Sausage Sighting #3: Brother Dino in the Boys' Shower Room

In the summer of 1974, just after eighth grade at Washington Junior High, I went to Manville, our summer camp on the prairie, and got engaged to a girl named Sarah, because she said God gave her a Vision of My Future.  But I had a mercenary aim -- Nazarene missionaries had to be married, so only by marrying  Sarah could I escape to Saudi Arabia with my boyfriend Dan.

We were engaged for exactly three days, from Tuesday to Friday.  Then God gave me a Vision of my own.

On Friday afternoon Sarah and I walked into the woods where boys and girls went to kiss, and stumbled across a counselor necking with his girlfriend (I don't remember his name, but he looked sort of like this guy).

Suppressing giggles, we hid behind bushes and watched as he pushed his hand under her shirt and felt her boobs, what Marty called "stealing third base"on this very spot two years ago.

 It occurred to me that every Nazarene preacher, every missionary, every minister of music had pushed his hand under the shirt of his girlfriend or wife and felt her boobs.    And had sex with her.  It was a job requirement.


Sooner or later, Sarah would expect me to do that.

But it wasn't going to happen. Watching the counselor fondling his girlfriend's boobs, I knew that intimate acts with a girl were out of the question, period.

But if I didn't get married and have sex with girls, I couldn't become a missionary.  Then  how could Dan and I escape to Saudi Arabia?

I left Sarah at her afternoon crafts class and walked down the mosquito-infested pathway toward the boys' cabins.  "God, give me a Vision," I prayed.  "Tell me your Will for my life."

I stopped at the low cream-colored building called the Boys' Bath House.  It was deserted -- most boys used the bathroom in the cafeteria, or went in the woods, and only showered when forced to.  It was disgusting, stinking of urine and bleach, and there were spider webs in the toilet stalls.

But today I heard the shower running, and felt its hot, moist steam on my face.  Who would be showering in the middle of the afternoon?  I walked over and peeked beyond the yellow stone wall.

It was Brother Dino, my counselor (and back home, my Sunday School teacher).  Standing under the stream, briskly soaping his firm, hairy chest.  Rivulets of water ran over his muscular belly and down into his patch of dark pubic hair and onto his enormous penis.  I could definitely imagine stealing third base and hitting home runs with him!

Before Brother Dino could turn around and see me, I ducked behind the stone wall, did my business at a urinal, and rushed back to my cabin.

That was the vision!  I thought excitedly.  God has shown me His Will -- He wants me to be with a man!

What Does "Brian Gives Free LBJs" Mean?

Rock Island, June 1974

One Saturday in the summer of 1974, just after eighth grade, the sky was clear and bright, the air smelled like new lilacs, and the grass was sprinkled with dandelions. I invited my friend Craig  to ride bikes.

As we passed the back of Washington Junior High, we saw a small, strawheaded seventh-grader in a blue windbreaker standing against the red brick wall, near the windows of the gym. When we drew closer, we saw that he had a sponge and a yellow bucket sloshing with soapy water. He was scrubbing furiously at a piece of graffiti.

This model is much older, but he has Brian's sandy hair and slim physique.

I recognized him as Brian, the boy my parents used to babysit.  They stopped because he had a smart mouth.  Once when we were playing in the back yard, he offered to tell us “a dirty joke,” right in front of my Mom! It didn’t matter to her that the joke was “The boy fell in the mud!”

“Hey, Brian!” I yelled. “You’re not supposed to be writing on school property.”

“You gonna call the fuzz, big guy?” Except for the belligerent smirk, he was cute, with a tanned face, sandy blond hair, pale blue eyes with eyelashes so blond we were almost white, and thin, pinkish lips.





His hands were raw from scrubbing at a line of graffiti: Brian gives free LBJs in letters nearly a foot high.

“What’s a LBJ?” Craig asked.

“It’s the president, Gomer!  I mean the old president, Lyndon Baines Johnson.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense!” Craig said.  "You can't give away presidents!"

“So what do you give?” I asked. “Can I have one?”

“I didn’t write it, ok?  It was a Mean Boy. Now can it, before I pound you.”



I tried to restrain a laugh at the thought of this slim, slight boy trying to pound me, after years of wrestling and judo. The posturing seemed to be hiding something scared, something wounded. I thought of Bill, who also threatened to pound me, long ago.

What kind of insult did giving LBJs signify?  Brian's feverish attempt to destroy the evidence made me suspect Acting like a Girl -- but graffiti was an unlikely Mean Boy punishment.

“You can’t erase paint with soap and water.  Why don’t you just mark it out?”

“Sometimes you can  And the paint’s in the garage, and if I go through there, Emmitt will see me. Ok, Mr. Know-it-All?”  Emmitt was his Dad.

“Why would Emmitt care what a Mean Boy says about you?”

Then we heard a clumping noise inside the building: a teacher or custodian, insanely working on the weekend, coming to the window to accuse us of disfiguring the school!  Brian kicked the bucket over and started to run away, but I knew he'd never find a hiding space by running east: the schoolyard in that direction was empty scrub for hundreds of miles. So I yelled “Get on my bike!”

Brian jumped on without protest and wrapped his arms tightly around my waist, and we sped away past the back of the school. We hid in the alley for awhile, panting and laughing. Then we went back to pick Brian’s bucket and sponge, and rode him home.

We became friends, of a sort, after that, but Brian didn't tell me what LBJ meant, or who wrote it, until many years later, when we were both in college.  By that time, I had already figured it out (You probably think it has something to do with sex, but it doesn't.)

Season after season, year after year, Brian gives free LBJs remained on the wall, faded but still faintly legible, stubbornly resistant to the generations of custodians who attempted to erase it.  It was the biggest riddle of my childhood, and not mine alone.  Generations of junior high students have wondered who this Brian is, and what LBJs are, and if they find out, how such things can exist on 20th Avenue in Rock Island, Illinois, in the world of everyday experience.

As far as I know, it's still there today.

See also: The Secret Message Behind "Brian Gives Free LBJs"

Finding a Boyfriend in the Girls' Locker Room

Rock Island, Spring 1973

Bill and I began to drift apart at Washington Junior High, when we took different classes and joined different clubs.  We still hung out, but we never slept over, and I think both of us were actively looking for new boys.

I tried dancing with boys at the weekly school dance for a few weeks, but teachers soon caught on and gave me detention. 

On a bleak Monday morning in February 1973, white with clouds that threatened snow, I was leaving school late after a club meeting, when I heard scuffling and voices from the eastern corridor that lead through Viking territory. I pushed past some onlookers and saw three Vikings dragging a Fairy (a feminine boy) kicking and squirming toward the girls’ locker room. (One of them was Dick, who I would meet again at a gay bar years later). His yellow button-down shirt was nearly torn off, his pants were bunched up around his ankles, and a Viking was jerking at his briefs. They were going to force girls to see him naked, and force him to see them!



When our eyes met for an instant, I recognized him as Dan, a slim, tanned seventh grader with dark blue eyes, glasses, and thick dirty-blond hair. I had him in three classes, but we rarely spoke unless a teacher forced us. Now, as I saw Dan's smooth chest, his warm tight belly, and his cock and balls freed from their white briefs, I felt the gasping ache of joy that I usually felt watching men with muscles.

At the end of the hall, a teacher swung through the gym door to investigate,  concluded that the assault was for Dan's own good, and silently retreated.

If the adults wouldn’t intervene, I thought, than I would have to! I propped my book bag against the wall and leapt onto the shoulders of the depantsing behemoth.

A moment  later,  Dan and I were both sliding through the double doors into the girls’ locker room. Fortunately, the team had a short practice session today, so most girls were dressed and gone, and the stragglers quickly covered up.

Dan was sobbing, and his hand was bleeding from where his watch snapped off. I put my arm around him while some of the girls gathered the books, clothing, Dan's glasses, and a clear-plastic protractor broken neatly in half. Then the gym teacher finally intervened and sent Dan – not the Vikings -- to detention.

On Tuesday I had wrestling, but on Wednesday, I waited for Dan at the portico outside the east door. “Hi, Dan!” I said, deliberately using his first name instead of  his last.  (Boys always used the last name unless they were very close friends.)

The Fairy barely slowed as he muttered “H’lo, Davis.”

“Hey, do you like Donny Osmond?" 

Dan  slowed a little more. “He's pretty boss, I guess.”

“I got his new album, Alone Together.  Do you want to come to my house and listen to it?  I live on 41st Street, over by Denkmann."

We ran joyously to my house and sat on the floor in my basement room and listened to "The Twelfth of Never."

Soon I was meeting Dan at his house every morning to walk him to school, and sitting with him every day at lunch. After school, when I didn't have to stay late for wrestling or clubs, we went to Dan's house and listened to teen idol music or watched tv or played chess. On Saturdays we rode our bikes, and went swimming and hiking. During the summer of 1973, I saw him kissing Bill at the Longview Park Pool.

Dan came to all of my wrestling matches and judo tournaments, even the one in Urbana, three hours away, and as we drove home across a prairie dark except for car headlights and the occasional dim light on a water tower, he nodded off and lay his head softly onto my shoulder, so close that I could feel his breath against my neck. My brother Kenny, sharing the back seat with us, glanced over but did not comment.

But we rarely slept over, rarely shared a bed.  Dan said that we were "too old" for that.

Too old to share beds and rooms, and houses and lives?