My Wild Night: Pancakes, Massage, and a Wiener

One day in the winter of 5th grade, when I was ten years old, a cute boy named Mark approached me after school.

"Wanna go out to eat?" he asked.

That was an odd dating request.  Boys usually just invited you over to play, or to Dewey's Candy Store.  If they were were rich, they invited you to a movie downtown.

But I said "Ok" anyway.  Mark was short and solid, with blue eyes and a severe military crew cut, and his brother Darryl was a high school wrestler.  "Out to eat" meant the whole family, so I could see them both!

"When do you want to go?" I asked, expecting him to say "Friday night."  But he said "Right now."

"Is your Dad here?"  I looked around for a car.

"No, just you and me."

"That's dumb! There's no restaurants in the neighborhood."

Our "neighborhood," the parts of Rock Island we could roam freely through without supervision, was bordered by 18th Avenue on the north, 31st Avenue on the south, 38th Street on the west and the city of Moline on the east.

There was nothing in it except Dewey's Candy Store and Schneider's Drug Store.


Was there some new place that I didn't know about?

"I have to go home first, and tell my Mom where I'm going."

"Don't be a baby!" Mark exclaimed.  "We'll be back before Captain Ernie is over."

We walked right past my house -- it would take only a second to go in and tell Mom.  But Mark, and his blue eyes, and his muscles, led me on, past 20th Avenue, all the way to the corner of bustling 18th Avenue. There were cars streaming in both directions, and the only traffic light was way down on 38th Street.



There were several restaurants on the other side of 18th Avenue, but the one that caught my eye was the Hasty Tasty Pancake House.

I had never seen anything so beautiful.  It glittered in red and gold like a palace from the Arabian Nights.

The Forbidden Fruit.

"I'm not allowed to cross 18th Avenue by myself," I protested.  "It's too busy.  We'll get run over."

"I do it all the time!  It's easy -- watch."  Mark waited until there was a momentary lull in the traffic and darted across the street.  My heart pounding, I followed.

The other side of the world!

Everything was different here.  The sky was darker, the air was cooler.  The houses were small and grey and shabby.

We went inside and sat at a garish red booth, and Mark bought us pancakes and milk.

They didn't taste good.  I felt too guilty for being on the other side of the world without telling Mom.

It was 4:00.  Sometimes I played after school, or went to Dewey's, but I always got home by 4:00, in time for Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat.  Mom would be wondering where I was.

"I have to get home to watch cartoons," I said.

"Come to my house. We can watch Captain Ernie there."

"Well...it's late, and..."

"I'll let you feel my wiener," Mark offered with an evil grin.

 "Um...well..."  I had only seen a few wieners before, and I never felt one. Bill never let me.  And Mark was cute...

"It's real big,  As big as my brother's, and he's in high school."

That sealed the deal.  We darted back across the street and walked to Mark's house, on 20th Avenue near the border of Moline.

Mark had a portable black and white tv set in his room. We sat side by side on the floor, watching Cartoon Showboat for a while. There was no clock, so I couldn't tell what time it was.

Dad got home at 4:00, and we ate dinner at 5:00.  I had to go!  What was the hold up?

Finally, after an eternity of cartoons.  Mark turned the tv off and drew the blinds.  Smiling, he took my hand and pressed it against his crotch.

"No fair!  All I can feel is your pants!"

"Ok."  He started to unzip.

Then we heard a noise in the hallway outside, and he quickly zipped up.  The door opened, and a big boy came in.  Darryl, the high school athlete!  He had his shirt off -- he had muscles!

"What you dorks doing in the dark?" he asked, leaping onto the bed and turning on the light. "Whoa, what a workout!  I need a massage!  Either of you guys a masseur?"

"I am!"  I said with a grin.

"Ok, great -- it's right there in my shoulder.  Dig in good."

I got to sit on the butt of a semi-naked high-school boy and rub his muscular shoulders!  But still, I felt guilty.  I shouldn't be here!  Dinner is at 5:00 -- Mom and Dad will be worried!

Eventually Darryl said "Thanks, little man" and left.  Mark shut the door behind him.

It must be almost 5:00 by now.  I had to hurry.  "You said I could..."  I began.

"Oh, sure."  Mark unbuttoned his pants, and pushed my hand inside.

It was nice, bigger than mine, with an impressively solid shaft.


"Now I get to feel yours, too."

I unzipped, and we fondled each other for awhile.

"I know how to make it get bigger," Mark said.

"But I have to...."

Then a voice yelled up the stairs, "Mark, is your friend staying for dinner?"

We quickly zipped up again.  He looked at me.  "Do you want to?"

"If my parents say it's ok," I said.  "Can I call them?"

"Sure.  The phone's in the kitchen."

There was also a clock in the kitchen.  6:30!  

My heart started to pound with fear.  "6:30!  But you said it was dinnertime!"

"That's right -- we eat at 7:00."

I was three hours late!  Without saying goodbye, I rushed out the door, into the winter darkness, and raced home.  Mom was calling all of my friends, and Dad was out scouring the neighborhood.  They thought I had either been kidnapped or fell into a ditch.

Years later, I learned that I could get away with any misdeed by claiming that I had been trying to meet a girl or impress a girl.

But "I was trying to feel a wiener" obviously wouldn't work.  I was grounded for two weeks, and forbidden from playing with Mark again.

My Grandmother's Gay Artist Friends

Santa Fe, New Mexico, July 2004

My Grandma Davis was an ultra-devout fundamentalist Christian who always carried her worn study Bible, corresponded with a dozen missionaries, and got angry at the "hippies and radicals" she saw on tv.  Yet she seemed remarkably nonchalant about my junior high boyfriend Dan, and when we broke up, she found a new boy for me to "go around with."

When she died, during my sophomore year in high school, we had to sort through her  possessions.  I found an old trunk in the attic with surprising evidence that she had encountered gay people before.  It contained:

1. Jazz records: Hoagy Carmichael, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Bix Beiderbecke.

2. Some paintings: a young woman with long red hair, wearing a blue evening gown and pearls; a still life; an old-fashioned cottage with a huge back yard covered with flowers, labeled "Devon."  When was Grandma Davis in Devon?

3. Some photographs of men, hugging, holding each other. One in a swimsuit, with a smooth, hard chest, standing on a beach, his arm around a taller, blond guy in a U.S. navy uniform (top photo).

Another of two very muscular, shirtless guys, one in white chinos, the other in overalls, apparently holding hands. (I asked for and got to keep them both.)

Dad could explain the music: "When your Grandma was younger, she was big into jazz.  Always going to concerts."

And the paintings:  "Right after high school, must have been in 1921, she went down to Indianapolis to art school.  Then, for some reason, she suddenly dropped out and went back home to Rome City.  That summer, 1923, she got saved at a Nazarene camp meeting, and married your Grandpa. "

I wondered what compelled a young woman to abandon her studies, her art, and her friends, shut them all away in a trunk in the attic for 52 years?

Did it have something to do with the hugging men?

Dad didn't know who they were.

A couple of years later, when I was in college, her younger brother Harry came to Thanksgiving dinner at Aunt Nora's house.  He was only ten when Grandma went to Indianapolis, but he remembered that their parents disapproved:

"This was during Prohibition, and Gracie and her friends went wild, with hooch and jitterbugging -- two things Nazarenes hate most.  It makes sense that she would want to hide away memories of her old, sinful life after she converted."

"But...who were the hugging men?"  I showed him the pictures.

"This one looks like a fellow she knew from art school, Carl something or other.  She brought him up to Rome City a couple of times. The others are probably his friends.  Oscar, maybe. I remember one time they all went skinnydipping up at Indiana Dunes, and got arrested, and Pop told her not to associate with such 'vulgarians' again, but of course she didn't listen."

Vulgarians?  Code for "gay"?  I looked in a directory of Indiana artists, but didn't find any Carl or Oscar from Indianapolis who was the right age.

Wood Woolsey

Then in 2004, I was visiting Larry in New Mexico, and I stumbled upon the name of regional artist Wood Woolsey (1899-1970).  He lived in Indianapolis from 1921 to 1927, and he studied at the John Herron Art Institute at the same time as Gracie.

He had a younger brother, Carl, also an artist, who lived with him.  My grand-uncle must have mixed the names up.

Wood Woolsey never married.  Could he have been gay?

Grandma Davis at the start of her life, skinnydipping with some gay guys!

Did finding out cause her skittish retreat into fundamentalist Christianity?

Or did she have only warm memories of her gay friends?  There's also evidence that she may have married a gay man.  And that fifty years later, when her 13-year old grandson began talking about boys he liked, she understood, on some level, and advised "You should find a nice Christian boy."  And when he broke up, she found him another boy to "go around with."

See also: Beefcake and Boyfriends of the Jazz Age

My Brief Modeling Career

Chicago, April 1979

One of the highlights of my freshman year at Augustana was my brief -- very brief -- modeling career.

I had my own radio program, the "International Pop Hour," where I played pop songs from Europe.  In between, I interviewed anyone who might have the slightest international connection, from the political science professor from China to the Italian-American manager of Langomarcino's Chocolates.

 One day in April, shortly after I got back from determining that my friend Mary's brother was "straight," I interviewed Lars Lundquist (not his real name), who came to Augustana as a foreign student in 1968 and now had his own photography studio in Chicago.

"I do everything -- kids, dogs, weddings, even passport photos," he said, "But I'm specializing in fashion.  I want to get some clients and go into talent management."  He paused.  "You know, you've got a nice fresh-scrubbed all-American look.  Did you play football in high school?"

"No, I was an athletic trainer.  But I saw more moldy towels and stinky athletic supporters than any football player."  I cued the laugh track.

"Can you come out to Chicago next week?  We'll do a shoot, and see what happens."

It's a scam!  My inner skeptic told me.  But then..."He's got a studio in Chicago, on Michigan Avenue!"  Besides, my listeners -- all 5 of them -- wanted to know what happened.

So the next weekend I drove out, and he took some shots of me wearing an orange leisure suit, a polo shirt and jeans, and a yellow turtleneck sweater with green pants (bright colors were "in" that year).

I quit my job at the Carousel Snack Bar, and through the spring and summer of 1979, except for my 10 days in Colombia,  I drove out to Chicago every few weeks and let Lars photograph me.  I got some work: see if you can find the Christmas 1979 catalog for the Marshall Fields department store, or Chicago Magazine in the spring of 1981.  I didn't keep any copies -- the photos were too embarrassing.

The money wasn't very good, and I was too busy with classes, clubs, and my job to drive out to Chicago every five minutes, so I was getting tired of it by the fall of 1979, when Lars asked, "Would you consider working for the gay market?"

"What?" I asked, stunned.  "What kind of market is there for gays?"

"All you have to do is pose nude -- there's no sex involved.  And the pay is good."

Was it legal?  And where could you go to buy nude pictures of men?

Apparently there were several gay porn magazines available in the adult bookstores of big cities.  Plus a mail order industry of nude male photos, marketed to gay men who couldn't get to big cities, and didn't want a porn magazine delivered to their home.

I could be a beacon of light to gay men in small towns!

But I would be out to millions of people.  Ok, hundreds.  They wouldn't be seeing my real name, but still...what if my mother saw the photos...or my friends at school....

A few days later, I met Fred, my ministerial student boyfriend.  I was sure that he would disapprove, so the nude photo shoot never happened, and my modeling career fizzled out (except for the adult movie I made, sort of, a few years later).