about the custom of sharing, and besides, I couldn't stand the little goblin.  But I moved like in dream, depersonalized, watching the events from above.

I got on my knees, stuck my head under the blanket, and took Schaefer-Shit's goblin dick down my throat.  It was  average sized but hard as a rock, and covered with short hairs, like it had just been shaved.

It wasn't pleasant -- like having a hairy rock prodding at me -- so after awhile I moved on to his balls.  They were huge, what they used to call "bull balls."

 I licked and sucked them -- one was a mouthful -- while beating him off, then returned to his cock in time for him to excrete a mouthful of lukewarm, salty goblin semen.

He pulled his pants up and found his shirt, and I returned to my place next to him on the couch.  We turned on the tv and watched a game show wordlessly.  Gradually my will power returned, and I realized that I had just sucked the cock of a vile little goblin.

"Don't tell Fred about this," I said, my eyes on the screen.

"Oh, no problem.  I can keep a secret.  I'm full of secrets."

Soon Fred appeared, carrying a grocery bag.  "You guys been watching tv?" he asked suspiciously.

"I've been keeping Boomer warm for you," Schaefer-Shit said. "But now I have to go to work.  See ya, Flintstone."

"Bye, Rubble."

The next time I saw him, the little goblin went back to his habit of ignoring me.

Good.

In June we moved to Omaha, and after six weeks Fred and I broke up.  I never saw or heard about Dale Schaefer-Shit again.

Good.

I never told Fred what happened that day.

Good.

Many years later, Fred revealed that he had been cheating on me with Schaefer-Shit.  Those times I ran into the little snivelly creep coming out of the shower, he had just been in the bedroom, being screwed by my boyfriend. 

I didn't blame Fred.  Schaefer-Shit had some kind of weird dark magic, and could get you to do what he wanted.

"Sometimes I didn't have a chance to clean up afterwards," Fred added, "So when you went down on me later, my cock had been inside...well, you know."

Yeah, I know.  Inside a goblin's butt.

A Gay Romance on "Barnaby Jones"

Rock Island, October 27, 1977

The cold, windy Thursday night four days before Halloween, during my senior year at Rocky High.

The family has gathered in front of the tv set, as usual: the tv is on every night from dinnertime to bedtime, a backdrop to all of our other activities.

7:00: Welcome Back, Kotter.  I look up briefly to see Horshak (Ron Pallilo) explain, yet again, that his name means "The cattle are dying."

7:30: What's Happening!. I look up briefly to check out Haywood Nelson's butt and bulge.

At 8:00, my parents want to watch Barney Miller, but I'm anxious to see James at Fifteen, starring teen idol Lance Kerwin.  So I watch on my small portable set upstairs.

At 9:00, I turn off the tv and start doing homework.  A few moments later, my brother Ken comes clomping up the stairs.  "You'll never guess what they're watching down there!" he exclaims.  "Barnaby Jones!"

"You're kidding -- Jed Clampett as a private eye?"  The oldster detective is played by the star of the Beverly Hillbillies.

"And Catwoman is his secretary!"  Lee Meriwether, who plays Barnaby's daughter-in-law, was Catwoman on Batman.

"That's crazy.  Is their rival detective Scooby-Doo!"

Ken laughs.  "Don't take my word for it -- you have to watch to see how terrible it is."

"Old people tv!" I complain.  "No way!"  My friends would rib me unmercifully if they found out I had watched something as lame as Barnaby Jones!

Ignoring me, he flips the tv on, and clicks the dial to CBS.

No Jed Clampett, no Catwoman.  Two cute young guys, one in a muscle shirt that displays baseball-sized biceps, the other in skin-tight jeans that reveal an enormous bulge.  They are standing so close together that they seem about to kiss.

"You're the man for me!" Muscle Shirt says.

"Let's not get carried away!" Tight-Jeans protests.

"This looks good...I mean, awful."  I stammer.

Looking back, I'm surprised that I didn't "figure it out" moment.  But no, I absolutely did not connect I want to see those guys kiss!  with gay.

"What did I tell you?"  Ken flips the tv set off, flops down on his bed, and opens a math textbook.

The next week I pretend to be immersed in a book in order to watch Barnaby Jones with my parents.  Tight-Jeans is Mark Shera, playing Barnaby's nephew, a law school student.  But he definitely likes girls.

What about Muscle Shirt, with his baseball-sized biceps and the romantic plaint of "You're the man for me?"  He must have been a guest star.

Before the days of the internet, there is no way to track down the episode.  I'll have to wait for summer reruns.

But during the summer, I am working at the Carousel Snack Bar on Thursday nights.  The scene of gay romance is lost forever.

Until 2017, when I found a photo of the scene on ebay, which led to the entire episode on youtube: "Gang War," starring 31-year old Asher Brauner.  My memory changed the dialogue a bit: he's not in love with Mark Shera, he's about to kidnap him.

Asher Brauner has been in a few movies of gay interest: he  played "Buddy" in Alexander: the Other Side of Dawn (1977), about a teenage runaway who becomes a hustler, and "Ted," in the gay-themed Making Love.  

He played the hero in the Indiana Jones spoof Treasure of the Moon Goddess (1987), and a man-mountain who takes out entire countries in American Eagle (1989) and Merchants of War (1989).

And he was the hero of a gay romance that I misread 30 years ago on Barnaby Jones.