A Memory of Two Men Hugging

Northeastern Indiana, Spring 1964

In an old science fiction story by Robert Heinlein,  a man discovers that the world is a lie.  Every building in every city is a movie-set fake, constructed for his benefit and disassembled when he passes on.

His friends, family, and even passersby are actors, staging scenes for his benefit and then going home to memorize tomorrow’s script.

He uncovers the lie only after years of living in what he thinks is the real world.

One day he is scheduled to go away for the weekend.  It is raining outside, so he opens his umbrella.  Suddenly he realizes that he has forgotten something upstairs, and rushes up to get it.  But it is not raining upstairs!  “They” neglected to produce sufficient rain to cover the entire house, and in that small detail their entire deception was revealed.

I spent my childhood in the 1960s and 1970s  in a lie of my own, told over and over again that I, like every boy on Earth, would spend my life yearning for feminine curves and smiles, that same-sex desire did not exist.

But I kept noticing momentary lapses, tiny mistakes, unguarded moments that revealed that it was not raining upstairs.

Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Green Jeans living together in the Treasure House.
Rich and Sean smiling at each other in The Secret of Boyne Castle.
Robbie Douglas singing about boys holding hands among the candles.

The first unguarded moment came very early in my life, when I was still a toddler.  Probably in the summer of 1964, when I was 3 1/2 years old.  We were living in Garrett, Indiana.

I woke up late at night, but I thought it was morning because it was light out, so I walked into the living room, where my parents were watching our old black and white tv.  On the small, flickering screen, I saw two men.  They looked like a cowboy and Indian, but in modern clothes.  They were hugging.

My mother noticed a moment later and rushed me off to bed, but it was too late.  I had seen two men who weren't swooning over women.  They wanted men.

I never saw that "cowboy and Indian" again, and over the years I concluded that I had dreamed it.   But recently I did some detective work with wikipedia and a phone call to my mother:

It was an episode of of The Real McCoys (1957-63, but rerun through 1964): a hayseed comedy about a farm family in rural California. The hugging "cowboy and Indian" were eldest son Luke  (Richard Crenna) and farm hand Pepino (Tony Martinez).

Luke was married, and Pepino had girlfriends.  They weren't "really" gay in the series.

But it doesn't matter.  As I grew, and the what girl do you like interrogations began, and the you'll find the right girl someday pronouncements, the constant hysterical insistence that no boy has ever liked boys, not once in the history of the world, I thought of the hugging men.

A glimpse through the machinations and dissimulations and lies.

It wasn't raining upstairs. 

See also: My Book of Cute Boys

Guilt and Shame: My First Night with My First Boyfriend

December 16, 1979, a week before Christmas.  It's the end of my first date with Fred the ministerial student: a farmboy from central Illinois, 28 years old, tall, broad-shouldered, smooth hard chest. 

We sit on the couch in his tiny apartment in Davenport, Iowa.   He refuses kissing, instead pushing my head down over his crotch.  I unzip him. Huge!  Granted, this is only the fourth guy I've been with, but I've seen a lot of cocks, and...well, just huge!  I try to go all the way down on him, but my gag reflex kicks in before I get halfway.  I cough and sputter.


Fred:  Shall we go into the bedroom?

We go to the bedroom, take off our clothes, and fondle each other.  I kiss and lick his chest.  He pulls down the covers on the bed and pushes me down, throwing my legs in the air. 

Boomer:  Wait -- what are you doing?

Fred:  Aren't you a bottom?

Boomer:  Um...what's that?

I am not yet aware of the existence of anal sex.  I think that gay guys just suck and masturbate each other.

Fred:  I'll explain later.

He switches positions for 69 and goes down on me while his cock pushes against my face.  I try to take him, but he's too big, choking me.

Boomer:  Wait...wait...let's try something else.

I turn him over onto his back and go down on him while beating off.  My jaw is going to ache tomorrow!  I don't swallow -- it squirts out all over his chest and belly and the bedsheets.  I run to the bathroom and get a towel.

Fred:  Thanks, but after all that, I think I need a shower.

He grabs the towel and goes into the bathroom.  I hear the shower running.  I beat off, thinking of his body glistening in the stream of water, and finish and wipe off with kleenix.  He returns and climbs in bed next to me and turns off the light.  He wraps his massive arms around me in the darkness.

Fred:  It's all right...it's ok.

Boomer: Huh?  What's all right?

What is he comforting me for?  Not swallowing? Grated, the sex wasn't great, but it's not my fault he has a big cock.

 Fred: Aren't you feeling guilty?

Boomer:  Guilty about what?

Fred:  About having sex with a man, of course.

Boomer:  Why would that bother me?

He turns the light back on and leans up on one elbow. 

Fred:  Are you trying to tell me that you have no guilt feelings about being gay?  After a whole society has been telling you your whole life that you're sick, disgusting, a criminal?

Boomer:  No, not at all.

Fred:  Man, I envy you.  I feel guilty all the time. You see all the images of homos on tv: they're pathetic little weaklings, sissies, flauncing around with limp wrists and lisps, thinking about nothing but Judy Garland and shopping, and I think 'Is that me?'  It's like being gay is about a betrayal of my manhood.  How do you avoid the feeling of shame?

I've only known that gay people exist for a few years, and my images were of guys like Jody on Soap: not particularly swishy  I heard about 'fags' and 'fairies,' but I never thought of them as gay, just as hetero guys too feminine to get girls.

Boomer: I guess I never worried about being too feminine.

Fred:Well, you're a bottom, so that's not your problem.  But I'm also feeling guilty because being gay will be a big disappointment for my parents. They'll never hear about any of my friends or romances.  No daughter in law, no grandchildren to spoil.  Since my brother can't have kids, the family name ends with me.

And all the media saying "Love and marriage is the meaning of life."  If you don't have a wife and kids, you've lost out, you're worthless.   I know it's just brainwashing, but the guilt just comes over me.  How do you avoid it?

How did I avoid it? I wonder.  I got the "What girl do you like?" litany over and over, the "wife, kids, job, house is your destiny" bit as long as I  could remember.  Finding out that it was possible to not get married, not have kids, to share your life with a man, came as a profound relief.

Boomer:  I don't know.  Following society's expectations was just never important to me, I guess. I was a Nazarene, so I was breaking social rules every day.

Fred:  What about your church? The Nazarenes won't even let you go to a movie.  They must think that homos are like incarnate demons.  I mean, I'm liberal, and I still hear the Book of Leviticus in my head every time I go to screw a guy.  Isn't that why you said no to Greek?

I never heard of gay people or gay sex mentioned, not once, from a Sunday school teacher, preacher, evangelist, or friend, until about my senior year of high school, when the new preacher discovered homa-sekshuls and started attributing everything from earthquakes to car accidents to God punishing Christians for not hating them adequately.

Boomer:  Well, our pastor does scream about homa-sekshuls in every sermon, but he's an idiot. Who cares what he thinks?  Even Nazarenes know that the Levitical Code doesn't apply to contemporary Christians.

Fred:  Hmm.  You're one of the lucky ones, I guess.  For most of us, overcoming society's hangups is a life-long process. The first thing you need after coming out is a good gay-friendly therapist.

Boomer:  No, the first thing you need is a friend.

Fred: So you're up for Greek, then?

Boomer:  Ask me tomorrow.

Nearly 40 years have passed since that night, but I still hear quite often that gay people experience "guilt and shame."  I didn't understand then, and I still don't understand.  When you realize that "it is not raining upstairs," that women are not an inevitable part of your future, that desire for men can and does exist, what is there to feel but an immense joy?

My First Hookup

Rock Island, December 1978

I figured "it" out in 1978, during the summer after my high school graduation, and immediately started looking for gay people in Rock Island.

Not for sex or dating, necessarily, just to find someone to talk to.  I had made a major discovery, uncovered the Big Lie, and I couldn't tell anyone about it.

There was no one to discuss the hints and signals that helped us finally realize that "it is not raining upstairs."

No one to share complaints about the incessant "what girl do you like?" interrogations of our family and friends.

No one who I could nudge on the street and say "Isn't that guy hot!"

But how to find gay people in a world with no dating apps, no internet chatrooms, no gay organizations, and everyone pretending that they had no idea that same-sex desire existed.

There was a gay bar in town, but you had to be 21 to get in.  I was 17, and looked around 15.

Asking knowledgeable straight people was a problem.  They would answer with a suspicious "Why do you want to know?  Are you a fag?"

So I made my inquiries as homophobic as possible.  "No, of course not!  I just want to know if it's safe to walk down the street in this town!"

That research yielded mostly dead ends, hints and rumors, no last names, no details.

I tried to look for  clues: guys who were especially feminine, or who made eye contact a little too long, or who touched your hand by "accident."

That was fruitless, too: I spent weeks hanging out with Jack Kerouac, aka Jurgen, only to discover that he was straight, living with a girl!


As far as I could tell, there were no gay people at Augustana, in Rock Island, in the state of Illinois, in the world.

Then, around Christmastime in 1978,  I went to the post office in downtown Rock Island to buy some stamps, and behind the counter was a grinning Little Person.

Or maybe just a short guy.  The Little People Association of America defines dwarfism as anyone 4'10" and under.  He may have been an inch or two taller than that, maybe 5'0", the height of Aron Eisenberg, who played the Ferengi boy Nog on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

(Don't worry, he was over 25 years old when he bulged for this photo.)

My Little Person -- his name tag said Andy -- was in his 20s, very handsome, with a round face, cleanshaven, shaggy brown hair, and a slim, tightly muscled physique.

For a moment I couldn't think of what to say: I just stared.  Then, catching myself: "I'd like a book of stamps."

"Got a lot of Christmas cards to send?"

"Yep.  A lot of guys on my list."

The word guys hung in the air.  Andy smiled even more broadly.  "Well, how about our new Carl Sandburg stamps? He's the one that called Chicago 'the city of big shoulders,' you know."

What straight guy would think of big shoulders?  Andy was gay!  But how to make contact at the front of a long line of grumpy Christmas shoppers?  "I know.  I'm an English major at Augie [Augustana College]."

"I went there.  Majored in Postal Science."  He laughed at his own joke, and touched my hand as he passed over the book of stamps.  When I didn't flinch, he said "Maybe I should drop by my alma mater some time, see how things are going over there."

"I'm at the Student Union most afternoons."  I couldn't think of anything else to say, so I left.

The next day I hung out at the Student Union all afternoon, but no Little Person.

I scrambled to find a gift to send to my Aunt Nora in Indiana, box it up, and take it to the post office at the same time the next day.  Andy was there!

He noticed that I let a couple of other people go ahead of me so I could go to his window, and grinned broadly.

"I wanted to thank you for the Sandburg stamps," I said.  "They'll be a big hit with my friends.  Too bad they didn't show the stormy, husky, brawling Youth, half-naked and proud."  

"That's our Tom of Finland collection, out next month."  I had never heard of Tom of Finland, the gay erotic artist, so I didn't get the joke.  He paused.  "Busy day today.  I can't wait until I get off at 6:00 pm."

At 6:00 pm I was waiting outside the back entrance to the post office, watching the day shift leave.  Andy glanced at me, but didn't speak.

"Hi, Andy!  I thought we could..."

WTF?  He walked past quickly without looking at me, then slowed and looked back.  Mystified, I followed.

I followed him for three blocks, past the Circa 21 Dinner Theater, past the Public Library where I spent many afternoons in high school, past the United Methodist Church.  Every now and then he looked back to make sure I was still there.

Finally we came to an old Victorian house that had been chopped up into apartments.  He unlocked a side door and went in, leaving it ajar.

I stood outside, wondering what to do.  A few moments later, Andy stuck his head out the door, looked at me, and disappeared again.

I followed him inside and up the stairs to a small studio apartment.  A daybed, a small coffee table covered with books and papers, two stalk lamps, a bookcase.

Andy carefully closed and locked the door.

"So, where do you want to go for dinner?"

Then he was on me, kissing and fondling everything he could get his hands on.  We tore off our coats and shirts and collapsed onto the daybed.  His mouth was everywhere, biting, licking, sucking.  He tried to turn me over and push inside, but I whispered "No, the front."

He went down on me vigorously -- my first experience at receiving oral sex.

  Then he lay on his back, moaning as I moved from his firm, hairy chest to his belly. When I got to his penis -- average sized, uncut -- he trembled and moaned and jerked his hips, and finished with a shudder.

I had only been in 1 1/2 sexual situations before, and never anything this exuberant.  It was overwhelming.

When it was over, we lay on the daybed, kissing and fondling, and I was finally able to ask Andy some questions.

No, he didn't know any other gay people in town.  Some familiar faces at JR's, some guys he knew by first names or nicknames, but no one real.

It was too dangerous.  If anyone discovered that he was gay, he would be kicked out of his apartment, fired from his job, arrested, committed to a mental institution.

"Could we...you know, get together again?  Maybe have dinner?"

"Not until you're old enough to go to JR's," Andy said with a sad smile.  "It's the only safe place."  He stood and handed me my underwear.  "Make sure no one sees you on your way out."

I left feeling even more alone.

Actually, Illinois revoked its sodomy law in 1962, and the American Psychiatric Association removed being gay from its list of psychoses in 1973.

 But Andy didn't know that.  No one in small town Illinois in 1978 knew that.

I never saw Andy again.  Years later, I asked around at JRs, and found out that he moved to Iowa City to be close to a lover.

A month later, I would meet my second gay guy in Rock Island, Peter the Male Witch.

See also: My date with Jack Kerouac.

My Date Must Be a Boy

Rock Island, Fall 1973

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, heterosexual desire was assumed a constant, a universal of human experience.  Same-sex desire was not mentioned because  there was nothing to mention.

It's not that it didn't exist; we knew about lots of things that didn't exist, like elves and unicorns.  It could not be conceived of.

It wasn't just a certainty that no boy on Earth had ever longed for the touch of another boy, not once in the history of the world.

We were unable to even imagine the possibility.

Boys who obviously longed for boys?

They were looking for a buddy or a role model.  Nothing else could be imagined.

Boys who obviously didn't care for girls?

They were shy, or immature, or hadn't found the right girl yet. 

There was no possibility, not in anyone's imagination, that they may care for boys.

Boys who were derided as "fairies" and "fags"?

Their interest in art and ballet, their inability to catch a ball, obviously represented deficient masculinity, but they desired girls as heartily as every other boy.

Desire for the same sex was simply beyond the boundaries of our imagination.

It was easier to conceive of hobbits.









But there were hints, mysteries to mull over, to contemplate like zen koans, to puzzle out like cryptograms.

Men on tv or in movies who cared for each other, fought for each other, and walked side by side into the future.

Men who didn't marry, who lived alone or with other men.

Men who hugged.

Boys smiled at me, or touched me on the shoulder.

The sight of a muscular frame that filled me with inexplicable joy.

Small subtle signs.

Through the looking glass.
Take the red pill.
With a bit of a mind flip, you're into the time slip.







Sometime in junior high, I read an one-page story in an Archie comic book.  Big Ethel's friends criticize her for being indiscriminate, accuse her of accepting dates with anyone, anytime, anywhere.

On the contrary, Ethel says, she has very exacting standards.
1. Her date must be a boy.
2. He must be breathing.
3. He must be a slow runner (so she can catch him as he's fleeing in terror).

It was just a throwaway joke with the punch line of "slow runner."  But I was mesmerized.  There was something -- a logical fallacy -- a paradox -- a hint.

Slowly it dawned on me: Ethel has a rule about dating only boys.

Such a rule is necessary only if there are other groups of people whom she could date.

Does she only date teenage boys, and not adult men?

Or only date boys, and not girls?

Could a girl date a girl?
Could a boy date a boy?

It's not raining upstairs.

The Martian Boy Invites Me to "Play"

Rock Island, September 1969

My parents used to have a barbecue every Labor Day, and invited all their friends and neighbors.  This year Greg and his father came.  After our hot dogs and hamburgers and Lays potato chips and apple cobbler, they wanted to play croquet.

Greg and I were in 4th grade, too old for baby games, so we escaped. We walked across the deserted schoolyard, peeking in the windows of Denkmann School, then crossed the street to Dewey's Candy Store.

Dick the Mean Boy was out of town, so we were free to explore south of Denkmann without being attacked.  We found a scary bizarro-world where the normal rules of time and space didn't apply.

Streets had names instead of numbers.
They doubled back on each other like a space warp.
They dead-ended at nothingness.
We saw the end of the world: 46th Street then 1st Street, the beginning of a new universe.

It felt very dangerous, as if we might run into a mysterious threat around every curve.

Then, standing in a front yard all by himself, staring into space, we saw a boy!

A couple of years younger than us, very cute: black hair, black eyes, olive skin, wearing a red shirt and short pants.

But strikingly out of place: alone, silent, unmoving.  And Asian!

In Rock Island, "minority" meant Belgian, Italian, or Greek.  African-Americans were strictly segregated, below the hill, and I had never met or seen anyone Asian.  Not even a face in the crowd at Longview Park or Mother Goose Land.


[Even in 2016, the Asian population of Rock Island is only 0.75%]

He couldn't be real! He must be a ghost.  Maybe a Vietnamese boy who died in the War.  Or a Martian!  Maybe he came here in a spaceship!

"Can he see us?" I whispered.

"I dunno.  Is he even here?"

We approached.  He smiled invitingly and said something in a strange musical language.  Martian or Vietnamese!

"Do you speak English?" I said loudly, enunciating every word.

He smiled, not comprehending, and said more.

"My name is Boomer.  This is Greg.  What's your name?"

He pointed to himself.  "Chi Ehr Ma."

"Ma?" Greg joked.  "Whose Ma are you?"

More words in his musical language, a bright smile, and then, in English, "Play."  He turned and walked around the side of the house and into the back yard.

Was that an invitation?  Did the Martian want us to play with him in the back yard?

Then suddenly he came out the front door!

There's no way he could have gone through the back yard, in the back door, and all the way through the house in just a second or two!


Screaming in fear, we ran back down the curving street and side streets with names instead of numbers, back to Denkmann School where things were safe, where things made sense.

A while later, when we calmed down, we decided that there were probably two boys, twins, trying to scare us.

On another day when Dick wasn't around, we ventured south again, and tried to find the Asian boys, Chi Ehr Ma and his brother, but all the houses on that weird curved street looked alike.  We couldn't be sure which one they lived in.

If they lived anywhere.  They were old enough to be in school.  Why had we never seen them at Denkmann?  Or at Dewey's, or anywhere else in the neighborhood?  Maybe they were ghosts after all.

Days and weeks and months passed, and Chi Ehr Ma, the cute boy -- we concluded that he was probably Vietnamese -- became increasingly attractive in my mind  -- and increasingly mysterious.  What would have happened if Greg and I followed him into the back yard to "play"?  Would we have been transported to a new, magical world?   Or would we just have become friends, with long, lush afternoons playing, walking hand in hand, clinging together during sleepovers?

Chi Ehr Ma, with his dazzling, seductive smile became one of the icons of my childhood, combining with Jonny Quest and Hadji, with Kurt Russell in The Secret of Boyne Castle, with John Christopher's Tripod books as a clue to the unraveling the Big Lie.  Telling me that, in spite of the adults' hysterical screaming of "You like girls!  Every boy likes girls!", some boys like boys.

It is not raining upstairs.

In junior high and high school I met a few other Asian men and boys -- my judo instructor, Peter who invited me to a sleepover, the Vietnamese refugee who worked at the pretzel place in the mall --  always with a subtle, nearly unconscious desire, as if I expected them to flash a dazzling, seductive smile and invite me to secret places in the back yard.

Rock Island, February 1979

During the spring of my freshman year at Augustana College, I enrolled in a course in East Asian Culture and Civilization, taught by Professor Ma of the Political Science Department.

I loved it.  I wantd to change my major to Asian Studies, to immerse myself in the exploits of ancient Chinese emperors, The Dream of the Red Chamber, Taoism, Buddhism, and that mysterious, musical language.

"Chinese has four tones," Professor Ma said.  "Ma is my family name, but depending on the tone, it could be horse, mother, to scold, or a question mark.  Let me demonstrate:  Ma ma ma ma -- 'did mother scold the horse?'"

Ma!  The boy from my memory was speaking Chinese!  Not Vietnamese, not Martian.  He must have been asking us a question.

I stayed after class and asked Professor Ma what "Chi Ehr" means.

"Depending on the tone, it could mean 'The life force is strong' or 'He eats cabbage.'  It's also my son's real name, but he likes to be called Chip."

My mouth dropped.


Professor Ma moved to the United States in August 1969 to teach  political science at Augustana, bringing his wife and twin sons, Yung Yu and Chi Ehr.  They bought a house in Davenport, across the river. In September 1969 his colleague, who lived in Rock Island, invited them over for a Labor Day picnic.  

A few days later, Professor Ma invited me to dinner, and to reunite with my old friend Chi Ehr, or Chip, now a 16-year old high school junior. (The model is over 18.)

He escorted me to an upstairs bedroom: unmade single bed, stereo, books, clothes, and sports stuff scattered about, posters of Van Halen and Farrah Fawcett.  The smell of marijuana.

"Farrah Fawcett -- gross!"  I thought.

Chip was sitting on the bed, a calculus book open in front of him.  Very tall and slim, with long hair and a long face, not at all cute.

This was the icon of my childhood, a clue that gay people exist?

"Sup?" he said. "Dad told me that we met before, when I was a kid."  Suspicious scowl, American accent.  Not at all what I was expecting!

"Yeah.  Me and my friend Greg, in 4th grade.  We said hello, and then you went to the back yard, and your brother came out the front door.  We got spooked and ran away."

He laughed, and flashed that dazzling, seductive smile of my childhood.  "Oh, yeah -- I remember that!  When you vanished, I got spooked, too.  The first guys I met in America were a couple of ghosts!  I always wondered what would have happened if you stuck around."

We didn't hook up, or even become friends.  The smile was enough.

By the way, I just looked up "Chi Ehr Ma" on the internet. He's a professor of mathematics at a university in California (not the famous mineralogist).

Not married. 

See also: 20 Asian Dates, Hookups, and Sausage Sightings; Kurt Russell's Secret.; The Son of Mr. Blowfish