The Joy of Saying "Cock"

When I was a kid, the Nazarene Church prohibited us from using "the Lord's name in vain."  To the extreme.

No goddam, of course, or the word damn, except in the phrase God will damn you.  Even darn was too much.

Gosh, gee, and golly, all shortened forms of "God" and "Jesus," were forbidden.

The British term Lord was shockingly blasphemous.  I got in big trouble with my counselor at Nazarene camp for carrying around a copy of Tarzan, the Lord of the Apes:

"You're practicing idolatry!  You're worshipping a false god!  There's only one Lord!

I never tried zounds, which means "God's wounds."

God also hated words that were obscene or even risque.

The word sex could be used only as a noun: Adam was of the male sex.  Never to refer to coitus.  Instead, the preachers and Sunday school teachers always used the phrase: going to bed: "God will send you to hell for going to bed before you're married."

I can only imagine the younger kids in the congregation misinterpreting that statement and being terrified of bedtime.

You must go to the bathroom, never pee or piss.  So you might say, "I was in the bathroom, going to the bathroom."

We had a lot of fun with the King James Bible's prohibition against coveting "thy neighbor's ass," but referencing the animal was ok.  To reference a section of the anatomy, you had to say backside.  Never butt or ass.

You insulted someone by calling them sinner, heathen, or Catholic, never asshole.

You could imply that someone's parents were unmarried, but you had to use the term illegitimate, not bastard.  Although we sort of cheated with dastard.

For the frontside, you had to use the word shame, or if absolutely necessary, the technical term penis.  Never, ever cock, not even in reference to the rooster.

Once in high school Verne and I tried to joke about the rooster.
Verne:  "I have a cock at home."
Boomer: "Can I see your cock?"
Verne:  "Sure.  You can even play with my cock."

Claiming that we meant "rooster" didn't help.  We were both grounded for a week.

During my senior year in high school, tired of the restrictions and bigotry, I  started breaking away from the Church.

The guilt was heavily internalized, so it had to be gradual, skipping the Wednesday evening service and a Sunday evening service here and there, reducing the amount of money I gave during the four weekly collections, and systematically breaking the rules.  From the least to most horrifying:

1. Reading the Sunday newspaper.

2. Buying on Sunday.
3. Listening to rock music.
4. Wearing short pants in public.
5. Going bowling in an alley that served alcohol.
6. Dancing
7. Going to a movie

By the time I got to my freshman year in college, there were only a few rules left to break:

  

Drinking alcohol.  Too advanced for me.

Going to bed with a girl before marriage.  No way!

Using the Lord's name in vain.

If I said bad words, I could finally be free of the Nazarene guilt!  So I started throwing them into casual conversations with my friends, Mary and Bruce.

Gee, it's hot today.  
Golly, I don't think I can finish this pizza all by myself.

Not even an eyebrow raise.

Our goddam paper is due tomorrow!

 Only a few eyebrow raises.

Excuse me -- I have to pee.

Nope.

This class is a real pain in the ass.

 That got an eyebrow raise.

That asshole cut in front of me!

A brief stare, but no comment.

Ok, time for the ultimate of bad words, the word that horrified men and God alike.

I walked up to Bruce, and tried to say Men have c...

Nothing came out.

Again.  I looked at Bruce, he looked at me.  I said I have a big c....

"What?"

God was looking down at me.  All of the Nazarenes were watching.  It was time to take a stand.

Bruce was staring at me as if I was crazy.

In a loud, clear voice, almost a yell, I said I like to look at cocks!

He laughed.  "Me, too.  And ducks and geese and cows and horses, down on the farm.  Ok, now I have one: want to hear a dirty joke?  The boy fell in the mud!"  

Bruce didn't get it, but by saying cock in public, I was free of Nazarene guilt.  I could go through life without expecting God to strike me dead every moment.

And I had come out.

Adam and I Sleep Together, Sort Of

Madison, Wisconsin, July 1981

When I was in college in the early 1980s, gay people were never mentioned in class or on the quad.  They never appeared on tv or in movies.  There may have been a few gay people around, but they never came out willingly.  To find them, you had to look for clues.

How about Adam Horowitz, manager of the Student Union bookstore?  You never saw him with a girl.  When pressed, he claimed to be in love with an icy Hitchcockian blonde, but gave no more details.

Of course, you never saw him with a boy, either.   We had a "date" in March 1981, with a thwarted kiss under the Bell Tower,  but that was the only time I saw him away from his counter in the bookstore.

Until the summer of 1981,  when the Film Club took a road trip to Madison, Wisconsin, about 3 hours away, for an Italian Film Festival, two days of Fellini, Antonioni, Pasolini, and Zeffirelli. Though Adam wasn’t a member, not even a student, he asked if he could tag along. The president gave her eager consent, obviously planning an aggressive seduction – she was a senior, with less than a year until graduation, and landing a mature “older man” who owned his own business would trump even a Fratboy.  But Adam ignored her and spent all of his time with me.

On Saturday night, after Pasolini’s Canterbury Tales, we had a late dinner at a Mexican restaurant called Casa de Lara, and then the others suggested that we drop into the nearby Whiskey River Saloon for a beer – but I wasn’t 21 yet, and besides, I was still too Nazarene to stomach such places. As I weighed my choices, enduring the disgusting hospital smell of a saloon or being abandoned on the street, Adam wrapped a paternal arm around my shoulders and pushed us off into the night.



We strolled jauntily through the crowds on State Street, talking of Pasolini and then of  A Many Colored Land by Julian May, which had just been published to delirious acclaim among science fiction fans. We browsed through a record store and a hippie bookstore, where I bought a copy of Allen Ginsburg’s long beat poem Howl.

When we finally arrived at the hotel room that four of us were sharing,  Adam did endless sit-ups in his underwear while I lay atop his bed, watching.

"How should we arrange this?" I asked.

"What?"

"The...um...sleeping arrangements."  My face began to burn. "Um...maybe we should bunk together.  Then Bruce and Lars won't wake us up when they come in.”

“They’ll probably be back any minute, though."

“It'll be easier," I insisted.

 "I guess."  We climbed into bed.  Adam pulled the covers up only as far as his waist, so if I glanced casually over I could see his belly, hard and flat and xylophone-ribbed, his thick chest just brushed with hair, his heavy, blue-veined arms and shoulders. He continued to talk, desperately, of underground comix and Scrooge McDuck and Isaac Asimov and The Prisoner, while I waited, so close that I could feel the heat from his skin.

"Did you know that Allen Ginsberg is gay?"  I interrupted.

Adam turned on his side, so he was facing away from me.  "No, I didn't.  Well, goodnight."  He turned off the light.  And, a moment later, Bruce and Lars arrived, rowdy and joking.


Adam permitted some touching and fondling during the night, but attempting anything more got me rudely shoved away.  I couldn't tell if Adam was inhibited because Bruce and Lars were in the next bed, because I wasn't his type, or because he was straight, so I gave up.  And next day, after Pasolini's Arabian Nights, we drove back to Rock Island.

Later in the summer, Adam went to a comic book convention in Chicago, where he met and fell in love with a graduate student in art history from Ohio State University.  He returned to pack some things and lock up his bookstore -- the college later sold the stock cheap and turned it into a tv lounge -- and move to Columbus, without ever naming his...girlfriend?  boyfriend?  or using a pronoun.  I got one postcard, stating how deliriously happy he was.  And then silence.

Internet research reveals that Adam is now a newspaper editor in a small town in the Midwest, still deeply involved in comic book fandom, and...gay, straight, bi?  Asexual?  I still don't know.

People of our generation were trained to keep silent.  I imagine Adam is sitting in his newspaper office right now, thinking "Was Boomer gay, straight, bi?  Asexual?"


See also: Kissing Adam at the Bell Tower.

Kissing a Boy at the Bell Tower

Rock Island, March 1981

When I was in college, Bruce and I and some other English-philosophy-modern language majors hung out at a little bookstore off the student union.  It sold mostly science fiction and fantasy novels, with a scattering of mainstream literature and philosophy, basically whatever the manager, Adam Horowitz (not his real name) liked.  Adam was older perhaps twenty-five, taut and muscular, surprisingly tanned, with an open, expressive movie-star face.  Not at all the sort of person you'd expect to spend his life selling science fiction novels.

Once an English major, he was expelled halfway through his junior year after a scandal that no one would talk about.  With no degree, no job, and nowhere to go, he got some faculty allies to help him open his little bookstore.

What scandal?  A same-sex affair, perhaps? 

It made sense: Adam never dated girls, or talked about girls.  Actually, he never said much about his personal life at all.  It sounded like the hesitations, dissimulations, and omissions that gay people made in the Midwest in the 1980s to avoid revealing their "secret."  

But there was only one way to find out for sure: get him alone, and then zoom in for a kiss!  It worked with Fred, my boyfriend last year.

On a cold, drizzling Friday afternoon in March 1981, the campus was nearly deserted.  I had been alone in the bookstore for nearly an hour, studying Paleontology on the green couch by the western window, while Adam sat on his stool reading the underground Zap Comix.  This was a perfect opportunity!

“I'm heading over to the Comics Cave," I said in a tentative voice.  "Why don't you come along?  I don't think you're going to get any more customers today."

Adam stared at me in shock, as if I had suggested skinny-dipping in the pond behind Old Main.  "Um...sure, why not?" he said finally.  He wrapped on his coat and locked up the store, and we walked out into the blustery gray afternoon.  He talked nonstop about R. Crumb and Steve Ditko, and then of Little Nemo who explored Dreamland in the newspaper comics of a century ago, as if he couldn’t bear a moment of silence.

He was really nervous!  That must mean he was gay!

To get to the parking lot, you had to walk past East Hall, left toward the Bell Tower, then right, up the heavily wooded ridge to 38th Street. Adam paused.

“Have you heard the secret of Bell Tower?” he asked.

“I don't know.  I’ve heard a lot of secrets since I came to Augie.”

“The Fratboys bring their dates there, because if you kiss a virgin under the bell, it rings. Thus notifying everybody up in Andreasson Hall that she is 99.99% pure.” He gestured toward the freshman girls’ dorm on the ridge.

"Cool!  Let's check it out -- I've never seen it up close before."

"Um..ok, I guess."  We turned away from the path, crossed the wet grass, and stood under the Bell Tower with its graffiti-blackened benches where Fratboys and their girlfriends kissed. It was very damp, and smelled of sawdust and brine.

“Did the bell ring for any of your....dates...when you were a student?”  I asked, deliberately avoiding the word "girl."

"Um..well, actually I never got a chance. It’s really sort of Fratboys’ turf. They have dibs on all Augie babes.  I was  a Head Case -- an English major."

"So you never heard the bell ring?  That's a pity."  I pressed my hand hard against his shoulder. I saw that he was beginning to blush.

But at that moment a professor appeared, trundling down from the ridge: short, balding, round as a goblin in a yellow slicker raincoat, with an umbrella shoved under his arm like a stage sword and a bulging briefcase at his side. I recognized him: Dr. Dahlquist, who taught American literature and journalism.

He flashed an odd, alarmed look at me, then at Adam. We said “H’lo” politely, but he brushed past us and walked on quickly, almost trotting, to East Hall.

Adam stopped and stared at his retreating form. The snub obviously bothered him.  I wondered if Dr. Dahlquist discovered Adam at the Bell Tower before, on another lazy Friday afternoon many years ago. I wondered who was kissing him then.

"Um...ok, you've seen the Bell Tower.  Do you mind if we take your car?"  He walked briskly toward the south, toward the student parking lot.  We drove to the Comics Cave and bought a few comic books, but he refused my offer of a milkshake at the Belgian Village.  He had a headache, he said.

I asked Adam for out for comic books several more times, but he was always "too busy."

A few years after graduation, I returned to Augustana for a visit and found the bookstore gone.  I heard that Adam had taken a job as a newspaper editor in Missouri, but b eforethe internet, could find no other information.

Today Adam has his own wikipedia page!  He actually ran a museum in Missouri before he retired.  He's published a lot of science fiction and comic book criticism, plus a book about a famous lynching incident.  

So, what about the Bell Tower kiss?  Was he gay, and scared?  Or straight, and scared?  I'm still not sure. 

Don't Call Bruce "Gay"

Rock Island, December 1979

My best friend at Augustana College, Bruce, didn't realize that we were friends.  He thought I was just another member of the Boosktore Gang, the group of comic book-science fiction-Monte Python fans who hung out at the Student Union Bookstore, but never had real conversations and never saw each other socially.  A casual acquaintance, a "school friend" at best.

Bruce also didn't realize that I was gay..   In fact, he often tried to fix me up with girls, or assumed that I was hot for whatever girl I happened to be chatting with.  But he was my connection to the daylit world, an interpreter of all those alien heterosexual folkways and mores

I chose him because:
1. He was an English/drama major

2. He didn't date much, so I didn't have to hear the play-by-play of nights of heterosexual excess.

3.. He was not cute: tall and skinny, with a mop of unruly hair and a sharp, angular face.  So there would be no weird sublimated attraction.  (This guy will give you an idea.)

4. He was pro-gay, at least in theory, though he roiled when someone insinuated that he might be gay.

He flew into a rage when you called him "Brucie" or anything that sounded similar.

The Fratboys soon got wise, and took to saying:
“Are you busy?”
“Do you bruise easy?”
“Do you think Diana Ross is too bluesy?”
Or my favorite, “I bought a new record, Strange Brew -- see?” 

They never tired of seeing Bruce redden with rage.

So all hell broke loose that December night with Leanne.

Leanne was a junior drama major, plump and aggressive with thin sandy hair.  In December of our sophomore year, she invited me to a new Chinese restaurant in Moline, the next town over, and I invited Bruce.  I didn't realize that they were old enemies, but they sniped at each other constantly.

Later I heard that last year Bruce won the role of Algernon in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest over Leanne’s best friend, a senior who would be auditioning professionally soon. Was she still angry about that?  

Or maybe she thought this was a date, and resented Bruce's intrusion.

After kung pao chicken and sniping, we drove through downtown on the way back to Augustana.  As we neared JR's, Rock Island's gay bar, Leanne said "Shall we stop?  You in the mood for a slow dance, Bruce?"

"What are you talking about?"  Bruce asked from the back seat.

"That's your bar coming up, isn't it? Wanna duck inside for a quickie?"

““It’s not my bar! I’m not even old enough to drink yet!”

He didn't realize that  it was a gay bar!  

Leanne slowed down. “I didn't mean that you owned it, dear,  I thought you were the entertainment for the evening."  She flashed a limp wrist.

I saw Bruce's face reddening in the rear view mirror. Now he got it. "Eat me!", he yelled.

"Better ask one of your friends to do that, dearie."

Bar next to JR

“That’s it! Stop the car!” Bruce shouted.  He snapped off his seat belt and opened the car door while we were still moving. Leanne skidded to a stop in front of a sandwich shop on the next corner (it seems to be an Irish bar now).

“You can’t get out here,” I told Bruce. “We’re two miles from the school. It’s cold out.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

"I've got a better idea.  We can both get out, and call my brother to pick us up.  I'm getting kind of carsick."   I got out of the car and slammed the door.  Leanne sputtered for a moment, then zoomed off.

I went inside the sandwich shop and asked to use the phone, while Bruce stood on the corner, sputtering a bit himself.  

"Where'd she get the idea that I was gay?" he asked when I returned.

"I don't know," I said.  "What's the big deal?  I thought you were in favor of gay rights."

"Well, sure, gay rights.  But...but...what if word gets around?"


I remembered Rocky High, where hanging out with a guy with muscles was a sure sign of heterosexual identity.  "Just find a jock to hang out with, and no one will suspect you."

The "accusation," oddly, served to strengthen our friendship.  We began talking on the telephone almost every night, first talking about how ludicrous it was for Leanne to think that he was gay, and then moving on to other things.  Like Fred -- Bruce became the only Augustana friend to meet my ministerial-student boyfriend.

But he never figured it out.  Not even when I got a boyfriend.

When we invited him over for dinner at Fred's apartment, he said: "Cool pad! Does Fred ever let you bring girls over?"

See also: Bruce Travels Forward in Time to Bring Me Guys

16 Texas Toughs, Houston Hunks, and Hell-fer-Sartain Sausages

I endured Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas  for a year after getting my M.A. in English.

It was actually Aldine, Texas, a far, far, far northern suburb of Houston, 20 miles from the beauty and excitement of the Montrose.

And, if you don't count two trips back to Rock Island and spring break in New Orleans, it was actually only seven and a half months, or 210 days.

209 days too long.

 I had a dreary two-room apartment on a dead end street, with an illiterate redneck landlord downstairs and a headbanger neighbor.

Everyone in the rust belt moved to Texas in the early 1980s, which meant that everything was grotesquely crowded, it took an hour to get anywhere in grotesque traffic, and everyone was new at their jobs, so they took forever and made lots of mistakes, which made every chore from banking to going to the gym a daunting enterprise.

Plus, everything was under construction, resulting in constant delays, and more flat tires in nine months than I've had in the 30 years since.

The campus was all ugly concrete slabs and treeless scrub grass.

Everyone was illiterate, surly, and very, very homophobic.  Consequently, all gay men were very, very closeted, giving you fake names and fake phone numbers.

There are a few things I remember fondly:
My Italian class.
A visit from Bruce.
Spring break in New Orleans.
Driving away.

And sausages.  They grow them BIG in Texas, and the guys were readily available.  For hookups, anyway.

Here are 16 Texas toughs, horrors, hookups, and sausages from my 210 days in Hell-fer-Sartain.

September:

1. The Student Who Got Naked in My Class, stripped down to his underwear right in the middle of a lecture on Moby Dick.  No one has ever done that in any class since.  The most beefcake you see is when they take off their sweater, and their shirt pulls up off their chest.

2. Raymond, a black guy with an interest in astrology (he was a Taurus) and an enormous Mortadella who kept saying "if you relax, it won't hurt." It did.

3. Sayid, his friend.  Raymond fixed us up, apparently believing that if I wasn't an anal bottom, I must be an anal top.  At the end of the date, Sayid ran into the bedroom, stripped, turned over on his stomach, and squealed "Take me! Take me!  Do whatever you want with me!"


4. Hank, a recent graduate of the college, now working in a department store, who claimed to want a relationship, but gave a fake telephone number.  He didn't realize that as a faculty member, I had access to all student records.  So I looked him up and called.

"Um...um...I don't...I mean," he stammered, trying to figure out how he managed to accidentally write down his real number.

"You said you wanted a relationship.  So -- dinner tomorrow night?"

He didn't want dinner.



October:

5. Dan, a Vietnamese immigrant who worked at the mall and chain smoked.  During our date, he poured water on a napkin to use as a makeshift ash tray.  After the date, I came down with a case of...well, let's just say it wasn't pleasant.

November:

6. Two Brothers and their Dad. I had a date with the 19-year old, but I made out with the 17-year old, and got a sausage sighting of the aroused Dad in bed.

December:

7. Dick, My Old Bully.  We reconnected at Christmas, back in Rock Island. Who knew that he was gay?  And so buffed?  And so well hung?




January:

8. My Most Embarrassing Hookup, when a middle-aged Mormon guy mistook me for a hustler.

9.The Redneck Boy from the trailer court next door worked out with weights, shirtless, in his yard.  I never made contact, but it was a pleasant sight.

February:

10. The Professor Who Got Away.  I pushed a little too hard, going into detail about the things we had in common.  I may have used the term "soul mate."  He rain.

11. The Russian Major.  I wooed him with my knowledge of Slavic languages, but after the make-out session on his couch, he said "I hate to burst your bubble, but I'm not in the mood to be raped tonight."  Raped?

March:

12. The Footballer.  This guy goes into ecstasies over me being from the Midwest, asked about farms, milking cows, etc., etc.  He asks me to wear a football jersey on our date.  He asks me to stand in front of the window and "Feel myself up."

No!

He arrives and says "Are ya hungry?"

Which is almost as annoying.

13. The Teenage Hustler of Bourbon Street.  The fuzz-headed Cute Young Thing kept following me around, trying to get me to buy him hot dogs, a pizza slice, beer, and Curaçao.  I finally agreed to bring him back to my hotel room, where he was too big to go down on adequately, and at the end of the evening he asked for $5.00.

April:

14. The Most Skittish Guy on Earth.  He arrives, says "There are too many people around.  You didn't tell me you lived so close to other people.  What if they saw me coming in?  What if they hear us?"

I get annoyed and say "Are we going to do it or what?"

He grabs a chair, puts it on the floor in the bedroom, and says "Go ahead and do it, then."

But then he hears a noise and vanishes before I have a chance to "do it," whatever "it" is.


15.Carl the Cowboy Cop  with a Kovbasa+, one of the biggest I've ever seen.  But he was immensely tall, which was a turnoff, and extremely anti-religious.

May:

16. The New Age Devotee who kept talking about the Universe, energy, chakras, crystals, and stuff: "The Universe wants you to find the one you're destined to be with."  He didn't want to do anything in bed except kiss and cuddle, although he stayed aroused all night.

In the morning, I prepared a New Age breakfast of granola and fresh plums.  I tried to hand him the bowl of plums, but he didn't take it, and it shattered all over the floor.

 A fitting end to my 210 days in Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas.

See also: Researching an Ugly Guy Takes Me to the Worst Place in the World

A Time Traveler from 1979 Brings Me Guys

Plains, September 2016

I'm having a terrible month: my father is sick, my boyfriend has moved away, and my classes are going horribly.  Depressed, I go jogging, and then stop into the gay-friendly coffee house for a post-jog smoothie.

Bruce is standing in line with a friend!

Not the Bruce I know now, chubby and bald, fighting health problems and chronic depression.  The Bruce I knew in college in Rock Island: tall and slim, with a sharp face, blue eyes, unruly dark-blond hair, a short beard, an impish smile.

The Bruce I knew in 1979, when we were 19 years old, full of pep and optimism, ready to take on the world.

I am so shocked that I just stand there, staring.

This guy doesn't just look like Bruce from 35 years ago.  He has the same stance, the same gestures, the same bemused, sardonic expression.

Years slip away.  I want to go up to him and ask about the assignment in Modern American Literature class. I swear I hear "Shadow Dancing" playing in the background.

Gaining control of myself, I stand in line behind "Bruce" and his friend.

They are talking about science fiction!  Bruce loved science fiction.

I've rekindled lots of old relationships since moving to the Plains: my Dad's old navy buddy, my grade school boyfriend, the nephew of my first sexual experience.  This must be a relative.

But Bruce doesn't have any children.  He has a sister; it must be a nephew.. 



"Bruce" and his friend get their orders -- coffee and chocolate-walnut bars -- and walk past me to the tables.  I stare.  "Bruce" ignores me.  The friend smiles.

They are both in their 20s, probably college students.  The friend is of medium height, rather cute, with short brown hair, prominent eyebrows, and an attractive "lost boy" expression.

I get my order and sit across from them, close enough to hear their conversation without drawing attention to myself.  Bruce's profile on Facebook lists no nephews.  Nobody of college age on his friend list.

This makes me more anxious to talk to this guy, to find the connection with my Bruce from 35 years ago. 

Of course, I'm not about to walk up to him and say "You look just like someone I knew 35 years ago."  I don't want to draw attention to my age, and besides, it's the oldest pickup line in the book.  I'd get sneered at.

Besides, I'm afraid.  Could this be my Bruce, zapped to the future in a weird time warp?

Suddenly the friend stands and heads toward me.

Uh-oh.  Was I cruising too obviously?  This is only a gay-friendly coffee house, after all.  Most of the customers are straight.

"Hi, I'm Jordan.  May I join you?"

"Sure, but what about your friend?"

"He has to get back to work.  I'm done for the day."  He sits adjacent to me at the table, so our legs press together.  "Are you a professor?"

We end up back at my apartment, kissing and going into the 69 position before I go down on him.  Jordan has a slim, smooth body and a cut Bratwurst+.  I don't care for his annoying habit of talking during sex: "Yeah...yeah...that feels good...that feels great..."

I try to steer the post-hookup conversation to his friend, without it being too obvious.  They only met a few days ago, when "Bruce" came to work in the computer repair store down the street.

A few days later, I do a work drop-in.  Jordan is there, but not "Bruce."  I ask about him as casually as possible: he quit the same day I saw him at the gay-friendly coffee house.  Jordan doesn't know anything else.

I'm too spooked to tell my Bruce about his 20-year old doppelganger.

Plains, December 2016

The end of the worst semester in history, with bereavement, romance problems, health problems, and job problems.  I'm glad it's over, so I can spend the next couple of weeks in Indianapolis and forget about the Plains altogether.

Depressed, I walk through the Performing Arts on the way to the parking lot.  I pause to look at the student artwork.  Suddenly "Bruce" and a friend come out of a classroom and head in the opposite direction.

"Bruce" looks the same as in September, except for a brown coat.  The friend is medium height, rather buffed, with a broad, open face, prominent ears, and unruly dark-red hair.   

 This time I turn back and walk abreast with them.  "Sorry to bother you, but you look exactly like someone I know."

The friend smiles.  "Yeah, I get that a lot.  My name is Cliff."

"Bruce" says "I'll see you later" and vanishes through a side door.

"Um...actually, I meant your friend.  He looks like a guy I used to know in college."

"Hm...maybe he's a nephew or cousin or something.  I don't know him very well -- we just sat together in art class."

We go out for coffee, and I end up taking Cliff back to my apartment, where we get naked -- he has a thick, muscular chest brushed with hair, an innie belly button, and a gigantic Mortadella, uncut.  He throws his legs in the air and says "Top me, Daddy!"   Instead I go down on him, then finish with interfemoral.

I get the course roster online, but can't find "Bruce's" name.  Nor is he on the list of art majors.  Maybe he is a time traveler from 1979.

Plains, February 2016

I'm writing a story about Yuri -- has it really been twenty years since we met, when I was in grad school in New York, sharing an apartment with the roommate from hell?  Time keeps on slipping into the future....

The program director wants us to attend campus sports events to "promote the program," so I go to the least objectionable winter sport the University offer, wrestling.  Afterwards I stop into the straight bar downtown for fish and chips.  "Bruce" is sitting at the bar, talking to a friend.

The friend is  of medium height, slim, thick brown hair, prominent eyebrows, small moustache.

I know the routine: distract me with a cute friend so I won't dig into the mystery of why you look so much like my Bruce from 35 years ago.  But this time I won't be fooled.  I squeeze between them, put my arm around his shoulders so he can't escape, and say "Hi, I've been meaning to talk to you. You look like my friend Bruce ___.  Does that name ring a bell?"

"No, sorry," he says with a frown.  "My name is ___, and this is Josh."

I ignore Josh.  "Have you ever been to Rock Island, Illinois?" 

"No, I'm from Colorado.  This is the farthest east I've ever been."

Didn't Bruce live in Colorado for a few years?  "Well, what's your mother's name?  Maybe..."

"Excuse me," he says.  He ducks through the front door and is gone.

Josh grins.  "I guess you came on a little strong."

"Beg pardon?"

"You were trying to pick him up, weren't you?"

"No...um...."

"I don't blame you -- he's hot.  I was trying to pick him up, too.  But the  'you look like someone I know' is the oldest line in the book.  You need some pointers on how to approach today's youth."

Josh invites me back to his apartment to hear his "pointers."  I go down on him -- average sized, uncut.  Then I push him onto his back and "face-fuck" him.

The "Bruce" doppelganger is not enrolled at the University.  I can't find him on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.  I have no idea who he is.  But as long as he keeps on bringing cute guys to cheer me up whenever I'm depressed, a little time travel is ok.

Next time, how about a black guy?

See also: Don't Call Bruce Gay

Julian: When a Bratwurst Isn't Big Enough

Rock Island, March 1982

When I was a senior at Augustana, a freshman named Julian joined the radio station crew.  Bruce, by then the general manager, planned to assign him a job as news stringer, someone who picked up and adapted news stories from the wire.  But Julian's father, a VIP in Chicago politics, called his old friend President Treadway, and guess who became music director?

Suddenly 50% of our programming was classical music.

Julian was brash, sarcastic, elitist, demanding, and entitled.  But he immediately piqued my interest:

1. He was into classical music.

2. He was black  There were very few black guys at Augustana.

3. He was chubby.  There were even fewer chubby black guys.  The 1980s fashion was svelte.

4. And he was flamboyantly feminine, what we called a flamer back then. Obviously gay, though of course none of the straight guys at Augustana noticed.

I hadn't met any gay students at Augustana, just some guys who would accept a same-sex hookup as a last resort, if there were no girls around.  So I was determined to get into Julian's life, as a boyfriend, a hookup, a friend, something.

Unfortunately Julian didn't like me.  Not at all.

No matter how nice I was, he remained condescending, rude, arrogant, and abrasive.  When I asked him to get a slice of pizza at the Student Union, he gave me cool attitude and said "No, thanks awfully."

Offering to work the dead time of Saturday morning didn't impress him.

Befriending his friends didn't work.  He hung out exclusively with giggling co-eds.

How about introducing him to my friends?  One weekend I brought Brian over for a tour of the campus.  We toured the radio station while Julian was in the office.

He barely grunted.

Brian was very hot. Could Julian be straight?

I decided to throw caution to the wind.

You never came out in 1982 without extensive tests to see if the guy would attack, or tell the dean and expelled for being gay.

It was March of my senior year. To be expelled now would be devastating. But maybe I could come out without actually coming out.

So I waited again until Julian was alone in the office, sitting at his desk.  I dropped in on some pretense and said,  "So a lot of people think Brian and I are lovers, but of course that's ridiculous."

"Oh?"  I could hear Julian cogitating. Ridiculous because we're friends, or because I'm straight?

"Yeah, he's not my type at all."

More cogitating.  By talking about it so nonchalantly, I had proven myself ok about gay people.  And a life of constant pretense gets lonely.  I could tell the exact moment when Julian decided to make the leap.

"I don't know," he said, staring down at his desk.  "I thought he was quite attractive."

And just like that, he was out.

My turn!

"Not very big beneath the belt, but not everybody can have a baseball bat down there."   I made a show of trying to look down at Julian's basket.

And just like that, I was out.

That Friday night we had dinner at O'Melia's (now it's Jake O's), a fancy eatery on Black Hawk Road,.

"I'm sort of nervous," Julian told me.  "I've never been on a date with a guy before.  I was asked out a few times in high school, but I said no.  I was worried about the erotic activity afterwards."

"Why?" I asked.  "Afraid you would feel guilty afterwards?"

"It's not that.  Well -- you've seen me.  Imagine me naked."

"I've been doing that all semester," I said with a grin.

He looked down at his menu.  "You're just being nice, but you know I'm gigantic where I should be small, and teen-tiny where I should be big.  I'm like one of those mythological beasts."

What did I ahve to do to boost this guy's confidence?  I tried a dirty joke: "Oh, you mean a unicorn?  Can I see your horn?"



After dinner we went back to the dorm, where Julian's roommate was gone for the weekend.  We turned on his stereo -- Beethoven's Symphony #7 -- sat down on the bed, and started kissing and groping.

Soon I had a chance to examine his beneath-the-belt gifts in detail.  Bigger than most, at least a Bratwurst, maybe even a Bratwurst+.

This was what he was concerned about?  So concerned that he turned down dates in high school, and came to college with a cynical, abrasive shell?

We only dated that one time, but we stayed friends until I graduated and he went back to Chicago for the summer.

See also: My Top Black Boyfriends and Hookups; 13 Gay College Boys.