The Only Gay Guy at a Straight Party

Plains, January 2017

The Unitarian Church hosts regular "circle suppers," where eight or so people assigned "at random" meet at someone's house for a potluck.  It's not really random: I am usually assigned to a group consisting of mostly gay people.

But the other night my group consisted of four heterosexual couples and me.

Still, I was rather looking forward to it, since last time I went to a completely straight party, I met a cute college boy, the host's son, and we dated for about six months.  I've had good luck meeting guys so far in 2017. Could lightning strike twice?

No.  The couples were all "my age" (chronologically, anyway), which means that their kids had all "got married and moved away."

Well, maybe the food would be good.

No.  Craggy, tasteless chicken enchiladas, green beans with a weird minty tang, a macaroni salad loaded with mayonnaise, and two kinds of cheesecake.  Plus a lot of alcohol.

Beefcake?  Half the fun of gay parties is cruising the new guys.

No.  I'm fine with older men, but they should know their way around a gym.  Three of the heteros were sagging, wrinkled, and speckled, "my age" but about 100 in gay years.  The fourth was obese, with ham-hands and medic id bracelets and complaints of sciatica.

An enormous penis would make up for any number of physique imperfections, but of course at a straight party men don't typically get naked.

Not that I wanted them to.  If they got naked, the women would to, and I would be out of there fast.

Well, maybe the conversation would be ok.  At gay parties, we start with conversations about gay subtexts or actual gay characters in books, movies, and tv programs.

"Has anyone seen Sleepless yet?  I hear it has a kidnapped son, instead of the usual kidnapped daughter."

They talk about quarterhorses, the use of Amazon Kindle way up in the mountains where there's no electricity, scuba diving in the Caribbean, and how you would like to die (the consensus was: instantaneously while on the way home from a nice dinner with your husband or wife).

I've been to dozens of gay parties, and not once did anyone consider "how you want to die" a fascinating topic of conversation.

Maybe we could move from sports and death to romance.  At gay parties, we tell about dates from hell, the biggest penis we've ever seen, celebrity hookups.

So I told them about Ricky with a Y, who spent our date bragging about how much money he had and psychoanalyzing me.

Clarice tells about Joanie, who who met her current husband while still married to her last husband, but she still stuck with him during his illness, taking him to all his doctor appointments.  She didn't start dating her current husband until he died.

That's not funny at all.

I told about the nephew of my first "boyfriend," who I ran into 40 years later on campus.  Cool twist.

Teresa had a boyfriend in high school.  He wanted to marry her, but she knew that his dad was an alcoholic and abusive, so she refused.  Sure enough, he turned out to be abusive.  Years later she and her husband saw a guy that looked exactly like him on a train.  He wasn't.


That's not a good story.  The abuse makes it a downer, and the guy on the train wasn't related to him.  If it was his son or grandson, maybe.

I couldn't discuss enormous penises here, so I told about Alan the Pentecostal porn star, and let them figure it out.

Barb tells about the time her boss invited her out for breakfast.  He was enormous, at least 300 pounds.  She thought it was for business, but he thought it was a date.  So she quickly fixed him up with someone else.

Stories shouldn't criticize someone's physical appearance.  There's an obese guy in the room who will feel rejected.

How about celebrity hookups?  I told about my date with Richard Dreyfuss.

Andy and Abby visited Los Angeles about twenty years ago, and saw Zsa Zsa Gabor walking a poodle in Beverly Hills.  At least, they think it was Zsa Zsa Gabor.  No, they didn't actually have a conversation.

Either heteros lead very boring lives, or they don't know how to tell a good story.

Maybe the party games would be ok.  At gay parties, we usually played "guess the penis" and other erotic-style games, but it wasn't obligatory.  Once we played a homemade gay edition of "Trivial Pursuit."

Our party game: go around the group and each tell about what you were doing at a decade in your life: age 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, and what you had learned by that point.

Do heteros spend all of their time obsessing about the past?  I have to research the past to write the stories on my blog, but still, it seems morbid.  Why not live in the now?

Because their goal in life was to raise children? The children are raised, so they have nothing to do but reminisce.

My goal in life is to find beauty.  Not only in male form, but in art, literature, music.  It's never over. Like Kevin the Vampire said last week, it's an eternal now.

Fortunately straight parties end early.  By 9:00 pm, everyone was dividing up the leftovers, putting on their coats, and driving off to their hetero lives.

The gay-friendly coffee house and the gym were both closed, so I went to a straight bar downtown, where college kids hang out.

It wasn't crowded -- a group sitting around a table, a couple playing pool.  More boys than girls.  Looked eerily like a twink bar, except no one was dancing.

The bartender was a buffed guy in his 30s wearing a backwards baseball cap.

"You look like you've had quite a night," he said.  "What can I get you?"

"Perrier, if you have it."

He frowned.  "I'll have to check the store room.  No one has ordered that for as long as I've worked here."

"What can I say?  I'm a child of the 80s."

"Oh, you're not that old!  I'll bet you could compete with any of the guys here."

I looked around the room.  "I'll bet I could, too."

See also:  Ricky with a Y; My Date with Richard Dreyfuss; Picking Up the Host's Son at a Straight Party.

The Smiling Boy at the Gym

The other night at the gym, a college boy cruised me.

This might not seem unusual.  I've been a twink magnet for years. I picked up the waiter at a restaurant in Indianapolis just a couple of weeks ago, and last week I picked up a guy at the campus food court.

But this was different.

1. In the straight world, no one cruises at the gym, except for little kids who haven't learned the norms yet.  Some of the guys are homophobic, and will respond with violent rage.  You check out biceps and bulges with very brief, nonchalant glances, and never make eye contact with someone you don't know.  I rarely pick up guys at straight world gyms.

2. It was at the YMCA, not the campus gym.  Very few college students go there.  The cardio center is occupied primarily by older men, the free weight room by serious bodybuilders and an occasional group of giggling high school boys.

This was a twink.  Around 20, cute, with a long face and sharp features.  Wearing a red baseball cap, so I couldn't see his hair.  Too far away to see his physique.

On an exercise bicycle that faced the weight machines, staring at me while I did incline presses.  Smiling.

At me, or in my general direction?

One way to find out: the preacher curl was the only other machine that faced the exercise bikes.  It wasn't nearly time for biceps, and I don't use the preacher curl, but I sat and did a few sets.

I have nice biceps, but you can't tell from a distance.

But the twink kept smiling at me.

There were half a dozen buffed older men in the weight machine room.  Why me?

I went back to the free weight room, did three set of butterflies and some ab crunches, and returned.

The twink had finished his cardio and was on incline press machine.  I chose another incline press a few feet away.  Both looked directly at a mirror.

He was wearing one of those slit-side t-shirts.  Pale skin, pinprick nipples, tight but not muscular -- I could see his ribs, and some tattoo writing on his chest.  He was lifting only 130 pounds (I do 270).

Smiling at me.

I looked away, flustered.

How could I concentrate on my weight training with this kid gaping at me like a lovesick puppy dog?

Was he mentally unbalanced?  High?

I returned to the free weight room, did some tricep pushdowns, and grinned like an idiot at the high school kid struggling with his shoulder press across from me.

He smiled shyly and looked away.

That's the way you're supposed to do it!

Back to the weight machine room.  The twink was sitting on a leg press machine, his cell phone in his hand.  He looked up and smiled.

He didn't speak, but kept smiling, his eyes followed me all the way across the room to the drinking fountain, and then all the way back.

I rushed back into the free weight room and hid there for half an hour.  When I returned, the twink was on an exercise bike again, this one facing away from the weight machine room.

There was only one way out into the lobby, except an emergency exit -- you had to go past him. But at least he wouldn't see me until it was too late to smile like an idiot.

Or not -- the moment I rushed past, I heard a "Hi!"

I turned.  "Sorry, have we met?  I'm not too good with faces."

 "No, I'm not from here," he said, smiling.  "I'm in town visiting my Dad."

"Where are you from?"

"San Francisco.  Well, Berkeley.  My Mom is a professor, but I just work for Verizon."

That explains why he didn't know the rules of straight-world cruising!  

We ended up at the gay-friendly coffee house, and then at my apartment, where I went down on the twink -- his name was Cade.  Average sized but very hard, very big spurt.   Then he threw his legs in the air, but I pushed him down and topped him in the interfemoral position.   We washed off, and then he tried interfemoral with me.

"I loved San Francisco," I told him as we lay in bed afterwards.  "It's Gay Heaven."

"It's nice -- lots of hot guys around.  But the competition is fierce.  I can never meet anybody."

"You need a gimmick," I told him.

"Here on the Plains, it's easy -- all I have to do is smile, and they line up.  You're the third guy I hooked up with at the gym this week."

Maybe I should start smiling at guys at the gym.

See also: My Ex-Student Naked at the Gym.

Brad Pitt or Skyler Stone: Which Celebrity Hookup Story Should David Use?

San Francisco, October 2010

Everybody has dated or hooked up with someone famous, or at least someone who's been in front of a tv camera, but a good celebrity dating story has to have five characteristics:

1. He has to be recognizable to the audience.  Someone who starred in five episodes of a long-gone sitcom doesn't count.
2. He has to be attractive.
3. He can't be out.  Who cares about your date with a gay guy?  We want closets, down low, dish.
4. The sexual activity should be explosive, even if it was mediocre at the time. This is an erotic story, after all.
5. The date or hookup should be verifiable.

That's why my go-to celebrity dating story is Michael J. Fox, even though it's been 30 years and nothing erotic happened. He's a recognizable star, he's attractive, he's straight, and I can prove that we had lunch.  I can invent the explosions.

My friend David in San Francisco has been hooking up with at least one guy per day since 1996, but that good celebrity dating story has always eluded him.  He usually goes with Brad Pitt, even though it was actually a 4-way, and the details aren't verifiable.

But today, David calls and tells me, "I found a new celebrity hookup story:  Skyler Stone."

Who?

"Do you watch Raising Hope?"

"Of course."   Unlike its predecessor My Name is Earl, there are no gay characters.  But there are ample gay subtexts, and endless beefcake: hunky Lucas Neff and Garret Dillahunt are shirtless in nearly every episode.

"Skyler Stone played Cousin Mike in the first episode."

I remember him.  In his underwear a lot, frizzy haired, hairy chest, sort of chunky, with a sizeable bulge.

"It was about five years ago," David says.  "I was in Los Angeles for a conference, and some of the guys wanted to go to a comedy club.   One of the performers was a cute kid named Skyler, who did stoner characters [five years ago, Skyler Stone was 24].  I didn't think anything of it until I saw him on Raising Hope."

"How did you meet?"

"I ran into him in the hallway, of all places.  I said I was a fan from San Francisco.  He loves the City.  We got to talking, and ended up going back to my hotel.  He went down on me while masturbating, but wouldn't kiss."

"Doesn't sound like the most exciting sexual experience."

"No, but he's a celebrity, and I need a celebrity hookup story.  What do you think?"

"It will work," I tell David.  "It just needs to be fleshed out a little, maybe tweaked."

1. Recognizable to the Audience

 Skyler Stone is a famous comedian who appears regularly at the Laugh Factory and the Improv.  He has 54 acting credits listed on the Internet Movie Database, including The Rules of Attraction, Accepted, Lost, and CSI.  He starred in his own tv series, Con, on Comedy Central in 2005.

Everyone in the audience will think "Sure, of course he's a big star.  I'd better not admit that I never heard of him."

2. Attractive

An angelic face that counter-balances his stoner persona, wavy blond hair, a buffed physique, a hairy chest, and an enormous Mortadella++ beneath the belt.

The audience will be imagining a blond Adonis.

"He was cute, but not angelic," David says.  "And not that well hung."

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," I tell him.  "And cock size doesn't need to be verifiable."

3. Straight

Married, with a daughter.

"But he wasn't married then," David protests.  "I thought he was gay."

"He might be bisexual, or mostly straight but interested in men on occasion.  But the key is, he's definitely not gay."

[Skyler is gay-friendly, however.  He directed Why Men Go Gay in L.A. (2009), about a straight guy who has such bad luck with women that he decides to turn gay.  And in 2012, he and buddy Mike Smith pranked the homophobic Chick-Fil-A by making out in one of its stores.]

4. Explosive Sexual Activity

David and Skyler fell onto the bed, kissing and groping each other.  David tore Skyler out of his clothes and went down on his gigantic Mortadella+.  Skyler moaned and trembled as he spurted into David's throat.  Then David pushed Skyler's legs in the air and topped him, thrusting in and out, while Skyler became aroused again.  When he finished, they collapsed into each other's arms, cuddling and talking softly until they fell asleep.  In the morning, they exchanged telephone numbers, but David was going back to San Francisco in a couple of days, and they never got together again.

"But that's not what happened," David complains.  "I didn't top him."

"Just a little colorful exaggeration."

5. Verifiable

Skyler Stone definitely appeared at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles in the spring of 2005.  David's conference is verifiable, too.

"With those changes, do you think Skyler Stone makes a better story than Brad Pitt?"  David asks.

Here's a link to the story of David's hookup with Brad Pitt.  

Which do you prefer?

Postscript:  David started using Skyler Stone, but since he disapproves of "colorful exaggeration," he used the real version.

See also: Raising Hope