4 April 2021
OK, you may not wish to read this one. It gets very personal. It’s time to explore my gay life. Let’s start with sex.
Probably like most people in Mississippi, I learned about the birds and bees, not from my parents, but from scrawls on the walls of men’s bathrooms and overheard conversations in the hallways at school. Most of it was pretty stupid. I remember one kid who was our high school quarterback who distinguished himself by telling everyone you didn’t have to be smart to be quarterback – and he proceeded to prove it with a terrible won-loss record. A group of boys were sitting outside on the football field and he stated he needed some woman to piss in. I seriously think that’s what he thought sex was – a male urinating into the vagina of a female.
You would think most of these boys would know more, particularly since they were often from farms. However, not everyone seemed to get the message via animal action on the farm. One cousin, when he married, got ready for the wedding night. He later realized his new wife had never been instructed as to what to expect. She was clueless.
Then there was the case where members of the basketball team got caught having sex with with the principals cow. Apparently the cow had a bowel movement during one of the attempted copulations.
The first time I saw a condom (we called them rubbers) was in junior high when one of the older boys showed one around in his wallet. I suspect the thing had been in their for years because it looked pretty beat up.
My sexual education was pretty much from bathroom walls. At least it was illustrated. Mother and Dad never mentioned the subject so one day, just to be mean, I asked Mom to explain about birds and bees. She was taken aback. She thought I knew nothing. I painfully made her go through the entire explanation. At least I now knew the illustrations were pretty accurate.
My first sexual experiences were pretty much like any teenage boy – nocturnal emissions. That hadn’t been part of Mom’s explanation and guys didn’t talk about them so it was new territory for me. Certainly pleasurable territory but mysterious all the same. Then came the realization you didn’t have to wait for nocturnal emissions – you could masturbate. That bolt out of the blue really took off and is still fun and entertaining today. I always loved a comment in an old Playboy magazine. They did a sex survey of their readership and reported 98% of all males had masturbated at least once in their life – and the other 2% lied about it.
Other than dates with my right hand, I was totally inexperienced sexually all through high school and undergraduate college. I had inklings that I was attracted to boys in junior high and high school but had not even heard of the word homosexual or gay in junior high school. None of the sex-ed films we saw ever mentioned the terms either. However, it seemed a lot of the students at high school certainly knew I was gay before I even knew it was a word.
I never really got into sports. I was, however, a killer at jacks. I could pretty much beat any girl in school except for Carol Cooper. I suppose that was a pretty good indication I was different. It was brought home in a very cruel way one day when at recess the boys were to choose teams for some game. I don’t remember the game but I wasn’t chosen. Not only was I not chosen but I was told I wasn’t wanted. I burst into tears and ran to Mrs. Hearn. I’ll always love her for wrapping me in her arms and soothing me and getting me to quit crying. She charged over to the boys and asked why no one wanted me on their team. After kicking in the dirt a while, one of the teams said I could play on their side.
That episode pretty much sums up my junior high and high school years. I was socially shy, insecure in my abilities, unpopular, and dealing with alcoholic parents at home. Shyness and insecurity have followed me throughout my life. Neither my Dad or Mom were affectionate. I certainly, to this day, have issues with intimacy, I assume because of all of the above.
By the time I was a senior at Ole Miss, I certainly understood the term homosexual and gay and knew that I certainly was. However, I never acted on my sexuality in college nor in my four years in the Coast Guard other than stealing glances at gay magazines in bookstores. I always restricted myself to masturbation and anal play in private. I also had never kissed anyone in a sexual way. That ended in graduate school at Ole Miss, however, not like most might imagine.
I was in the basement bathroom at the student union at Ole Miss sometime in 1974 or 1975 when in walks my old French teacher from undergraduate years. I always had my suspicions about him and we certainly made eye contact. We went upstairs for coffee and got to talking. He learned about my field work at Tishomingo and he said he would like to see the park. I invited him on my next field trip. One thing led to another and I had my first experience with oral sex. Later, when he found that was my first, he shook his head and told me he wished he had handled it a little differently but I certainly had no complaints.
We never really hooked up again in graduate school but he did introduce me to a friend of his. I hooked up with his friend twice and experienced anal intercourse. What was so funny at the time was I had a Siamese cat named Charlie. He was afraid of cats and I had to lock poor Charlie out of the bedroom.
Much, much later, while teaching at IJC, I received an opportunity for a Mellon summer fellowship in Nashville dealing with new advances in biology. I had a dorm room at Vanderbilt and thoroughly enjoyed it. However, my libido was in overdrive and I actually drove around Nashville and picked up a hustler (next to the Grand Ole Opry house) and took him back to the dorm for oral sex. I was so weirded out I left the program early and made sure I had my doctor in Fulton give me a penicillin shot. Of course, I had to explain why but he didn’t bat an eye and simply loaded up the syringe.
I also tied up once more with my old French teacher on a trip back to Oxford. We went for Chinese and had oral sex back at my motel. I don’t remember why I was in Oxford but I called him out of the blue. When I told him who was calling (back before caller ID) he repeated my name, excited. He had a wife and two kids at the time. The kids got excited because they though I was another Fred. The other Fred turned out to be his old lover from UNC Chapel Hill. It was a case of mistaken Freds.
Just before I left IJC, I had started traveling to Birmingham to visit my first gay bars. There were two that I would go to but didn’t do anything sexually at any of them. Then when spring break came, I decided to get into my truck and drive – somewhere, anywhere. I ended up in Key West and stayed at a gay guest house and went to the famous Copa gay night club. The massive dance floor was packed with absolutely beautiful men dancing their asses off. I got “gay overload” and had to leave. I did experience my very first visit to the baths. Key West, at the time, had several gay bath houses where the order of the day was anything but cleanliness. This was a very nice bath house (since out of business) but I was too paralyzed with fear to do anything other than take a shower.
After I moved to Jackson for graduate school at the medical center, I lived at Jacks and Jills, the oldest gay bar in the state. The only sexual experience I had was with a guy by the name of Butch at Archie’s cabin (we met at Jacks). Archie was nice enough not to disturb us. It was Butch who took me to my first opera. He wasn’t one to settle into any kind of relationship so it pretty much was a one and done thing.
I didn’t do anything sexually while in San Antonio other than going to gay bars. It was the same with my brief time in Atlanta with the exception of going to another bath house in Atlanta and actually participating for a change.
Once I got to Fort Lauderdale (actually Hollywood at Lincoln Chateau) my mentor for finding AIDS patients at Hollywood General asked me on a date. Later I invited him over for dinner one night and he showed up with flowers. You can’t not have sex when someone brings you flowers! Actually, as I wrote in a previous blog, it was just frottage.
Jump ahead several years and I would often spend a week or two in Key West during the summer (I taught first summer term and it was usually late July or early August in Key West). I always stayed at gay guest houses and hot tubs were usually very interesting. I remember one guy who was down for the weekend to meet his boy friend but wanted to have sex with me. We basically did mutual masturbation at the hot tub but then he wanted to have anal sex with me. All it took was one look at his penis to realize that wasn’t going to happen. It was huge.
At my favorite gay guest house in Key West, I had a favorite room. It was on second floor and at the top of the stairs. My window overlooked the condo next door. One day I was stunned to see a guy at the window of the condo looking at me while masturbating. It seemed that was his thing. Friends of mine would stay in the same room on my recommendation and they reported the same experience. It finally got so bad that the guest house had to police on him because he kept propositioning the guests.
My favorite story about the guest house (Curry House, not the historic one) was a professor from UF who had brought a favorite student down with him. The student was drop dead gorgeous. The manager of the guest house couldn’t put a complete sentence together when the guy walked into a room. He really was the most beautiful man I think any of us had ever seen. We also had the added benefit to get to see him swim naked in the pool.
Anyway, friendly me, I always spoke to him. One morning I came down for breakfast and find him all scratched to hell and back and bruises everywhere. I asked “Hard night?” He proceeded to tell me that he and the professor were drunk and they were on the balcony on the second floor (that faced Fleming Street) and the professor was performing oral sex on him. He got so excited he fell over the rail of the balcony onto the ground below. Fortunately/unfortunately for him, he landed in shrubs planted around the guest house. The alternative was a brick walkway.
To be honest, other than the one hot tub incident at Curry House, I’ve led a pretty chaste existence when I visit Key West. By the way, the Curry House is no longer a gay guest house.
In the 90’s I made it back to San Francisco for a National Education Association Convention. I was a delegate for UFF. As it so happened, the convention meeting was during the week of gay pride in San Francisco. I got to see my very first gay pride parade. It was great. Leading off the parade were “Dykes on Bykes.” They were mostly topless and there were quite a few that rode proudly showing their mastectomy scars.
The parade started at one end of Market Street near the Castro and marched down the entire length. Thousands lined the streets and the parade itself was probably a mile long. The highlight of the parade was a giant mannequin of J. Edgar Hoover in a polka dot dress. Rumor had it that he was once at a gay party and was dressed in drag in a polka dot dress.
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The only place I would stay would be at the Parker Guest House, an old Victorian reconfigured as a bed and breakfast. It’s primarily a gay guest house but is very welcoming to straight couples.
Courtyard at Parker Guest House
OK, enough about the Parker House, back to sex. I would also go to a bath house not far from the Parker. It was called Eros and it was huge and took up two floors. You paid a fee to enter, grabbed a towel and got an eyeful. I was too chicken to do anything but masturbate to porn movies. However, the place was very clean and they provided condoms and lube everywhere.
On one trip out to San Francisco, a good friend, Tom, joined me and we toured the wine country and stayed at a nude resort near the Russian River. A bunch of us ended up in the hot tub on the first night. I ended up going to the cabin of a guy (Tom chastely went back to ours
shared cabin alone). The guy, again, was waiting on his boy friend to arrive and he wanted to release some sexual tension before the boy friend arrived the next day. The reason I bring this up was this guy was heavy into nipple play. He really liked his nipples tortured. I couldn’t twist, pinch or bite hard enough for him. It seems like every guy I’ve ever been with in California is heavy into that. With me, I can take it or leave it but I’ve decided it must be a western thing.
Back home, I started volunteering for Stonewall Library and Archives (now Stonewall National Museum and Archives). It was there I met Robert Nathans. To this day I think our benefactor, John Graves, hired Rob to help me out with the library. Somehow I ended up as President and we moved the entire library and archives twice during my presidency. I was at my wits end.
John introduced Rob to me when the library was at the old GLCC building on Oakland Park Blvd. Rob and I sat down and I asked him how he would like to help. He said marketing was his strength but he would help in any way possible. We went to lunch and he told me his life story. He had AIDS and a lover had just passed away and he needed something to occupy his life other than grief. He was a godsend.
When things really got bad – we had just moved from the fourth floor of the building to the third floor (several thousand books) and were scheduled to move to a new building entirely – Rob suggested a vacation in Key West. We stayed at the Equator Resort – another favorite place of mine – and unwound.
Cognizant of his diagnosis, I made the first move on Robert at the guest house. He said stop. I did. I made the second move and he said stop. I did. I didn’t make a third move. I think he was surprised. It really wouldn’t have worked out anyway since we were both bottoms in our preference for sexual position.
Rob and developed a deep friendship, going on trips, eating dinner together, etc. I described us as an old married couple in that we did everything together except the sex.
After we moved the library into the new building, a patron asked me out. I agreed and we went to a pool party. He said he had a surprise for me. The surprise was he was the entertainment at the party – in drag. That didn’t bother me. What was a little bothersome was he didn’t feel comfortable enough to tell me. In any case, we saw each other a couple of other times but only one oral sexual encounter resulted.
My old undergraduate French teacher got in touch with me. He called out of the blue with a question about a wild orchid found near Oxford a friend asked about. He said he knew who would know the answer – me. One thing led to another. He ran a garden store in Oxford after retiring and had to go on buying sprees for plants to South Florida. I invited him to stay and he came back a couple of times.
Once I took him to Key West (again at Curry House) and for the first time in my life I topped someone. The second time he came down from Oxford I took him to a gay club in Fort Lauderdale and he was willing for sex with me but it just didn’t work out.
Michel and Nancy have tried to introduce me to people. Michel did introduce me to John, now a good friend but we lost touch early on and then re-established contact. He’s the second person to bring me flowers. No, there was no sexual interaction.
So, now you know something about my sex life. People ask me why I haven’t found someone to live with or have a relationship. The closest I’ve come is with Rob but it wasn’t a sexual relationship. I still have deep seated intimacy issues, I’m still shy, and I’m still insecure. I avoid conflict because I had enough of that with the screaming of my parents and grandparents. To be honest, I’ve never had any good role models for relationships in my immediate family.
For a long time, AIDS was a constant in the back of my mind. To be honest, I would probably be dead from AIDS very early on if I didn’t have my social problems. I admit to having a high libido even at the age of 72. My right hand is still my best friend in life. I am alone but not necessarily lonely with all my friends around me.
Would I prefer to have a relationship, or in this day and age, a marriage? Yes, I would. I also realize that at this late stage it’ll never happen. Do I have regrets? Yes. Would I do things differently? Probably not because it just isn’t in my capabilities.
One thing that has been interesting to me about sex. I once considered going into business with a bartender at Jacks (we thought about opening a pizza place). We were always gossiping about other people at the bar and we got around to talking about sex. His idea was that he didn’t like vanilla sex. He started out with vanilla sex but as he grew and aged, he liked new challenges and new things and was willing to try out more and more.
I’ve noticed the same trend in myself. I think after a while you get bored and want something new. It’s like looking a porn. At first, it’s exciting but then it all gets so formulaic that it no longer interests you. Don’t get me wrong, I still watch and like porn but it has to be a certain type. We all have our own peculiar fetishes and kinks. Things we like and things we don’t.
I guess if I have a type, it is the edgy look on a guy, like he’s street tough. Why, I have no idea. I also seem to have a smoke fetish. I don’t smoke, I don’t like smokers, but for some reason I like photos of men who smoke. It could go back to the days when I was a kid and pictures of the Marlboro man. I do like anal stimulation, particularly when it involves the prostate. Why, again, I don’t know. Mother was a big believer in enemas when I was a kid. If I had a complain, out came the enema bag. Maybe that’s where that comes from.
So, if you were keeping score, I’ve performed oral sex on a person five times, I received oral sex from a person six times, I been the bottom for anal sex twice and I have topped once. By this, I guess you could consider me versatile although there are so few data points you can’t draw any statistical conclusions.
What it does tell me is that I grew up with a skewed view of sex – from my upbringing and from the repressed sexual attitudes of the town in which I grew up. The topic was addressed once in high school with a film. My parents never talked about it until I forced my Mom. I was led to believe the only kind of sex that was legitimate was as a married heterosexual couple. I stupidly believed what religion taught. I was certainly surprised when I went to Ole Miss and found out people thought of sex like eating popcorn. A significant number of married couples I have known either cheated or got cheated on by their spouse. I acknowledge I have hang ups about sex but at least I acknowledge them and am not hypocritical about them and can be open and honest about them.
Stay tuned!
