If I Were a Gay Man, Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum!

The following blog is VAGUELY EXPLICIT!
If you are uncomfortable reading about a summer romp between two men - well, skip this blog.
Another one will be along in a little while.

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SUMMER 1986

At this point in time I had been out for a little over a year - and been a non-virgin for about nine months. Happy little gay boy, la la la la la.  A good friend was stage managing a summer stock season in the midwest somewhere. The last show of the season was FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and she asked if I could come down and serve as an additional ASM (Assistant Stage Manager.) It was a big show, and the actual theater was a thrust-type stage with audience on three sides. My friend begged. She said she REALLY needed two ASMs backstage. Ever the genial fellow, I obliged.

When I got down there, all was good and the other ASM was nice. He was in his mid-20s, kind of cute, Jewish, had a moustache, and he was engaged to be married two weeks after FIDDLER closed. Oh, yes, ASM (as I'll call him from here on) was the only Jew involved in the production, on stage or off! It was basically the "Viking production" - starring Leif Erickson as Tevye! Oy!

Tech period went fine - except that I was nearly killed by a dry-ice fog machine. But the show duly opened to thundering applause. The opening night party was held at a beautiful home on a lake. We were tired, happy the show was open. We could now relax, do five shows on the next couple weekends, and otherwise have fun.

Well, after a few drinks the other ASM and I were sitting on a staircase drinking gin-and-tonics and he starts asking me about my coming out, what it was like, hadn't I ever been attracted to girls (No!), and other typical questions.

Then he says, "Would you?"

"Would I what?"

"You know! Would YOU . . . ?"

"Would I what?" I repeat.

He seems VERY uncomfortable! "You're really gonna make me ask this, arent you?"

"What are you talking about!" I ask, utterly baffled.

"Will you . . . have sex with me?"

Now, this is a spit-take moment if ever there was one! I recover myself and say, "Aren't you supposed to get married in two weeks?"

He explains that he is getting married, he loves his fiancee very much, but he's always thought he'd like to try sex with a guy just once. And this seems like his only chance before he gets married.

What we have here is an ethical dilemma  . . .

Is it wrong to have sex with a straight boy who is engaged to be married in two weeks?
Am I doing him (and his future wife) a favor by helping get this out of his system? 
If I say "No," am I denying him the chance to discover he REALLY is gay, and that he should call off the wedding before he messes up his and his future wife's lives?

Big inhalation of air . . . "So, you really want to do this? You're really serious?" I ask.

He stands up, takes me by the hand, and says, "Let's go!"

He takes me out to his car. We get in and he asks, "Where should we go?"

"Look, ASM, this was YOUR idea! Where do YOU want to go? Why don't we just go back to the Techie House?"

He explains that we can't do that, someone might get suspicious or figure out what was going on, or something.

I think, "Silly boy! Who cares! We're theater people!" We're still sitting in the car pondering locales and I put my hand on his upper leg and . . .

"Oh my God!" he says. "You're actually doing it!"

Now I'm TOTALLY confused. I ask, "If you don't want me to touch your leg through your pants, how are we gonna have, ummm . . . sex? Any time you want to stop, just say so. This was YOUR idea."

"I know where to go!" he beams and starts the car. I leave my hand on his leg and his breath corresponds to my hand as it moves higher up, onto his lap, and into the warm space between his jean-covered thighs.

He parks the car across the street from the theater.

"The theater!" I say. "You want to do it at the theater?"

"I have the only set of keys!" He smiles.

We go inside. He's REALLY nervous and sits down on the vinyl-covered couch in the Green Room. "Do you really want to do this?" I ask again.

"Yes! Stop asking that!"

I kiss him on the lips. He closes his eyes and kisses back, really well, too. We break apart for air. "Whoa! I've never kissed a guy before," he says. "It's different. It's rougher."

"Well, I've never kissed a moustache before; and THAT's what's rougher!" I make a face, and we go back to kissing.

"I don't like it here," he says. "This couch doesn't feel right. I want a bed. Come with me!"

He takes me by the hand and I wonder where he's taking me this time! I see, and smile; and know I've got a fabulous story for the future. In the corner backstage, under the blue running-lights, is Tevye and Golde's bed from the "Dream" sequence in Act One. We jump into the wacky-looking bed, strip off our clothes, and go at it: kissing, touching, rubbing, getting sticky.

Before we finish, I have a vision that as we orgasm a bunch of gay ghosts are gonna appear at the head and foot of the bed, crawl out from underneath, and after a lovely harp glissando they will all break into a chorus of A blessing on your house! Mazel tov! mazel tov! And I pray that the spirit of the fiancee won't appear to curse me for coming all over her future husband.

The next day we had two shows and ASM barely mentioned our one night of love. Sunday we had the afternoon off and the production staff went to the nearby lake and I learned to water ski.

After the Sunday night performance ASM volunteered to lock-up. He asked me to stay behind and help. When everyone else was gone he asked me to come out on the stage with him. He'd turned on all the work lights so the stage was very bright.

"What?" I asked, following him out to the middle of the stage.

"Stay right there," he said positioning me dead center front on the thrust stage. He jumped off the front of the stage, crossed the shallow orchestra pit, and climbed out into the auditorium. He sat down fifth row center, smiled, and said, "Strip!"

Well, as I said at the beginning of this blog, I am a genial fellow, and I obliged. It was one of the hottest, sexiest things I've ever done, too. After I was properly unclothed we switched positions. I went out into the audience and he hopped onstage and stripped.

Let me entertain you, indeed!

Over the next ten days we did just about everything you can imagine. He didn't feel up to being topped - he thought I was too big. Silly boy! But pretty much everything else was tried at least once!

When the show closed he departed for home to prepare for his impending marriage. I never heard from him again and have no idea if he married the girl or not. That was twenty years ago!  OH MY GOD!  How time flies!

It was just about the best sex I've ever had. It was the first time I didn't feel like the newbie, the novice. I was now the expert. It was so uninhibited, so free, so very hot.

And to him, wherever he went, and whatever he chose -

L'chai-im!

David

When I think of Tom

I discovered a couple months ago that my first love, Tom Ladd, died on January 22, 2006. I found an obituary on-line and it said only that he had died of unknown causes. He was 44. I fell madly in-love with Tom in January 1985, when we were both working at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. I was 22; Tom was 23. Tom gave me my first real kiss, too. I hadn't seen or communicated with Tom for about twenty years. But I thought about him often and really wanted him to know how my life turned out. Tom was cute; but his magic power was that he just radiated sexual energy. One simply HAD to look at him, his face, his movements, he flirted with everyone, slept with many, and he just oozed sexiness. Here is our story. 

"Anything Goes!" 

In January 1985, I was working as a stagehand at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. On this particular day we were beginning two weeks of "tech" rehearsals for a large-scale production of Cole Porter's ANYTHING GOES! It starred legendary belter Karen Morrow as Reno Sweeney, Steve Hanan as Moonface Martin, Maureen Brennan as Hope, and featured Broadway veteran Justine Johnston as Mrs. Harcourt. Johnston may be best remembered today as "Old Heidi" in the original production of FOLLIES in which she sang "One More Kiss." I was one of about five permanent stagehands - but this production was bigger than anything the Guthrie had ever done - and they had hired an additional ten people to fill out our ranks. On this first day, we had an orientation meeting up in the balcony of the theatre; the stage was a-buzz with saws and screw-guns where the Carpentry Shop was building a three-story ocean liner! I was paying only slight attention when . . . my eyes scanning over the new stagehands when . . . "Who's that boy!" And thus, Cole Porter struck me gay!

Well, maybe I was always gay, but I certainly didn't know it until then. And I didn't know it as an irrefutable aspect of my being for another few weeks. I was twenty-two, I'd never been on a date, I'd never had a girlfriend, and I was waiting for the "magic" to happen when I'd meet the right girl and feel like a grown-up. But really, "Who's that boy!" This was Tom. He was almost exactly a year older than I was. He was about 5' - 8" and 140 pounds. He had sandy brown hair, blue eyes, a stunning smile, and he simply glowed with sexual energy. I know now that I was in love. But at this point, I was probably falling back on a repressed gay-boy's safety-emotion - "I want to BE him" instead of "I want to have sex with him." Over the coming days I discovered that Tom was gay. OH MY GOD! And that did the trick. I had to become gay, too, so I could have him. I didn't say anything about my new feelings; I didn't know how. But I quickly discovered that not only Tom but another couple stagehands were gay, too. As was the entire gang of chorus boys. And this was a Cole Porter show! My soul was suddenly being informed by Porter's double-entendre lyrics, scads of young men in sailor suits dancing their asses off from eight till eleven then changing into t-shirts and jeans so they could go dance at some gay bar called The Saloon in downtown Minneapolis for several hours more. 

"Blow, Gabriel, Blow!" 

During a break in the Green Room one-day, Tom was just beginning to eat a banana when one of the other gay stagehands said, "Is that for practice?" Tom, without batting an eyelash, said, "I dont NEED to practice." And Tom expertly deep-throated the entire banana and slowly pulled it back out. I was speechless, awestruck, and insanely in love. I became a love-sick puppy and followed the poor boy around. Luckily many of our assignments kept us together during the run of the show. One of my favorite moments was during Act II when Tom and I would have to wait in one of the Guthrie's downstage tunnels during the song, "All Through the Night." It's a beautiful song, and all this blue light would spill down the tunnel shaftway, and Tom and I would sit and wait for our cue - sometimes whispering to each other. I was nearing a point when I felt I could say, "Tom, I'm gay, too. I don't know what to do." 

"Break a Leg!" 

On Valentine's Day 1985, after the show had been open for about two weeks, we were presetting the stage about 6:00 PM and someone said that we needed to find a replacement for Tom. My heart stopped. Why isn't Tom gonna be here? In a few moments I heard the dreadful news. Tom had been hit by a car on the way to work that night. He was fine - save a broken leg. But he would not be back to the show. My ticket to homosexual joy was snuffed out by a speeding motorist on Hennepin Avenue. I was appointed by the cast and crew to assemble Tom's "get well" package. Yay!! I knew his favorite candy, drinks, and also added in the SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE cast album. I visited him in the hospital a couple times. Then he went away to recuperate. Tom did make it back to work the last few weeks of the show as ANYTHING GOES! proved so popular the run was extended. On Memorial Day 1985, I went home with him to talk and have a drink. I desperately wanted to sleep with him. Tom felt it was a bad idea - since I was so clearly in love with him - and for him it would just be sex. But he walked me part way home and gave me my first boy-kiss. I always thought it was a cliché about floating on air. It isn't! I wouldn't brush my teeth that night, either. I didn't want to lose even a molecule of Tom from my mouth. 

"But if, baby, I'm the bottom, you're the top!" 

About a year after we initially met, Tom and I finally had sex for the first and only time. It was okay. It simply meant too much to me - and not enough to him. I was so scared that it be wonderful that I made it mediocre. But he was glorious naked. He had arguably the most beautiful penis I have ever seen! Tom wanted to screw me but we didn't have any condoms and I wouldn't let him. God he was hard to turn down that night! I wanted him SO much. But I was a very good boy. 

"It's Delightful, it's Delicious, it's Delovely!" 

So I've now known I was gay for twenty-one years - slightly less than half my life. You know, I had an incredibly painless coming out. My family was cool with it. Within a year I would meet Eric, my lover, whom I've been with for a little over seventeen years. Eric's family is fine with everything, too. I wish I had tracked down Tom so I could tell him how I turned out. I miss him. I remember signing in on the Guthrie Theatre's call-board and suddenly Tom appeared, put his hands around my waist and said, "Hi, sailor, can I buy you a drink after the show?" Instant hard-on time, instant adrenaline rush, instant puppy love. 

Tom and I both loved musicals, too. He was jealous I'd just seen SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE. We both jokingly talked about how we could have "saved" MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG. Tom introduced me to Carly Simon's TORCH album which had a stunning version of "Not a Day Goes By" on it. He introduced me to the the cast albums of BABY and LITTLE SHOP. I remember Tom's 24th birthday party and how he wore this incredible football jersey he had gotten from a previous boyfriend whose last name was Savage and whose number was 69. The very real football jersey said "Savage 69" on it. It was the hottest "get laid" clothing I ever saw! 

After ANYTHING GOES! Tom got a job as manager of the Uptown Theatre in Minneapolis. The Uptown was an independent movie/art house/revival house sort of theatre. Eventually he moved back to Chicago and we lost touch. Tom and I wouldn't have worked out. I was freshly out, a virgin when we met. Tom had been fuckin' like a bunny since he was sixteen when he'd been picked up by an old man of thirty-five at the supermarket. But I joked to him that someday, in twenty or thirty years, he'd be tired of screwing boys and he'd come to me like Frederick to Desiree in A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC. He laughed and said it sounded great! It was a fun fantasy. 

I always look for personal angles into songs and music I love. In "Hello, Young Lovers," from THE KING AND I, in which Anna is singing of her past, she begins the song with the line, "When I think of Tom . . ." and continues to tell of her memories and past love as she watches and sings "hello" to the newer, younger lovers. It's a melancholy song, full of ennui, full of love, full of gratitude and regret. "When I think of Tom . . ."

Mom had sex with Colonel Klink

All right, my mom never had sex with Colonel Klink -- but she did have a summer-stock affair with actor Werner Klemperer back in the late 1940s. Klemperer went on to play Colonel Klink on HOGAN'S HEROES - the 1960's television show set in a Nazi-run POW camp. My mom did not watch the show - she was offended by the whole idea of making light of Nazism. However, I loved telling neighborhood kids that my mom "dated" Colonel Klink; and also telling them that she "dated" Jack Klugman, Oscar on THE ODD COUPLE. She also "dated" Jerry Orbach - but I didn't know who he was at the time I was bragging to my pre-pubescent pals about my Mom's sexual conquests back in the day.

This little tidbit of arcane family lore is offered up primarily to show that I did not come from an average family. My parents were a good deal older that most of my friend's parents. When I was born my Mom was 38 and my Dad was 44.

My Mom grew up in a Methodist Democrat family in Texas during the depression; and when she turned nineteen she moved to New York to become an actress. This was 1943. She spent the next fourteen years in the theatre (mostly stage managing and sometimes directing) and working in film and photography. She also spent seven years in psychoanalysis. She met my Dad in 1946 or 47 while they were both working on the Henry Wallace Caravans. They were in a relationship for about a year. They broke-up because my Mom wasn't ready to get married, and my Dad was. They didn't see each other for ten years. In 1958 my Mom felt she was ready to get married, she called up my Dad and asked if he was still interested, and they were married. I was born four years later.

My parents were very unusual. They were deeply political, deeply spiritual (though not terribly religious) and both were very well-read. My Dad only graduated from high school; he hated structured education. He was quite brilliant in many ways. Mom went back to college after I was born and went on to get her doctorate. My parents were very involved in the civil rights movement, feminism, they were "radicals" who thought "liberal" was an insult. They both cared about our country more than almost anyone I've ever met.

This just seemed like the normal American family to me. But it seems many kids didn't grow up in this wacky, progressive, politically-infused, sexually frank, over-educated, semi-socialist stew pot. By the time I was thirteen I had met George McGovern, and Ted Kennedy. Mom had been tear-gassed. I'd met German philosopher Herbert Marcuse (his favorite American TV show was MANNIX, in case any scholars need to know!) And we have home-movies of Joan Baez. Our house was always filled with peace-niks, hippies, and lesbians.

Does anyone wonder how I wound up like this?

In 1984, just before I came-out (to both myself and the world) I was working as a Production Assistant at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. One show I was assigned to was Director Peter Sellers' HANG ON TO ME - a mish-mash of Maxim Gorky's SUMMERFOLK with two dozen Gershwin songs added in. It was fabulous! It was five hours long, but it was FABULOUS! Werner Klemperer was in the cast. So now I knew him, too - but not as well as my Mom did! The Guthrie Theater had a bar for the staff and a couple times my Mom came in and had drinks with Werner. It was really interesting seeing the two of them relate, seeing a part of her youth bubble to the top as she and Werner drank and told stories.

That is now over twenty years ago. Werner Klemperer, and both of my parents, are gone. It's over fifty years since my mom and Herr Klemperer made hay in a summer-stock barn in Arden, Delaware. And I'm still using her affair with Werner Klemperer as a social introduction to make friends and break the ice.

Be careful what you tell your children!

David

When you talk about this blog later, and you will - be kind.

Copyright 2006 D. H. Maxine.
All rights reserved.

Stupid Boys

Is that a Pink Lambert or are you just glad to see me?



For those of you who aren't into really old recordings - the Lambert Company was a record producer in the very early 1900s (approximately 1902-1903.) Their records were cylinder-shaped - not the more familiar flat discs. And many of their records were a vivid fuscia color--a color that I have previously described to friends as dog-dick pink. They are VERY phallic, and VERY rare, usually fetching several hundred dollars each. I thought of this blog title a long time ago - and it would make a great T-shirt slogan; but NO ONE would get it! And that's one of my problems these days.

What do you do when almost all of your interests are so off-beat from the world around you that you barely fit in? I collect old books; old records; love opera; and old movies. In previous decades this would have screamed fag! Fag! FAG! I'm not sure what it screams now because most of my gay friends are into rock, sports, and their Playstation or X-Box. Granted, everyone still loves sucking-dick, but really, weren't we supposed to be the smart and artsy types?

Almost everyone I know is apolitical (which means you don't care much about politics.) I thought perhaps I'd better define it - though I hope that wasn't necessary. I grew up in a fairly leftist household and am used to talking extensively about the world we live in and what's wrong with it. Nobody much wants to do that anymore. Sure we all complain about Bush, but where is the passion to save the world? It was there in the '60s and '70s when I was growing up; but it seems to have vanished. Talk about the Big Chill.

I'm generally very forgiving of other's belief-systems. I know a couple Log-Cabin Republicans; I know some Radical Faeries; I know lots of atheists (including myself); as well as agnostics, Jews, Buddhists, and Church of England members. If you are a right-wing fundamentalist chances are you don't hang out with me. But otherwise I feel I'm extremely flexible (I can even suck my own dick - with effort) Sorry, I had to work that in.

But back on point. What's happening to the Gay community? Are we just gonna become HETS that suck each others dicks? Do we just want the right to get married so we can be normal = average = dull?

I do believe that homosexuality is genetic. But if that is so, since we do not (generally) reproduce, there has to be another way we are contributing to society/civilization which keeps the "little-faggot" DNA in the gene pool. I've always believed our contribution was that we were the spiritual, creative, intellectual, artistic, soul of humanity. Of course "breeders" sometimes fill this function - but it used to be filled by the shamans, priests, poets, gurus, actors, artists, authors, and architects that liked to suck dick. What's gonna happen when the queer contribution to civilization amounts to gym equipment, popularizing PA piercings, and playing video-games?

What a world, what a world! Who would have thought some hot little boys like you could destroy our beautiful wickedness!

David
(Listening to Lucrezia Borgia)

When you talk about this blog later, and you will - be kind.

Copyright 2006 D. H. Maxine.
All rights reserved.