10 problems with liking men in suits

There are some definite problems with having a special interest in men in suits.

1. They are garments designed erase any hint of the man's physicality.  Women's outfits show curves and cleavage, and bare arms and backs, but men's outfits make their bodies invisible (obviously some sexist stereotyping going on).  So unless they're very buffed or aroused, you have no idea what's going on under the gabardine.

2.  Half the time, when you think you see a bulge, it's not actually their cock.

3. Men generally wear suits when they are busy with work or at a formal event, where they're unable or unwilling to cruise, and might not even recognize your interest.   So it's hard to meet them that way.

4. If you do manage to meet them while they're in a suit, 90% of the time they'll show up for the date dressed "casually," in a bicep-displaying shirt and bulge-displaying jeans

5. If they do show up in a suit for some reason -- they came directly from work, or you're going to a party at Andrew Lloyd Weber's house -- I guarantee that they will take it off and carefully hang it up before beginning any sexual act. No way this is happening.

More after the break.

My Textbook Representative is a Gay Porn Star

Philadelphia, March 2013

Every academic is pestered by textbook company representatives pushing for you to assign your students their latest frightfully over-priced, generally gay-free textbook instead of some of the thousands of articles and e-books available for free at the campus library.














I'm usually immune to their pleas, but the rep that knocked on my office door last month, Mark from ___ Company, was jaw-droppingly handsome, and knew it: wavy brown hair, square jaw, piercing green eyes, huge hands, and a bodybuilder's physque crammed into his too-tight white shirt and grey slacks.

He flashed the smile that had been getting him special privileges his whole life and began pushing the new textbook with interactive e-book that meshed directly onto our online learning management system and...

"Um...sure, sure," I said, grinning like an idiot.  "But how is it with gay content?  I never order a textbook unless it covers the Stonewall Riots of 1969 that started the Gay Rights Movement."

He didn't flinch at the "controversial" topic.  "Well, let's take a look."  He came over to my side of the desk so I could see his laptop and leaned over me, so close that I could feel his body heat and, if I looked down, check for a basket.

There were several references to gay people: Stonewall, Anita Bryant, Matthew Shepard, the AIDS Quilt, gay marriage -- a lot more than the none in most intro texts.

"Ok, let me send you a link to the supplemental materials, and give you my card."  His huge bear-paw hand enveloped mine.  He flashed that smile again.

The moment Mark left, I dropped everything to look him up on the internet: Linkedin, twitter, instagram, and Facebook.

Mark was 26 years old, grew up in Pittsburgh, spent his junior year in high school in Japan, graduated from Duquesne University, had been to Europe and Canada, had a DUI arrest, had a brother named Clay.

He wrote a google review of a restaurant in Philadelphia.

He wrote an Amazon review of the tv series Sherlock.

There were a lot of newspaper articles about tennis -- his various matches and awards in high school and college.  He was signed on to a professional tennis recruitment website.

Facebook and Instagram had some pics of Mark with his arm around an older man and a guy he tagged as Mohammed, wearing a graduation gown, holding a fish [the models in the illustrations are not really him].

Shirtless.

I saved the shirtless pic to look at his thick, smooth chest, his shoulders and biceps, and his sixpack abs later.

He had a profile on a professional modeling site: interested in print and tv assignments, photos in a suit, in a sweater, in a swimsuit.  His resume listed some catalog work and local commercials.

How did this guy have time to work as a textbook rep?

Mark was back in my office the next week to see if I had gone over the supplementary material.

I was a little embarrassed that I had done so much internet stalking, so I decided to come clean.

"I looked you up online.  Quite an impressive list of accomplishments: decathlons, tennis, modeling."

He grinned.  "Oh, you saw my portfolio?"

"I lived in California for eleven years, so I've been around models' portfolios a lot.  Have you done any tv or movie work?"

"I have some youtube videos, if you'd like to see them.  Look under Markster348."

He moved on to discuss another textbook that my students might like.

As soon as I got home that night, I checked youtube for Markster348, and found a lot of streaming videos of Mark singing and flexing.

Then on a hunch I looked for Markster348 on some gay dating sites.

Jackpot!  Single, bisexual, into anal, oral, frottage, rimming, into jocks and preppy types.  A nice nude photo, semi-aroused cut Kielbasa.  But he hadn't accessed his account in "over two months."

No way I was going to date him -- he lived in Harrisburg, a two hour drive away (textbook reps have a wide territory).  And a hookup seemed inappropriate, given our professional relationship.

But I saved the nude pic to look at later.

The next week, Mark was in my office again.

"Have you made any decision about the textbook?"

"I'm about 75% in favor of ordering it."

He grinned, "What can I do to get you to 100%?"

Let me see you naked!  "Let me look over some of the supplemental materials, the pre-tests, the videos. and so on.  Speaking of videos, I saw yours online.  Very impressive.  And not just on youtube.  Some of the dating sites."

He glanced around nervously, probably afraid that I was going to out him.  There were five other offices right next to mine, and you could hear conversations in any of them.

  "Oh...um...thanks.  How did you find them?  I didn't think I had my screen name published anywhere."

"You told me -- Markster354, on youtube."

"Oh -- those videos.  I thought you meant my..."

"Your..."  I continued.

"Some stuff I did in college.  No big deal, but I'd rather not have my girlfriend find out about it.  Or my boss."

"Of course."

He took out a piece a paper, scribbled a few words, and pressed it into my hand.  "To look at later."

I obligingly put it in my pocket, and looked at it after he left: "Frat Boy Rim Job."

Boystube had a clip: five "fratboys" have a sex party, with oral, anal, rimming, and barebacking.

My friend Alan in West Hollywood starred in some porn movies in the 1980s, so I know a little about the industry.  This was strictly amateur, and rimming -- gross!

If you don't know what it is, look it up.  I'm not going to explain.

Still, it was interesting to watch Mark in action.  How often do you see someone that have a professional relationship rimming a guy while being topped?

He was in my office the next week.  "Ok, I've decided on your textbook," I announced, to spare him endless drives out from Harrisburg.

"Great.  And if there's anything else I can do..."

"I'll send you an email.  And, by the way, I saw that movie you recommended."

He flashed a broad smile.  "What did you think?"

"Very talented performer.  Very versatile."

He glanced around and leaned in close.  "If you'd like -- you know, a private showing -- I'm staying at the Days Inn."  He passed me a card with his phone number.

In case you were wondering: oral only, no rimming.

Alan, the Pentecostal Porn Star

West Hollywood, October 1985

When I moved to West Hollywood in 1985, I began to attend the All Saints Metropolitan Community Church, a gay-specific church.  It wasn't very big.  The MCC tends to thrive in communities where mainstream churches are homophobic, but in West Hollywood you had many other gay-friendly congregations.

So every Sunday only 30 or so people gathered in a sort of chapel on the second floor of a building on the corner of Santa Monica and Fairfax, down the street from the French Quarter Restaurant, for a service that borrowed heavily from Roman Catholic liturgy, with robes and incense and chants of "Peace be with you," but old-fashioned Methodist hymns and a conservative evangelical-style sermon.

(Most members of MCC were raised in homophobic denominations, usually either Protestant fundamentalist or Roman Catholic, so the church tried to accommodate both.)

Many newcomers believed that the Bible disapproved of gay people, or that AIDS was God's punishment for being gay.  The pastor had to minister to them, so every sermon was about how God is not homophobic, the Bible is gay-friendly, you can be gay and Christian.

For those who attended every Sunday, it got a little redundant.

There was a pastor and two student clergy, quite a lot for such a small congregation, but the positions were highly prestigious -- ministering in the heart of the Gay World!  -- and therefore sought-after:

I have a thing for clergy.  The pastor was in a long-term monogamous relationship, and one of the student clergy was a bit too old for me (a Baptist minister, married with children, before he came out).

That left Alan, a tall, husky former Pentecostal who had trained to become a missionary.

He had a boyfriend, too, but by mid-October, they had broken up, and I saw my chance to move in.  I wrangled an invitation to his house for dinner on the Saturday after Halloween.

Alan and his two roommates lived in the bottom half of a brown stucco duplex, about 10 blocks from the church, near Plummer Park where all of the male hustlers hung out, and the Formosa Cafe, where Hollywood celebrities used to hang out.

He turned out to be a former theology student and English major who almost went to grad school in Medieval poetry.  He had been in West Hollywood for six years; in his early days he acted in gay porn, alongside such greats as Kip Noll and Jeff Stryker.

So you'd think that we would have a lot to talk about.  Still, the date didn't go well.

1. He served canned ravioli, with no salad or vegetables in sight.  This is what you serve to impress a date?

2. Instead of The Golden Girls, the West Hollywood staple, he wanted to watch The Love Boat.  Geez, my grandmother watched that!

3. An hour of mind-numbing boredom later, I said, "Are you ready to go out?"  Nearly all dates in West Hollywood included an hour or so at the bars, mainly because being in a gay-friendly public place was so new and novel for most of us.

"Ok.  We can go to the baths."

A bath house!  On a date?  Unheard of!  And, for that matter, weren't clergy supposed to be into monogamous relationships, not hookups?

4. "Never mind, we'll just stay here," I said.

"Ok.  Go in the bedroom and take off your clothes.  I'm going to take a shower first."

Huh?

I just sat there, speechless, infuriated.  The student clergy was treating me like a hustler!  I heard the shower run, then go off.  Alan came out in a towel.

"I thought you would be naked in my bed by now."

"You didn't pick me up at Plummer Park" I yelled.  "This is supposed to be a date, not a sales contract!  And you call yourself student clergy!"

"Hold it-- I didn't mean to offend you," Alan said, perplexed.  "I was just trying to speed things up. I'm nervous -- I like you a lot.   Um...do you still want to go in the bedroom?"

"No, I want to go to the bars, and find someone who acts like a gentleman.  Like about a thousand other guys in West Hollywood!"

I stood and moved toward the door.

"Come on, I said I was sorry..."  He rushed toward me.  His towel fell off.  A gigantic Kielbasa+.

Whoa, what do you call that thing?  I stared.  He smiled.  "Did I mention that I used to do porn movies?"

I forgave him.  Turns out that being gifted beneath the belt (see my Sausage List) got Alan out of a lot of faux pas.

We dated for about six weeks, until I went home for Christmas, and a Norwegian con artist moved in.

My First Visit to an Adult Store

Bloomington, Indiana, fall 1982

I "figured it out" during my senior year in high school, but my real "coming out" was at the beginning of my first year in grad school at Indiana University.

As an undergraduate at Augustana College, I had worked hard, very hard, to find gay people, and I found a few -- my ex boyfriend Fred; an Episcopal priest in Des Moines; Prfessor Burton, who held handcuff parties for campus hunks.  You had to go through word of mouth, through a friend of a friend of a friend.

Now I was at a vast university with 40,000 students, and as far as I could tell from conversations and signals and interests, every single one of them was heterosexual.

My friends, classmates, and coworkers all, without exception, maintained the "what girl do you like?" whine of my childhood.  I had to leave Playboy magazines in my room, and think of logical reasons why I didn't have a girl on my arm every second.

My classes were as empty of gay references as they had been at Augustana.  Every writer who had ever lived was heterosexual.  Every poem ever written was written from man to women.  The Eternal Feminine infused all our lives.

And, as far as I knew, this was the way life was everywhere and for everyone.  A vast emptiness, hiding, pretending, unyielding silence.

That Saturday night I had been watching Silver Spoons and Mama's Family in the 13th floor tv lounge of Eigenmann Hall.  At 9:00, my roommate Jon said "Let's go to the grad student mixer.  I'm hot to get laid tonight."

I had no interest in getting laid.  At least, not as Jon understood it.  But I walked with him across the vast, silent campus, past empty buildings, past towers of Indiana limestone erected by heterosexuals long ago, to the Memorial Union, where a party for heterosexual grad students was in session.

Then I said goodbye and went to the campus library.  There were uncountable millions of books in the vast stacks, rooms as long as a football field, but only two listed under "homosexuality" in the card catalog: the memoirs of Tennessee Williams, and Nothing Like the Sun, by Anthony Burgess, about Shakespeare's romance with the Dark Lady of the sonnets.

I walked alone down Kirkwood Avenue, past student bars and little Asian restaurants and hamburger stands.  Just before the Baskin Robbins closed at 10:00, I stopped in and bought an ice cream cone.  Two scoops, strawberry on the bottom and Rocky Road on the top.  30 years later, I still remember that ice cream cone.

There was a gay bar in Rock Island, a dark closet bar with a nondescript name and no windows, where you entered through the back so no one could see you.  But surely Bloomington was too small for such a place.

 I stopped into a weird eclectic bookstore called the White Rabbit. No gay books -- it was illegal to display them openly, as Fred told me when I found his secret bookshelf two years ago.  So I bought a novelization of the 1980 Popeye musical starring Robin Williams, set in the port town of Sweethaven:

Sweet Sweethaven!  God must love us.
Why else would He have stranded us here?

A church tower had a cross that lit up white at night, and I looked up it and prayed "Why did you strand me here?"

I wandered for a long time through quiet residential streets, houses where heterosexual husbands and wives were asleep, their children in the next room surrounded by "what girl do you like?" brainwashing toys and games.  I walked past a public park, but was afraid to go in.  After dark, monsters roamed through the dark swaying trees.

It occurred to me that I was one of the monsters.  After all, being gay was illegal in the United States.  I was a criminal.  (Actually, Indiana's sodomy law was repealed in 1976.)

Somehow I found myself at a small, nondescript building on College Avenue.  The sign on the marquee advertised "Adult Books."

They probably wouldn't stock any gay porn.  But it wouldn't hurt to check.  The most they could do is call me a "fag."

The rest of the story is on Righteous Gemstones Beefcake and Boyfriends

The Satyr's Hookup with Sylvester Stallone

Upstate New York, August 2010

Troy, my boyfriend for the last year, has finally agreed to move in, and we're having a "housewarming" party to celebrate.  We invite his college friends Micah and Jordan; the Rich Kid and the Rapper from the Gang of 12, and their dates; and my ex-boyfriend Chad, who of course has to bring his housemate/Daddy, the Satyr.

The Satyr is a tall, husky, bearded bear, 62 years old, with an enormous Kovbasa++++ beneath the belt.  But I don't like him -- he's imperious, theatrical, sneaky: he has a manipulative relationship with Chad, and he tried to keep me and Troy from dating.  For what reason, I don't know.

Besides, he stifles my standard conversation topics at gay parties.

Enormous penises...he has the biggest I've ever seen.

Dates from hell -- there aren't any worse dates than our weird night in October 2008.

Celebrity hookups -- he claims to have been with everybody.

When he was a teenager, hustling in Times Square, his clients included Robert Redford, Peter Fonda, and...Christopher Isherwood. When he was a camera man in Hollywood, he dated Tom Selleck, Rob Lowe, and John Travolta, who flew him down to Cabo for a wild weekend with Tom Cruise.

I'm sure the Satyr is making all of this up.  I lived in West Hollywood for 10 years at about the same time, and met a lot of celebrities: Michael J. Fox, Richard Dreyfuss, Robin Williams, Christopher Atkins -- but I never dated any superstars.

Time to call his bluff.  "Details!  You have to tell us the whole story.  Date, location, who you were with, what he was wearing, how hung he was..."

The Satyr glares at me, but says "Sure.  I'll tell you about my first gay sexual experience, with Sylvester Stallone."

"Great!"  I've heard a lot of celebrity dating stories about Stallone, the Italian Stallion, the star of the Rocky and Rambo series, so I'll be able to spot a fib a mile away.

Manhattan, January 1970

The Satyr (then named Sparky) was 22 years old, living in Spanish Harlem, taking acting classes at CUNY and trying to make ends meet anyway he could.

Through hustling, of course -- his extra-large equipment made him very popular among a certain type of closeted queen (shown is porn star Rick Donovan).

He hadn't "come out" -- acknowledged that he was gay.  He was always "the trade" -- the one who gets the blow job.  In those days, the trade thought of himself as straight.

He also waited tables at a strip club, swept floors at an illegal gambling den, read Tarot cards, did astrology, and translated Japanese for the Consulate General of New York ("I was born in Japan, before my mother -- well, that's another story").

Through the New York occult community, Sparky met Morton Lewis, who had directed a few films on astrology and the paranormal.  He needed a camera man for a new hippie love fest film that his brother was bankrolling.  It wouldn't take much work -- just three sets, a bedroom, a living room, and an exterior to be shot in Central Park.  Two days max.

He neglected to mention that it was going to be a softcore porn, but Sparky wouldn't have minded anyway.  It was a job in the industry!  Anyway, he could easily ignore the women's naked bodies and concentrate on the men.

"Wait -- you said you didn't identify as gay," Troy protests, "But you liked looking at men."

The Satyr shrugs.  "It was 1970.  Gay people were criminals in the State of New York, and psychopaths, according to the American Psychiatric Association.  It took a lot to admit it to yourself."

The movie, Party at Kitty and Stud's, would star newcomer Mike Stallone, a very massive bodybuilder type with thick black hair, dark droopy eyes, a sensual smile, and a strange, slurry way of speaking.  He was beautiful!  Sparky was instantly hooked.


He struck up a conversation with Mike at lunchtime.  They had a lot in common.  Similar childhoods: Mike's mother was a professional astrologer, and his father was a hair stylist.  An interest in the occult.  Determined to make it in the business, scrounging around for any job they could find.  Mike's latest was cleaning out the lions' cages at the zoo.

"I was completely broke, man, sleeping in the bus station.   It was either take this job or rob somebody."

"You should try hustling," Sparky said.  "With your physique and dick, you could earn some primo bread."

"I'm not queer, though," Mike said with a smile.

"That's ok, you don't have to be.  A mouth is a mouth, right?  It's the guy going down on you that has to be queer."

Mike didn't actually have sex with anyone on camera, but he had to be aroused a lot, on both days, through multiple takes.  By the second day, he was having trouble keeping it up.

In one scene, he had to be a gigantic shaft ready to plow into one of the actresses.  Morty wanted Sparky to film him approaching slowly, and stopping just before he touched her vagina.  But Mike couldn't stay hard long enough.

"We're going to have to shorten the scene," Morty said.  "Unless somebody wants to be a fluffer -- go down on Mike until he gets hard. Ladies, I know it's not in your contract, but..."

Before any of the actresses could respond, Sparky said "I'll do it!"

Everyone stared.  No one admitted to being gay in 1970, at least not in public.

"Hah, hah, big joke!" one of the actors said.  "Like you'd really go down on a dude!"

Sparky's face was burning with embarrassment and fear -- would Morty fire him?  Would Mike beat him up?   He tried to concentrate on that beautiful body, and more -- Mike's painful childhood, his determination, his passion, his pride.

"His penis..." Micah adds.

"Of course.  The penis is the doorway to the guy's soul.  A blow job is very spiritual."

"I'm serious," Sparky said, his voice trembling a bit.  "I'd love to help out."

"Let's cut the clowning," Morty said.  "Ladies..."

"No, let him do it," Mike said.  "It takes a lot of guts to admit you're queer, especially among you Neanderthals. I'm game."

Morton shrugged.  "Just get with it already.  I've got a movie to make."

"Come on, buddy," Mike said softly.  "Let's see what you got."

So Sparky knelt in front of the nude Stallone.  He had never gone down on a guy before, but he had received many blow jobs, so he knew what to do.  Soon Mike was an iron rod.

"That's enough!" Morton exclaimed.  "You want to get him hard, not have his baby."

Flushed with erotic excitement, Sparky returned to his camera, and they filmed the scene.

He "fluffed" Mike twice more before the day ended.

A few months later, Mike -- now named Sly -- got his big break, a starring role in Rebel (1970).  And Sparky moved to California, where he got a job as a camera man.  They never had sex again, they didn't even stay friends, but still, it was the defining moment of Sparky's life.

Upstate New York, August 2010

"Reading between the lines, it's kind of a sad story," Troy says.  "The guy you came out for wanted nothing more to do with you."

"But it was never about Stallone," the Satyr says.  "I liked him, sure, and he had a great physique, but it was about being true to myself.  It was the moment when I could finally stop lying to myself and say 'I am gay.'"

"My defining moment came with John Travolta," I tell them. "Picture it: the summer of 1978.  A sallow 17 year old..."

See also: Lane's Hookup with Batman, Robin, and the Joker; the Sylvester Stallone post on Boomer Beefcake and Bonding.

Comic Book Guy's Date with Porn Star Jeff Stryker

West Hollywood, November 18,  1987

It's the day before my 27th birthday, a Wednesday, about 11:00 pm.  I have spent the last hour and a half cruising at Mugi, the gay Asian bar in Hollywood.

In West Hollywood in the 1980s, in the first years of the AIDS epidemic, you don't go to the bars looking for someone for that night -- only sleazoids and druggies go home with someone they picked up right then.  You talk, maybe kiss and grope a bit, and make a date for a few days later.

Which presents a problem:  After two hours of looking at hot guys, and probably kissing and groping more than one of them, you're revved up, full of energy, excited, horny, and rather lonely.

I've been striking out, which makes the horniness and loneliness worse.  I'm tempted to go to the Gold Coast, the sleaze bar on Santa Monica and La Jolla, and pick up a sleazoid, someone I don't even find attractive.

Instead I use my usual plan for assuaging the horny/loneliness: I go back to my childhood, when I used to buy comic books at Schneider's Drug Store.

Book Circus, on La Jolla across the street from the Gold Coast, sells mostly gay porn, but there's an eclectic selection of used books -- I've bought 19th Century Russian Literature, the Bhagavad-Gita, and The Fleischer Story (about the studio that produced Betty Boop and Popeye Cartoons).  Plus general interest magazines like Time and Newsweek, and comic books.


It's mostly empty at this hour: I see a sleazoid who struck out at the Gold Coast recharging his engine with a copy of Advocate Men; an elderly bespectacled queen browsing in the used books; a couple of street kids or hustlers, hard to say which, wandering aimlessly about without looking at anything.

The night manager  looks up from his half-eaten hamburger and french fries and glares at me.  His name is Jacob, but I'm going to call him Comic Book Guy, after the character on The Simpsons, because now I can't see or hear him in any other way: in his 40s, dark beard, fat, with chubby hands and a gigantic belly, always dressed in a tank top and shorts, even in the winter, nasal sarcastic voice, elitist disdain of anything you decide to buy.

Oddly enough, Comic Book Guy is not without friends.  He usually has two or three guys hanging out by his counter, Sometimes they sneak him over gin-and-tonics from the Gold Coast, in spite of the "No Food or Beverages" sign.

Sometimes they go back through the "Employees Only" door with him.  To do what, I can only guess.

The comic book section is well-stocked with non-DC and Marvel titles.  Gladstone reprints of classic Uncle Scrooge stories from the 1950s.  The perennial teen beefcake of Archie.

It's like I'm back in Rock Island, browsing at Schneider's Drug Store, like I'm warm and safe in my attic room, while Mom and Dad watch tv downstairs, and there's leftover Harris pizza waiting for me in the refrigerator.

I choose two Ducks and two Archies, plus an Advocate and the porn magazine Inches, brace myself for Comic Book Guy's  sarcasm, and head for the checkout counter.

Sure enough, he wipes his hands on a napkin and announces  my titles, loudly: "An infantile news magazine...a magazine for men who have struck out at the bars to beat off to...two infantile picture-books about talking ducks...and Archie comics!  I take that back...you plan to beat off to Reggie Mantle!"

Everyone is looking.  I redden with embarrassment.

"Give me a break!" I exclaim.  "Lots of guys read comic books."

"Do you have someone at home to sound out the big words for you?" Comic Book Guy says with a sneer.

I pull out my wallet and try to hand him a bill.  "Just can the sarcasm and ring me up."

"I'm sorry, the kiddie lit is only for sale until 10:00 pm.  If you would care to return in the morning..."

"That's not a rule, and you know it!"

He smiles and looks blatantly down at my crotch.  "Or I could give you the books tomorrow at 6:00 pm sharp, when you arrive here to take me out to dinner."

Weird way to ask a guy out!  "I'm sorry, tomorrow is my birthday.  I'm having a party...."

Comic Book Guy grins.  "I would be delighted to be your date at your birthday soiree!  Pick me up here at 6:00 pm. sharp."

I'm tired, horny, lonely, and dazed.  Almost by rote, I say "Sure, that will be great."

  He takes my money, counts out my change,, and bags my books so quickly that I'm not sure what happened. "Don't beat off to Reggie too much tonight.  You'll need your strength."

November 19, 1987

I spend the next day going to USC, the gym, and Muscle and Fitness, and agonizing.  I don't find Comic Book Guy attractive -- he's too old, too fat, and too sarcastic for me -- plus you never invite someone on a first date to your birthday party -- plus the other party guests will be West Hollywood gym rats who won't accept a sarcastic chub.

But I didn't get his number, so I can't call and cancel.  Just not showing up would be rude...and I wouldn't be able to go into Book Circus again...

I end up telling Marcus, who is hosting the party, to expect one more, then driving out to Book Circus to pick up Comic Book Guy.  He's wearing a different tank top and shorts.  He pulls me into a wet kiss, then puts a flabby arm around my shoulders and escorts me to my car.

"I'll take the back seat -- do you mind?  It's hard for me to fit into the passenger side.  Besides, we need room in the front seat"

"You're bringing a guest?" I ask, fuming.  My date has a date?

"We have to pick up your present.  Sorry I didn't have time to wrap it.  Here's the address."

Grudgingly I drive us to an apartment in Westwood.

"We're going to be late," I growl.  "What's the big..."

"Patience, young grasshopper."  Comic Book Guy gets out of the car and goes inside.  About ten minutes pass, while I stare at my watch and wonder if I should just leave him there.  Finally he emerges with my present.

Jeff Stryker, the most famous gay porn star of the 1980s.

Apparently he often did personal appearances at Book Circus, and he and Comic Book Guy became friends.

I don't get to go down on Stryker: he wins the "who can get aroused fastest" contest, but refuses his prize,  -- ten minutes in the bedroom with me.  He sends Jacob instead.

 Jacob turns out to be good at kissing, cuddling, and oral, with a presentable 6" penis.  And a lot of porn star friends.

No, we don't date again.

See also: Nude Photos of Jeff Stryker

Nude Photos of Jeff Stryker

I don't know if you need nude pictures of 1980s gay porn icon Jeff Stryker.  Surely he's got the most recognizable penis in the business.  But just in case, here are a few

1980s prettyboy face, hardbody, 10 inches.  Any questions?

Come on, 10" is not that big.  I knew a guy with 11".  But he could barely get aroused.  Stryker had no trouble in that department.

You can still buy the authentic Jeff Stryker dildo.  I suggest keeping it by your bedside to scare overnight guests.

My Jeff Stryker Hookup story is here.

The full post is on Boomer Beefcake and Bonding

Japanese Tentacle Porn

The statue of Laocoon and His Sons reminds me of Shokushu Goukan, or Tentacle Rape, a distinctively Japanese form of pornographic art in which the subject is being entered, usually without consent, by a monster with many penis-like tentacles.

The tentacles can also act as ropes for bondage.

There is mouth and anal entry, and either penis manipulation or some sort of tentacle-fellatio.

The origin was probably a non-pornographic yokai who grabbed unsuspecting fishermen and pulled them to their deaths.  A little tweaking, and the cautionary tale becomes porn.

Contemporary artists usually show hapless space explorers running afoul of multi-tentacled alien monsters with sexual congress on their minds, but there are also furry and fantasy-world tentacles.

The monsters can be plants, animals, or miscellaneous, sentient or not.

Sometimes the encounter is not accidental but by design, the hero captured by a mad scientist or Medieval torturer.

We usually don't see the being, just the straining, struggling muscles and the multiple entries by the tentacle/penises, so the acts becomes stylized, pure entry, sex without an object.

See also: Laocoon and His Sons; and Yokai: The Gay Goblins of Japan

The Pentecostal Porn Star's Top Boyfriends, Tricks, Scenes, and Hookups

I hope Alan isn't reading these stories in the afterlife, or I'm in for a major haunting.  He would hate being called a Pentecostal Porn Star.  He didn't like talking about his porn career.

Actually, he didn't like talking about his past at all.  Most guys in West Hollywood  loved swapping stories about coming out, seducing a straight man, or seeing a celebrity penis, but Alan generally kept mum:  "Who cares about the past?  It's dead and gone.  We're young, we're hot, we're in the greatest place in the world.  This is our time to LIVE!"

Still, when he was tired and loaded up on sugary snacks, he could tell a good story.  Here are his top 20 boyfriends, hookups, and back room exploits.

Alan was born two days before Halloween, 1956, under another name, in a small town near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  When he was ten years old, he began going to a Pentecostal church, got saved and filled with the Spirit, and began speaking in tongues.

1. The Pentecostal Boy.  His first sexual experience was at age 16, with one of his Pentecostal buddies.  Neither of them had any idea that gay people existed, but they fumbled around and discovered oral.

2. The Preacher at the Bathhouse.  After graduating from high school in 1974, Alan enrolled in the ultra-fundamentalist Waynesburg College.  He majored in either English or History, and played football to become more "macho."

There's an investigation of Waynesburg College on Small Town Beefcake

 He also began going to the bathhouses of Pittsburgh, where he ran into the minister of his hometown Pentecostal church.

After he got his degree in either English or history, he told his parents that he was gay.  They had a big blowup, and didn't speak to him for years.  He moved to Los Angeles, and got a job teaching ESL to new immigrants.

3. The Son of a Gilligan's Island Star.  One of his first boyfriends was David Johnson, son of Russell Johnson, the Professor on Gilligan's Island.

4. Will on Land of the Lost.  Alan made the rounds of closeted and semi-closeted celebrities, including Wesley Eure,  who played the teenage son on the Saturday morning live-action series Land of the Lost.

5. Porn Star Kip Noll.  He also began going to the bathhouses and bars of pre-AIDS Los Angeles.  One night he met someone who, impressed by his size, introduced him to porn director William Higgins, who cast him in a movie about a boy who wanders around West Hollywood picking up guys.  Kip Noll went down on him.  He refused to do anal.

6. The Football Coach.  Later that year Alan starred in a movie about a football player who gets blown by his teammates and tops his coach.  The exteriors were filmed at UCLA.  While doing research, he met and began dating the football coach of a L.A.-area university.  He wouldn't say which one, although I'm quite sure the name would mean nothing to us.

In all, Alan appeared in five porn movies, but his star potential was limited due to his reluctance to do anal, and by his lack of serious gym time -- he was getting a little chunky.

7. The High School Boy.  He got a job teaching English at a Catholic school, and began seeing one of his students -- after class, right in the classroom.

8. A Drag Queen Fairy Godmother.  After a series of crises in the early 1980s, including getting fired from his teaching job, the death of a close friend, and a sexual assault by a vice cop, Alan turned "ex gay," proclaimed that God had "cured" him, and joined Homosexuals Anonymous.  To prove to himself that he was really straight, he went to one of the dive bars in Hollywood and picked up a "woman" -- who turned out to be a drag queen.

That night he was an anal bottom for the first time.

In the morning he realized that God loves gay people after all.  He retired from porn, changed his name to Alan, turned blond, grew a beard, and joined the gay-positive Metropolitan Community Church. He became Student Clergy.

9. The Norwegian Con Artist.  Alan and I met in the fall of 1985.  We dated briefly, until he dumped me for a Norwegian con artist (the relationship didn't last long).  Then we became friends, and roommates for about a year.

10. The Bed-Hopping College Boy. In the summer of 1986, Alan returned to his old idea of becoming a missionary, with a gay twist: he moved to Japan to start a gay Pentecostal church, but returned  to West Hollywood at the end of the summer.  When I went to visit him, he picked up a college boy named Minoru, who kept switching between our beds all night.










11. My Celebrity Boyfriend.  In the spring of 1987, I dated the Celebrity, a still-closeted former teen idol.  Alan asked him out immediately after we broke up -- or maybe before -- and they dated twice.

12. The Kept Boy.  Alan found three in a bed distracting, so he didn't do much "sharing."  Our first "sharing" experience was accidental, with a kept boy who we didn't realize was drunk

13. The Parisian Cop.  In the fall of 1989, Alan moved to Paris to...well, start a gay Pentecostal church.  But soon he gave up that idea, and became a permanent Parisian.  When I came to visit, he picked up a Parisian cop.

14. The Father and Son. While in France, Alan took a trip to Hong Kong, and picked up a father and son -- a biological father and son!

15. The Lapp.  The nice thing about Paris is, everyone in the world eventually gets around to visiting, including a member of the Sami people, the nomads of northern Scandinavia.

16. The Hong Kong Hustler.  Alan loved Hong Kong, and visited as often as he could.  Unfortunately, it didn't have quite the sexual freedom as Paris.  In the summer of 1992, feeling deprived, he hired a hustler, and bottomed.  Without a condom.

A few months later, Alan discovered that he was HIV positive.  Deeply depressed, he moved in with his sister in Norfolk, Virginia, became "ex gay" again, and cut off all contact with his former "sinful associates."

17. Sandy.  Soon Alan changed his mind -- God loved gay people after all.  He started going to the Norfolk Metropolitan Community Church, where  he met Sandy: middle-aged, African-American, rather feminine, almost as big beneath the belt as he was, also a recovering Pentecostal.  They stayed together until the end of his life.

18. The Substitute.  I visited them twice in the early 1990s, once in Norfolk and once in DC.  Since becoming HIV positive, Alan insisted on monogamy -- no "sharing," not even with safe sex.  But when I spent the night with them, they brought in a substitute.  Ok, that's my scene, not Alan's.

19. The Colonial Williamsburg Boy.  In New York in 1998, I met Barry, who grew up in Colonial Williamsburg and went to Howard University in DC.  Turns out that he had dated Sandy!, Ok, that's Sandy's.

20. The Male Nurse.  We gradually lost contact in the 2000s, as friends who live across a continent from each other do.  But one day in 2005, Sandy called to tell me that Alan had died of AIDS-related cancer.  He was in good spirits during his last days, content with his life and certain of his place in heaven.  Almost his last words were "Isn't that male nurse hot?"

Alan LIVED until the end.

Why We Read "Playgirl" in Rock Island

Back before the internet allowed us to download 100 pictures of naked men before breakfast, you got a few pictures per month, in expensive, glossy magazines.

In West Hollywood, you could get In Touch for humorous articles  along with your porn, Mandate for hairy-chested machismo, Advocate Men for twinks, Drummer for leather, Inches for...well, inches.

 But you'd never dream of picking up Playgirl, except maybe when it featured a nude celebrity like Christopher Atkins. It was a magazine for women, with articles for women, ads for women, and heterosexual models disrobing for women.  Gay men absolutely, emphatically did not exist.  Who in West Hollywood could tolerate such a slap in the face?

 Not until the 2000s did the editors admit, privately, that some men bought the magazine, that men existed who liked looking at photos of naked men. 

But outside gay neighborhoods, in the homophobic small towns of the Straight World, gay magazines were often unavailable, so Playgirl was all you could get.  Many gay men had fond memories of nervously bringing a Playgirl to the counter at the 7-11, claiming "It's for my girlfriend" or "It's a gag gift for my sister."

 They found something quite different from what they would find in a few years, in the gay magazines in West Hollywood or the Village. 

The models in gay magazines were portrayed as overcome by a passion, grimacing, leering, inviting -- no, daring you to do the forbidden, to walk on the wild side.

 But the models in Playgirl were warm and safe, comfortable, disrobing for a wife or girlfriend, inviting you to engage in in a wholely conventional, expected, "normal" activity.

The models in gay magazines had perfect bodies and enormous penises.  They displayed themselves as a challenge. You would never meet anyone like them in real life, or if you did, they would shoot you down instantly. 

The models in Playgirl tended to be more "natural," not particularly muscular, not particularly hung.  They looked like men you might actually meet, who you might actually have a chance with.

So thousands of gay men moved to West Hollywood and the Village, expecting not endless nights of tricking with superstuds, but someone to cuddle on the couch with.

Mark Brandon the Actor/Mark Brandon the Porn Star

I'm trying to figure out if the Mark Brandon who is currently starring in the Archie comics Riverdale series is the same Mark Brandon who did "gay for pay" porn in the early 1990s.  They certainly look alike, with the same hair, the same eyebrows, and the same mouth (give or take 30 years).

Mark Brandon the porn star was active from 1991 to 1995, appearing in such magazines as Advocate Men and Inches, and in the porn movies Close Shave 3, Dynastud 2, Rock Hard 2, Dial S for Sex, and Morning Ritual.  Apparently he only appeared in heterosexual and solo j/o scenes.

He looks to be in his 30s, so I'm going to guess a birthday in about 1955.

Here he has darker hair.

Mark Brandon the actor was born in 1951 in Long Beach.  He was working as a fireman when he started auditioning for commercials.  His first screen role was on a 1983 episode of Mama's Family, playing an orderly in a nursing home opposite Harvey Korman.  If he was 23 years old, he would be born about 1960.

During the 1980s, his acting was sporadic: episodes of Santa Barbara, Throb, Dynasty, Unsub, and Danger Bay, mostly under the Mark High.

I have found no pictures of Mark from that era.  We'll have to make do with recent ones.

Between 1991 and 1995, he has six tv and movie appearances: news anchor, presenter, narrator, master of ceremonies, uncredited, and "Marty Spencer" on an episode of Robin's Hoods.  All as Mark High.

Those jobs couldn't have paid very well.  Did Mark take a "jump to the left" and agree to be filmed aroused, as long as he didn't have to actually make it with a guy?

The world wants to know.

By the way, these days he does mostly Hallmark "inspirational movies."  He's married, and has a son.

Mark Brandon the actor, I mean.