A Naked Man Behind the Door

Speaking of sausage sightings, here's one for the record books:

There are several unisex bathrooms on campus, three in a row in a corridor of the Business School, three in a row in the Art Building, two in a row in Social Sciences.

They're designed for the disabled who can't negotiate the m/f restrooms, but also used by:

Non-binary and transgender people who might not feel comfortable in the m/f restrooms.

Guys who are shy about pulling it out in front of other guys.

And anyone who dislikes the gunkiness of the toilets in the m/f restrooms after about ten hours worth of students have been parking their behinds on them.

They are big, with big, square doors that can accommodate wheelchairs.  When you walk in, there's a sink directly in front of you and a toilet and sometimes a urinal five paces to the side.

No "occupied" indicators, like on airplanes.  You just try the door.  If it's locked from the inside, you move on.

That's a lot of buildup, but the payoff is worth it.

The other night I was walking through the Business School on the way back from the gym, and I decided to use one of the bank of unisex bathrooms. I chose the middle one for some reason.  Symmetry, I suppose. 

The doors are unexpectedly easy to open, and I had to go.  I swung it wide.

There was a man facing me!

Too old to be a student, probably in his 30s.  Tall, pale skin, buzz cut. Wearing a gray business suit.

Except his pants were down or off. I saw his bare, hairy legs, his thighs, his crotch, and a long, thick uncut cock hanging down.  About 4" soft.

I said "Excuse me" and swung the door shut again.

They don't slam.  It took a second.  He just stood there, motionless, staring.

Obviously he had not realized that the door was unlocked.

But one thing is bugging me:  he was nowhere near the toilet.  He was about three steps from the sink, facing away from it.  Facing the door.

What was he doing?

Maybe he was an exhibitionist, waiting for someone to expose himself to, with the safety of claiming "I didn't know the door was unlocked."

If so, he would have a long wait. There are several bathrooms in the Business Building, and not many people around.

Could he have been waiting for someone specific -- a bathroom hookup that I accidentally interrupted?

It beats shoving your cock under a toilet stall.

Going to Bed with the Boy Next Door

Rock Island, November 1968.

 A Thursday, two days after my eighth birthday.  Mom isn't feeling well, so she's in bed already.  Dad made macaroni and cheese for dinner.  My brother and I are in our pajamas, watching The Flying Nun and reading books.

Suddenly Mom calls Dad into the bedroom.  He returns a few moments later.  "Boys, get your coats and shoes on.  You're going on a sleepover."

Cool!  They said I could start going on sleepovers when I turned eight, but I didn't think it would be so soon after. But why does Kenny get to go?   He's only six!   

"Who with?"  I ask.

"Mike from next door."

Mike?  But we aren't friends -- he's a year younger than me, in the second grade.  We only played together once last summer, when he talked me into running through a sprinkler with my clothes on, and got me in trouble.  

But -- a sleepover, like the big kids have!  "I'll go pack some clothes and toys."

"No, there's no time.  I'll bring you some clothes tomorrow.  Just put your coats and shoes on right over your pajamas.  And you can pick out one toy apiece to bring.  But hurry up."

Kenny and I run down the stairs to our basement room to get our shoes on, and then look for toys to bring.  My teddy bear (named Ted E. Bear) seems like an obvious choice, but I don't want to act like a little baby in front of Mike, so I choose a Tarzan action figure instead.

When we climb up the stairs again, Mike's Dad, Mr. Maartin, is standing in the living room.  "Ready to go, cowpokes?" he asks with a broad smile.

I smile back.  Mr. Maartin is tall and broad shouldered, with thick arms and a little tattoo of an anchor on his wrist.  He's way old, of course, almost 30, but sometimes old guys are nice to look at, too.  I wonder if I'll get a glimpse of his shame tonight, like with Cousin Joe last summer.

Dad helps us put our coats on over our pajamas, hands me a plastic bag with our toothbrushes and toothpaste in it, and gives us each a hug.

Mom comes out to say goodbye.  She has her coat on, and she is carrying a suitcase.

"Where is Mom going?" I ask.

Nobody answers.  Mr. Maartin takes our hands and leads us down the steps and across the fresh November snow to his house.  I see Mom and Dad walking across our back yard to the garage.

"Don't worry about a thing," he says as he opens the screen door.  "Your Mom will be fine.  This is all perfectly normal, the cycle of life."

My heart sinks.  Is she sick?  Is she going to the hospital?  Is she going to die?

I try to avoid thinking about my worries and enjoy my first sleepover.  It's not what I was expecting: no other boys except Mike.  Mr. and Mrs. Maartin right there all the time.  We watch Bewitched and That Girl and Dragnet, eat Jiffy Pop  Popcorn, read comic books, and play army men.  At 9:00, Mrs. Maartin brings us mugs of warm milk, and then sends us to brush our teeth.

9:00?  I thought you stayed up all night at a sleepover.       

Mr. Maartin stands at the bathroom door, already in his pajamas.  I see his broad pale chest with little hairs around his nipples, his thick biceps, his little belly.   "Ok, cowboys, which of you wants to bunk with Mike, and which wants to bunk with his old dad?"

"You!"  I exclaim.  Mike is cute, slim, brown-haired, blue-eyed, with small, hard biceps and an outtie belly button.  I like how his brown skin stands out against the white of his pajamas.  But -- Mr Maartin is big!  And I'll be able to see his shame!

"I want Mommy!" Kenny exclaims.

"She'll be fine, I promise," Mr. Maartin says.  He turns to me.  "Um...you know, pardner, if it's all the same to you, I think the little buckeroo might need a woman's touch tonight."  He takes Kenny by the hand and leads him down the hall.

Suddenly I realize that he meant him and Mrs. Maartin.  No way would I want to sleep with a lady!  All those disgusting powders and perfumes.  Besides, at church the preacher said boys should never sleep with girls unless they're married.

Mike smiles at me.  "Sometimes I snore, but all you have to do is shake me til I I wake up.  I don't care."

We climb into his single bed and wait for Mrs. Maartin to say goodnight and turn the light off.

The bed is very narrow.  I accidentally push my leg against Mike's thigh.

"Hey, stay on your own side!" he murmurs.

This isn't fair!  You get stuck with the second-best bed, far away from Mr. Maartin and his shame, and you can't even be comfortable!

"I don't got cooties!", I say, wrapping my leg over his leg and my arm over his thin chest.

I've never held a boy like this before -- it's amazing, warm, hard, intimate.  I flush with unexpected joy.

Instead of shrugging me off, Mike turns over onto his side.  My arm is around his chest, and my other arm slides against his butt.  After a few minutes, he begins to snore.  I kiss his shoulder.

I don't want to fall asleep, to miss even a moment of this joy.  I want to lie like this, with Mike in my arms, tonight and tomorrow night, and every night, for the rest of my life.

I never had another sleepover with Mike -- he was a year younger than me, an impassible age gap.  But in the next weeks, and months, and years, and decades, I had lots of sleepovers with lots of other boys and men.  Holding a boyfriend in your arms all night is way better than a sausage sighting.

By the way, as you probably guessed, Mom was having a baby.  In the 1960s adults never discussed such things with kids, so I was oblivious until Dad called the next morning to announce that I had a baby sister.

See also: I Get a Glimpse of Cousin Joe's Shame; My Third Grade Boyfriend; A Crush on the Girl Next Door's Boyfriend.

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.