My Sunday School Teacher's Stripper Sons

When I was a kid in the 1970s, my favorite Sunday school teacher was named Brother Dino (not his real name).  He was young, in his mid-20s, with black hair and a thick black moustache -- rare for Nazarenes.

He had only been saved for a couple of years -- before that, he was a Catholic! -- and he knew all about movies, dancing, drinking, card-playing, carnivals, circuses, and Catholic Masses. He framed them as destructive and evil: "Look how horrible my life was before I got Saved!" -- but the stories were brash, colorful, and seductive.

Brother Dino was our cabin counselor at Nazarene summer camp during the summer of 1974, just after eighth grade. One day I saw him naked in the shower.  He looked like this guy: muscular body, hairy chest and belly, very impressive beneath the belt.

Nazarenes typically didn't have many kids -- why bring kids into the world, when the Rapture would come at any moment -- but Brother Dino and his wife had lots, four girls (born 1968, 1970, 1973, 1975)  --and, just when they were giving up, two boys, Mickey and Dom (1977, 1978).   I didn't pay them much attention -- I left the Nazarene church when the oldest was only about 10 -- but my mother told me about the them their talent show and jump quiz triumphs, their dates with the new preacher's kid, their participation in International Institute, their colleges and marriages and children.

She never mentioned the stripping. But my brother Ken did.

At Christmastime 1999, I was back in Rock Island home for the holidays, and as my brother drove me away from the airport, we passed a low gray building.  "That's a new strip club," Ken announced.  "Where girls take off their clothes," he added, as clarification.

"Any male performers?"  I asked.

"As a matter of fact, Tuesday is lady's night, with guys taking their clothes off."

I didn't ask how he acquired that information.  "Hmm...lady's night, only women allowed, I guess."

"And you know who the top dancers are?  Brother Dino's kids, Mickey and Dom!  Brother Dino can barely hold his head up in church anymore!  What did he expect, when he gave them Catholic names?"

Mickey and Dom were now in college -- one at Augustana, the other at St. Ambrose, the Catholic college in Davenport.  And on Tuesday night they made extra money by performing at the strip club.

Men were allowed in "if accompanied by a lady," so I called an old college friend, and we went to the 10:00 show. I was the only man in a crowd of twenty or so women.

Having not seen the boys since Mickey was a toddler and Dom a babe-in-arms, I didn't know what to expect.  They came on stage dressed as college jocks in sweatpants and Augustana and St. Ambrose sweatshirts.  They pretended to argue about college rivalries, and in "anger" stripped each other out of everything but their jockstraps.

 They had smooth, muscular bodies -- rather surprising, given their dad's hairiness, and not as sculpted as the male models of West Hollywood, but certainly impressive.

They danced together on a little stage, then separated and worked the crowd.  I think it was the oldest, Mickey, who gyrated toward my side of the room.  I held up a dollar.

He approached, grinning, his smooth chest shining with sweat, and thrust his crotch suggestively toward me. "I'm an ex-Nazarene, too," I told him, shouting to make myself heard above the music.  "Your dad was my Sunday school teacher."

He looked surprised, but kept grinning.  "Small world!" he said.  "You gay or is she your girlfriend?"

"Just a friend."  He straddled my lap.  I shoved the dollar inside his jock strap and felt around to see if he was as big as his dad.  He was.

"Cool!  You guys the best tippers!  Wanna kiss?"

"Sure!"

He bent over and kissed me briefly on the lips, as I shoved another dollar into his jock strap.  The crowd squealed in shock or delight.  Then he rose and backed away and gyrated toward a woman who was holding up a dollar.

My mother tells me that both Mickey and Dom are married with children now, working in human resources and telecommunications, respectively.  Their stripping days are far behind them.  But I'm sure that they're gay allies.

Rock Island has changed.

See also: A Nude Party with the Golden Boy

Our Hook Up with Brad Pitt

San Francisco

One night when I was visiting my friend David in San Francisco, we went out to dinner at Thai Thai.  He wanted to introduce me to his friend Corbin, a gym rat from Oakland with, he said, an awe-inspiring Mortadella.

Corbin was late.  We were about to order without him when he came bursting in, giddy and excited. "I brought someone -- I hope you don't mind.  He's out looking for a parking space."

Actually, I did. If  Corbin brought a date, we would be divided into two couples, and no Mortadella+ for me.  

But David said "No problem.  Is your date hot?"

"Is he hot!"  He sat and took David's arm.  "Out parking the car right now is none other than Brad Pitt!"

The hottest actor in Hollywood?  The star of Thelma and Louise, and Johnny Suede, and A River Runs Through It?  And Interview with the Vampire, where he and Tom Cruise played a gay vampire couple?  Sure, he always had a lady on his arm, but he must be bisexual -- straight men just don't get abs like that!

"How did you..."  I asked.

"I stopped in at the gym before coming here.  Just walking down Market, and there he was!  Everybody was staring, and a guy stopped and asked him for his autograph -- he refused.  But I played it cool, like you told me you did in West Hollywood.  I pretended I didn't even know who he was."

In West Hollywood, when we encountered big stars, we pretended not to recognize them.  No fawning, no gushing, no autograph requests.  We approached, or let him approach, as if he was just another hot guy.

But San Francisco had no movie and tv studios, no actor population, so celebrities appeared only when they were visiting, or starring in something on stage.  And most residents moved directly from homophobic small towns, so they never developed big city nonchalance.  So apparently they fawned and gushed and stammered, and called all their friends.  It took a studied indifference to incite Brad Pitt's interest.

"So we talked, and before you know it, he agreed to come to dinner with us."

"Ok," I told David.  "So the key to dealing with celebrities is, don't scare them off.  Don't discuss their movie career unless they bring it up.  Don't ask which celebrities are gay.  Stick to coming out stories and the biggest penis you've ever seen."

Brad arrived just in time to hear me say that, but he remained nonchalant, grinning broadly as he shook our hands.

He was about my height, lanky, with a sharp chin, deep blue eyes, long scruffy hair, almost exactly like this photo of Brad Pitt at the Golden Globes in 1996, except cleanshaven.

He sat and put his arm around the back of Corbin's chair.  "Nice to meet you all.  San Francisco is such a great city, and the guys are super-hot.  I wish I could visit more often."

"I loved Interview with a Vampire!" David blurted out, starstruck.

"Yeah.  You know, I met Anne Rice, at a book signing in Boston.  She told me that she always intended the character of Louis to be gay all along."  

This seemed strange.  He met Anne Rice at a book signing?  Wouldn't she have been on the set?  Wouldn't she have discussed her character with the actor portraying him?

But maybe not.

For the rest of the dinner, we avoided talking about movies.  Instead we discussed our miserable fundamentalist childhoods (Brad and David both grew up in Southern Baptist households, and I was Nazarene).  

Then we discussed the gay pride celebrations and other gay festivals in San Francisco.  Brad told us that in 1987, when he was 18, he marched in the very first gay pride parade in Oklahoma City.

Brad and Corbin held hands under the table, but I also saw a few brushes of Corbin's leg against David's, and Brad occasionally reached over and groped me.  A good sign that we weren't dividing into two couples.  Before the night was over, I would definitely be experiencing a Corbin Mortadella and a Brad Pitt Kovbasa+++.

Sure enough, after dinner David invited us back to his apartment on Waller, just off Haight, for "dessert."

He served three-day old cookies that no one touched.  Instead Corbin and Brad sat on the couch, kissing, while David went down on Corbin.

I pulled Brad over and kissed him and unbuttoned his shirt.  He had six-pack abs, hard and smooth, tight muscled, the stuff of legend in gay communities ever since he flashed them in Thelma and Louise.

Brad tried to push my head down onto his crotch, but I resisted.  Later -- I'd gone down on lots of guys.  I'd never have the opportunity to feel abs like that again!

We went into the bedroom, where I went down on Brad while he went down on Corbin and David at the same time.  Definitely a monster, a Kielbasa, cut, with a mushroom head.  He finished in a few minutes, but almost instantly sprang up, ready for more.  Then David pulled out a condom and topped Brad while Corbin and I just sort of lay there.

Spending the night after "sharing" is usually obligatory, but David's small bed wouldn't hold four, and Brad had to get to the airport early in the morning, so he left -- without giving us his phone number.

I doubt that it was really Brad Pitt himself, but still, David, Corbin, and I added "a hookup with" to our repertoire of celebrity dating stories. 

See also: Nude photos of Brad Pitt

Swimming with a Boy Named Twilight

Titusville, Florida, Summer 1967

I had a recurring dream, or an especially vivid memory, of being attracted to a boy in my earliest childhood,

A very short house with a tall palm tree out front.  A woman, blond in a flowered dress.  A fat, blustery man.  A girl eating strawberries with whipped cream. A baby. And the boy.

Older than me, but still a kid, and taller, with blond or dirty-blond hair. I remembered his name as Twilight.

This guy is over 18.  I didn't remember how old Twilight was.

There were three main images:

1. We are watching tv in a room with oak panels. I think that a guy on screen is cute, and turn to Twilight for  validation.  He smiles.

2. In a car, driving somewhere: Twilight is sitting next to me in the back seat.  He says "Look at that" and reaches over my lap to point it out.  His warm, tanned arm rests briefly on my thigh.

3. Twilight is trying to coax me into a warm, salty ocean.  He splashes through the surf, yells, "Come on!"  His dark-tanned skin glistens in the sun.  There's a line of white on his back, where his swim trunks have ridden down.

Over the years Twilight grew in symbolic importance, until he became a Harlequin figure, a Jack of Shadows. The smile reveals the existence of same-sex love.  The touch demonstrates that it can be be physical as well as spiritual. And the cry of "Come on!" invites me to embrace its warmth: "don't dream it, be it."

Or was he a real boy that I actually met?

In the fall of 2004, when I was living in Florida, I decided to try my sleuthing skills out on the mysterious Twilight.

More after the break