Bill and I Become a Mama and a Papa

Rock Island

When I was a kid, my boyfriend Bill and I were constantly on the lookout for evidence that sometimes men like men, and marry them, and live with them in a house.  But the adults talked in riddles, or pretended not to know what we were talking about, or downright lied.  So one day, I think when I was nine years old, we took matters into our own hands and became Papas.

Bill was spending the night, and as a special treat Dad took us out to eat at A&W.

It was a drive in: you parked your car, ordered through a radio thing, and a girl in a short skirt (called a car-hop) brought your food on a tray that attached to the car window.

We actually preferred Sandy's, a few blocks away, where cute college boys in Scottish kilts sold Edin-burgers.  

A&W had good chili dogs, french fries, and root beer, and sometimes little toys came with the meal, but the hamburgers were heterosexist.  Selection was based on your role in the heterosexual nuclear family:

Papa Burger
Mama Burger
Teen (boy) Burger
Baby (girl) Burger

My brother and I always ordered the Teen Burger.  No one wanted to be a Baby, and we were too young to be Papas.

Even as a kid, I knew that there was something wrong with this scenario.  What about baby boys and teen girls?  Or young adults, like my Uncle Paul, who were married but didn't have kids yet?

Or boys who liked boys?

Bill and I looked at each other and grinned, tacitly agreeing.  When Dad asked what we wanted, we said "Papa Burger" in unison.  "And fries and root beer," I added.

He stared at us in the rear view mirror, perplexed. "Are you sure?  They're pretty big."

"We're hungry," I said.  "Being Papas is hard work."

"You can't both be Papas!"  my brother Ken exclaimed. "Where are the Mamas?"

"We adopted our kids," Bill said, playing along.

"Single men can't adopt kids," Mom pointed out. "You'll have to have Mamas sooner or later."

"Ok, so I'm the Papa and Bill's the Mama." Strangely, no one thought of the musical group.

"No way!" Bill protested.  "I'm not changing any diapers!"

"If you're a Papa and a Mama," Ken said, "You got to kiss."

"Ok."  I leaned over and tried to kiss Bill on the mouth, but he turned away, and I got his cheek.

"Ok, Skeezix, that's enough!" Dad yelled, suddenly angry.  "You're both getting Teen Burgers, and that's that!" (He always called me Skeezix when I failed to demonstrate heterosexual interest.)

We cringed in the back seat.  What was he so upset about?  We were just playing!

But sometimes even a hamburger can be a form of resistance.

Coincidentally, that was about the time Dad and Mom began insisting that I play a sport.   Sports as a remedy to gayness?

The Boy Named Angel

When I was in grade school, I had a regular boyfriend, but I liked lots of  other boys: Craig, who sat next to me in class; Joel, who also liked looking at boys with muscles; Robbie, a hookup at the bookmobile one summer: and David Angel.

Not the David Angell who produced Cheers and Frasier.  A slim, shy boy, puppy-dog cute, with dark hair and dark blue eyes and nice hands.  We played occasionally, but never became friends, I think because there were so many bigger, bolder guys around.  It was one of those relationships that might have gone somewhere, but didn't.

I have three good memories of David:

1. One day at recess we all decided to take nicknames.  David wanted "Muscles."
"But you don't have any muscles!" I protested.
"Sure I do. I'm real strong!  Feel."
He flexed a small, hard bicep.  I cupped it with my hand.
"You're right.  It's really big."  Flushed with an warmth that I didn't understand, I moved quickly away.

2. In the spring of sixth grade, shortly after we went to "A Little Bit O'Heaven," Joel invited some of us over for a sleepover.  His small twin bed was only big enough for two; everyone else had to make do with sleeping bags.  We spent the evening wondering who would be the Fifth Boy, the boy invited to share Joel's bed.

At bedtime, Joel said "Everybody else here has been in my bed before, so it's David's turn."

My heart sank.  I wanted to be the one!

"That's ok -- I like the floor," David said.  "Why don't you let Boomer?"

Joel glared at him, and my boyfriend Bill glared at me, but neither of them could say anything as I took my place beside Joel.

3. In junior high, we had gym class together, and I got one of my first sausage sightings of David in the shower.

And three bad memories:

1. We were playing once when a middle-aged woman, presumably his mother, appeared.  "Your father won't let me back in the house," she told David.  "There's food cooking -- I need you to turn the stove off, so it won't burn."  Weird and creepy.

2. David never invited anyone over to his house to play or watch cartoons.  We were intimately familiar with every other house in the neighborhood, but not his. So one day Bill and I knocked on the door, ostensibly to invite him to go to Schneider's and look at comic books, but really to get a glimpse inside.

He came to the door, pale and nervous.  "Are you nuts?" he whispered.  "You can't be here!  My Dad sleeps during the day!"

"We were just..."

"Get out!" he whispered.  "Get lost!"

3. One day in junior high gym class, David was stripping down, and I saw a large red-and-purple bruise on his chest.

"Wow, how did you get that?" I asked.

"What, this?"  He quickly covered it up.  "That's nothing.  We were just playing around.  It happens to everybody."

"Who was playing around?"

"Um...my cousin and me.  Just playing around, no big deal."

I couldn't imagine what kind of playing around might cause a bruise like that.

Ok, I get it now: these are obvious signs of domestic and child abuse.  But what kid in the 1970s would think of that?

And one mixed memory:

During our senior year in high school, Bill told me that  David went crazy.  All of a sudden he forgot to how speak English, and he only knew a few words of Spanish, so he started yelling "Te amo!  Te amo!  Te amo!"

We went to visit him at the East Moline State Mental Hospital.  We were directed to a big, airy room where patients in bathrobes were playing pingpong and foosball.  At the far end, several sat on chairs watching One Life to Live.  

David was sitting on a white couch, in a t-shirt and pajama bottoms, laughing over a paperback edition of Tom Sawyer.  I hadn't seen him, except in passing, since junior high gym class -- my first thought was "He's gotten really muscular!"  He had a hard, smooth chest and thick biceps. He still had a shy, wounded puppy-dog expression.

But he didn't act shy or wounded!

"Hi, guys!"  he exclaimed.  "Rapley let you out early, huh?"

Bill and I glanced at each other.  Mrs. Rapley was our fifth grade teacher.

David laughed.  "I'm just joking with you.  I know what year it is.  Let's have a hug."

He stood and gave us each a bear hug, and sat us down on either side of him.

"So, what's new with you guys?  You still an item?"

"An item?" Bill repeated.  "What...what do you mean?"

"An item -- you know, like giving each other flowers and chocolates and carving your names into trees with little hearts!"

My face burned.  "David, you know that we're both boys, right?"

"Come on, Boomer, you know the soul doesn't have a gender.  We're infinite beings trapped in one-dimensional bodies, so what does it matter if you have the same plumbing?  Get married already, march down that aisle.  God knows you were meant for each other!"

"What are you talking about?" Bill asked in a curt, angry tone.

"David is confused," I told him.  "He doesn't mean to imply anything."

"Hey, just because I'm crazy doesn't mean I can't see what's right in front of my eyes!  Now you gonna kiss, or what?"

"Um..actually, we broke up awhile ago."  I figured that was the only way to end the uncomfortable conversation.

"Yeah.  We're still friends, of course, but we're dating other...um...guys now."

"That's too bad.  You make such a cute couple! Maybe you'll find each other again later on, in your next life."

We chatted for awhile longer, about other things, and then left.  In the parking lot, Bill said "Wow, David is worse than I thought!"

"Completely delusional!  Where'd he ever get the idea that we were...you know?"

"Next he'll be claiming that we're little green men from Mars!"

Two months later, I finally discovered what David had known all along.

The adults are lying -- only real is real.
We stop the fight right now -- we got to be what we feel.

I recently tracked down David again, thanks to Facebook.  He moved to Missouri to stay with his aunt and uncle, graduated from high school a year late, studied biology in college, and worked in a zoo.  Later he moved to Denver and became a dog trainer.  He still suffers from anxiety and depression, but he is taking medication.  He is heterosexual but has never married.  

No post mentions an abusive parent.

My Boyfriend Bill Grows Up

Remember my first boyfriend, Bill, from Denkmann Elementary School?  We were inseparable for three years, walking to and from school, watching Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat, reading comic books, inviting cute boys over for sleepovers.

We had our own gang -- me, Bill, Joel, and Greg -- who liked looking at men with muscles.

I have lots of good stories about Bill:

The naked Indian god at the pow wow.

The time we went to A Little Bit O'Heaven for my birthday trip, expecting statues of naked Greek gods?

The time we got Dad upset by claiming to be a Mama and a Papa.

We stayed friends in junior high, but we drifted apart into other interests and social circles.

The last time I was at his house was for a Halloween party in tenth grade, probably October 31st, 1975.  I spent most of the evening talking to his big brother Mike, who used to call me "Bud" and drive us places.

The last time I saw Bill was during 12th grade, probably March or April 1978, when we visited David Angel in the mental hospital.  He thought we were a couple.  We laughed it off as ridiculous.



The years passed: Augustana College, Indiana University,  Texas, West Hollywood, San Francisco.
I didn't hear anything from or about Bill, though I often spoke of him as my first boyfriend.

The years passed: New York, Florida, Ohio, Upstate New York.  I started a blog about my childhood memories, and recorded all of my Bill stories.

I tried to look him up, but none of the high school or college friends that I was still in contact with remembered him, and he had a common name, impossible to google.

Before I knew it, I was 54 years old.  Nearly 40 years had passed since the day Bill and I visited David Angel.

Then out of nowhere I got a friend request from him on Facebook.

Eagerly I scoped out his Facebook profile.

Where was he living?  Reno, Nevada
What was his job?  Restaurant manager.

Most importantly, was he gay?  Were my memories real, or a misinterpretation of a straight boy's friendship?

Status: single.
Favorite TV shows: Breaking Bad, Lost, CSI.  
Favorite movies: Back to the Future, Men in Black, Star Wars
Favorite music: R.E.M., The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jefferson Airplane

Didn't tell me anything.  But then, my facebook profile is also vague.

Time for our first chat in 40 years.

We exchanged life histories in that stilted, obituary style that you use when reconnecting with someone after many years.  He studied culinary arts at Black Hawk College, then worked as a chef at Jumer's Castle Lodge, across the river in Bettendorf.  During the 1990s, he opened a restaurant near the resort of Wisconsin Dells.  It went bankrupt after the stock market downturn of 2004, and he moved to Reno, Nevada, where he now manages all of the restaurants in one of the casinos.

"But I've dabbled in other businesses, too," he continued.  "In 1999 I became co-owner of a strip club in Moline, out by the airport."

My heart sank.  A strip club?  Straight!

"I insisted that we were equal opportunity," Bill said.  "We had male strippers on Tuesday nights."

"I've been there!" I exclaimed.  "Christmastime 1999 or 2000.  On male stripper night.  I saw my old Sunday school teacher's sons, Mickey and Dom!"

If Bill noticed that I had just outed myself, he didn't let on.  "Sure, I remember them.  College boy act.  Very good, very professional, and they had the goods.  I always auditioned the strippers personally, to make sure they were up to speed."

"Men and women both?"

"Of course!  I have a pretty good eye for beauty, as you saw with Mickey and Dom."

Bisexual?  Or straight and nonchalant about gay people?

"What about romances?" I asked.  "Any long-term relationships?"

"I was married for 15 years.  We had an open relationship, though. We both saw other people.  Since then I've been single."

Bisexual?  Or straight?

"But what about you?" Bill asked.  "Any boyfriends, lovers, husbands?  After Dan at Washington Junior High, I mean."

Boyfriends, lovers, husbands -- he knew about me!  And he interpreted my friendship with Dan as a romance.  

I told him about Fred the Ministerial Student in college, Raul and my celebrity boyfriend in West Hollywood, 10 years with Lane, 5 years with Troy. 7 years with Yuri (we were friends, but closer than many lovers).

"You've been busy!" Bill exclaimed.  "Me too.  I'm single but not lonely.  I can still attract the hotties -- look."

He sent me a nude photo.  

It was eerie looking at Bill's face again after 40 years.  He was a little chunky, with a muscular, slightly hairy chest and big biceps.  

In all of our sleepovers, I never saw Bill nude.  He was a little small beneath the belt, uncut.  

"Hot!" I told him.

"Thanks.  It gets me a lot of action."

Ok, still noncommittal.  Time to ask.

"Action with men or women?"

Bill didn't hesitate.  "Oh, men, of course.  Women are nice and all -- I wouldn't kick Scarlett Johansson out of bed -- but at the end of the day you really want two muscular arms around you and a baseball bat pressing against your leg.  We knew that back in third grade, didn't we?"

"All but the baseball bat part.  I didn't figure that out until after high school."

"Well, I was precocious.  I started getting busy in 10th grade.  Remember Aaron, the Rabbi's son?  And Tyrone, on the football team?  And what about that cutie who played the violin...what was his name?"

"Todd."  Had he gone to bed with everyone I had a crush on?

We should have stayed friends.  It would have made high school a lot more fun.

Bill died recently.  One of our last chats on Facebook was his memory of the day we became a Mama and a Papa at the A&W Restaurant.

Island in the Sky: My First Boyfriend

Rock Island, February 1969

Just after Christmas in 1968, when I was in the third grade, a boy named Bill, short and deeply tanned with black eyes and small hard fists, suddenly started to chase me across the schoolyard to my house every afternoon, threatening to pound me for some offense. But I proved too swift, and my house  too close by, to make pounding feasible, so Bill took to walking next to me instead, pointing out the other boys he had pounded or planned to pound.

This isn't him, of course.  This model is well over 18.  But it will give you an idea of his arms, shoulders, and smile.


The "pounding" attempts went on for a month or two.  One day in February, when we reached the chain-link fence, Bill announced, “I’m gonna go to Dewey’s and get an ice cream cone.” Dewey’s was a store in a white building on 20th Avenue, facing Denkmann to attract rich South Side kids as they walked home with allowance money bulging in their pockets.  It sold mostly kids’ treats: ice cream, candy bars, Hostess Twinkies, little bags of Lays Potato Chips.

“It’s too cold for ice cream,” I said.  "Anyway, a Mean Boy named Dick hangs out there."

“Ok.” Bill turned abruptly and walked away, his boots crunching loudly on the ice-encrusted snow. But after a few steps, he turned back. “They have other stuff, too,” he said in a low dismal voice.  "Uh. . .you know, if you want, you can come with. I got money.”

Finally I understood, and I almost laughed. Bill was asking me for a date! For all his tough-guy posturing, he was shy and nervous when it came to talking to boys. Maybe this was why he became a bully – they rarely dated anyone. They substituted pounding for hugs, pointed out faults to avoid being rejected.

“That sounds cool,” I said. Bill had muscles, and he was forceful, always in charge, so we could play adventure games and Bill could rescue me and I could exclaim “My hero!” And it would be fun to date a bully; imagine the stares and double-takes when we played together at recess!

After buying a Milky Way for me and Hostess Snowballs for himself, Bill suggested that we eat at his house instead of staying at Dewey’s, where the fat man behind the counter always glared at kids and muttered about long-haired hippie freaks. Besides, Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat would be on in a few minutes.

Bill was rich.  He lived in a gigantic house with lots of levels and an arbor out back.  He and his brother and sister all had their own rooms. There was a separate dining room, and a family room with oak panels and chairs shaped like barrels and a piano in the corner.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in the family room, watching Bugs Bunny and The Three Stooges on Cartoon Showboat and drinking Squirt from thick, heavy glasses, the first I had ever seen that were actually made of glass, not plastic.

Bill’s family kept rushing in, all bubbly and excited. His Mom, a squat brown smiling woman, invited me to stay for dinner. His Dad asked what I was studying in school and lent me a book on the ancient Aztecs. His older brother, a high schooler named Mike, mussed my hair and called me “Bud” and offered to drive us places.

Later I found out why everyone was so excited – Bill had never liked a boy before! This was the first time he had ever invited a boy over as an actual date!

This photo is not really of him; I only have a few photos of me and Bill together, and most of them make us look like little kids (that's really his house, though).

After that Bill invited me over to his house almost every day after school, and on weekends he always thought of something fun to do: miniature golf, hiking at Black Hawk Park, a “young people’s” concert at Augustana College, a trip to the Putnam Museum in Davenport to see Egyptian mummies and a huge Aztec calendar stone.

Sometimes Bill asked me to sleep over, and if it wasn’t a school night we got to stay up as late as we wanted, even later than his big brother. We lay propped on thick starchy pillows on Bill’s bed, eating Lay’s Potato Chips and listening to “Chicken Man” on the radio and reading comic books. I had only a few comic books of my own, donated by uncles or traded with cousins, but Bill had hundreds, of every type imaginable: Superman, Tarzan, Archie, Donald Duck, Little Lulu, Casper.

One of the Casper comics was so beautiful that I begged Bill to let me keep it. The cover showed the ghost-boy scaring a superhero. In the story inside, Casper flew an island in the sky called The Elysian Fields. There he met the gods of Greek mythology – Zeus, Apollo, Ganymede, Hyacinth – all with beautifully sculpted muscles. They lived together, eating grapes, throwing a discus, playing horseshoes on a unicorn horn, their idyll threatened only by the mischief of a green-faced trickster god.

They lived together – that was the most important part, the reason I asked for that comic book out of all of Bill’s hundreds. I had never heard the word "gay" before, but I knew that this was proof positive that grown-up men got married and lived together, and maybe when we were grown-ups, Bill and I would get married and live together  too.

The comic book reappears, when Darry and I search for it during my senior year in high school, and when I write a story about it during my freshman year in college

Slow Dancing with Boys at Washington Junior High

Rock Island, September 1972

When I was in 6th and 7th grades (models are ovr 18), I was told incessantly about my upcoming "discovery of girls."  No matter that I thought "girls are yucky!" now.  One day soon, very soon, I would awaken changed, my body and my mind aching to kiss, hold, hug, and have sex with girls.

My parents, my teachers, Brother Reno, Grandma Davis, my cousin Joe -- they all insisted that it would happen, it was a fact of life, universal human experience, as inevitable as sunrise. As the days and months of 6th and 7th grade passed, they became more insistent, constantly interrogating me: "Do you like girls yet?  What about now?  Now?  Now?"

Meanwhile, the school kept trying to jump-start my "discovery."

One Friday afternoon shortly the beginning of 7th grade at Washington Junior High, we were all herded into a gymnasium decorated with red and gold streamers, the boys and girls on separate sides. A table on the north side had rows of paper cups full of beet-red punch and piles of sugar cookies that looked like they had been sitting around since Christmas.

“What’s going on?” I asked my friends (my boyfriend Bill wasn't there; he had football practice). They didn’t know, so I approached a hulking Ninth Grader.

"It’s the canteen,” he grunted.  "It's to teach all you Spazzes how to dance with girls."
"I'm not dancing with any girls!"

He laughed, a short derisive laugh.  “That’s what you think, Gomer! Nobody gets out of here alive unless you ask a little cutie pie if you can drag her, and she says ‘Oh, yes, please do!’”  The last came in a squealing falsetto.

"My church doesn't allow dancing.  It's a sin in the eyes of God.  I can get an excuse from the Preacher."

Soon a teacher walked onto the stage and announced that it was “time to dance.” He put a single on the record player: "Song Sung Blue," by Neil Diamond.  A few boys crossed the wilderness of tan, gleaming boards and dragged girls onto the dance floor. Others followed, until eventually most Ninth Graders and quite a few younger boys made the trek.

My friends and I stood our ground.  No one tried to force us, though once a teacher clomped over and announced with a grin that we couldn't hold out forever – in a matter of days or weeks, or months at the most, our ache of desire would overpower our shyness, and we would cross the wilderness of tan, gleaming boards, and approach the Girl of our Dreams, and become men.

That's never going to happen!  I thought savagely.

I noticed a few boys, maybe a dozen, on the east side of the gym, mixed in with the girls, chatting casually.

“Why don’t they have to drag girls?” I wondered aloud. “Are they already men?”

“Man, you got fruit-loops for brains?” my Ninth Grade informant exclaimed. “They’re the exact diametric opposite of men. They’re Fairies!”

“Like. . .um. . .in Mother Goose?” I asked, perplexed.

“Naw, Gomer...remember Acting like a Girl, the stuff that got Mean Boys on your case in diaper school?  Fairies are like that, but tons worse – they pretend they really are girls! So they hang out with girls instead of hugging and kissing them!  But they can't hold out forever!  Watch this!"

He suddenly vaulted across the gym to the girls' side, grabbed a seventh-grade Fairy, and dragged him out onto the dance floor.  They slow danced until two teachers rushed in and pulled them apart.  Everyone laughed.

"He was too obvious," I thought, not realizing that he intended to humiliate the younger boy.  "I can hide it, I bet."

I scanned the girls' side of the room.  I saw Dan, who would become my second boyfriend, but for some reason I decided on a cute dark-haired 7th grader named Brett, who was engrossed in a conversation with a girl.  I tromped over and asked "Wanna dance?" with a friendly, non-threatening smile.

Brett stepped aside, thinking I meant his friend.

"No...you."

He stared, his eyes wide with suspicion.

"Not a slow dance, a regular modern dance," I explained, "Where you don't touch each other."

"I...um...."

"It's crowded...who will know?"

He looked to his friend for advice.  "Oh, go on," she said, pushing him toward me.

I took Brett's hand -- warm, damp with embarrassment -- and led him onto the dance floor.  We danced to "Knock Three Times" and "I Feel the Earth Move," careful to always have a girl nearby and constantly move across the dance floor to avoid discovery.

It worked wonderfully!  I was dancing, laughing and joyous, with a boy.

I kept it up for several weeks, dancing with Brett or other from the girls' side of the gym.

Then, like Icarus, I flew too close to the sun.  One afternoon Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" came on, a slow dance. Most of the kids on the dance floor fled to their respective sides of the gym.

Brett looked at me quizzically.  "It's ok," I said.  We began to dance, slowly, not touching, but close, gazing into each other's eyes.  I wanted to hold him in my arms, I wanted to kiss him.  So I reached out and took both of his hands.

Then someone grabbed me and jerked me roughly backwards.  It was a teacher.  "Picking on a kid, just because he's smaller than you!" he snarled.  "A week's detention!  Brett, you can go home."

After that, I got an excuse from my Preacher to sit out the canteens.

Brett and I stayed friends, but we never danced again.

See also: Why Corpses are Called Stiffs

Bill and I Find a "Little Bit O'Heaven"

Rock Island, May 1972

When I was a kid, one of my birthday presents was always an excursion for me and two or three friends to anywhere we wanted in the Quad-Cities.  Unfortunately, my birthday was in November, so most of the fun places were closed.

But then I got the bright idea of postponing the excursion to May: then my friends and I could go to Mother Goose Land, Longview Park, the Putnam Museum, or the Niabi Zoo.  Or, the spring of sixth grade, A Little Bit O' Heaven.

B. J. Palmer, son of the founder of chiropractic medicine, traveled the world collecting Chinese, Indian, and European art.  Now it was on display in a contemplative garden on the grounds of Palmer College of Chiropractic.

The commercials promised: "Mystical idols from the forbidden East! Treasures of Greece and Rome!  Dangers around every curve!"

I imagined a temple out of Johnny Quest, with statues of Greek gods and naked natives brandishing spears.  

As my boyfriend Bill and I talked it over, the Little Bit O' Heaven became bigger and bigger.  Acres of statues.  40-foot tall slabs of muscle. Flexing bodybuilders.  Natives who were completely naked!  Rows of penises that you could see and touch!

It was settled.  We were going to A Little Bit O'Heaven!

I invited Bill and two other friends who liked muscles: Joel, a cute curly-haired soccer player, and Greg, the boy vampire who gave me my first kiss.  My brother wanted to come, to do research for his own birthday excursion in June, and of course Dad drove us and paid the admission fee.

It started out ok: we walked through an ornate gate into a tropical greenhouse with macaws and parrots, and a 40-foot waterfall splashing through a miniature town.  Then a 10-foot tall statue of the Buddha, some totem poles, and a pond full of live alligators!

That was cool, but we were anxious to get to the acres of muscles and penises.

Next came a courtyard where you walked along a winding path, past statues.  A fat Buddha.  A naked lady.

Another turn, another naked lady.

"Where are the men?" Bill asked.

"They're coming up, probably saving the best for last," I assured him.

Another turn, another fat Buddha.  And another naked lady.

"You said there would be Greek gods," Greg protested.

"Naked," Joel added.

"Um...maybe they're in storage," I said.  My stomach was starting to hurt.  "Dad, where are the men?"

Another turn, another naked lady.

"It's art," he said with a shrug.  "That means women."  

"Gross!" Bill exclaimed.  "Who wants to see that?"

I was hot with disappointment, outrage over the false advertising -- and embarrassment.  I promised my friends muscles!  "Dad -- let's get out of here!  Can we go to the Putnam Museum instead?"  

"No way, Skeezix!  This is your birthday trip, and it cost me a fortune."  He always called me Skeezix when I failed to demonstrate heterosexual interest.  "Now quit whining and enjoy it!"

My friends never forgave me for subjecting them to the Little Bit O'Heterosexual Heaven.

Although getting ice cream on the way home helped.

A Naked Indian God at the Pow Wow

Rock Island, September 1970

Every summer the Sauk and Fox Indians, who used to live on the site of Rock Island, returned for a Pow Wow at Black Hawk State Park.  On the Fourth of July weekend in 1970, just after fourth grade, Bill's big brother Mike and his girlfriend took us to see it.

We wandered the booths where Sauk/Fox  ladies sold beadwork, moccasins, feathered headdresses, little toy drums, fried bread, and ice cream sandwiches. For some reason, the phallic Weinermobile was there, selling hot dogs.

Mike bought me a small green-plastic statue of a Sauk with a round face, long flowing hair, and bulging muscles.


The lady at the booth said that he was Wisakeha, a beautiful youth who created all of the world's rivers.  He fell asleep on the day the White-Eyes first bridged the Mississippi, but someday he would awaken and banish war from the world forever.

Mike got quiet after that, maybe thinking of Vietnam.

The show came later: Fancy Dancers fluttering with fringed shirts and enormous feathered headdresses, Medicine Dancers in animal masks, Eagle Dancers with red and green streamers fringing from their pants. A "Wild Indian" blew cigarette smoke through his nose and scared the little kids with his tomahawk. Sauk women marched single-file across the dirt, chanting to the corn spirits.   Teenage boys wearing only buckskin pants marched across the dirt, pounding on drums and screaming. They invited the kids to scream as loud as we could to awaken Wisakeha.

When a white-haired old man in a red-beaded headdress began to screech in the old Sauk language, Bill and I decided to look for Indian arrowheads in the hickory-oak woods. We walked up a steep trail that led away from the Pow Wow until we could no longer hear the shrill song or the murmuring voices. Sometimes we caught a glimpse of the river through the foliage, glinting down past a white-brick dam.

Suddenly the woods became very quiet. We saw a figure standing a little down from the path, facing the river.  An Indian! One of the teenage performers, I thought, still in costume, except his buckskin pants were down around his ankles, leaving him naked. I saw the side of his thigh, the curve of his clenched buttocks, his thin striated belly, his massive chest painted green like the forest. He was peeing, I realized with a start -- and he had a garden hose between his legs!  It took two hands to direct the stream of urine into the undergrowth.

I had only seen a few penises before, or what the grownups called "shames": my brother's, my cousin Joe's, and my Uncle Paul's.   (I didn't count the Naked Man in the Peat Bog, because I thought he was a monster.)

He couldn’t be a real Indian boy! I thought. He was too muscular, too alien, too beautiful. His chest was green, but the rest of his body was dark gold, like a statue. He must be Wisakeha, the god that the Sauk and Fox worshipped, who would soon banish war from the world. We watched in utter silence, afraid to move or breathe.

Suddenly the boy noticed that we were watching. He turned, his muscles taut, his eyes pools of black. And he screamed. It wasn’t angry, like the screams of wild Indians on tv, or the preacher at church – he was screaming with joy.  He wanted to be seen.

But we were too terrified to stick around.  We ran back to the Pow Wow as fast as we could, and collapsed yelling into Mike’s arms.

Maybe we did awaken a sleeping god that day.

The Sausage Sighting Prank at the Funeral Home

I was saddened to hear that Larson's Funeral Home in Rock Island is closing.

It may seem strange to get nostalgic over a funeral home, but the gigantic blue-stone structure in downtown Rock Island was an important part of my childhood.

1. It sent out advertising calendars to everyone in town every year, perhaps as a momento mori.  I checked the date hundreds of times on a red-emblazoned calendar from Larson's Funeral Home.

2. It was the site of a major sausage fondling.

In the fall of 1972, when I was in seventh grade, my friend Craig's older brother had a job at Larson's Funeral Home.

Jim was sixteen years old, tall and lean, with sharp features, a thick neck, and hard wiry biceps (I never actually saw him naked).

All he had to do was stay in the office overnight to answer the telephone, take down the information about someone who just died, and call the mortician to arrange a pickup.

Most nights, no one called, so Jim just camped out in the office: there was a television and a couch where he could sleep.  Down the hall there was a kitchen, with lots of leftover hors d'oevres in the refrigerator.

No one said Jim couldn't have friends over.  On more than one occasion, he had just enough time to shoo everyone out and dispose of the pizza boxes and beer cans before the mortician arrived with a pickup.

Seventh graders were all in awe of the boy who had a brother who worked with dead bodies!  Was it gross?  Was it creepy?

Could we see one of the dead bodies?

We asked, but Jim refused:  "I could get into a lot of trouble."

"Come on -- you let your friends visit all the time."

"Yeah, my friends.  Grownups, dig?  I could get into a lot of trouble letting little kids run wild in the funeral home.  What if you knocked over a funeral urn, and scattered some poor guy's ashes all over?"

That only made us more anxious to go.

Finally, one Friday morning around Halloween, Jim gave in.  "We just had a new pickup last night," he told Craig.  "That boy who died in the car accident down in Coal Valley.  He's still in the embalming room. You guys come over tonight around 10:00 pm, and I'll give you a tour."


10:00 pm?  We had to be in bed by 10:00! This would take a little strategizing:

1. Brett, the cute dark-haired boy I danced with at the canteen, invited Craig, Bill, and me over for a spur-of-the -moment sleepover.

2. At 9:00 pm, Brett's older brother and his friend offered to take us all out to Happy Joe's for pizza.  They said "We might be back a little late."

3. At 10:00 pm we parked on a side street and, talking and laughing to cover up our nervousness, walked up to the front door of Larson's Funeral Home.

Jim let us in, told us to wipe our feet, and showed us around.

The lounges, the music room, the library, the coffin room.

Jim demonstrated why Barnabas Collins, the vampire on Dark Shadows, was never filmed getting out of his coffin.  There's no way to do it without looking ridiculous.

That was interesting, but we wanted to see the dead body!

The small chapel, the large chapel, the kitchen, the office.

What about the dead body?

"Ok, I saved the scariest part for last," Jim said loudly, stopping in front of a tan metal door.  "I just want to make sure you're prepared.  Sometimes the eyes are still open, and they follow you around the room.  And do you know what rigor mortis is?"

We shook our heads.

"You know why they call corpses stiffs?  Because their bodies stiffen up.  Everything stiffens, even, you know, down below."

"No way!" I exclaimed.  "Not the dick!"

Jim nodded solemnly.  "Everywhere.  It's pretty gross.  I won't make fun of you if you decide to stay behind."

Are you kidding?

He opened the door and led us into the embalming room.  It looked like a doctor's office, all white cabinets, rubber gloves, and gleaming steel implements, but on the examination table lay a naked teenage boy.

Blond curly hair.  A cute round face, a red mark on his forehead.  Eyes closed.  Smooth hairless chest, pale arms and legs.  Beautiful, thick Bratwurst.  Fully aroused.

I  couldn't take my eyes off it.

"You can go up and touch him if you want," Jim suggested.

The others hung back, hesitating, but I moved forward to the table.  Jim looked surprised when, instead of touching his hand or face, I gently wrapped my fingers around his penis.

It was warm!

At that moment Corpse Boy opened his eyes.

I jerked myhand away.

He sat up and yelled "Uggh!"

We all screamed and ran from the room, out into the small chapel, and into the foyer.   Brett got to the front door first.  It was locked.

Jim and his friends were laughing.  "We got you good!"  he exclaimed.  "Meet my Cousin Boris, from Transylvania."

Corpse Boy emerged, pulling on a pair of jeans.  He was still partially aroused.   "I vant to suck your blood!" he said in a Dracula accent.


I was pretty sure that it was all a prank before I grabbed Corpse Boy's penis.  But not entirely sure.

Years later, I ran into Jim at the Mall.  He asked "Have you felt up any corpses lately?"

I get nostalgic thinking about Larson's Funeral Home.

My Third Grade Boyfriend

Rock Island, July 1968

When I was 7 1/2 years old, we moved from a nice house in Wisconsin, a block from the beach, to a gross house in Ill-An-Noise, in back of the grade school. Yuck!

This new world was stupid and boring, but I was determined to make the best of it.  The first thing I needed was a boyfriend.  Somebody to show me around, introduce me to other kids, point out the places to get necessities (like cookies and comic books), and the places to avoid (with mean dogs, mean boys, crazy ladies, and escaped killers).

He should be a boy, of course, around my age, and preferably both nice and cute.

In August, when school started, there would be a whole roomful of boys choose from, but that was over a month away, an eternity for a 7 1/2 year old!  I needed somebody now!

Fortunately, 1968 was the heart of the Baby Boom, the biggest generation in history.  There were 77 million kids growing up in the U.S., some in nearly every house on every street in the country.  It didn't take long to compile a list of prospects who lived within a couple of blocks.

Bill, who became my boyfriend in February, wasn't on the list -- I think he was away on vacation at the time.  Joel and Greg, who would become close friends later on, lived three blocks away, too far.

But there were a lot of boys left. You have to figure out who I chose:

1. The Little Kid, aka Mike (top photo), who lived next door.  He was a year younger than me, but he had muscles and a brown smiling face.  We ran under the sprinkler in his front yard, clothes and all, which soaked my shirt and pants and got me in trouble.

2. The Cereal Boy, a cute redhead with freckles, a year older than me (left).  He invited me to watch Saturday morning cartoons and eat cereal -- but it was Froot Loops!  I hate Froot Loops!

3. The Football Player, aka Mean Dave, who punched me in the stomach and called me a "girl," then helped me to my feet and said "I was just kidding.  You want to go to the high school and watch the football players practicing?"  They didn't have football at Denkmann, but he was playing on a summer enrichment team, and he wanted to be a football player when he grew up.

4.  The Parakeet Boy, aka Nice Dave (left), a curly-haired blond boy who had two dogs, a rabbit, a parakeet, and a hamster.  He talked to the parakeet, and made it eat a cracker out of his mouth, which I found gross.  But I liked petting the dogs and the rabbit.

5. The Old Guy, much taller than me, with all kinds of muscles.  But he was eleven -- almost a teenager!  Way too old for me, sort of like a West Hollywood twink dating someone in his 70s.  And he said crazy things, like he already knew how to drive a car and he could stay up until midnight if he wanted.  He had tons of toys in his room, plus a sticker labeled "panic button"; he said if he pushed that, sirens would go off and the whole house would shake.

I tried.  Nothing happened.  He said "It only works for me."

6. The Sick Kid (left), pale, kind of ugly, always looked like he was pain, but he had a round plastic pool in his back yard, and his Mom brought us lemonade in plastic glasses with little palm tree straws.

7. The Angel, aka David Angel (there were a lot of Davids in the neighborhood): puppy-dog cute, but  painfully shy.  When I try to talk to him, he ran to the back of the house.  When I went to the back of the house, he ran to the front.

8. The Rock Star, aka Craig (left), who wanted to be a rock musician.  He had weird hippie hair that turned me off, but he never wore a shirt, which was nice. We went into his basement and played rock stars with his drums and guitar.

9. The Indian, aka Bobby,  a year younger than me, short and slim with black hair and a bright smile.  He wasn't really from India, but he looked like Raji, the boy on Maya.   But it was hard to get close to him, since he lived on the other side of the house where the Killer lived, a crazy-evil blond boy who attacked anyone who came nearby.

Ok, which of these 9 hot guys did I choose to become my summertime boyfriend?

Answer after the break.

The Football Star's Date with Tarzan

Rock Island, June 1972

One day in the summer of 1971, when I was ten years old,  my boyfriend Bill and I were out riding bikes near Longview Park, when we came to a big house "on the register of historic places."  There was an old guy in the back yard, sitting in a lawn chair reading a newspaper.

He had his shirt off!

He was very muscular, with a thick hairy chest, big shoulders, hairy flat abs, and square hands.  Balding on top.  A round open face.

"Hey, I know that guy from church!" Bill exclaimed.  [He was a heathen Presbyterian]  "Hi, Mr. Franck!"

Frank -- like my Dad?

He looked up.  "Hi, Bill.  Who's your buddy?"

We went into the back yard through a little gate, and Mr. Franck stood up and shook both our hands -- not many adults did that!  He told us to call him Sonny -- everybody did, even kids.  He was a teacher at Rocky High, so he would see us both in his biology class in a few years.

After that, the promise of beefcake brought us past Sonny's house quite often.  He was often in his back yard in mid-afternoon, giving us just enough time to gawk at his muscles and get home in time to watch Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat.

During the school year, we went on Saturday afternoons.  Sometimes he wasn't there, of course, but often he was, sometimes in back yard, sometimes on the front porch, often with his shirt off, even in October.  He always waved, and talked to us when we stopped.

Once he invited us in for lemonade.  There were pictures of cute, muscular guys all over his parlor.  Sonny must like men with muscles, too!

"Is this your friend?"  I asked, pointing to a teenage bodybuilder lifting an enormous barbell.

"It's me, when I was about your age.  Sports were sort of my bag, back then.  You boys like football?"

"Sure!"  We actually hated football, but it seemed polite to say we liked it.

 Sonny told us that he was an All-American wingback at the University of Minnesota, and then he was a halfback for the New York Giants.

"They're good," Bill offered.  "I like...um...."

"Randy Johnson?"

"Right, him."

Having to hear about football was almost a deal-breaker, but beefcake was hard to find in Rock Island, so we continued to visit Sonny.   We could see his hairy chest, and maybe someday we would even get a glimpse of his shame (his beneath the belt gifts).

No sausage sighting, but the next summer, when I was 11 years old, we biked past Sonny's house, and he was sitting in the back yard, drinking lemonade with Tarzan!

Jock Mahoney, who starred in three movies that we saw on Tarzan Theater on Saturdays: Tarzan the Magnificent (1960), Tarzan Goes to India (1962), and Tarzan's Three Challenges (1963).

Not my favorite Tarzan: too scrawny, with stupid slicked-back hair.  But he had a kid sidekick, a Indian boy named Jai, which allowed for all sorts of role-playing fantasies: "Let's pretend that you're Jai, and the cannibals have tied you up, and Tarzan has to rescue you."

We biked up.  'Wow, Sonny, I didn't know you knew Tarzan!" I exclaimed.

"Come in and sit down, boys," Sonny said.  "I'd like to introduce you to my old friend, Jock Mahoney."

We shook hands.  Tarzan had a strong, pleasant grip.

"How do you know each other?" I asked.  "Did you live in Hollywood?"

"We go way back, long before Hollywood," Sonny said.  "Jocko and I went to Davenport High School together."

A famous actor grew up in Davenport, right across the Mississippi!

"Sonny was two years older than me," Jocko said.  "And a  Golden Boy, a track star, a football star.  Way out of my league, But I eventually won him over."  He leaned in close.  "Always remember this, Boomer: the key is, be persistent.  Show up where he is.  Pretend to be interested in the things he's interested in.  Eventually he'll see the light."

Wait -- this wasn't how friends talked.  Were Jocko and Mr. Franck boyfriends?

"Wrong, as usual!" Sonny exclaimed.  "I noticed you right away.  Why do you think I joined the Glee Club -- because you were in it!"  He turned to us.  "Imagine me, trying to hold a tune!  I may have been older, and an athlete, but Jocko was taller, and bigger.  A lot bigger."

They looked at each other, paused for a moment, and laughed.

At the time I didn't know what he meant.  Now I do.

"Remember the night of the Harvest Dance?" Jock asked.  "We both had dates, but we dropped them off early so we could go down to the Mississippi and..."

"That's a lie!" Sonny exclaimed, but he was smiling.  "Sheer rumor-mongering!  Nobody can prove it happened."

At the time I didn't know what he meant.  Now I do.

"What about after high school, when you grew up?" Bill asked.  "Did you live together?  Boomer and I want to live together in a house."

"Sonny was recruited to play football for the Golden Gophers, in Minnesota" Jock said.  "I went to the University of Iowa,  Then during the War we both joined the Marines, but we weren't in the same unit.  Then I moved to Los Angeles to become a stuntman and actor, and Sonny played for the Giants and later became a teacher."

"Life takes you in different directions, and you can't always be with the people you care about," Sonny added. "But that doesn't mean you lose them.  You can keep in touch, write letters, visit.  And you always have memories."

"Like that night when your folks were out of town..." Jock began, "And I brought over a bottle of tequila..."

"Lies!  All lies!"  Sonny exclaimed.  "Defamation of character, that's what it is!"  And they both laughed.

Were Mr. Franck and Jock Mahoney Boyfriends?

George "Sonny" Franck (1918-2011) was married for 57 years, although I don't remember a wife being present when we visited.  He had four daughters.  

Jock Mahoney (1919-1989) was married three times, and had three children and four stepchildren.  One of his stepdaughters is actress Sally Field, whose son Sam is gay.

See also: Zack Hooks Up with the Prince of Sweden; My Third Grade Boyfriend

Two Boys Kissing at Longview Park Pool

Rock Island, July 1973

I don't remember much of what happened on that day in the summer of 1973, about a month before we visited my Kentucky kinfolk and I met the Teenage Indian God.

 I don't know why practically everybody I knew was at the Longview Park pool:

Peter, the only Asian boy in school, who would participate in the streaking adventure next year.
My best friend Bill.
Dan, the boy I met in the girls' locker room, who had dirty blond hair and a gay-coded lilt to his voice (thought I didn't know what gay meant yet)
Darry
My brother and his best friend.

It was one of those bitingly hot, oppressive days that you sometime get in the Midwest, where the heat literally sizzles in the air and you can't walk more than a few steps without getting soaked. The pool was crowded with glistening bodies, mostly high schoolers, breathtakingly beautiful although dangerous – a bounce in the step or a lilt in the voice might draw their wrath, and result in a shove at a girl or a forced swimsuit removal.  I was standing with Dan at the four foot mark, where the bottom slid abruptly into the deep end, relishing the feeling of endless space. But when I bobbed under the water for a moment, Dan was gone!

Anxiously I scanned the surface of the pool for boys with dirty-blond hair.

The pool had been noisy, with screams and laughter and fifty gossiping or bragging voices, but now it was so quiet that I could hear David Cassidy singing “I Think I Love You” from far away, maybe from a transistor radio over by the bath house, or farther afield, from someone’s picnic on the grass that sloped down the Bluffs. But the song hadn’t played regularly on the radio for years! I had a strange feeling of being unstuck in time, as if I had tripped accidentally into the past like Barnabas Collins on Dark Shadows.

I pulled myself out of the pool. The damp concrete was hot beneath my bare feet, the air thick and heavy, smelling of chlorine and suntan oil and Raid, the spray used to keep bugs off. I walked around the shallow end, past the baby pool, and then along the western perimeter, where a chain link fence looked down the Bluffs. Then I saw a churning in the deep end, like a cauldron boiling.

Some Mean Boys were trying to drown Dan!

Why wasn’t the lifeguard intervening? Or any of the adults?  Why were they all pretending not to notice?
I dove into the hot, frothing water to rescue him myself.

I don't know if the rest was a dream or not: I saw Dan's torso, his shoulders, his tousled dirty-blond hair -- he was kissing Bill!  Their arms and legs were intertwined, their bodies were pressing rhythmically together, and they were kissing!

Writhing with jealousy, I tried to pull them apart. Dan pushed me away with his hand. I head a sickening thud.

The next thing I remember is lying on the concrete at poolside, a hard-muscled guy, sopping wet, kneeling over me, holding my eye open.  He had blood on his hands.  I found out later that he was a medical student who had fished me out of the water and performed first aid.

An emergency room visit and five stitches later, I was back home in bed, eating ice cream.

They told me that I tried diving off the edge of the pool and doing a somersault, but I miscalculated and hit the side.

That makes more sense than what I remember, unconscious fears and anxieties bubbling to the surface when I didn't even know the word "gay" yet.

Afterwards I rarely went into a swimming pool again, and I always jumped in feet first -- no diving. And Bill and I grew even more distant.  The last time I visited his house was for a Halloween party in 10th grade, and I spent most of the evening talking to his big brother Mike, who used to call me "Bud" and drive us places.