Leonard Bernstein, the Rabbi's Son, and the Verge of Coming Out

This story has been moved to RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

There's a Picture of Me and a Girl on My Parents' Dresser

Rock Island High School, Senior Year

Younger gay guys are often shocked to discover that I used to date girls. "Are you bisexual?" they ask. "Were you trying to 'turn' straight?"  Was it a screen, so no one would find out?" 

"No."

"Then...why?"

I think for a long time, wondering myself.   But in the end there's only one answer: "I had no choice."

During my childhood in the 1970s, heterosexual desire was assumed universal human experience.  Little boys might think "girls are icky!," but once they hit puberty, they would "discover the opposite sex," become obsessed with feminine curves and smiles.  Period.  No exceptions.  End of story.

So from birth relatives, teachers, preachers, coaches, camp counselors, judo instructors, Mean Boys, and friends subjected me to a flurry of interrogations: "Do you like girls yet?", by which they meant "Have you grown up?  Are you a man?"

When I turned 13, then 14, then 15, pubescent, yet still protesting a lack of interest, they shifted their tactics.  I was obviously "wild about girls," like every boy who ever existed. I just needed to find one who was my "type."  So they demanded: "Do you like that girl?  Or that one?  Or that one?"

They asked "What girl do you like?" more often than "How are you?"  I went to sleep each night with the interrogation ringing in my ears: "What girl do you like?  What girl do you like?  What girl? What girl?"

When I was hesitant about answering, or answered with the name of a head cheerleader too far out of my league to realistically pursue as a girlfriend, they -- literally everyone I knew -- tried to fix me up.

My father invited coworkers with teenage daughters over for dinner. Teachers assigned me female partners for projects.  Friends orchestrated chance meetings.  I was seated next to girls in the car, invited to parties only to discover that a "date" had been arranged for me, asked to fetch a book from a girl's house.  When the waitress smiled for her tip, I was advised "She likes you -- ask her out."

During high school, I succumbed to dates with 8 girls, including Julie, my date to the Senior Prom.

Everyone was going.  And during the spring semester, no one could talk about anything else. Finals, graduation, college plans?  Who cares!  Let's talk about corsages, tuxedos, dance steps, limousines, and fancy, expensive dinners at Jumer's Castle Lodge (which had rooms to rent upstairs, they told me with a leer).

Everyone wanted to know who I was bringing.  Friends I hadn't talked to in years accosted me in the hallway to ask "what girl?" "what girl?" "what girl?"

But...I didn't have a girlfriend!



"Ask someone -- anyone!  You have to go!  It's a rite of passage, the beginning of adulthood."

But...my church deemed dancing a sin, so surely my parents would never give me permission!

They did.  "Go! Stay out as late as you want! It will be the most important evening of your life!"

But...I didn't want to ask a girl!

My brother took care of that, fixing me up with an 11th grader named Julie, who was thrilled by the promise of hanging out with seniors.

It wasn't that bad.  We shared a limousine with Aaron (the rabbi's son who didn't realize that he was gay), Darry, and their dates, so it was much like a group of friends hanging out together.

This was the disco era, so we didn't need to touch as we danced to "Disco Inferno" and "Do You Believe in Magic."   It was easy enough to turn slightly and pretend to be dancing with a guy. And when we came to a slow number, like "You Belong to Me" by Carly Simon, I suddenly felt a desperate need for punch and cookies.

The only thing I hated was the slap-on-back congratulations, as if having Julie on my arm was the pinnacle of accomplishment.  I had fulfilled the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of everyone I knew!  No more uncertainty, no more sleepless nights of worry -- I had arrived.

There was a photographer, so Julie and I were photographed, me in my brown suit and Julie in her yellow dress.  20-wallet sized to send to all of our friends and relatives, and a full-size for the mantle.

After having dinner at Jumer's Castle Lodge and ignoring offers to get a room, I had the limo deposit Julie on her doorstep, with a "Thanks for a nice evening" but no kiss.  I never saw her again.

 But my parents put that picture on the mantle, amid pictures of me and my brother and sister and uncles and aunts and grandparents.

It stayed there, me and a girl smiling at the world, after I figured it out, after I dated Fred the Preacher and the Priest with the Pushy Mom and the cute cultist

It stayed there, me in a brown suit and a girl I never saw again, while I was living in Bloomington and Texas, discussing my date with the bodybuilder and my trip to India with Viju and my trip to Italy to track down my high school crush.

One day in frustration I took it down and hid it in a drawer in my room, but the next year it returned like the raven in the Edgar Allan Poe poem, chortling "Nevermore!"

It stayed there when I moved to West Hollywood,  telling my parents all about dating Alan and Raul and my celebrity boyfriend and my date with Richard Dreyfuss.

Why did my parents leave it up?  What were they trying to say?  What were they trying to believe?

This isn't the photo

Finally, in the summer of 1988, a decade after my prom date, it vanished from the mantle, replaced by an Isabel Bloom sculpture. 

Thank God! I exclaimed.

Sometime during the 1990s, a picture of me and my partner Lee appeared on the mantle, in a group photo with my brother and sister and their spouses.  I figured that the prom photo was gone for good.  But no...

Rock Island, December 1994

During a Christmas visit,  my mother asked me to get something out of her bedroom.  I hadn't been in there for years.

That darned prom photo was sitting on their dresser!

As far as I know, it's still there.

Dad Takes Me to See Naked Men

When I was growing up in Rock Island, the adults always asked "Is there any girl at school that you like?" but never "What do you want to be when you grow up?"  That was already decided.  I would go to work in the factory.

Rock Island was a factory town; almost every adult I knew, and the dad of almost every kid I knew, worked at J.I. Case, International Harvester, Caterpillar, or John Deere.  They all made tractors, harvesters, and other farm machines.

My factory was going to be J.I. Case Company, with its logo of an eagle digging its talons into the world.  Like my father and grandfather and three of my uncles and two of my older cousins.  Like everyone.

You started on the assembly line, then after a few years got promoted to lineman, and maybe, eventually, to foreman.

I could think of no fate more horrible than getting up at 5:00 am for a day of screwing things into things, then returning, dirty and dripping with sweat, to the small square house where my wife would have dinner on the table.

So, occasionally, in grade school or junior high, I said that I didn't want to work in the factory when I grew up.  Dad laughed.


"Of course no one wants to work.  You probably would rather spend the whole day playing football with your pals.  You have to, so you can make money to support your wife and kids."

"No, I mean, I want to do something else besides the assembly line at J.I. Case Company."

"Like what?  Sell shoes in the mall?  The factory pays better, and you don't have to work nights, so you can spend time with your wife and kids."

Tenth graders at Rocky High were put into "business" or "academic" tracks.  I had high grades, so they put me into the academic track, explaining that it was for kids who planned to go to college.



College?  The possibility had never crossed my mind before.  No one in my family had ever gone to college (actually, my grandmother went to art school, but I didn't know that at the time). Wasn't it just for rich people?

No, there were lot of scholarships.  I could probably get one.

"Don't be crazy!" Dad said when I told him about college.  "You don't need college to work in the factory!  Besides, what are you going to do in college but read books?," he added with a derisive sneer. Nazarenes thought of books other than the Bible as worthless at best, and most likely tools of Satan.

"Yeah, and play the violin," I said, to rub it in: classical music was also suspect, redolent of decadence and effeminacy.  "Maybe I'll major in art.  And grow my hair long, like a girl."

I expected Dad to yell, but instead he just stared at me, open mouthed.  Eventually he said "Why don't you come and take a look at the factory? Who knows, you might like it?"

So the next Saturday, we took a tour of J. I. Case Company in Rock Island.  There were three big buildings, all of featureless gray concrete.  The first building contained offices, with vast rows of desks where secretaries and stenographers worked.

"All ladies up here," Dad pointed out.  "But they never go out onto the floor.  That's 100% men."

The "floor" was a vast concrete hangar where the tractor parts moved on conveyor belts until they were assembled on a gigantic machine and then hauled out.  It was all noise and bright lights and grime, all wires and tubes and pipes and complicated sharp things.  I couldn't understand what anything was for, but I did notice that Dad was right: 100% men.

None with their shirts off, but still....

The third building was for painting, finishing, and licensing. There was also a small tv lounge that stank of paint, a lunchroom with vending machines, and because you got dirty and sweaty during the day, a locker room with showers, so you could be fresh and clean when you returned to your small square house, where your wife had dinner on the table.


Here they had their shirts off.  There were even some naked musclemen walking around, penises swinging -- much bigger than the ones I saw in the high school locker room!

Dad took me back to the car, and we drove up the hill again.  "That wasn't so bad, was it?  It's 100% men.  No girly influences at all.  Do you think you'd like to be down there on the floor every day?"

"No.  This was fun, but I still want to go to college."

Why did Dad bring me there?  I didn't understand at the time, but now I do:

He thought of college as a feminizing influence, a place where I would read books, study music and art, and "turn" gay.

So he was offering a masculine alternative: the factory floor, 100% men, sweat, grime, muscles, and swinging penises.

He hoped that looking at male bodies all day would "keep" me straight.

See also: Dad Explains the Facts of Life; Class Rings and Arabic

Dating the Preacher's Son

Verne, Mark, and a guy I don't remember

Rock Island, May 1977

During my junior year at Rocky High (1976-77), most guys were obsessed with demonstrating that they were not Swishes (our word for "gay").  The best way was to become a Rock (jock), or be seen in public with one -- they hated men with muscles.

I wasn't on a team -- being an athletic trainer didn't count -- so I had no choice but the only other option: date a Rock.

But most Rocks were very busy, having sex with eight or nine girls in various combinations every night, so they had little time or energy left for boys.

 One day in November, a few weeks after my date with Todd's girlfriend, I was running around the indoor track, when I saw the preacher's son Verne (not his real name) playing one-on-one basketball in the gym be-low. Verne was a senior, so our paths rarely intersected. At school, I saw him only in the locker room after football practice, when he was anxious to get to the showers.

At church, he was always encased in a shell of fawning groupies. Practically our only contact came a couple of months ago, when I helped him Pray Through to Victory at an altar call.

As I ran, Verne finished his game. He guzzled Gatorade from a plastic bottle, then ripped off his t-shirt and collapsed, shimmering with sweat, onto the lap of a girl.  He was hugely tall, with broad shoulders, hard thick biceps, short dark hair, and dark blue, almost purple eyes.  And he was a Nazarene -- no sex allowed!  He would be perfect.

It took a week for me to bolster my courage enough to call. Even then, I dialed and hung up three times. When Verne came on the line, I said, “There’s a gospel concert on Saturday. Um. . .if you’re not, like, busy or anything. . .would you like to go?”

Verne burst into raucous laughter.

“Sorry to bother you,” I said stiffly, my face burning with humiliation.

“No – it’s ok, sorry,” Verne said. “It was just funny the way you asked. I’m busy Saturday, but what about the basketball game Friday? You can do more touching at a game, anyway. I’ll get us a couple of girls.”

I spent the rest of the evening exuberantly calling all of my friends, and wondering why do we need girls?

During the game, Verne and I sat with the girls on either side, so that our thighs and knees sometimes brushed together, and whenever the Rocks scored a point, he enveloped me in a warm, sweaty hug. Next came Alfano's for Canadian bacon and sauerkraut pizza and two pitchers of soda, one for the boys and one for the girls.

We had a lot to talk about.  Verne was taking AP Spanish and French; if it hadn't been God’s Will for him to become a preacher, he would have become a linguist.

When we dropped off Verne’s girl, he walked her to her doorstep “for safety,” but returned almost immediately, complaining that her father had left the porch light on.

My girl came next; her porch light was dark.

When I returned to the car, Verne asked “Did you get any?”'

I assumed that he meant kissing, so I said “Sure. Lots.”  I had kissed her on the cheek.

Verne and me

Verne reached over and punched my shoulder and exclaimed “Awright!” I was disappointed that he didn’t walk me to my doorstep to “get some,” but otherwise I was elated by my success.

During the winter and spring of eleventh grade, we went to a a jazz concert, the spring musical,  an orchestra banquet, two basketball games, a baseball game, hiking, jogging, tennis, and swimming.  That was more enough for us to be “going together,” though no one at Rocky High seemed to notice, referring to us only as buddies.

 Dating Verne summarily ended any suspicion that I was That Way. Even at church, people spoke to me in a civil tone.  It also ended pressure by my Crowd to date girls -- apparently Vikings were dreamy enough.

 Maybe that's why he always insisted on girls for evening dates.  He usually provided them, but twice I brought Becky, my Just Friend, and once I acquired my own, by casually saying: “Oh, and Verne will be there, too.”

At some point Verne always disappeared with his girl for ten or fifteen minutes, and on the way home he had the annoying habit of asking “Did you get any?” But these complaints were trivial; I was dating a Rock!

In May we spent a weekend camping with his friends at Starved Rock State Park at Starved Rock State Park, about 100 miles from Rock Island.

 Though we shared a tent, I avoided any repeat of the scapular incident last summer at music camp. I didn't want to discover that Verne was one of these guys who drops you the moment things get physical.  But I did get a sausage sighting.

The Most Homophobic Statement I Have Ever Heard

Not Ralph in underwear

Rock Island, December 2001

I've heard lots of homophobic statements over the years, ranging from the ignorant (mostly from "friends"):

"Are you the boy or girl in your relationship?"
"What do they think causes it now?"
"If you've never been with a woman, how do you know you like men better?"

To the raving (mostly from preachers).

"The homa-sekshul would just as soon kill you as look at you."
"No nation that has tolerated homa-sekshuls has ever survived!"
"Homa-sekshuls are possessed by the Spirit of Evil!"

But the most homophobic statement I ever heard consisted of five little words:

"Oh, you mean that place."



Mr. Manary was a young, hip teacher at Rocky High, who insisted that students call him by his first name, Ralph.  I never actually saw him in his underwear, but close scrutiny during lectures suggested that he looked like this: tall, thin, clean-cut, tight-muscled, and bulging.

During my sophomore year, I had Ralph for American History.  He wrote a book on the Quad Cities, so he had us investigate Rock Island during the 1920s, and learn about gangster John Looney and jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke.

When we got to the 1950s, we read some writers of the Beat Generation, including Allen Ginsberg's "Supermarket in California", and we watched the classic anti-Communist allegory I Married a Monster from Outer Space.  

Have you ever heard of anyone so cool?

During my junior year, I had him for political science.  We took a field trip to the courthouse to see a real criminal trial,  about a shooting that took place in the Hawaiian Lounge, Rock Island's gay bar.  One of the witnesses, the "swish  on the double date", helped me figure out what gay meant.

Eugene McCarthy

When we held a mock 1976 presidential election.  Jimmy Carter won by a landslide, but Ralph came out in favor of the liberal independent, Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy.

Ralph was the first person to encourage me to think about college.  He even got the head of the history department at his alma mater, St. Olaf College, to invite me to apply.

During my senior year, I had him for AP American History.  Sometimes he held study sessions at his house, and his wife made cookies.

We had to parse Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech and read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, about the oppression of the Native Americans.

Fast forward 20 years, to January 2002: I was living in Florida but back in Rock Island for the holidays.  I contacted Ralph, the local history expert.

Ralph's house

Now in his mid-50s, he was still teaching at Rocky High, still living in that small two-story house on 7th Avenue, with a white picket fence and an old-fashioned gas streetlamp.

We talked about Rock Island history:  scandals and floods and riots.  Local celebrities.  Iconic businesses.

Then: "What can you tell me about the Hawaiian Lounge? It was a Rock Island institution, and then suddenly it was gone, and JR's took its place.  Do you know how and when it closed?"

His eyes flashed.  "What lounge, now?"

 "You know, the Hawaiian Lounge.  Our poly sci class sat in on a trial about a shooting that took place there."

"Can't say I remember it."

I didn't notice his attempts to not know. He was a liberal, sensitive to minority struggles, and just plain cool, so why wouldn't he be gay-friendly?

That Place

"It was just a few blocks from here, on 4th Avenue.  You had to drive past it to get downtown...." I stopped short and stared.  His face was contorted into a mask of disgust.

"Oh, you mean that place."

He emphasized the word that: alien, other, stranger, savage.  Something wicked.  Something awful.  That place.

I quickly made an excuse and left, and drove aimlessly around in my sister-in-law's car for a long time.  I have rarely felt so depressed.

One of my childhood heroes hated me.

Showering with Two Boys at a Church Conference in Switzerland

When I was sixteen years old, I was selected to join 500 Nazarene teenagers from around the world in Fiesch, Switzerland for our International Institute.

It was like summer camp, with daily sermons, Bible studies, jump quizzes, and seminars on soul-winning, except we had afternoons and one full day off for field trips and sightseeing  We could go out on our own, as long as we:
1. Didn't try to make friends with the locals.
2. Didn't set foot in any Catholic church.
3. Were back by 7:00 pm.

But every good Nazarene knows how to bend the rules.

The full post is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

What Do You Have Under the Hood?

When I was growing up in Rock Island, most boys were obsessed with being "men," doing exactly what men were supposed to do and nothing else.  The slightest of shifts in your hips as you walked, the most subtle of wrist movements, the tiniest bit of animation in your voice was proof positive that you were not a man at all, but a sissy, a "fag," or a girl.

Even if you got your body gestures, walking, and talking perfected, you could still give away your inner girlishness by not being knowledgeable and enthusiastic about three things: girls, sports, and cars.

The only one I had any hope of accomplishing was cars.

There was no way I was going to kiss and hug girls, sports were too confusing, but I had just got my driver's license, and Mom let me borrow her car sometimes.  Knowing how to fix a car was an attainable goal.  Masculinity within my reach!

The only problem: I was an aesthete, an intellectual, into Renaissance poetry and statues of naked men.  I couldn't tell a hammer from a nail. I got a D- in shop class.  I got carpentry and building toys for Christmas, and left them untouched in their boxes.



But I perservered.  In August 1977, I went to my father and asked him to teach me how to "fix cars."

"You?"  he asked in surprise.  "You hate mechanical stuff."

"Well, most mechanical stuff.  You couldn't pay me to solder an iron onto a lathe, or whatever.  But a car is different."

"Ok, I can give you some pointers.  There are three things about cars that every guy should know: how to change a tire, how to change the oil, and how to repair a carburetor."









1. Change a Tire.  

Dad took me out to the garage, popped open the trunk, and showed me where the jack and spare tires were stored.

"You've seen the ladies with flat tires on the side of the road, waiting for someone to help.  If you can change a tire, you'll be sure to get their phone number!"

What about a guy on the side of the road?  I thought.  

  And of course, if you're on a date and the tire goes flat, you'd better be able to change it, or the girl will think you're a sissy."

He showed me how to jack up a car and "unscrew the lug nuts."

I couldn't get the wrench to work.  It just slid along the nuts.  Finally Dad grabbed the wrench and did it himself.

"Well, you get the idea, anyway."

2. Change the oil.

"A garage will do this for you, but imagine how impressed the girls will be when they find out you can change your own?"

"And the guys,"  I said.

This involved getting under the car and unscrewing a gross greasy thing.

I balked.  "I'll impress the girls with my wit and charm, thanks."











3.  Fix the carburetor.

Next Dad showed me how to open the front hood and prop it up.

"Knowing what's under here is the key to impressing girls."

It was an incomprehensible mass of wires and pipes.

"Here's your fan belt, your carburetor, your radiator, your angler, your glockenspiel."

I stared into oblivion, imagining a hot guy with his shirt off straining over the engine.

"Loosen the rod here, angle the pipe so the screw goes counter-clockwise, then re-up the uptake on the valve here.  This knob goes with this fuel injector.  Then you just sort of squeeze the triangulator down the revolver, and gently push the socket into the wrench."

I stared into oblivion, imagining a hot guy with his pants off straining over the engine.  Dad hadn't mentioned the benefits of not knowing how to fix cars.

"Now you try."

I turned and headed back to the house.  "Thanks, anyway.  I'll just pay someone to do it."

Preferably a guy with his pants off.

I Meet the Nazarene Teen Idol

When I was growing up in the Nazarene Church, twice a year, in the fall and the spring, we had a "revival": a full week of screeching, foot-stomping, Bible-thumping sermons by an evangelist who made his living going from revival to revival, getting people saved and sanctified.

You were encouraged to bring your friends who went to other churches, and thus might not be amenable to visiting on a Sunday morning.  But on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday night, they were free, right?

We did get a few converts during every revival, but not nearly enough for the evangelist, who stomped and shouted with more and more urgency as the week wore on and nearly everyone who needed to get saved was already saved and only a few people went down. Or no one.

The only bright spot of the whole ordeal was the gospel group that accompanied the evangelist. During the fall revival in my junior year in high school, the evangelist was the young, muscular but bellowing Brother Jonathan, and the musical group was the Smith Family (not to be confused with the punk rock group the Smiths, which I have several times).

They sang fast, upbeat songs which I assumed they wrote -- there were records for sale in the lobby.  Church oldsters used to old Salvation Army-style ballads like "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" were scandalized by their country-inflected lyrics, not to mention their guitars, drums, and tambourines.  One of their songs goes through my head intermittently to this day:

I've got confidence, God is going to see me through
Whatever the case may be, I know He's gonna fix it for me.

(I just discovered that "I've Got Confidence" was not a Smith Family original: it was composed by Andre Crouch and popularized by Elvis Presley.)

I haven't been able to find any photos -- too much interference from other Smiths on the internet -- but they looked something like this: middle-aged husband and young-adult daughter as the lead singers (baritone and soprano), teenage son on the guitar, preteen son on the drums, and wife on the tambourine, piano, or organ.

 Scott, the teenage son, was a year younger than me, tall and buffed with big hands, a round face, short blond hair, and dreamy blue eyes.  The Nazarene equivalent of a teen idol, our own Shaun Cassidy!  I was desperate to become his friend, or at least feel a warm strong handshake, but I didn't have a chance.  He was mobbed.

Girls were swooning, batting their eyes at him, writing him love notes under the guise of prayer requests.  Old people (anyone over 30) were pushing to tell him what a "fine Christian boy" he was and getting him to autograph any piece of paper they could find, even the "notes" page of their study Bibles.  Boys were rushing to kneel at the altar in the hopes that Scott would come down from the podium and put his arm around them as they moaned and cried and "prayed through to victory."

Unfortunately, I couldn't join them at the altar, because I had made a major tactical error.  You could go down only to get saved (forgiven of the sins you had committed), sanctified (made holy, so you would be incapable of future sins), or to help someone else pray through.   And, not knowing that Scott would be there, I got sanctified just a few weeks ago!

Going down again so soon would be admitting that I had never been sanctified at all -- that I had been deceived by Satan into rising from the altar without praying through. Or that I was lying to get the praise and prestige.  A major faux pas. a major humiliation!

The full post is on Righteous Gemstones Beefcake and Boyfriends

Sausage Sighting of the Preacher's Son

Rock Island, May 1977

When I was in high school, Verne the Preacher's Son was my kind-of boyfriend (at least when there were no girls around).

Nothing erotic happened, but we hugged, and I got a number of sausage sightings.

This guy is over 18, older than Verne at the time, but he has the grin, the same chest and shoulders, and the same beneath-the-belt gifts, a sizeable Bratwurst.

During my junior year, I applied for early admission to Olivet, our Bible College on the prairie, because Verne was going.   It offered 30 majors, but everyone assumed that I would be studying to become a preacher, evangelist, minister of music, or missionary.

As the days and weeks of my junior year at Rocky High passed, Verne began to conjure an idyllic future for us.  We would be roommates at Olivet, of course, and take lots of the same classes. He would play football, and I would be an athletic trainer.

Then, when we graduated, we would get called by the same church, maybe as preacher and minister of music.  They often worked as a team.  We would plan church services together.  We would go on retreats, prayer breakfasts, and sabbaticals. Our wives would exchange recipes in parsonage kitchens.  Our children would grow up together, and eventually marry each other.

Sometimes these conversations involved hugging.  Sometimes they involved playfully grabbing at each other while changing clothes.  I had already seen Verne nude in the locker room, and on our camping trip, but there was something especially erotic about nude horseplay, in his bedroom at the parsonage on a Saturday afternoon.

A random guy

One day in May 1977, shortly after Scott the Cornetist disappeared (later we discovered that he died), we were changing clothes after jogging, and I got tired of the "wives and kids" litany.  "Why will we need wives?" I asked.  "Why can't it just be the two of us?"

He looked at me like I was crazy.  Then, after a long pause: "Have you ever seen a Nazarene preacher that didn't have a wife?"

"Um. ...no."

"Every preacher -- every man --  has to get married.  It's  a fact of life.  But friends are just as important.  Maybe more."  He put his hands on my shoulders and drew me into a warm, sweaty, hug "The Bible says that David loved Jonathan 'more than the love of women.'"

I wasn't satisfied.  "Why can't David and Jonathan live together without women?"

Verne laughed and broke away.  "Man, you get the craziest ideas!  Without women, they would be Swishes!"

Little White Lies in High School

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, the Nazarene church was very strict: no movies, no dancing, no eating out on Sunday, no shopping in a store that sold alcohol, and absolutely no lying. 

Lying wasn't as bad as going to a movie, but it was still bad enough to send you to Hell for all eternity.  Our Sunday School teacher told us to be especially careful of four situations where people thought lying was justified.  It was not.

1. "White" lies that you tell to avoid hurting someone's feelings.

If Mom asks "How do you like my brocolli and lima casserole?" and you don't like it, say so. Don't lie just to avoid hurting her feelings.

2.  "Kidding," lying as a joke. 

If your friend asks "What's the homework assignment?", don't answer "To eat fried worms."  Don't try to be funny.  Tell the truth.

3. Misdirections, lies that are technically true. 

When the Sunday school teacher asks if you have witnessed to anyone (told them about Jesus) since last week, and you haven't, don't say "I talked to some of my friends."  Obviously you did talk to your friends during the last week, but you are not answering the question. 

4. "Necessary" lies that you tell to avoid something that you think is worse. 

During the Tribulation, when they round up and shoot all the Christians, if someone asks "Are you a Christian?", you must answer "Yes.."  Better to die right away and go to Heaven than live a few more years and go to Hell.  .

I appreciated this list of types of lies, since I was lying all the time.

   

1.  My parents, teachers, and friends were constantly asking "Is there any girl in your class that you like?".or "Is there any girl at church that you like?", and by around 9th grade,  they began asking with intensity, fervor, and a look of joyful anticipation. 

"No" was not an acceptable answer. It didn't mean "no," it mean that I didn't trust them enough to reveal my secret crush.

So I picked a girl at random and named her.  A little white lie to avoid hurting their feelings.

2. Whenever a new girl appeared in class or at church, or a girl broke up with her boyfriend, they pushed me at her.  "Don't be shy!  Ask her out!"

I couldn't tell them that I didn't want to date her, or any girl, for that matter.  So I waited a believable amount of time and said "I asked her out.  She said no." 

Just kidding.

3, In high school, on
Tuesday nights (the night you call for Saturday dates), I would get a constant interrogation from my parents "Who are you going to call?  Why haven't you called?  It's getting late!"

So I called a male friend and asked him to 'hang out."  Then I reported back:   "I made a call."

"Do you have a date?"

"Yes."  Dates refer to any plans, not just romantic ones, right?  Misdirection.

4. My friends were constantly asking "Isn't that girl hot! Doesn't she have nice breasts?  Wouldn't you love to get her in the sack?"

If I said "No," they wouldn't believe me.  Or maybe they would, and discover that I was the only boy on Earth who was not interested in girls.  I couldn't even imagine the consequences.  Psychological tests.  A mental hospital.  Or maybe medical tests, dissecting me to see what went wrong. 

So I said "Sure, she's totally hot." 

A necessary lie to avoid something worse.

The Naked Goldenboys at Football Try-Outs

Rock Island, August 1975

"All entering sophomores invited to try out for junior varsity football," Dad reads from a brochure that came in the mail.

"That's nice," I say, immersed in a course catalog.  In just a few weeks, I'll be going to Rocky High, a mature, sophisticated, grown-up high schooler with tons of cool courses to choose from.

Arthurian Legend or Greek Mythology?
The Great Depression or The Civil War?
Advanced Spanish or Elementary Swedish?
I must have that course catalog memorized!

"You dropped out of wrestling and judo," he points out.  "You have to play some kind of sport in high school."

"Is that a rule?  I don't like sports. Besides, I'm going to be busy with orchestra, jump quiz, Spanish Club, Writers' Club..."

"Yes, it's a rule!  And stop pretending that you don't like sports.  You're a boy, aren't you?"

"Well...I wouldn't mind the track team, I guess."

"Why not football?"

"No way!" I exclaim.  "Football is gross!"  Of all the sports I hate, football is the worst.  Guys pounding each other into a pulp over some stupid little ball.  Why don't they just give everybody his own ball -- that way they wouldn't have to fight over it.

"Football players always get the cutest girls," Dad says, assuming that I, like "every boy," make decisions solely on their usefulness in acquiring girls.

"What kind of date can I go on in Intensive Care?"

"Don't get smart!  It won't hurt you to try out, at least."

When Dad says "Jump," you don't ask "How high?", you just jump.  I have no choice but to try out.

Rocky High is about 2 1/2 miles from my house, a straight shot down 18th Avenue to Longview Park, then left on 17th Street and down the hill.  I walk slowly, hoping to arrive too late.

I have only seen the high school from a distance.  Close up, it's vast and imposing, two huge limestone monoliths, a dozen outlying buildings, a huge parking lot.   Suddenly I feel very small.  How will I ever find my classes?  I was one of the top students at tiny, ordinary Washington Junior High, but here, surrounded by rich kids from the South Side, the children of Augustana professors...what if I...

Somehow I find the locker room.  It's deserted, silent except for the sound of a shower.  I walk over -- a heavily tanned, muscular guy, probably a senior, is soaping up.  Enormous penis.  But what I remember most is his trapezius, the muscle the goes across the top of the shoulder.  How did he ever get it so big?

I stand staring, open mouthed.  Is this what playing football is like?  Constant sausage sightings?

He smiles.  "You get lost, kid?"

"Um...I'm supposed to go to junior varsity football try-outs."

He points the way.

There are 30 guys already on the field, doing push-ups.  I know some of them from junior high -- well, knew of them, since they were too far above me on the social ladder to speak to.  They were the goldenboys who played every sport, led every school club, and presided over every assembly.  As handsome as Greek gods, and built, tall, broad shoulders, thick biceps, and huge hands.  They drank three cartons of milk at lunchtime, put their legs on the desk in front of them in class, came in late, left early without ever getting in trouble.  They could do no wrong: teachers and students alike were in love with them.

No doubt the other guys are goldenboys from their own junior highs.

I stand staring, open mouthed.  Is this what being on a football team is like?  Hanging out with Greek gods day after day?  Sitting with them in the cafeteria?  Pairing up with them for class projects?  Being invited to sleepovers at their house?

I'm in!  But wait -- that would mean playing football.  Gross!  There must be some way to hang out with goldenboys without having projectiles aimed at you!

 The Coach, a short, solidly built bulldog who will also be my gym teacher in the fall, takes my name, asks what position I want to play ("um...I dunno -- whatever he's playing"), and tells me to do push-ups..

 I haven't started weight training yet.  I can only do five.

Turns out we are just warming up.  After some sit-ups and jumping jacks, the real try-outs begin.  There are five tests.  After each, the coach walks up to a few of the guys, ones who did well and ones who didn't, and asks their names.

The Running Test.  I'm good at running -- I easily zip past most of the guys.  Only two pass me.

The Obstacle Course Test.  "Run in between these giant things as fast as you can without knocking them over."

Easy, and sort of fun.  This might not be so bad after all.

The Throwing Test.  I have never touched a football before in my life, let alone thrown one.  The projectile goes way to the left of the target I am aiming at.

The Catching Test.  A gigantic projectile hurled at me.  I missed it by a mile.

Ok, this isn't going well.  It's not worth hanging out with Golden Boys if you have to throw projectiles, or get them aimed at you!

The Tackling Test.  "Hurl yourself with all your strength at that big square blue thing."

Forget that!  I run around it.

After the coach finishes marking things on his clipboard, he says "You all did a great job.  Hit the showers, and then wait in the locker room for me to call your name.  I'll tell you whether you made it or not in private."

Showering with the Golden Boys is exciting -- a roomful of hard pecs, washboard abs, and gigantic Mortadellas.  And fun -- the guys tease each other, snap towels, pretend that they're going to grab each other's penises.
 
I want to be part of this group, get sausage sightings and penis-grabbing every day.  But then...shudder...I'd have to play football!

Most of us are still half-dressed, some still toweling off, when the Coach starts calling names, and taking the boys one by one back to his office.  Anderson... Angelo... Bates... Bergstrom...  Callohill....

"I'm not too worried," says the boy to my right, whose Mortadella+ I gawked at just a few minutes ago.  "There are 20 guys on the JV team, and 27 of us -- I counted.  That means 3/4ths of us make it."

My heart sinks.  What if I make it?  There must be a position that's all running and obstacle-course.  Then I'll spend my first semester at Rocky High getting pummelled!

"There's going to be a pizza party Friday after practice, for the ones who make the team," he continues.  "Maybe..."

At that moment the Coach calls my name and waits for me to approach. But we don't turn left, to his office, like the other boys.   We turn right.  He wraps his arm around my shoulders and leads me to a little caged room with athletic equipment in it.

"Boomer, I know you gave it your best shot, but not everyone is cut out to play football.  I can see how much you love the game, though, so I had an idea.  Do you have your Red Cross First Aid Certificate?"

"Sure.  I got it last year."

"Well, how would you like a job as an athletic trainer?  You'd be part of the team, just as valuable as the quarterback."

And I could hang out with goldenboys without getting pummeled every day!  

By the way, I eventually saw the Coach naked, too.

See also: My Crush on the Girl Next Door's Boyfriend; and I Get a Job as an Athletic Trainer.

High School Graduation: Getting Down with a Dude

Rock Island, May 1978

My brother Ken wasn't the only one who seemed to "know" in the winter and spring of 1978, my senior year at Rocky High, as I studied for AP exams and filled out college applications.  It seemed that I spent the whole semester protesting "No way am I a Swish!"

1. Darry (below), who explored the ghost of Davenport House with me, gave me a portable chess set for Christmas, with the card saying: "You'll need this for your honeymoon with Xaviera Hollander."

Xaviera Hollander was a New York City madame who told about her exclusive brothel in an autobiography, The Happy Hooker.  She was widely recognized as the most beautiful woman in the world.  Why would I need a chess set for my honeymoon with her?  Obviously because we wouldn't be having sex!








2. My Career Planning teacher assigned the Strong Interest Inventory, which matched you to jobs based on a series of Zen paradoxes: would you prefer to draw maps or feed zebras,  solve people’s problems or drive race cars, chop wood or program computers? When the results came, I was a good match for journalist, chemist, historian, and astronomer.

And female lawyer.  But not male lawyer.

Hot with rage, I stormed up to the teacher.  “This test thinks I’m a Swish!” I yelled.

With the offending score under his nose, he stumbled around for a few moments and finally came up with an excuse:  "Male and female lawyers draw on different sets of skills. The men are more aggressive,  and the ladies are more nurturing."  He looked up at me with watery wounded eyes.  "It doesn't mean that you have homo...homosexual tendencies or anything."

3. After the Sunday evenings service, the teens gathered for "Afterglow," a sort of party with games, Gospel music, and snacks.  Since it counted as a date, the ten or fifteen minutes between altar call and Afterglow was filled with preening, evaluating, and drama.

Church royalty usually had many invitations to choose from, especially Debbie, who was spoiled, snooty, and arrogant.  So I was surprised when she approached me with three of her cronies in tow, pressed her flat palm hard against my chest, and commanded, “You’re taking me to Afterglow.”

When I refused, she stared open-mouthed for a moment, as if she had never heard such nonsense, and then said "Figures.  I knew he was a Swish."  Her cronies giggled with delight.

4. For a skit in Spanish class, my female partner and I pretended to be parked at a lover’s lane. I took her in my arms, and an accomplice cut the lights, giving us time to muss our hair and clothes as if we had been necking. It wasn’t supposed to be funny, but the class roared.

Later my friend Tom, who would invite me to visit him in Los Angeles two years later, explained: “It was just the idea of you with a girl!”

I thought he meant a Nazarene, forbidden anything past first base, but now I realized that he thought I didn't like girls, so the sight of me pretending to kiss one was hilarious.

5. Craig, who went streaking with me in junior high, invited me to his graduation party.  "There'll be mattresses in the basement," he said, "In case you want to get down with. . .um. . .anybody."

Surely he meant "with a girl." He would be shocked and outraged if I used the mattress to get down with a dude.

Wouldn't he?

But he did say "get down with...um...anybody."

No way was I a Swish!

The Preacher Discovers Homa-Sekshuls

Rock Island, September 1977

When I was growing up, every Nazarene Preacher had a hobby-horse, some sin or social problem that he screamed about in every sermon, regardless of the topic: working on the Sabbath, playing cards, liberal Christians, Communists, hippies.

 In 1977, at the start of my senior year in high school, we got a new preacher, Brother Spearman, whose hobby-horse was the Unpardonable Sin.

 God didn’t distinguish between little sins (like falling asleep in church) or big sins (like going to a movie).  The punishment was always the same, burning for eternity in the Lake of Fire.  But,  if you went down to the altar and moaned and sobbed loud enough, God would forgive you for any sin, no matter how heinous.

With one exception. If you committed the Unpardonable Sin, you were doomed to the Lake of Fire, no matter how often you went to the altar and moaned and sobbed.  God wouldn't forgive you.

God's Word didn't tell us which sin was unpardonable, though occasionally a Sunday school teacher speculated that it was believing in evolution, setting foot inside a Catholic church, listening to rock music, or getting your hand stamped for re-entry into an event.  Preachers usually kept mum, because their jobs depended on a lot of sinners going down to the altar, and you wouldn't go down unless you thought you could be forgiven.

When Brother Spearman dangled the Unpardonable Sin in front of the congregation; he got people to the altar, but it kept backfiring.  God held grudges.  When you got to the altar, you had to work to persuade Him.  You had to cry hard, moan and gasp, and plead over and over, sometimes for ten minutes, sometimes longer.  But suddenly anyone who didn't feel the ecstatic release of Victory within a few seconds concluded that they were doomed.

One Sunday Laverne Larsen, son of the Sunday School Superintendent (yes, a boy was named Laverne), was having trouble praying through to Victory.  Suddenly he brushed off the hands of the church men, leapt to his feet, and screamed “God won’t forgive me! I committed the Unpardonable Sin!” He ran sobbing from the sanctuary.

Making church royalty doubt their salvation did not bode well for Brother Spearman’s continuing employment. He had to think of a new altar call draw, and fast!

He hit on the answer when he read a newspaper article about a town somewhere out west passing a law that prohibited normal people from speaking out against Homa-Sekshuls.

Suddenly Brother Spearman realized: the Unpardonable Sin was turning Homa-Sekshul!

God liked symmetry. The first sin, that got man expelled from the Garden of Eden, was Adam seeing Eve naked and realizing that men and women were different. So the last sin, the one that could never be forgiven, was a man rejecting that difference. God talked about it on practically every page of His Word.

When the hippie boys started acting like girls in the 1960s, we called them harmless lunatics. But Satan was able use their long hair and beads and rawhide fringes against them. He whispered “Men are just like women, so why not become a woman?” And countless thousands turned into Homa-Sekshuls. And now we were allowing Them to roam freely in the streets and appear all over the tv screen -- on Three's Company, Soap, Barney Miller.  

There were even teenage Homa-Sekshuls, Shaun Cassidy and Leif Garrett, who sang songs to brainwash kids into turning that way!

I had never heard gay people mentioned in church before, not once in thousands of sermons and lessons and meetings. But I took careful notes, and later I looked up the tv programs and teen idols he mentioned.

The effect was strong, and immediate.  The moment Brother Spearman signaled the altar call, a dozen teens and adult men rushed forward to beg God’s forgiveness, some for the sin of a momentary lapse in masculinity, others for the sin of thinking that Homa-Sekshuls were just harmless lunatics.

Brother Spearman had found his new hobby-horse!  After that he included Homa-Sekshuls in every sermon rant, regardless of his actual topic:



Why does God hate premarital sex? Because once you start having sex with anybody whenever you feel like it, it’s only a matter of time before you start looking funny at men.

What’s wrong with the Catholics? They won't let their priests and monks get married, the way God intended, so they're bound to turn Homa-Sekshul.
Even at Christmas: When Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant, he could have left her, but he didn’t, because he was an honorable man, not a Homa-Sekshul.

I thought the whole thing was ridiculous.  What evidence did he have that Shaun Cassidy and Leif Garrett were gay?  How could you "turn" gay through heterosexual sex? Preachers always set up straw dogs, groups that it was easy to hate, so you could blame them for everything wrong with the world: Catholics, evolutionists,  liberal Christians, Hollywood movie producers.  Why were Homa-Sekshuls any worse?

My Hookup with the Son of Mr. Blowfish

Washington, Iowa, August 2003

The class I hated the most in high school was Public Speaking.  I didn't mind the speaking -- it was rather fun having an audience.  But the teacher, Mr. Blowfish!

Actually Mr. Lundquist, he was a prissy, snippy, ultra-swishy little gordito, balding, with a villain goatee, who lived to impress upon students that they were worthless.  He swept over the classroom, making condescending, sarcastic, and insulting remarks in his overmodulated, oversophisticated voice.

"Try speaking English.  Eng-Lish!"
"I have an idea.  Let's try to get it right."
"You can't be that stupid.  You must be putting me on."
"God, your parents must have been morons, to have you."

More than one student was reduced to tears, whereupon Mr. Blowfish would sneer "It's called real life.  Get used to it."

The whole class hated him.

I remember one piece of advice he gave us: When you're invited to a party, find out who's coming, and research their interests, so you'll have something to talk about.

Wait -- this miserable, mean-spirited little troll was invited to parties?

I eked by his class with a C-, which was pretty good.  No one got higher than a C, except for the two A's given to girls who, we assumed, were his relatives.

When I figured "it" out, the summer after my high school graduation, I realized that he was the first gay person I ever met.  A gay hint in junior high speech class!

The years passed.  I graduated from high school, moved to West Hollywood, then New York, then Florida.  When I came back to Rock Island to visit, I asked around the gay community.  No one had ever heard of Mr. Blowfish...um, I mean Lundquist.

Still, the little Truman Capote wannabe must be gay.  Nobody straight was that swishy.

Back in Rock Island in the summer of 2003, I finally found Mr. Blowfish: he was retired, living in Washington, Iowa, about 70 miles away.

Now, finally, I could find out if he was actually gay or just a swish!

I called and gushed, "You were my favorite teacher in high school!"

Naturally I got an invitation to visit.

On the hottest day of the year, I drove my sister-in-law's car to Washington, to a very nice grey-brick house with dormer windows.

27 years had passed since I took Mr. Blowfish's class, but still, I recognized the man who answered the door: a fat, bearded bear in his sixties, wearing only a swimsuit and flip-flops.  I saw a mass of thick white hair on the man-boobs of his chest.  I couldn't see a basket.

"Mr. Davis, how nice to see you again!" he said, offering a limp handshake.

"Dr. Davis, now."

"I know, I know!  Isn't that marvelous, even if you did go to a third-rate school!  You must be using the skills I taught you every day, or do you hide behind those dreary  -- what-do-you-call-it -- Powerpoint presentations?"

"Sometimes," I admitted.

"Cover-up for academic incompetence, I always say.  Well, why don't we go out to the back?  It's such a nice day."

Mr. Blowfish led me to the back yard, where there were lawn chairs, a little white table stocked with a pitcher of lemonade, and a children's wading pool amid miscellaneous toys.

My heart sank.  If he had kids, he couldn't be gay.  "Are those toys for the neighborhood kids?" I asked tentatively.

"Oh, those belong to the grandkids.  My boys are visiting just now.  No matter where they're living, they always visit at the same time -- safety in numbers, they say.  Stick around for a bit, and you'll meet them."

He sat his lawn chair, took off his flip-flops, and plopped his feet in the kiddie pool.  "Oh, feel free to take off your shoes.  And your shirt, too.  You obviously spend a lot of time in the gym trying to forestall the ravages of age, so you might as well show off the results."

I took my shirt off, to see if his eyes widened.  They didn't.  "So, how old are your boys?" I asked, still trying to salvage my lifelong belief that Mr. Blowfish was gay.

"Oh, Thanh is 32 now.   He was born just a couple of years after my late wife and I left Viet Nam. He lives in Des Moines, doing something idiotic with computers. Louie is 28.  He lives in Michigan.  He could have been a doctor, but he chose the stupid path, conducting low-paying research."

So Mr. Blowfish fought in Viet Nam?  I couldn't imagine it.  And when I was in high school, he spent his days berating, demeaning, and otherwise terrorizing his students, then going home to hold his five-year old and one-year old sons on his lap.  Named Thanh and Louie Lundquist.  The image was bizarre.

"...and Sam is 26.  He just got a tenure-track position in art history at Cornell College.  Not the good school -- the dinky one up by Iowa City. I told him to set his sights a little higher, but he chose the liberal arts. Now, I ask you, what good has lecturing on Rembrandt ever done the world?"

After about fifteen minutes of similar put-downs, there there was a roaring in the front of the house, and the back yard exploded with people and dogs and a flurry of voices.

"Grandpa, Uncle Sammy bought me an alligator!"

"We got ice cream, but we're still hungry for hot dogs!"

"Gross, your feet are in our swimming pool!"

After the introductions, Thanh and Louie set up for grilling hot dogs and hamburgers, their wives busied themselves with salads and pie, their four kids and three dogs roughhoused, and Mr. Lundquist yelled for everyone to keep out of his flower bed.  The youngest son, Sam, the one who lectured on Rembrandt, invited me for a walk down the silent, sizzling hot streets of Washington.  His eye-widening was unmistakable.

Yep, gay, not out to his family, but he was sure that they knew.  No one had inquired about a "girlfriend" for years.

"Was Dad really your favorite teacher?" he asked.  "A lot of people are turned off by his perfectionism."

"Well, maybe not my favorite.  But I thought he was gay, so we had kind of a kindred spirit."

"You thought Dad was gay?"  Laughing, he squeezed my shoulder.  "That's so bizarre!  After Mom died he was out with a different lady every night!  He always said that his three favorite things in life were wine, women, and...women."

"Mr. Blowfish...I mean Mr. Lundquist was a little swishy in class.  A lot swishy, actually."

"You called him Mr. Blowfish!  I love it!  Because you thought he liked...um...going down on guys?"

"No, no, because of his looks.  I never thought of that other connotation -- until now."

Sam smiled, and briefly touched my hand.   "That will be my nickname from now on -- Sammy Blowfish.  Apropos of nothing in particular, are you busy later?"

I ended up asking my sister-in-law if I could keep her car out overnight, and then driving home to Cornell with Sammy.

He was short, slim, dark-skinned, with a beautiful physique and nice beneath-the-belt gifts. And he lived up to the Blowfish nickname.

This story continues in Son of Mr. Blowfish

See also: I hook up with my "Uncle"; Getting the Chinese Delivery Guy into my Bed.