Cousin Buster and I Get God Mad

Observant Jews often face conundrums about everyday activities.  You can't work on the Sabbath; does that include pushing elevator buttons?  You need separate sets of dishes for dairy products and meat: what about eating in a restaurant, where the dishes are all mixed up?

When I was growing up Nazarene, we faced similar conundrums.  Preachers and Sunday school teachers had to apply the law with the sagacity of a Talmudic scholar.

You can't work on Sunday.

1. Does that include yardwork?  Yes.  What about mowing the lawn on a riding mower?  Yes.

2. Does it include performing CPR on someone who has had a heart attack?  No.

3. What if you work in a restaurant where your schedule occasionally requires you to work on Sunday?  Politely refuse, and if you are forced, quit.

You can't go anywhere near alcohol.

1. What if your college roommate wants to drink in the room?  Change roommates. He's evil.

2. What about if alcohol is being served in one room of the building, but not in the others?  Don't go within ten feet.

3. Can you take a job in a drug store that sells beer, among other things?  No.

You can't dance, not even in the "guise of folk dancing or physical education class."

1. Can you watch folk dancing? No.

2. What about jazzercise, a very popular exercise of the 1970s?  No.

3. Can you just sway?  No










You can't go to a movie theater.

1. Can you go into a theater if your car broke down and you need a telephone?  No.

2. What about if it's a school field trip?  No.

3. What about a movie on tv?  No.

As a result, I was in a movie theater only a few times before college, and then always with guilt and fear as I waited for the heavens to open and God to strike me dead.

But my Cousin Buster found an loophole.

Buster lived in the trailer in the deep woods, next to my grandfather's house just outside Garrett, Indiana.  His parents were lapsed Baptists, but he went to a Nazarene church and learned the same restrictions that I did.

The summer after sixth grade, when we were visiting, he said "There's a monster movie marathon playing at the Drive-In.  Let's go."

"A drive in theater?"  I didn't remember any rule about that, but I still dubious.  There was no building, just a field, but there was still a big screen.  "You're still watching a movie."

He grinned.  "Uh-uh.  Movies have pictures and sounds.  We're just going to see the picture.  With a monster movie, it doesn't matter what they're saying, anyway."

It wasn't the building or the big screen, because we couldn't watch movies at home on tv, either.  It must be the combination of pictures and sound!

"No sound, no movie," I said.  "It might work.  But how are we going to do that?  Leave the little speaker thing off the car?"

"Just wait and see."

Buster told our parents that we were going to go star-gazing, and we rode our bikes down the dusty country roads to Route 6, to the theater.  But instead of going inside, we walked our bikes across a field of summer corn to a little knoll beyond last row of cars.  The screen was far away, but still visible, especially with binoculars.

We lay on blankets on the rough ground, shivering in the breeze, eating potato chips and watching something about Frankenstein fighting Godzilla.

And we managed to see a movie without getting God mad, unless He was miffed by the lying to our parents, trespassing, and theft.

Best night ever.

What?  You were expecting a hookup?  I did think about things other than cute guys once in a while when I was a kid.

But here's a group of cute guys to tide you over.

See also: Looking for Uncle Edd's Gun.

What Dustin Likes about Older Guys

Remember last January, when I went to a heterosexual party, and hooked up with the host's 21-year old son, Dustin?  (Not his real name.)

Dustin is in college in Minneapolis, but last week he drove out for the long weekend.  On Saturday, he was busy with his friends, but on Sunday we went out to dinner at the new Mexican place and saw Deadpool, at the Mall.

The tickets seemed rather cheap.  While we were waiting to buy popcorn,  I looked at my receipt.

Senior Citizen Discount!

Whoa, I'm only 55.  I won't be eligible for senior citizen discounts for at least five years!

"It must be the contrast effect," Dustin said.  "The average age of this crowd is about twenty, so you naturally look old.,"

I looked around.  Almost all college-age boys, in pairs and groups.

Suddenly I felt very out of place.  I tried to concentrate on the pre-movie commercials.

"Anyway, who can tell the difference between 55 and 60?   Or 40 and 60, for that matter?  There's young, and then there's old, that's all."

"What's that you say, sonny?"  I said, hurt.  "Why, in my day, we had respect for our elders.  When my Dad told me to go out and feed the dinosaurs, by golly, I jumped to it!"

Dustin caressed my knee in the darkness.  "Hey, Grandpa Simpson, you got the goods.  I'd go down on you sooner than any of these Marvel fanboys.  In fact, I'll bet that you're the only guy in the whole theater who has a 100% chance of getting laid tonight."

He was right -- I did get laid after the movie.  Repeatedly.  Young guys who have only had sex a few times can be remarkably energetic.

Did I say that?

During one of our cuddling breaks, I dug out old my Norton Anthology of English Literature, and read Dustin a poem, "The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water," by William Butler Yeats (1903).

I heard the old, old men say,
"Everything alters,
And one by one we drop away."










They had hands like claws.

And their knees
Were twisted like the old thorn-trees
By the waters.

"All that's beautiful drifts away
Like the waters."

"Ridonkulous!" Dustin exclaimed. "I call B.S.  Or should I say banana oil?"

"I think the proper term is bogus."

He kissed  me on the chest, then started working his way down.  "If all you look at is his hands and knees, you're doing it wrong.  The best part of an older guy is in between."

I laughed.  "Speaking of knees, how about getting on yours?"

See also: My Ex-Student Naked in the Locker Room; and Hooking Up with My Host's Son

Meeting my First Bisexual

Bloomington, Spring 1983

When I was in grad school in English in the early 1980s, we had to learn all about Great Literature, which meant long, boring novels about heterosexual men lusting after women.

And we had to watch Great Movies, which meant long, boring movies about heterosexual men lusting after women.

A group of English grad students went to the Nuart Cinema for "art films" every couple of weeks.  All horrible AND heterosexist:

Tempest, with John Cassavetes having sex with Susan Sarandon on the beach.
The Return of Martin Guerre, about a Medieval Frenchman who comes back to his loving family.
Sophie's Choice, about a young writer (Peter MacNicol) who falls in love with an elderly concentration camp survivor.
Koyaanisqatsi, shots of crowded city streets and things going by on conveyor belts.
The Year of Living Dangerously, with Mel Gibson falling in love in Indonesia
Liquid Sky,  about heroin users who kill each other while aliens watch.
Fanny and Alexander, 3 hours of Swedish kids watching their relatives do boring things.

I dragged my friend Joseph, one of the "Gays of Eigenmann Hall," along to share in the torture.

Joseph ("Joe" in the straight world) was a grad student in history, concentrating in Enlightenment Europe, fluent in French and German, and a fencing enthusiast with an impressive physique.

I tried hard to date him, and he did consent to share my bed a couple of times, but he wasn't particularly interested.  He liked husky, hairy blue collar types, auto mechanics and repairmen.  One day he was elated because he had managed to seduce the custodian at Ballantine Hall, right down in the boiler room!

At the Nuart, we were strictly closeted, of course -- coming out to a heterosexual friend in 1983 would result in, at best, a horrified stare and a stammer of  "Whoa, back off, man!"

So I didn't talk about gay subtexts, or point out attractive men on screen.

But Joseph went even farther to maintain a heterosexual facade. He joined in the nonstop discussions of feminine beauty, saying things like "You'd have to be an idiot to leave a hottie like Nathalie Baye (in Martin Guerre)"  and "I kept waiting for Susan Sarandon (in Living Dangerously) to show her breasts!"

One night he kept it up even after we said goodnight to the other guys and returned to Eigenmann Hall: "I can't believe how sexy Meryl Streep (in Sophie's Choice) was!"

"Don't you mean Peter MacNichol?"

"Oh, right, right."  He grinned sheepishly.  "Sorry, I was still pretending to be straight."

But I was suspicious.

When you grow up being told over and over that same-sex desire does not and cannot exist, you become very sensitive to subtle signs of erotic interest: a glance that is a little too open, a little too much attention to detail.

Gradually I became aware that Joseph noticed women.  When I referred to a female classmate, I might say "She sits behind us in Chaucer class."  He would describe her hair and face.  He looked women up and down, evaluating their breasts and curves in the same way that he evaluated the biceps and baskets of burly truck drivers.

Was it possible that Joseph could be bisexual, and not know it?

One day I invited him to my room for a Domino's pizza, and asked "Did you ever have sex with girls, before you realized that you were gay?"

"Oh, yeah, sure, who hasn't?  How could you avoid it?  When you're on the fencing team, the girls are all over you. Hotties, too!"  He caught himself.  "I mean...well, you know what I mean..."

"Not really.  I'm not attracted to women at all."

"Me, neither!" Joseph protested.  "I'm gay!  I mean, what straight guy fantasizes about big, burly truck drivers with gigantic stick shifts?"

"It's not always a matter of one or the other.  Some guys like both."  I picked up a copy of Playboy (displayed prominently on my desk to keep up my heterosexual facade) and opened to a page at random.  "For instance, if she walked into this room and offered to kiss you, would you accept?"

"Well, sure, who wouldn't?  Being gay doesn't mean I'm dead!"

"I wouldn't.  No way!"

He stared.  "But...I like guys...." he said in a small voice.

"I know.  It's like, after a lifetime of heterosexual brainwashing, realizing that you like guys is a joyous, liberating experience.  Then, when you find yourself attracted to women, you think that the brainwashing worked after all.  You feel like a traitor.  But let's face it -- some guys like guys, some guys like girls, and some guys like both.  There's nothing you can do about it."

Joseph denied it again, but soon he revealed, with a sigh of relief, that for dating, romance, and long-term relationships, it was men only.  But for sex, and for noticing attractive people on the street, he was into both hairy, husky truck drivers with gigantic stick shifts, and thin, athletic women with long brown hair.  It was nice to not have to hide anymore.  At least among his gay friends.

Fine, always nice to help someone recognize their true nature.  Except Joseph somehow got the idea that all gay men were attracted to thin, athletic women with long hair.  He began pointing them out to me with the avidness of a hetero-horny jock.


One Sunday night he knocked on my door to tell me that I had missed a really good episode of One Day at a Time.  

"Why, did Max (Michael Lembeck) take his shirt off?" I asked.

"What?  Are you kidding?"  he exclaimed.  "There was a really hot close-up of Barbara (Valerie Bertinelli), cleavage and all!"

"But...she's a woman.  Why would I...."

"Who cares if you're gay or straight?  If Barbara's cleavage doesn't get you going, man, you don't have a pulse!"

Um...some people are straight, some are bi, and some are gay.  They all have pulses.