David's Top 20 Hookups and One-Night Stands

David, my friend in San Francisco, spent the first 43 years of his life in small-town Arkansas, a conservative Baptist minister who had barely heard that gay people existed, and certainly didn't know that he was himself gay.  After all, he was married.  He had two children.  He lived in Arkansas.

On January 6th, 1996, his 43rd birthday, he realized that he was gay.  Within a week, he had his first same-sex experience, resigned from his pastoral job, moved out of the parsonage, and asked his wife for a divorce.

By June he was living in San Francisco, He got an apartment and a job, joined a gym, bought a new wardrobe, and went cruising.

After 43 years in the wilderness of the Straight World, unwilling to touch, look at, or even fantasize about the masculine, he wanted to make up for lost time by experiencing masculine beauty five times a day.

Hooking up that often is a herculean task, even in Gay Heaven.  You have to be always "on," looking constantly, at work, at the gym, on the Muni.  You have to walk down different streets, go to different bars and restaurants, so you don't run into the same crowd all the time.  And you can't be picky: you have to be available to every man of legal age, whether he's old, young, short, tall, thin, or fat.

The logistic problems made him revise his goal to one a day.  Still during the last twenty years he's probably been with around 5,000 guys.

Here are his most memorable hookups, one-night stands, and public sexual encounters.

The Bible Boy of Castro Street.  In June 1996, shortly after we met, David shocked me by picking up a street preacher.

Brad Pitt.  In August 1996,  David and I had a four-way with Corbin the Gym Rat and Brad Pitt.

The Homeless Kid.  In September 1996, David shocked me again by actually talking to a panhandler.  And inviting him over for dinner.

Santa Claus.  David wasn't usually into the bear type, but he made an exception for Santa Claus, aka Bearnard, in December 1996.

The Straight Boy at the Garlic Festival.  David even cruised in the Straight World.  It paid off when we went to the Gilroy Garlic Festival in July 1997.

The Car Wash Boy.  David was visiting a friend in Oakland, and they passed one of those buffed college guys who advertise car washes by taking their shirts of.

The Abductee.  Alien abductions were all the rage in the 1990s, so what better place to cruise than at a support group for abductees?  Of course, David had to have his own abduction story....

The Brothers.  David was quite a twink magnet, but he didn't discriminate.  One summer he hooked up with two tourist brothers from Slovakia, both in their 40s, while they were traveling with their wives.

Kevin's Old Apartment.  In March 2003, I flew out to San Francisco for a visit, and David and I tried to track down my ex-boyfriend, Kevin the Vampire.  We hooked up with the guy currently living in his apartment after a conversation of less than five minutes.






The Elevator.  There's a lot of porn about getting someone to go down on you in an elevator, but have you ever tried it?  David did.


The Hitchhiker.  In August 2003, David came to visit me in Florida, and we drove down to Key West for the weekend.  On the way we picked up a teenage hitchhiker, on the way to his freshman year at Florida International University.

The Unicyclist.  For at least a decade, the Unicyclist was a fixture on Castro Street. He didn't speak; if he liked you, he would circle you and beep a little horn.  For some reason he never approached David, so one day David approached him.

The Surfer.  The water at Baker Beach in San Francisco is cold.  Even in the summer, you're not going to swim or surf there without a wetsuit.  But when David saw a naked man there in April 2005, he didn't ask questions.  He just went down.

The Bodybuilders.  Everybody in San Francisco went to the gym, so you had to be really spectacular to draw attention based on your physique.  And the really spectacular guys tended to only date each other.  One spring David managed to date Bodybuilder #1, and then, after they broke up, shared his new boyfriend, Bodybuilder #2.

The BART.  The Bay Area Transit System has very small restrooms, and it's not very well heated, but that didn't stop David from having a twink go down on him in the middle of December..

The Slave.  David was into leather, but not into BDSM; no bondage, whips, or clamps, thank you.  But when the prospective bottom looks like this, who can say no?

Skyler Stone.  A comedian who usually plays stoners. You may know him as Cousin Mike on Raising Hope, or from his prank make-out session with his buddy at the homophobic Chik-fil-A.  By all accounts, he's straight, but David says that they hooked up in Los Angeles.

The Otter from the Bike Stop.  In March 2013, David visited me in Philadelphia, and proved that he still had the stuff by getting the telephone numbers of 14 guys in a single 24-hour period.  The only one he actually hooked up with was an otter met in the gay bar The Bike Stop.

The Stonewall Veteran.  The Stonewall Riots, the start of the Gay Rights Movement, were in 1969, so there aren't a lot of people left who can say they were there.  David met a guy who was active in gay rights even earlier, in the Mattachine Society of the 1950s.

Everybody Hooks up with Everybody.  In July 2013, I flew out to San Francisco to visit David, and he provided a friend to share: James, a black-haired twink majoring in Arabic.  It turns out that James dated the nephew of a guy I cruised back in Rock Island 30 years ago.  Sooner or later, everybody hooks up with everybody else.

Nude Photos of Christopher Atkins

Christopher Atkins (1961-) is probably the first teen idol to go full frontal on the big screen.  Several times.

Here he shows off in his iconic but immensely heterosexist Blue Lagoon (1980).












The full post is on Righteous Gemstones Beefcake and Boyfriends

Barry and the Creepy Old Guy

You remember Barry, the shy, slim boy growing up in a conservative household in Colonial Williamsburg, who sought escape by getting drunk and experimenting with drugs?

How did he get from there to the health-conscious gym rat I knew in New York, who didn't drink or use drugs, who would never even set foot in a bar?

After his first sexual experience, when he was 16, Barry was angry and bitter over the Big Lie, the conspiracy to keep him from knowing that gay people exist, as well as the everyday heterosexism of "what girl do you like"?  So he continued his smoking and drinking, and moved from marijuana to prescription drugs.

He spent the next two years driving into Norfolk and using a fake id to get into the bars, where he would drink, dance, and hook up, usually for money.  Often with two or three guys in a night.

"Norfolk is 50% black," he said.  "Can't get much better odds than that."

"How did you find the time to go home with so many guys on the same night?"

"I didn't usually go home with them.  We did it in a parked car, or in an alley off Stockley Gardens."

By some miracle Barry managed to graduate from high school with a 3.5 GPA.  His search for black men led him to 80% black Howard University in Washington, DC, as a pre-law major.  Again, he spent most nights going to the bars on Dupont Circle with his fake id., dancing, drinking, trying Ecstasy, tricking, and hustling.


He was arrested twice, once for propositioning an undercover cop (DC had sodomy laws until 1995) and once for "indecent exposure" in a public restroom.

"I'm all for exploring masculinity in all its variety," I said, "But it sounds like you were obsessed."

"I thought that's what gay life was about.  Drinking, dancing, drugs, and hooking up."

He felt very guilty after his hookups, especially the anonymous encounters where a guy would go down on him without even a kiss first.  How degrading!  This wasn't what sex was supposed to be about.  What happened to the affection, the caring?  Sometimes he prayed afterwards to turn straight, so he could have a "normal," caring relationship.

"Did you date?"

"Just once."  During the summer of 1992, he fell in love with a tourist from St. Lucia -- his first romantic relationship, four years after coming out!  After a courtship of only a few days, he returned to St. Lucia with his new boyfriend.  But he soon grew bored, returned to DC, and resumed his life of drinking, dancing, tricking, and hustling (See A Boy, A Man, and a Caribbean Island for what really happened).

"Did you use condoms with your tricks?" I asked.

"Not usually. I didn't really care about HIV or hepatitis.  It's a miracle that I'm negative now."

He graduated from Howard University, with a C+ average.  Not good enough to get into a reputable law school.

So he moved to West Hollywood, got a clerical job, and spent his nights at Mickey's and the Rage, dancing, hooking up, drinking, and using drugs. He graduated from Ecstasy to cocaine and crystal meth.

The demon at his exorcism happened to disapprove of an evening where one of his tricks went down on him at the notorious hustler hangout, a donut shop on the corner of Highland and Santa Monica.

(It's under new management and not a hustler hangout anymore.)

"I loved West Hollywood," I said.  "The gym, the bookstores, the restaurants.  Did you go to the French Quarter?"

"Not really."

"Lots of spiritual activities, too.  The Metropolitan Community Church, Beth Chaim Chadashim Synagogue, Evangelicals Together."

"I didn't really join any groups."

"Not even gay Catholic groups?"

"ESPECIALLY not gay Catholic groups.  I wouldn't even trick with a guy if I knew he was Catholic.  Once a guy took off his shirt, and I saw a crucifix around his neck.  I ran away like a vampire."  He paused.  "Maybe I was a vampire."

Then, in the summer of 1998, a trick took him to a very nasty apartment complex near downtown.

Sagging, peeling wallpaper, threadbare carpets damp with mysterious stains, dim light from sickly yellow lamps, stultifying heat,  It was insufferably hot and damp.

As they were walking down the hallway, they passed a couple on the way out.

One was a creepy old guy in a business suit.

"What's wrong with old guys?  I'm 14 years older than you."

"Some of them are hot, but this guy was the worst: smelly, sweaty, with warts and claw-hands, slicked-back hair, and that creepy leer, you know, that they get when they won't take 'no' for an answer."

His companion was a blond guy in his 30s, but very worn and craggy, with bloodshot eyes and a scraggly beard, sweating in an old-fashioned leisure suit and gold chains.

As they passed, the blond guy locked eyes with Barry and mouthed the words "Help me!"

Barry noticed a crucifix around his neck.

"Do you think it was a kidnapping?  Or a hustler changing his mind about a trick?"

"I think it was a glimpse into my future.  I was seeing myself in ten years."

Barry was too freaked out to follow through with his own trick.  He ran back to his car and zoomed home, and said the Rosary for the first time since high school.

"I felt the presence of the Blessed Virgin, as if she had been watching over me all along, waiting for me to come home again." 

A week later, he was back in his parents' house in Williamsburg.

He gave up the bars, went to drug counseling, joined a gym, began practicing Zen meditation, and started going to Dignity, the gay Catholic group.

For the first time in his life, he had gay friends.

Maybe the Blessed Virgin had watched over him for a purpose.  He should become a monk.  But it had to be a pro-gay monastery.

Asking around Dignity, he discovered Andre's Traditional Catholic Community, and applied to join as a postulant.  That's when I met him, on the night of his exorcism.

Barry decided that he didn't have a monastic vocation, but he continued to go to Mass, say the rosary daily, and live a clean, almost monastic lifestyle. An hour of meditation and two hours at the gym every day.  No drinking, no smoking, no drugs, no bars.  No hookups, just dating and sharing with friends.

Today, thanks to the Blessed Virgin and a Creepy Old Guy, Barry is still DDF, still going to the gym and meditating daily.  He and his partner Daniel run a gay bed and breakfast on Long Island, near the Hamptons.

Daniel, by the way, is twenty years older than Barry.

See also: The Colonial Williamsburg Boy Finds Out What Gay Means; The Catholic Priest in my Bed; and The Homophobic Demon.