Cruised by a Waiter at a Crazy Retro Restaurant

Indianapolis, December 2016

Who ever talked me into going to this crazy restaurant?

I guess my friend Tyler, Fred's "son," did.  It's a few blocks from where he works, so good for having dinner while waiting out rush-hour traffic.

But Tyler is an expert in the culinary arts.  Surely he could drive a few miles to a more...um...modern place, rather than Charlie's Bar and Grille.

Decor from the fifties.

Clientele consisting entirely of heterosexual couples in their 90s.

Grotesquely outdated music playing in the background, syrupy-slow versions of the most depressing songs possible.

"Yesterday"
"If You Could Read My Mind"
"Sad Songs"

And my personal non-favorite, "Times of Your Life":

You wake up and time has slipped away
And suddenly it's hard to find
The memories you left behind
Remember, do you remember, the times of your life?

Just what I need -- a reminder that time is slipping away, and most of my life is over, in a horrible retro restaurant a few days before New Year's Eve.

Sighing, I look at the menu:  steaks, chops, veal cutlet, Salisbury steak, chicken a la king.

What the heck is a chop?

I order the Turf and Surf, sirloin steak with a stuffed lobster tail, which my Encyclopedia of Bad Taste calls "a paeon to 1950s excess" and a "middlebrow status symbol of our parents' generation."

Shouldn't it come with a martini and a slice of banana cream pie?

The waitress, the only person under 90 in the restaurant, is intrusive, overly aggressive, telling us in detail where every menu item is located, as if we have never seen a restaurant menu before, and coming back twice to ask "How's everything tasting?"

I hate the "How's everything?" question.  It always comes at the exact moment when your mouth is full or you're discussing something embarrassing.  But I hate the "How's everything tasting?" question even more.  I order food for its nutritional value and visual appeal. Who cares about the taste?

And to make matters worse, a second person, a maitre-d or wine steward or something, comes up and asks "How's everything tasting?" a third time!

I'm not answering this time.  Let Tyler do it.

"It's great," he says.

But he's not going to let me off the hook.  He wraps his arm around my shoulders and asks "How about you?"

Shocked, I shrug him off.   He retreats.

"What was that all about?" Tyler asks.

"No idea.  In gay neighborhoods, the waiters cruise you -- flirt with you --- to get a bigger tip."

"But this is Indianapolis, not West Hollywood.  And how would he know you're gay?  He probably thinks that we're father and son."

"Maybe he picked up a vibe."

"But he's not even our waiter, so he won't be getting a tip."

"There are other reasons to flirt with people..."

"No way!" he exclaims.

Suddenly the maitre d' or wine steward or whatever is back.  This time I get a better look: in his twenties, medium height, on the thin side, with a round face, heavy eyebrows, and short brown hair.  White shirt, black pants, apron, so I can't see a bulge.  Sort of cute, in a cornfed Midwestern way.

"Hi, I didn't get your names."  He holds out his hand to be shaken.  "I'm Mike."

What wine steward or maitre d' or something asks for your names?  This guy is definitely cruising!

"I'm Tyler, and this is my friend Boomer, from West Hollywood, California."

"California!  Cool!  I'll bet you know lots of movie stars."

"Sure.  I car-pool with Cary Grant.  Humphrey Bogart's kid mows my lawn.  Last week I went out to dinner with Tyrone Power."

"Funny!"  He pauses.  "I'm a big fan of old movies."

"Working here, you'd have to be."

He touches my shoulder. "Rear Window is playing at the Royal.  If you guys have time this evening, you should check it out.  I'm going after work."

He vanishes.

"Definitely cruising -- trying to pick me up," I tell Tyler.  "Not even being subtle about it."

"Don't be ridiculous!" he protests.  "This isn't a gay bar!"

I shrug.  "Seems weird to me, too, but can you think of another explanation?"

"Um...being friendly?"

"That's an awfully touchy-feely friendliness."

"Ok, then, if you think he's flirting, ask him out.  I'd love to see the look on your face when he runs away in a panic."

What if he is just being friendly?  Asking out a random waiter in a straight-world restaurant could be very embarrassing.  Especially in this weird retro 1950s restaurant.  "That won't be necessary.  I like to meet my men the old fashioned way.  On a dating app on my smartphone."

Our real waitress arrives to clear our dishes and ask if we'd like to order dessert.  We refuse, so she goes to get our check.

Suddenly Mike returns with plates of apple pie a la mode.  "On the house," he says, "Because you had to wait so long."

"We didn't have a long wait, but thanks..." Tyler says.

"Hey...um...about Rear Window...the theater is kind of hard to find, so I thought if you could wait until 7:00, when I get off work, you could follow me over."

"We're busy tonight,"  I tell him.  "But I'm free tomorrow."

"Great!  Meet me here at 7:00.  We can go to the movie, and then get drinks or whatever."   He touches my shoulder again, and rushes off.

Tyler stares.  "Does this sort of thing happen to you often?"

"That would be telling."

Actually, it's only happened 3 or 4 times in my life.

In case you were wondering: smooth chest, two tattoos, average size, uncut.  Oral bottom.  Pushed me down on the bed to get into the interfemoral position, but spurted before he could insert anything into anything.

See also: I Spend the Night with Fred's Son; Hookup with the Waiter at a Fundamentalist Restaurant; and Cooking and Cruising.

8 Harvard Boys in My Bed

Growing up in a working-class neighborhood, we hated the North Side kids.  Their summer houses, their fancy cars, their birthday trips to Paris, their opera tickets, and especially their elitism, their snobbish disdain for my house, neighborhood, outfits, music, just about everything.

I still get upset when I hear snobbish derision of the Midwest, tv sitcoms, science fiction, or some other beloved region of my childhood.

Yet I love Harvard, the oldest and most elite university in the U.S., probably in the world.

Whenever I'm in Boston, I try to go to the campus, walk down Everett and Oxford and Divinity Street, across Harvard Yard.  I go into the Widener Library and Memorial Hall, down the corridors of the Law School and the Divinity School, pretending that I belong there, that I'm a student (or, more recently, a professor).

I am always shocked by how ordinary the buildings and classrooms and students look.  This isn't a shimmering otherworld of universal wisdom.  It could be any college anywhere.  It could be Penn State.

Ok, the freshman dining hall looks a lot like Hogwarts.

However, every Harvard student and graduate I've ever known has been crazy.  No exceptions.  Some are just quirky or eccentric, some are bona fide nutcases.

I've dated or hooked up with eight Harvard boys.  Each has had a fabulous physique or superb beneath-the-belt gifts.  Each has been certifiable.

In order, from least to most insane:

1. Jermaine, the Biggest Guy on My Sausage List, with an enormous Kovbasa++++.  He was remarkably kind and unfailingly upbeat, with just a few eccentric habits.  Like asking "Who's your Daddy" during the sexual act, getting offended at the suggestion that he might be a top, and skinny dipping in the icy Atlantic Ocean with his uncle.

2. Ari, the Linguist Who Wouldn't Shut Up, born in Israel, with Hebrew as his native language.  But he didn't want to talk about that.  He wanted to talk about the pronomials of Tlingit, a Na-Dene language of British Columbia and Alaska, and the gender categories of Jingulu, an Australian aboriginal language.  Yawn.  At least he was gifted beneath the belt, #6 on my Sausage List.

3. Hunter the Historian, an undergrad I hooked up with in the Widener Library while visiting Boston for a conference.  He was a history major who asked me an endless array of questions about life in West Hollywood in the 1980s.  Was I a Castro clone?  Did I go to the baths?  Did I use poppers? I kept trying to steer him toward the sexual encounter.  

4. Sammy Blowfish, the son of my old high school speech teacher, a new art history professor at a small private college in Iowa.  Other than his odd inferiority complex and his fixation on dalmatians (although he didn't own one), his only quirk was trying too hard, initiating sexual acts a dozen times in the 24 hours or so of our date.

5. Dr. Charles Bertan, professor of Restoration and Augustan literature at USC, uptight, conservative, so completely non-sexual that I couldn't imagine him with his clothes off, let alone actually having sex with anyone.  We went out on one date.

6. Ricky With a Y,  a cute twink with a hairy chest and a rather small penis, who spent our whole date psychoanalyzing me.  "Why do you think that is interesting?" "Why do you say that?"  "Tell me about your relationship with your father?"

Even in the bedroom: "Is your refusal to engage in anal really a failure to embrace your gay identity?  Do you subconsciously believe that if you don't top me, you're not really gay?"

He wasn't even a psychiatrist.  He ran a mail-order company that sold gay pride merchandise.

7.  Matt, Fred's Cute Young Thing, a recent graduate of Andover Academy and Harvard, who spoke with a nasal Boston accent, peppered his conversation with French and German, adored the opera, and complained that everything about me was bourgeois or jejune:  the Midwest, West Hollywood, USC, you name it.  Plus he gossiped about everybody and everything, providing the weird voices.

In the bedroom, he kept up a nonstop monologue of his progress: "I'm getting there...un peu plus, mon chevalier...a little more....je vais arriver...a little more...bien, bien...here I go..."

What did Fred see in this guy?

Well, he was cute.

8. Santa Claus, aka Bearnárd with an accent, in his 60s, chubby, with a white beard and a hairy chest.  He was actually David's hookup, not mine, but I tagged along to make sure everything was ok.

Bearnárd majored in biology at Harvard, but now he wrote fantasy novels about King Arthur and lived in a completely Medievalized apartment in the Castro. There were suits of armor, tapestries, halberds,and heavy oak tables.  He offered us "mead" to drink out of golden goblets (really).

It was Christmastime, so he explained to us the pagan origins of the yule log, the Christmas tree, the wassail bowl, chestnuts roasting over an open fire, and "Twelve Days of Christmas."

After all that, the hookup was rather a letdown.  I mostly watched and fondled a bit.

See also: My  Sausage List; 12 Teacher Hookups

August 1984: An Ole Miss Undergrad Named Elmer

Oxford, Mississippi, Summer 1984

I've just finished my M.A. degree, and I'm on my way south to Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, a far northern suburb of Houston, where I will be teaching English.  I stop for the night in Oxford, Mississippi, the home of Ole Miss.

I tour the university and the William Faulkner house, get take-out fried chicken from Lenora's Family Restaurant, and check in to my hotel to settle down for an evening of Family Ties, Cheers, and Night Court.

I'm not planning to go out.  I have to take occupancy of my new apartment by 5:00 pm tomorrow, or I'll be stuck in hotels all weekend.  That means getting up at 5:00 am.

Besides, I'm in Mississippi, the heart of the heart of the most horrifyingly homophobic state in a horrifyingly homophobic country.  Where is there to go?

My Gayellow Pages listed only 1 bar in the whole state, in Jackson.

And I definitely am not going to go to a straight bar!

Still, I'm restless.  I have to go somewhere.

In the gathering darkness, I leave my hotel, walk down Lamar Boulevard, past Lenora's again, around the courthouse.  The same coffee houses and pizza places you would find in college towns anywhere,  Down University Boulevard, toward the campus.  

Elegant but rundown Victorian houses, gas stations, clothing boutiques, a lot of churches, a Christian Science Reading Room.

I see a cute guy heading in my direction, coming from the campus -- about my age, light brown hair, clean-shaven, slim, smooth chest.  His shirt is tucked into the right pocket of his jeans.  He gives me a long cruisy stare and turns south, onto 11th Street.  Curious, I follow.

He turns right onto Lincoln Avenue, a residential street that dead-ends at a traffic barrier.  He walks around -- there's a dirt path into the woods.

I follow him into the dark woods lit only by twilight and an occasional street light glimpsed far away -- and cigarettes.  The woods are populated!

Rugged Ole Miss Rebel football players, well-kept businessmen-types, bears, blue collars, rednecks who drove a dozen miles to stand in seclusion in the warm, humid night. Lots of muscles. 

The smell of beer and cigarettes and sweat.

This must be an outdoor cruising area, like the one Viju took me to in India earlier this summer.

The guy I followed in stands with his back to a tree and drops his pants.  Average beneath-the-belt-gifts, but already standing at attention, pale in the moonlight.  I kneel on the damp earth and go down on him.  

It takes him a long time, but he finishes with a barely suppressed moan.  Then he pulls me to my feet and zips up.  I try to kiss him, but he moves his head away  

"My name is Boomer," I say.

He looks startled, but says "Howdy, Boomer.  I'm Elmer."  He extends his hand.  It seems odd to be shaking hands with someone after we've been intimate.  Sex first, introductions later.  "Thanks, that was awesome."

He vanishes into the darkness.


A few guys have gathered to watch our performance.  I go down on a slim, blond guy in his 20s, with a Bratwurst+.  Then another Bratwurst is pushed into my face, and I try to go down on them both at once.

I can't see who it belongs to.

Sex first, introductions later.  If at all. 

One finishes and walks away; the other pushes my head off and walks away..

I wander through the woods. 

Someone is trying to go down on a middle-aged guy with a hairy chest, a little belly, and a gigantic Kovbasa, a  foot-long baseball bat  It's too big, so mostly he is using his hand.  I stand beside them, and he goes down on me as well.

I try to kiss the middle-aged guy, but he pushes my head down to his chest instead. I kiss and lick his nipples.

After a few moments, he leaves, and the guy on his knees goes down on me alone.

I don't finish; it's hard to concentrate in the semi-darkness, with the bugs and the heat and the sweat.  Besides, I don't know anything about the guy I'm having sex with.  At least in the bathhouse in Chicago last year, you could see their faces and physiques.


Some guys have gathered around to watch.

Finally I pull him to his feet, so at least I can see his face.  It's Elmer!

"Oh, hi, Boomer, I didn't know that was you."  

"You can't get rid of me that easy," I joke.  I try to kiss him, but he pulls his head away.

"You got a room?"

"Yeah, I'm at the Graduate, up on Lamar."

"Let's go there, ok?  The mosquitoes are getting pretty intense out here."

On the way out of the woods, he stops to go down on a tall, muscular redhead with a military crew cut.

Then we go back to Lamar Boulevard.  Elmer stops at a small grocery store to buy a toothbrush.  

"Do you know any of these guys?" I ask.  "Like, last name basis?"

"I know some of the faces of the regulars, but we don't talk much. We're mostly just there for the sex.  I think you're the only guy who ever told me his name."

It sounds horribly depressing, something out of a Truman Capote novel.  At least Rock Island has some gay bars.  "Is that all there is for gay guys to do, here in Oxford?  Have quickies in the woods, with mosquitoes and muddy knees?"

Elmer slaps me on the back.  "You gotta be kidding me, boy!  Them woods are just for sex.  I got a lot of gay friends in town.  I got two boyfriends.  We go to movies, to football games, out to eat, that kind of thing.  There's a professor that throws real fancy parties once a month  30 gay guys, with dancing and hors d'oeuvres."

"But it's like...Mississippi!  Are you out to people and everything?"

"No, coming out is a Yankee custom.  We keep a low profile down here, no camping it up and calling each other 'Mary,' and if somebody asks, you just say you haven't met the right girl yet."

When we get back to my hotel room, Elmer goes immediately into the bathroom.  I hear the sound of tooth brushing and gargling.  He returns: "Ok, you go brush your teeth, too.  And use mouthwash."

I comply.  When I come out, he is lying naked on the bed.  "Now I'll kiss you."

Sex first, intimacy later. Last names, not at all.


See also: Cruising Rednecks in Oxford, Mississippi