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.

Troy's Sausage Sighting of My Cousin Graydon

Lots of gay men have told me that their first sexual experience came with cousins: mutual j/o in the bathtub, oral behind the barn, anal during a sleepover.

Not me.  My cousins all lived hundreds of miles away, so we didn't get a lot of contact, at best two visits per year, at Christmas and in the summer.

Still, during my childhood, I accidentally got four sausage sightings and one grope: Joe, Phil, George, and Buster, four of my six boy cousins (not counting the ones from Kentucky).

Leaving Ed, 12 years older than me, and Graydon, 14 years younger (born in 1975, the only son of my Uncle Gus and Aunt Lynn).

When I moved to West Hollywood in 1985, Cousin Graydon was still prepubescent, so there wouldn't have been much of a point to a sausage sighting.

But as he grew up, for some reason he bonded with my parents and sister, and after they moved to Indianapolis, he often drove down to visit, whether he was living in Auburn, Warsaw, Fort Wayne, or Grand Ile, Michigan.  Our paths crossed during several Christmas and summer holidays.

The young adult Graydon was tall and beefy -- he worked in construction, which gave him a presentable physique.  A bright, open face and a shock of dirty-blond hair.  Very cute.  A very visible bulge on the right side of his jeans.

I wanted a sausage sighting.

But whenever we visited Mom and Dad at the same time, I got the spare bedroom, and  Cousin Graydon took the fold-out couch in the study (later the home gym/sauna).

So no covers kicked off the bed.  No morning wood.

No "accidentally" running into him during a late-night bathroom visit.

When I suggested that we go jogging, Cousin Graydon went in there to strip down and change clothes.

This was getting frustrating.  How hard should it be to get a sausage sighting of your kid cousin, when he's sleeping in the room right next to you?













Indianapolis, December 24th, 2010

My boyfriend Troy and I have driven out to Indianapolis from Upstate New York.  We arrive bearing presents for my parents, my brother and sister, my nephew, and...sure enough, Cousin Graydon.

36 years old, unmarried but heterosexual, still working in construction.

Bearded, with a tattoo on his bicep, but still buffed.  Still with a very visible bulge on the right side of his jeans.

One of the dogs leaps onto his lap and accidentally lands on his bulge.  He grimaces and runs his hand over it.

I really want a sausage sighting.

So this year I go all out.

 His Christmas present is a retro Hawaiian swimsuit, so I can watch him change "to make sure it fits."

He changes in the bathroom.

Well, at least I get a bulge sighting.

That night I try to stay awake, waiting for a late-night trip to the bathroom, a half-opened door, and an "accidental" sausage sighting.  Eventually I fall asleep.



December 25th

We always open our presents on Christmas Eve, so there's nothing to do on Christmas Day but have dinner.  

In the afternoon, Troy and I work out in the home gym, and then hit the sauna.  Cousin Graydon joins us -- in his underwear!

It's a small home sauna, very cramped with three people.  I can see his bulge very clearly.

But that's not a sausage sighting!

"You know what they do in Finland after a sauna?"  I tell him.  "They take off their clothes and run around naked in the snow."

"No way I would do that!"  Graydon exclaims.

It's no longer about the sausage sighting.  It's the principle.  I've seen four of my six male cousins naked without even trying.   Why is this one such a pain?

Later I "accidentally" leave a book in the home gym, so I can go to retrieve it when Graydon is already in bed.

No sausage sighting.

This is getting urgent.  Graydon is going back to Michigan tomorrow!

Again I stay awake into the night, waiting for a bathroom visit.

No bathroom visit.  Eventually I fall asleep.

December 26th.

After breakfast, Graydon leaves for Michigan, and my parents go to church.  Troy and I say that we're going to hang around the house, playing with the dogs and working on our laptops.

The moment we're alone, Troy takes my hand.  "Guess what?  I accomplished something that you've been trying to do for years.  All it took was a little luck."

I listen with increasing consternation.

In the middle of the night, Troy woke up with indigestion, and went into the kitchen to look for some Alka-Seltzer.  Graydon was there, standing over the sink eating a turkey sandwich, while the dogs looked on, begging.

One of the dogs thought that the tassel on Graydon's bathrobe was a toy, and started tugging on it.  The bathrobe fell open.  

Troy couldn't help staring.    

Graydon quickly wrapped up again.  "This never happened," he said with a grin.

"So, how was it?" I ask dismally.

"Fantastic!  Cut Kielbasa.  Low-hanging balls.  You should have been there!"

Well, there's always next year.

See also: Sausage Sighting of My Cousin Buster; My Uncle Gus's Wiener

The Best Friend of Terry the Homophobe

Rock Island, July 1989

I'm in no mood to be back in Rock Island: I just got back to West Hollywood after my semester in Turkey, and I just started dating an amazing guy named Lane.  If I'm gone for too long, someone else will snatch him up.

But it's my baby sister's wedding, and I have to be in the wedding party, even though I detest the heterosexist ritual, and I'm not too fond of her fiancee Terry.

He's definitely cute: curly blond hair, round face, glasses, hard biceps, Bratwurst+ (yes, I got a sausage sighting).  But he is intensely boring, all about cars, sports, repairing things, and girls, girls, girls!.

And he drifts easily from heterosexist "She's every man's fantasy" to blatant homophobia, telling "fag" jokes, making limp-wrist gestures, exclaiming "Everybody with AIDS should be shot!" and "Why don't we just put the homos on an island and be rid of the problem?"

Tammy tries to squash him, not always successfully.  Hasn't she told him that I am gay?  Doesn't she know? We never actually had a coming-out conversation, but she met Fred and Viju, and she's heard all about Alan, Raul, my celebrity boyfriend, and most recently Lane.

Terry and Tammy dated during their last year of high school, a disastrous year of college, and a year in the workforce at the same auto dealership in Davenport, so I've seen him lots of times on Christmas and summertime visits.  I've met his parents and his three friends, who I call the Three Jerks.

They're rather hot also.


1. Rod, Terry's oldest friend (far left), a grinning, round-faced Augustana student (biology major) and jogging enthusiast.

2. Anky, his next oldest friend, a history major at the University of Illinois.  He is short and tightly-muscled, with swarthy Mediterranean looks (second from right).

3. Paul, a tall Nordic blond with a swimmer's build, slicked-back hair, and beady eyes, Terry's most recent friend.  He's a little older, about my age, and works at the car dealership.

Regardless of their hotness, the Three Jerks are loud and boisterous and way, way heterosexist.  The minute they burst into the house for a Christmas party or into the back yard for a Fourth of July Barbecue, they bore me with talk of cars and sports, and pepper me with questions about the "hot girls" of California, and how many have I bedded, and could I get them the telephone number of Heather Locklear?




Two Days Before The Wedding

Tammy is out somewhere. Terry and his three friends, aka the Three Jerks, still damp from swimming at Longview Park, descend upon our game room to yell loudly while playing foosball.  Then they settle down to watch a VHS tap of Big Trouble in Little China.

I join them, squeezed onto the couch between Anky and Paul -- it's rather fun to sit with hot guys, heterosexist or not, and  I can ignore the hooting at Kim Cattrell's breasts.

Paul nudges me.  "Is she as hot as your girlfriend in California?"

 I should respond according to the rules of survival drummed into my head in West Hollywood:


Never come out.  When asked about your girlfriend or interest in girls, lie. Make something up.

But I'm tired of being mistaken for straight. "Gross!  I don't have a girlfriend!"

"No girlfriend!" Anky exclaims.  "With all those foxes around in California?  Well, maybe you just need some Midwestern talent."

"You just leave everything to us," Paul says.  "We'll check out the guest list, and make sure you get laid tomorrow night -- right, Terry?"

Terry shoots him a pained look, but says, "Sure, I'll see what I can do."

The Day Before the Wedding

We gather at the United Methodist Church for the rehearsal.

The wedding is going to be entirely heterosexist, with the men filing down the church aisle, arm in arm with the women, separating for the ceremony, and then coming together, arms around each other in heteronormative bliss, for the photo.  Then we're going to be seated together at the reception.

Sure enough, the Three Jerks have fixed me up with Charlene, one of the bridesmaids, Tammy's friend from high school.  She's heavily made up and stinking of perfume.

"You are so lucky, bud!" Paul grins at me. "Cream of the crop!  A lot better than those fags in California, right?"

Terry shoots him a pained look.

Anky presses his hand on my back.  "And I hear she puts out.  You'll definitely have a story to tell all your friends back in California."

We start down the aisle:

Anky, the Best Man, with a girl.  Then: Paul, me, Rod, and my brother Ken, each of us arm-in-arm with our corresponding girl.

But instead of grabbing onto Charlene, I take one step back and latch onto the arm of Paul!  He looks stunned, but walks a few feet with me until the preacher stops us and tells us to try again.

This time I take a step forward and latch onto Rod!

"Boomer!" My mother commands.  "Do it right, or don't do it at all."

I grudgingly comply.

Later, at the rehearsal dinner, Anky buttonholes me.  "What's up, man? It looked like you were deliberately trying to ruin Terry's wedding."

I am sick of hiding.  "Oh, no, I just have a hard time figuring out the moves.  I'm not used to boy-girl pairs.  Back in West Hollywood, it's all boy-boy pairs."

"Boy-boy pairs?"  He repeats, staring.  Then he breaks into a wide grin.  "I had no idea you were...we'll talk later, ok?  After dinner."

After dinner Anky walks me out into the parking lot and reveales that he is gay!

"I've seen you maybe eight, ten times over the last three years.  Why didn't you tell me before?  I ask.

He shrugs.  "Why didn't you tell me?"

Well, why didn't Terry tell me that his best friend was gay?  Or tell his best friend that his fiancee's brother was gay?

Turns out Terry didn't know.  Neither of us lisped or swished, so he couldn't "tell" from visual clues, and everybody who did know was following the rule:  Never come out. 

And he still won't know.  Anky makes me promise not to out him.

He still goes to Terry's bachelor party.  I claim a headache and bow out.






The Day of the Wedding

Anky and I sit together at the reception, and then visit my ex-bully Dick for dinner and "sharing."  He has a slim but firm physique, nice hands, and an average-sized but beautifully shaped penis that presses straight up against his abdomen.  He goes down on Dick and me at the same time, and then he lies on his back so I can go down on him while Dick is topping him.

We get together a few more times, when we're both back in Rock Island for Christmas or the summer, but eventually we lose contact.

Terry stopped being homophobic,by the way.  In 2016, he lent his son his vintage 1969 Chevy Camero to drive in the Indianapolis Gay Pride Parade.

See also: How We Survived the Homophobic 1980s; My Date with the Groom's Grandson at a Gay Wedding; and Sausage Sighting of My Parents' Contractor