"My Uncle's Queer": My Nephew's Transformation from Choir Boy to Punk Rocker

Rock Island, December 1999

I am in grad school in New York, visiting Rock Island and Indianapolis for the holidays, staying with my brother Kenny in his rundown, rambling house downtown.  The house is crowded with Kenny's children and stepchildren, plus a huge assortment of dogs, cats, hamsters, and parrots.

It's easy to miss Joel, Ken's youngest son, in the crowd: he's thirteen years old, short, slim, a quiet, polite Johnny Nazarene.  But a talented singer: he's toured in Iowa, Minnesota, and Sweden with the Moline Boys' Choir.  We go to their Christmas concert and hear his solo in "Come, O Come Emmanuel."

December 2000

Yuri and I are visiting Rock Island for the holidays. My family practices a "don't ask, don't tell" policy, so they don't know if we're friends or boyfriends or lovers.  Most of them probably don't even know that we are gay.  But Joel figures it out.  Although he claims to be straight, he asked us to teach him and his friend Max "how gay guys have sex."

Yuri and I teach him about gay kissing.





August 2001

I've completed my Ph.D., and I'm visiting Rock Island for a few days just before moving to Florida.  Joel is a cute 15 year old with short black hair, pale skin, and nicely rounded biceps.  Nazarenes aren't allowed to listen to "the devil's music," basically anything with guitars, but he likes Weezer, Nickelback, and other groups that I never heard of, but sound loud.

Oddly, ,my brother doesn't forbid it.  "It's his life," Kenny says.  "If he likes the devil's music, that's on him."

Joel asks why I didn't bring Yuri.  "You guys are, like, hot together, aren't you?"

Ken glares at me, accusing me of outing myself to his son.  "Boomer has a lot of friends, all kinds," he explains.  "Black, white, Jewish, Muslim, gay, straight.  He's so liberal, it hurts."



December 2001

It's only been six months since I saw him last, and the transformation is amazing.  Joel is a surly 15-year old, dressed all in black, who protests the "capitalist spending frenzy" of Christmas.  He spends most of his time in his room, listening to metal music.  He emerges to eat a bowl of Lucky Charms instead of Christmas dinner, and to ask "So, Uncle Gizmo, are the beach boys hot down in Florida?  I bet you get tons of action."

In front of the whole family, including relatives I wasn't out to!

"Um...well, I do ok," I stammer.

Later I ask Kenny if Joel is gay.

"Nope, nope, nope!" Kenny exclaims.  "He's totally hot for girls.  He's got a little gay friend, but that doesn't mean a thing."


June 2003

Maybe Kenny is angry about my accidental outing, or maybe he's just busy, but he doesn't invite me to Christmas in Rock Island in 2002. I don't visit again until June 2003.

Joel has just turned 17.  He has green hair, earrings,  and a pierced lip.  He gives me a hug and calls me "Beach Boy,"

He just got back from Hardcore Fest, where he heard Walls Of Jericho, Suicide Note, Saved By Grace, As We Speak, Provoke, How It Ends, Devastator, Preacher Gone To Texas, Blood In Blood Out, Too Pure To Die, For Death or Glory, Wings Of Scarlet, Uphold, Begin Again, King of Clubz, Pound for Pound, Undo Tomorrow, Haunted Life and Butt Lynt.

"Sounds like a great lineup," I tell him. I've never heard of any of them.

And naturally he's the lead vocalist in his own punk band, The Dead Eunuchs.

June 2004

Joel has a bright red mohawk and a nose ring.  The Dead Eunuchs has been performing all over the Quad Cities.  Tonight they have a gig at the Rusty Nail in Davenport.

"You should come," Joel says.  "We play a great set."

Well -- I'm not much for punk music in noisy heterosexual bars. "I don't think..."

 "You'll like one of our songs.  It's called 'My Uncle's Queer.'"


My face begins to burn.  Is Joel outing me in front of roomsful of drunken heterosexual rednecks?  "Queer?  Sounds homophobic!" I exclaim.

"The Dead Eunuchs are opposed to racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, fascism, capitalism, brutality, and the police state," Joel recites.  "It's right there on our MySpace page. Come Saturday night.  You'll find out."

It's a small club with a bar and grille and a little stage.  About 20 people in the audience, some rednecks, but mostly bohemians of all shapes and sizes.  The Dead Eunuchs, five guys in their late teens or early 20s, perform in mohawks, shirtless (nice abs), with lots of crotch-grabbing and pretending to lick each other.

Their songs are the standard punk "life is meaningless" shtick, until they come to "My Uncle's Queer."

As far as I can tell from the screeching, the lyrics are:

My uncle's queer, you heard me right!
He won't tell Dad, he's scared to fight!
Break the system, break the wall,
Press your cock against my balls.
We're all dying from the fear
Inside out, everybody's queer!

Not very complementary, but at least it's inclusive.

Guitar riff, and then the second verse:


My sister kissed a dyke for [?],
My brother sucked a stud for Jesus
We all got cocks, we all got balls,
We all got faces pressed to the wall.
I am queer!  You are queer!
Hear that preacher, the world is queer!

"Nice inclusive message," I tell Joel later as he sits, shirtless and sweat-soaked, at my booth eating a hamburger.   "But not entirely accurate.  I've been out to your Dad since high school.  He was the first one I told when I figured it out."

"The song isn't about you.  It's about everybody who's afraid to be who they are."

I hesitate about asking if Joel is really "queer" or not -- it would be contrary to his message of solidarity.

And no, he never invites me to "press my cock against his balls."  

Billy Booth Comes Out on the Set of "The Twilight Zone"

Billy Booth was playing on his Little League team in LaCrescenta, California, about 20 miles from Hollywood, when an agent approached his mother and asked if he would be interested in doing some tv commercials.  A decade of tv and movie work followed: The Snow Queen (1957), Goodyear Theatre (1959), The Slowest Gun in the West (1960), Donna Reed (1964), and Andy Griffith (1964), plus a recurring role as Tommy on Dennis the Menace  (1959-1963).

But his favorite role, the one he would remember forever, was "Short Boy" on The Twilight Zone, when he was 11 years old.

"A Stop at Willoughby" (May 6, 1960) was one of many episodes about harried business executives who escape to what narrrator/writer Rod Serling thought of as the kinder, simpler world  of the 19th century, with people riding on penny-farthings and bands playing "Beautiful Dreamer" in the park

In this case, harried ad exec Gart Williams (41-year old James Daly) escapes from his obnoxious boss and harridan wife when his commuter train makes an unexpected stop at the small town of Willoughby, July 1888.

For the rest of the episode, he tries desperately to return.  Finally he succeeds.  In the twist ending, it turns out that he jumped out of the train to his death, and "Willoughby and Sons" is the name of the funeral home.

Billy played one of the two barefoot boys walking toward the fishing hole, then returning to town later. The older (Butch Hengen) tells Williams that "the fish are biting."  Williams says "I might go with you tomorrow."

That's all: two walk-ons, shot together on a single afternoon, uncredited, no lines.  But what happened after stayed with Billy forever.

After his scene, he expected someone to take the fishing pole and fish prop from his hands, but no one came.  He started walking, but took a wrong turn and got lost, still dressed like Huckleberry Finn.  The hard ground hurt his feet.  He was getting a little worried, when suddenly Jim Daly was beside him.

"Are those real fish?" he asked, smiling

"Yep. Boy, do they smell!"

"We'd better get them back to props.  Come on, I'll show you the way."  Jim put his hand on his shoulder and steered him in the opposite direction, back across the Willoughby set.

Jim was very big and tall.  Billy felt like a big man just walking next to him, like they were pals.

"Do you think you'd like to live in a town like Willoughby?"

"Naw -- it sounds real square.  No tv, no movies, no comic books!  But I liked working here.  Butch is cool -- me and him, we're going to the beach tomorrow, if his Mom says it's ok."

"That's fine  That's all you need, really, in this life -- one special friend.  They're hard to find."

"Oh, I got lots of friends."

"Sure, but do you have a special friend?  Someone who makes you smile whenever you look at him, who makes you sad when you have to say goodbye."  Jim was staring straight ahead, reciting as if remembering a scene. His words made Billy feel warm and happy inside.  "Who you don't want to say goodbye to, ever -- you want to spend you life with him."

"That's pretty cool, Mister Daly.  Is it from a movie?"

"No, it's from real life.  Or at least, how I wish life could be.  Maybe it will be, when you grow up."

They handed the fish and fishing pole to the prop master, who snarled "It's about time!  I thought you nicked it!"   Then Jim walked Billy to where his mother was waiting.  They shook hands and said goodbye.

Billy never saw him again.  But he remembered the warm hand on his shoulder, the distant, faraway look, the sadness.

One special friend.  

Billy's next job was on an episode of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.  Dwayne Hickman and Bob Denver were both nice to him,  but the only cast member who made him smile just by looking at him was Mike Burns, a cute teenager with big muscles and a hairy chest.  But Mike ignored Billy, or talked like he was just a little kid.

One special friend.

Jay North, his costar on Dennis the Menace?  Nice, but not very cute.

Mickey Sholdar on The Farmer's Daughter?  Cute, but not very nice.

Like many child stars, Billy found acting jobs scarce once he hit puberty.  But he didn't mind: he could go to a regular school with regular kids, and do normal things like ride bikes and go to the beach.  He started fantasizing about cute guys climbing into his bed, hugging and kissing him, touching him down there.

A guy from his biology class; his gym teacher; Robert Vaughn, the Man from Uncle;  Mike Burns; and Jim Daly, who (in Billy's fantasy) had muscles and a hairy chest, big hands, and a gigantic penis.

In high school Billy began dating girls.  His favorite dates ended with him and a friend dropping off the girls and then parking and going down on him, feeling a buff guy's cock thrust against his tongue and throat.  But it was just a physical release -- his friend could never be a special friend.  He was too busy thinking about girls.

Billy graduated from LaCrescenta High in 1967- and enrolled at USC.  Some of his classmates were growing their hair long, smoking pot, and joining in the anti-war protests, but Billy never did.  He was a good boy, quiet, respectful, studious, a square.  Besides, with their long hair and beads, hippie boys looked like girls.  He liked "real men," strong, masculine, powerful.

Like the football jocks he invited to his dorm room to beat off while looking at Playboy.  Sometimes he went down on them, but again, it was just a physical release.  They were both supposed to be thinking about girls.

In 1974 Billy graduated from USC with a degree in political science.  He moved to San Francisco to go to the Hastings College of Law, and met gay people for the first time.  Men who acted like women, flouncing and sashaying down the street.  Not a problem -- he was open-minded -- but with no connection to his life at all.  Instead he started dating Kathy, a Berkeley undergrad majoring in English.

She was certainly a friend -- they had a lot of fun together.  And they had sex - it was simply a matter of closing his eyes and fantasizing about a muscular guy with a hairy chest.  That desire to touch her, to be touched by her, was absent, but it was probably just a childhood fantasy -- it didn't exist in the real world.  Kathy must be his special friend.

In June 1977 they married and moved to Los Osos, California, in San Luis Obispo County.  They bought a house near the beach.  Billy started a private practice in business and real estate law, and Kathy worked on her writing.  In October she announced that she was pregnant.

Billy was 28 years old, with everything he was supposed to want in life: house, job, wife, child on the way.  This was the life everyone wanted.

Wasn't it?

Well, wasn't it?

He had never been so miserable.

One day on a whim, he tracked down James Daly, who remembered their brief conversation 17 years ago!  He got an invitation to visit.

Kathy didn't understand why he wanted to cross the country to visit someone he met once, but she wasn't about to pass up a trip to New York, so in January 1978, shortly after the New Year, they flew out to Nyack.

Daly was 59 years old, graying but still big and tall, still acting in local theater and taking the train into Manhattan every weekend.  They went shopping for antiques, and walked on the beach even though it was in the 20s outside.  Nearly the first thing he told them was: "I'm gay."

He grinned at their shock -- you didn't just come out to near-strangers in 1978!  "For the last six months I've been telling everyone.  You'd be surprised how healing it is. Such a blessing to finally end the lies."

"How long have you known?" Billy asked.

"Oh, since I was a boy.  But when I was young, we thought it was a mental disorder.  [My wife] Hope and I tried all sorts of therapy to 'cure' me before figuring that it was hopeless and divorcing.  Even then, I stayed in the closet."

"Have you ever had a companion?" Kathy asked.  "Someone to spend your life with?  A special friend?"

Billy stared -- he had never used that term in front of Kathy.  How did she know it?

"Lots of lovers, but I'm afraid that the happiness of a special friend has always eluded me.  I think because I came out of the closet too late."

"It's never too late," Kathy said, glancing over at Billy.

They waited until their son Devon was five years old to divorce.  Billy continued to live in Los Osos and practice law, stayed close to Kathy and watched Devon grow up, but he was down in Los Angeles most weekends.

He had brunch at the French Quarter.  He visited the gay synagogue.  He had many boyfriends and lovers, and a partner who lived with him for 12 years.

Billy Booth died on December 31, 2006.  His family suggests that, instead of flowers, you can best honor his memory by calling an old friend.

William Faulkner and his Boyfriend Paint Robert's Penis Green

Call me Artie.  Your story about visiting Lynchburg, Virginia, the "scariest place on Earth," made me laugh.  I grew up in Marion, Virginia, about a hundred miles away, and Lynchburg was our beacon of culture and enlightenment!

This was long before Stonewall.  I graduated from high school in 1951  (don't do the math: I know how old that makes me!).   But we knew all about gay people; every town had its resident "queer," and there were private men-only parties where guys from 100 miles around would gather.

In Marion, the parties were held at the home of the high school drama teacher.  One of the regular guests was Robert Anderson: about 40, with a slim, slight build, a little moustache, a hairy chest, and a rather big cock, but a complete bottom.  In those days, young guys were always the "trade," going down on older, so it was quite a kick watching Mr. Anderson reverse the roles, going down on the twinks and Cute Young Things.

Mr. Anderson was the mayor and the editor of the local newspaper, plus he had a wife and daughter at home.  You may wonder, wasn't it dangerous, in Virginia in the late 1940s, with gay sex being a crime?  You see, if anyone told on Mr. Anderson, he would report on them, so we were all safe.

It wasn't just about sex.  We were a circle of brothers, a bulwark against the homophobia of the outside world.  We joked, gossipped, and told stories about gigantic penises and celebrity hookups, just like you did in West Hollywood parties years later.  Mr. Anderson liked to tell the one about his first three-way:

New Orleans, June 1925

New Orleans in the Jazz Age!  What could be more exciting for a teenager with an adventurous spirit, a famous father, and a stepmother who was trying to buy his love with endless gifts of clothes and cash?

Robert (never Bob) was fascinated by the new social and sexual freedom of the 1920s.  Women had the right to vote, and could drive autos, smoke, and wear pants, with barely an eyebrow raised.  Men wore perfume and marcelled their hair, and called it the latest style.  Black, white, Creole, Italian, Jew: all races mixed with equality and passion.  There were proponents of free love, birth control, anarchy, Bolshevism, vegetarianism, and Buddhism.


Robert's father was Sherwood Anderson, the literary flaneur whose Winesburg, Ohio (1919) is still required reading in schools.  Their apartment in the Pontalba Building, off Jackson Square, was a bona fide literary salon, a gathering-place for writers and artists of all sorts, from Carl Sandburg to F. Scott Fitzgerald.  But the writer who most fascinated him was Bill Faulkner.

William Faulkner is famous today for Southern Gothic classics like The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom!, but in the spring of 1925 he had only published poetry, and only in college magazines.  He was working on his first novel under Sherwood Anderson's tutelage.

He was 28 years old, a short, small man, not a Charles Atlas "physical culture" type, soft-spoken, rather fey; yet his dark eyes and intense energy were immensely attractive.  Robert assumed that he was queer.  He wondered what queers did in the bedroom, and resolved to find out.

When Faulkner first moved to New Orleans in November 1924, he stayed with the Andersons, but by March 1925 he had fallen in love with Bill Spratling, a 23-year old instructor of architecture at Tulane University.  He moved into Spratling's apartment in Pirate's Alley, about a block away [now it's the home of Faulkner House Books], where they held court with a large group of artists, writers, bon vivants, and intellectuals, most of them queer men or women.

Robert barged his way into some of their soirees, and was disappointed to find no sex going on, just a lot of drinking, piano-playing, and discussions of Valentino, Kandinsky, Thomas Mann, and "Rhapsody in Blue."

Maybe if he caught them alone, they would be in the middle of an act, and he would be invited to watch -- or join in.  He had heard about the "French vice: that the New Woman liked to practice on her lovers -- what we call oral sex now -- there was no reason why a queer couldn't do that, too!

Robert was definitely interested in going down on Bill Faulkner, and maybe Spratling, too.  Maybe both together?  He started practicing on bananas, so he wouldn't gag on their enormous penises.

He began knocking on their door with various excuses at odd hours -- 8:00 am; 10:00 pm; noon.  But they were never "in media res."  They were sitting down to breakfast, or working in the garden, or one of them was out.

In June they announced an upcoming trip to Europe.  Robert knew that he had to act fast.  One evening around 10:00 pm, he knocked on their door, as usual, but when Spratling answered, he screwed up his courage and kissed him on the mouth.

"Hey, now!" Spratling exclaimed, startled.  And then he called back into the house "Bill, did you order a boy to be sent over?"

Faulkner appeared wearing only pajama bottoms.  "Him again?  After all this time, you'd think the agency would send us a new one."

"I just...I mean..." Robert began.  He expected them to be all over him, kissing and touching his body.  Instead, they were joking, distant.  "I wanted..."

"It's been quite obvious what you want for some time," Faulkner said.  "The question is, why would I be disrespectful to my dear friend Sherwood Anderson by corrupting his first-born son?"

"It's not corrupting.  Not if I'm willing."

Spratling laughed.  "I think we can accommodate the pest...I mean, the young queer in training.  Shall we all adjourn to the boudoir?""

"No, your studio would be much more exciting than a boring old bedroom," Faulkner said.  "Don't you agree?"

They both put their arms around Robert and escorted him into the next room -- to Spratling's studio (he was an aspiring artist as well as an architect). 

Robert nodded mutely.  The Bills both stripped out of their clothes -- Faulkner was average sized, uncut, and Spratling very big.  Neither were aroused.  Following their lead, Robert took his clothes off -- he was most definitely aroused -- and approached Faulkner and groped him, and leaned in for a kiss.

Faulkner swung him around and pinned his arms behind his back.

"Wait...what...."

Spradling grabbed a brush and pallet and began painting his cock!

"Wait...this isn't..."  Robert said, straining against Faulkner's arms.

"Calm down, my dear.  Soon you'll be a work of art." Spradling pushed up Robert's still-aroused cock to paint the underside.  The brush felt like a tongue licking at his shaft, not at all unpleasant.  "You'll be in all the museums.  Your dick will be famous world-wide -- and much more impressive than Michelangelo's David, I might add."

"Do the balls, too," Faulkner suggested.

"Oh, no, the penis alone will be my masterpiece.  Besides, it's such a monstrous specimen, I'm sure I'll run out of paint."  He dabbed Robert's cock head with green.  "All done.  Now, shall we introduce young Master Robert to his adoring public?"

Before he knew what was happening, Robert was pushed, naked and dripping green paint, through the kitchen door into Cabildo Alley.  He banged on the door, but they didn't answerr.  The only thing to do was walk home, ignoring the stares and jeers of the evening crowd, without being arrested for indecent exposure.  At home, he told his parents that he had been the victim of a fraternity initiation.

Robert never visited the Two Bills again -- he sent a friend to retrieve his clothes.  But he did hook up with Spradley alone one night, after Faulkner moved away, and the next summer, in France, he and his brother "shared" Paul Robeson.  But those are stories for another time.

See also: Beefcake and Boyfriends of the Jazz Age