PISSING IN THE OCEAN

Introduction=AUTOBIO
CH01 = A Miracle!
CH02 = Mama, What Does ‘Fuck’ Mean?
CH03 = Me & JC
CH04 = My First Catholic
CH05 = The New Me
CH06 = My First Lesbian
CH07 = SF, Mobile & NYC
CH08 = In the Shadow of the Lady’s Torch
CH09 = Kurt
CH10 = Maggie & The Little Theatre
CH11 = Hal
CH12 = Winn
CH13 = Greenleaf
CH14 = Herb
CH15 = Stuff Happens
CH16 = Eureka!
CH17 = Shewbread/LSD
CH18 = All Is Well

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Many years ago, back somewhere in the 1970's, Rolling Stone Magazine published a cover which made me laugh out loud. It was a black and white photograph, looking west into the Pacific Ocean, with a famous young, male television-star standing buck-naked on the beach, his handsome backside to the camera, obviously taking a leak into the great mother of us all. There were dark clouds and shafts of light over the ocean; it looked very profound, very meaningful, and very apropos of those times. It was gutsy for its time. A naked man on the cover of a national magazine! This was long before video-tapes or DVDs became a part of practically every household; today, a lot of those are porno disks and tapes — which would have been illegal back then — just as I was; I was still legally a criminal, back in those days, before 1976, when Jerry Brown (bless you, Governer Moonbeam!) and California decided that “the love that dare not speak its name” could now be shouted from the rooftops!

In the photograph, a wave had just broken on the beach in front of the naked man, and had started its retreat, with froth all along the edge of the water, and he was pissing into it, froth into froth! It spoke to me. It was, I decided, a perfect metaphor for my life! At the time, I felt as though I had spent my entire life, but especially the last four or five, years, pissing in the ocean! I had struggled with the Mormon Church and with Christianity itself - and "lost," according to them. I had graduated from the University of Utah with a major in Theatre Arts and had lived in Hollywood for 3 years, even worked at CBS TV script dept. for a year, trying with frustrating unsuccess to get inside all the closed doors. I had written 3 screenplays, had one almost produced, then discarded. I had written and published 7 Gay novels in just 4 years, from 1968 through 1973, fighting with my publishers and editors every step of the way, getting pittance for all my work, talent, readability, one problem after another with each publication. $900 was the most I’d ever received for any book, with no royalties for future printings of the first six.

The published books were embarrassing and infuriating with all their typos, spelling mistakes and huge emissions of text. Four of my titles had been changed to what the publishers thought would titillate “Faggots.” The editor had made notes on the manuscript pages about “Good Fag Hots!” That was Greenleaf Classics, in San Diego.

Next I'd met the infamous "Frenchy" owner and operator of Le Salon, San Francisco's major Gay porn shop, who asked me to write the first book in his new venture "Frenchy's Gay Line." I wrote I WANT IT ALL and ALL OR NOTHING for him, in addition to illustrating the covers of his first 8 books, mine included - working with a strait (look it up) editor named George. I complained when the first book was published, asking why there were so many misspellings and typos. George told me: "Oh, Queers love that, didn't you know?" So I stopped writing for FGL.

All along, for whatever publisher, my books had been getting consistantly excellent reviews in the Gay press:

"Dirk Vanden is not only a talented writer, but his vivid imagination and intersting 'sexuations' made LEATHER QUEENS and LEATHER, and his other titles most readable." I WANT IT ALL "is his best work and tells almost all there is to know about San Francisco's bike set." Charles McAllister, Book Reviews, California Scene. Jan. '70

"If you thought that Vanden's I WANT IT ALL said it all, you are mistaken. Read ALL OR NOTHING and see if you agree... I recommend this novel highly but at the same time realize that it is not for the sexual novice nor for the old-fashioned sexualist. Of its genre, it has to be the best book ever written." Victor DeStefano, Book Reviews, California Scene. Feb. '70

"THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD." Review headline for I WANT ITALL. "The best homosexual fuckbook I've ever read." Michael Perkins, SCREW Magazine. Oct. '70 "ALL OR NOTHING. " In Dirk Vanden, "you have a novelist who has decided to write about Gay life realistically and even propagandistically, the latter because the straight reader finds himself believing - as the author wishes him to - that the Gay world is somehow tenderer and more feeling than the straight world. Not a bad accplishment. An excellent Gay porn novel which raises the standards for the genre." Michael Perkins,SCREW magazine, April, '71

ALL IS WELL "is the final step in the metamorphosis of the Gay novel. It takes homosexual literature out of the grade 'B' or 'trash' category and elevates it to a new albeit long-awaited height... Should be required reading on any Gay booklist. "K.C." DAVID Magazine, Feb. '72

ALL IS WELL "is Vanden's best work to date, which makes it a very good book indeed." Richard Amory's review in VECTOR, Feb., '72:

"This has got to be the best Gay book on the scene today... Buy, read, pass on ALL IS WELL by Dirk Vanden. You can't help but feel good after reading this one." Marc Williams, Mattachine Times, Dec. '71

"'ALL IS WELL' is Dirk Vanden at his best." Headline of Harold Fairbanks' review in THE ADVOCATE. Dec. '71

Richard Amory, author of SONG OF THE LOON, etc., contacted me in response to an article of mine, published in VECTOR - the magazine outreach of SIR, THE SOCIETY FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS, in San Francisco - dealing with the many problems of Gay writers working with and for strait editors and publishers, such as Greenleaf Classics and Frenchy's Gay Line. He also had written articles and reviews for VECTOR and we got together over coffee to discuss putting together an All Gay publishing company. We spent several weeks that summer putting together such a company, tentatively called "The Rennaisance Group."

In fact, Herb and I took Richard Amory to see the premiere of SONG OF THE LOON, the "underground" movie based very loosely on his book, which was filmed without his knowledge, permission or imput. The movie was awful, an excuse to show near-naked bad actors, with most of his dialog and poetry excised. They even killed the hero's lover in the end, which definitely did not happen in the book. As the ending credits rolled, Richard stood up from his seat and yelled:"That was shit!" as he walked out of the theater. Hurrying after him, we explained to the usher or manager that that was the author of the book, yelling.

It had been a terrible translation onto the screen and Richard was "jangling" for months. (That movie is now a high-camp-cult-favorite. Richard would have hated that.)

Even though we held a symposium at SIR, attended by then-famous Gay authors like Phil Andros, Larry Townsend, Peter Tuesday Hughes, Douglas Dean and several others, in spite of that list of talent to offer, we couldn't find anyone interested in funding such a venture. The idea died with a dull thud. Olympia took the pain out of the venture by contacting all the writers in that article, asking us to write for them. Then, after one or two books from each of us, Olympia went bankrupt.

I had been planning a long and lucrative career as a "Foremost Gay Author," telling "my side" of the Gay coin, but when Olympia went belly-up, I had no place to go. I'd burned all my bridges behind me and no new Gay publisher was clammoring for my next novel. I had worked so hard to get seemingly nowhere! My books might have received high praise from the critics, but I was broke.

All along, it had seemed like I was accomplishing something at the time, and it even felt good, at the moment, doing it, but the net effect was no more long-lasting or world-changing or even life-changing, than a good piss would make in an ocean made up of mostly fish-piss anyhow!

I was raised as a Mormon in a tiny Mormon town in Utah, called "Vernal” and had been planning to go on a Mission to save heathen souls when I got out of High School – until a Mormon Bishop told me that men like me went to Hell and burned in the eternal fires forever. I had told him that I had met “this guy...who, you know, likes...other men.” His first horrified words were: “Run from that man as you would run from a snake! He is an abomination in the sight of God! ”

I knew I was not a terrible person, In fact, I had been one of those too-good-to-be-true Mormons like you see in the pictures, all white shirts and teeth, but my religion considered me a sinner! An Abomination! I finally figured out that I must be in the wrong religion and went looking for the right one, but never found it. I decided there is no right religion. None of them are any truer than the others. They all contain bits and pieces of truths "like pearls scattered around in a pigpen after a feast of spoiled oysters."

The changeover process was not quick or easy; my indoctrination in Mormonism had been very thorough, my faith seemingly unshakable, but there was no doubt in my mind that I couldn't stop thinking about doing things to or with some of the other boys – especially Max, the super-hot-high-school-good-Mormon-all-sports-jock and nice-guy! I knew I could never go on a Mission; I’d end up seducing my partner and then we’d both get kicked out of the church and go to Hell together.

But once away from my rural, provincial home town, attending the University of Utah in “cosmopolitan” Salt Lake City, 1951, Gay Bars and Baths became my churches. Semen became my sacrament.

True enough, I went through "hell" for awhile, but now, at age 74, I am happily content with myself, having made my mark on the cave wall: "Dirk Vanden was here!" and having solved the mystery: What am I and Why? I have known True Love in several forms and am fairly sure that my books or art have made a positive difference in someone's life.

Note: The following incidents of my life have been "dramatized." I can't remember, 50 or 60 years later exactly who said exactly what and to whom, but I have stayed as true as I could to the actual exchanges. They are "essentially true." Some names have been changed to protect the guilty as well as the innocent.

The longer I live and the more I consider it, the more certain I am that I'm a “bastard.” I don't mean the figurative kind, although I'm sure I've been called that by any number of people, but rather the literal "I-am-not-my-father's-son" genuinely misbegotten type bastard. I'm also convinced that this shameful secret explains why my "father" treated me with frigid disdain all his life and why my mother punished herself with excrutiating headaches all of hers. I also believe that it has had a great deal to do with my particular version of homosexuality.

Although I wasn’t to solve that unmentionable mystery until much later in life, my maternal Grandmother gave me the first clue. Grandma Vernon was surely the most religious person I’ve ever known. She was as close as anyone can come to being a latter-day saint. She was good and kind and loving and giving, and she spoke with a conviction that, as far as I was concerned, could only come from being absolutely right. She adored me and I returned the adulation.

I can vividly remember sitting at the big round table in Grandmother’s kitchen, which smelled like vanilla, as I drank milk or lemonade and ate cookies or freshly-baked bread with homemade butter and jam, listening raptly as she bustled around the large room, cooking something (in my memory she is always cooking something), telling one of her many stories. She knew all sorts of wonderful stories — from the Bible, from her life as a young Mormon girl, whose parents had crossed the plains in covered wagons — but my favorite of all was about me!“We had all but given up hope,” she would say, “hope that your mother would ever have children. She and your father had been married for ten long years before you came along.” She would pause for a moment, gazing at something in her memory. (Grandmother had brought forth eleven children of her own. She knew well enough that women without children were considered practically useless by the Mormon Church, and therefore, also by Mormon friends and Mormon relatives as well.) She would look at me and smile — the kind of radiant smile that only holy saints and Jesus could smile; sometimes she would squeeze my arm or pat my hand. “But then,” she would say, “a miracle occurred! God answered our prayers. You were born.”

She would hug me tightly and whisper how much she loved me, and I would press as close to her as I could get, and tell her how very much I loved her, too. Then she would say “Praise the Lord!” And I truly believed I was talking to The Lord when I said “Amen!”

I grew up mostly in my mother’s home town of Vernal, Utah, way up in the northeast corner of the state, high in the Rocky Mountains, on coast-to-coast Highway 40, about 20 miles west of the Colorado border, and about 30 miles east of my "father's" home-town, where we spent a few early years; Roosevelt was the center of the Ute Indian Reservation.

It turns out that the Ute tribe of Native Americans had much more to do with me than I had been led to believe, until Van lost his cool one day when we were arguing and snapped: "You never knew your great-grandmother was a 'Squaw,' did you?" He spit the word out like it tasted dirty. I said "Really? Which tribe?" he said "Oh, shit" and walked out of the room.

When the Mormons took the state away from the people who lived here, they converted many of those people, mainly women, and the Mormon men married them. There was a surplus of unmarried men in those days. My great-grandfather must have been such a man. In her older years, my grandmother was obviously Ute. Which makes me 1/8 NA.

Vernal was a small all-white, 99% Mormon town, nestled in the middle of a beautiful, broad, fertile green valley, near the source of the Green River, crisscrossed with small farms and ranches, all surrounding a “downtown” of about four blocks, in the center of a town of about 4 square miles, with a population of just over fifteen hundred.

At various times during my childhood, I probably heard many clues about things that had happened before my birth, but I didn’t assign them any particular secret meaning until after Mother had died at age 96, in a "Convalescent Hospital." I couldn't even think such things until they were both dead.

Going through her remaining belongings, I found references to her marriage ("What fun we did have!") and cryptic notes about the first 10 years:

My given name was Richard Dale Fullmer; I was called Dale (which I hated because I thought it was a "girl's name") at school and by all my relatives. When I started High School, the teachers called me by my first name, so I gladly went by Richard, or Dick. In college, I shared a class and coffee with a hunky student from Holland named Dirk Van der Elst. I liked his name better than mine - Dirk for Dick - "short knife" rather than "penis" - so I adopted it as my nom-de-plume: "Dirk Vanden," my nom-de-paintbrush:"Dirk," and later, when I lived in San Francisco with Herb Finger, my "chosen name, rather than my given name:" "Dirk Fullmer." That's still me.

I now believe that the man listed on my birth certificate as "father" was actually my uncle, Van Fullmer Jr., who did not want or couldn't make babies. He had grown up as the eldest in a family of 9, 8 of which he had helped raise from babies, one year after another, until he was sick and tired of babies, and had probably decided he did not want any "damn kids" of his own. He definitely didn't like children. He referred to me as "the damn kid" to his co-workers.

That is not to say he was a "bad" man, in any other way; he was a very good man, helpful and kind - to everyone but me. Everyone loved Vannie! Everyone but me. He paid my expenses until I had graduated college, but it wasn't because he loved me. He was not the kind of father the other kids had, or that I'd read about in books, or heard on the radio, in the stories we listened to every evening (instead of talking) and I didn't have a clue about why.

Automobiles were just becoming popular in the 1920's and Van had a talent for keeping them running. He knew that if he went to an Automotive Certification school, he could take his “Certified Auto Mechanic” certificate and get a job anywhere in the country - anywhere besides Utah. They both hated Utah. He and Afton, my mother, had saved up for several years so he could go to such a school in Kansas City, Missouri. Just before they left, Van's younger brother, “Bud” (Von) decided that he wanted to go get certified, too.

A week before the school started, the three of them drove to Kansas City in a Model-A Ford, and rented a tourist-cabin, close to the school, 2 rooms, with a single bedroom, and a foldup bed for Bud. In the spring of 1932, Van and Von started Automotive School and Afton got a job as a waitress. He was 31, she was 28, and Bud was 30.

They had been there only a few months when Mother announced she was pregnant. Having already spent most of their savings on Bud's tuition and daily needs, and without mother’s salary and tips to finance their stay, and with a baby on the way, they had to quit school and move back to the hated farm on an alkali plateau in eastern Utah called Myton Bench. I was born in the little 1-room cabin on my Grandfather’s farm, where Van had been born 32 years earlier!

It does not take a mathematical genius to add 2 and 1. For 10 years, for whatever reasons, Mother had been unable to get pregnant. She knew, as did all of her relatives, that she could only prove her worth as a woman by producing children. Barren Mormon women are considered worthless. Then, wonder of wonders, it happened: the answer to prayers! Me! Within weeks of my “uncle’s” moving in with them, a miracle occurred.

My guess is, Van was probably sterile from a childhood disease, he'd had several; maybe he knew it, maybe not. I doubt that he had deliberately avoided impregnating her for 10 years. Mormon men are supposed to be prolific breeders, and are valued for adding to the number of potential tithe-payers they produce. But for whatever reason he hadn't become a father yet, surely he had reason for being suspicious when I was announced.

There was no way, short of face-to-face confrontation, that he could ever prove the baby wasn't his, and I'm sure that never happened. Von was only a year younger than Van; they looked enough alike to be twins. Their DNA’s would have been virtually identical, so I would have come out practically the same, one father or the other.

After their failed attempt at Certification, they returned to hated Utah, and Bud went on to sire 8 or 9 kids he could claim as his own. Half of them were blue-eyed tow-heads, like me. The other half were dark like their Native American (Ute) mother.

Now I understand why he hated me! No wonder Mother punished herself with debilitating migraine headaches the rest of her life. I was her sin - her bastard. They had been married in the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City, so divorce was not an option. They were chained together "For time and all eternity" by their temple vows. I’m certain that they never talked about it with each other or anyone else. No one ever talked about sex in those days. It was a terrible secret between the 3 of them, all their lives. Did she or didn't she? Was I or wasn't I?

Please understand that I am not accusing my mother of being a tramp. I'm quite certain she never was. Except for that one deviation, she was a "good Mormon woman" all of her life, even though she only went to church now and then. She respected her temple-marriage vows and wore magic-underwear, as did Van. But something happened in that cabin in Kansas City, Missouri, and she gave in to her physical needs during estrus, and "cheated," or "sinned," just once! But that's all it took! But if she hadn't, I wouldn't be here, so I can't say it was a "bad" thing she did. Whatever, that one "sin" in her life haunted and tortured her all the rest of it. It tainted their love and their lives, and mine. Every single day of my life, I was a reminder to her of that one "sin," she had committed. Every time my supposed father looked at me, he wondered if she had cheated or not, or felt a gnawing hatred for me, suspecting the truth but unable to prove it.

Having loved someone and lived with him for 18 years, I know that what my "parents" had was not love; it was love in the beginning, but it had become a religious contract they were terrified to break.

I'm convinced that Mother lived to be 96, partly because of her fear that Van would be "over there," just waiting to make Heaven Hell for her, just as he had her life on Earth.

One final thing he did let me know he was convinced that I was no son of his: When he died of a heart-attack at age 73, he left a will with a lawyer, who summoned Mother and me to his chambers to read that Van Fullmer, Jr. had left his entire estate, less one dollar, to his wife, my mother. To me he left that $1 - but only if I didn't contest the will. The lawyer gave me a dollar bill - my "father's" legacy.

Even now that I've reasoned it all out - especially now that I realize what Hell they both went through because of me - I wish I could somehow go back in time, when he was still alive, and yell at him, at both of them: "IT WASN'T MY FAULT!"

I often asked Mother: “Why does Daddy hate me?” To which she would always reply: “Daddy doesn't’ hate you, dear. That’s just his way.”

It was late in the summer of the year I turned 9, 1942. I had been out in the hills west of our home, in Roosevelt, in the high desert country of north-eastern Utah: red sandstone hills, low, twisted cedars and pinion pines — swimming in the canal, with my cousins, Ronald and Ginger, two and one years older than I.

They were from a very large family, 6 other children besides them, and they knew a lot about "The Facts Of Life!" I, on the other hand, was an only child and knew nothing at all about sex. This now seems very strange, considering that I grew up on a series of farms, where we had horses and cows, dogs, cats, pigs and chickens, but I obviously ignored their sexual behaviors, or repressed them. Most likely, Mother distracted me and said “They’re just playing. Never mind.”

We had been riding our bicycles along the canal road, and had stopped by the old swimming hole, in the shade of a grove of cottonwood trees. As we were getting dressed, Ronnie told us a joke he had heard at school: It had to do with a boy asking a girl if he could "fuck" her. At first, she refused, so he offered her a piece of fruit and so she let him. This went on through four different fruits, and, finally, the punch line was: "Apples, peaches, pears and plums, I won't get off 'til the baby comes!"

"You are the stupidest person in the whole world! You don't know what 'fuck' means, do you?"

I was quite certain that they didn't know what they were talking about! As far as I knew, there was no connection between sex and babies. I believed that God made babies, and delivered them in the same way Santa Claus made and delivered Christmas presents: Miracles, plain and simple.

I protested. They insisted, then proceeded to demonstrate how it was done. Ronnie was 11 and, to my amazement, could make his little dink get hard and bigger, and with Ginger leaning back against a tree, her dress held up to where she could peer over it to watch, Ronnie put his stiff little prick up into her pussy. They moaned and gyrated briefly, acting as if they were having a wonderful time, and then disengaged and suggested that I try it. My poor little dink simply wouldn't get hard at all: it had shrunk up so tightly into my body that I couldn't possibly get it up inside hers.

It was the first time I had seen a girl's "privates," and I was shocked and frightened. It looked like she was missing something! I had seen other boys naked, but had never seen an erect pee-pee! It had never occurred to me that such a thing could happen. I was fascinated and terrified at the same time.

I was also amazed at the casual way Ron and Ginger were acting, as if this was something they did all the time! I couldn't help feeling that, in spite of my failure, I had taken part in something terribly wrong, if not downright sinful!

They were too disgusted to go on playing with me, so they finished dressing, got on their bikes and went home. I wandered along the canal road for several hours, feeling utterly miserable and useless.

It was true, what they said, I told myself: I was stupid! Things like that happened to me all the time, especially at school. All the other children seemed to know enormously more than I did about life, things they had learned from their older brothers and sisters. I grew up very much alone, even though I went to school with more than a hundred other children. I had no one to tell me the secrets they had discovered in the process of living, no one to warn me that adults lied — even parents.

There was, of course, the distinct possibility that my cousins had tricked me. It certainly wouldn't have been the first time. I was a completely gullible child and very often the other kids, and sometimes my older relatives — especially my uncles and their kids on both sides of the family — made a fool of me, using my innocence as their weapon against me.

I felt like such an idiot because I didn't know things I should know — if for no other reason than to understand when I was being teased! My father teased me for being "stupid." Maybe he was right.

Mother was out on the front porch of our house when I returned, mending one of her dresses (we were very poor, and she made or repaired most of our clothing). "Where on earth have you been?" she asked, not really angry. "I was starting to get worried."

"Mama.." I was frightened, but I needed to ask somebody, someone I could trust to tell me the truth. "What does 'fuck' mean?"

She caught her breath and stared at me, speechless for a long, terrible moment, her eyes wide with shock and outrage. Then, very slowly and carefully she put down the needle and crossed her hands in her lap. "If you ever use that word again," she said in a voice like winter, "God will strike you dead!"

After a long, intense silence, she asked in almost a whisper: "Who taught you that word?"

I hated tattling on my cousins, but I had never in my life lied to my mother, so I said "Ronnie and Ginger."

The very idea seemed to strike her dumb for another awful silence as she considered the implications of what I'd just told her."I don't want you to have anything to do with them — ever again! Do you understand me?"

I managed to mutter "Yes," but I was so frightened I could hardly speak; I had never seen my mother so angry about anything!

She sent me to my room, and said Dad would punish me when he got home from work.

I didn't believe that Dad would actually spank me. First of all, I'd heard him use the word himself — several times — when he was talking to his brothers, when he didn't know I could hear what he was saying. Some of the men he worked with at the turkey-farm east of town, said it all the time: They said "Fuck this," or "Fuck that," or "Fucking right!" Also, the very house we were living in had had "FUCK YOU" written on some of the walls before we moved in. Mother had very quickly painted those rooms, covering the words, but no one had said anything about God killing whoever had written them.

Dad had spanked me only once in my life: a little over a year before, when I had refused to go to school. We had moved three times that year, during my second grade, because Dad couldn't find a good job: from Roosevelt to Rock Springs, Wyoming, then to Sacramento, California, then finally to Baggs, Wyoming, where he worked doing odd jobs on a sheep ranch. In Baggs, I had been even more of an outsider than usual. A one-room school housed all of the twenty or so children who lived in or near the tiny town, and all the kids knew one another — half of them were related. In Baggs, we were the only Mormons, and I was teased mercilessly about being a "Moron!" I was ridiculed and ostracized until I couldn't take it any longer. One morning, I told my parents I would rather die than go back to that hateful school, where even the teacher acted like there was something wrong with me. Dad spanked me then, so hard and so long that I passed out. When I woke up, mother was crying and told me I wouldn't have to go back to that school again — we would be leaving Baggs and moving back to Utah, back to Roosevelt, Dad's home town, into my Uncle Howard's old house in Hancock Cove.

The thing I couldn't understand was why God would strike me dead, and not Dad, or Ronnie, or Uncle Bud, or Uncle Glen, or any of the others I’d heard use the word. Was I special, for some reason?

I was hoping that Dad would explain it all to me. Maybe it had something to do with the difference between men and women. I wasn't sure what that difference entailed, but I had no doubt now that it was real. For one thing, women didn't swear, or weren't supposed to. Maybe "Fuck" was a swearword that men could say, but women couldn't.

Shortly after Dad's old pickup rattled past my window, I could hear them arguing in the kitchen, but I couldn't make out the words. It was the first time I had ever heard them argue. When he came into my room, he was grinning. He sat on my bed and patted his knee.

I went to him, feeling very conspiratorial, and I bent myself over his knee, expecting a pat or two — but his hand smacked against my butt so painfully I yelped and started to cry; this seemed to encourage him, and his hand slapped even harder, and went on and on until I was screaming "Don't! Please!"

They left me crying, cringing painfully on my bed, my mind a jumbled chaos of fear and confusion. I felt more alone than I had ever felt before. I felt betrayed and abandoned. And something new, a feeling I'd never had before, of being, somehow, unclean in the sight of God! Without meaning to, without even knowing what I was doing, I had sinned! That meant I was a terrible person.

That evening, no one said a word during supper. When I had finished eating, Mother sent me to my room again. Usually I was allowed to listen to the radio with them for an hour or so after supper, but the radio wasn't even turned on that night. Instead, I could hear their voices, from the kitchen, arguing again, low at first, then louder, until suddenly he yelled "A Goddamned Mama's boy, that's what! A Goddamned Sissy!" Something crashed! Then the kitchen door banged open and Mother ran out, through the living room and out the front door, sobbing as she ran.Dad yelled "Come back here!" From outside she called "I'm never coming back!"

I followed them, terrified, crying, stumbling in the darkness, along the rutted dirt road that led into town.I could hear her sobbing, and I followed the sound until I could see the two of them, darker silhouettes against a background of shadows, huddled in the ditch beside the road. He was kneeling, holding her as she cried, sounding utterly heartbroken.

I ran to them, my arms open to embrace them, ready to beg their forgiveness, and to plead with her not to go away.

Dad furiously shoved me away and I stumbled backward, falling in the dirt. "Get out of here!" he yelled at me. "This is all your fault anyway, you little bastard!"

The next morning, we all acted as though nothing had happened. Mother woke me at six o'clock, as usual, and we fed the pigs and chickens while Dad milked the cows, and turned them out to pasture, as always. We had breakfast together — silently — and then Dad went to work. I started to help Mother wash the dishes, as I had done for several years, but she said "No! I'll do them. You go on out and play."

I wanted her to say she was sorry for getting so upset, and I desperately wanted to tell her that I hadn't meant anything bad when I asked her that terrible question, I had merely wanted to understand. But she never mentioned the incident, nor did I, nor, as far as I know, did Dad, ever again.

Up to that point, Mom had been my best friend — I had been with or near her almost every hour of my life, except for school — I would go with her everywhere, doing the chores, weeding the garden, shopping, to Church, visiting relatives, and we would laugh and sing songs and play games; she would hug me or hold my hand and smile with a smile that let me know that she loved me very much, and everything was all right. I thought she was the most wonderful person in the world, and that had made me feel very special indeed, because she had so obviously adored me!

But after that day, we became strangers. It was as though she had turned something off. From that day onward it seemed to me that she never allowed herself to feel anything for me besides obligation: she had been responsible for bringing me into the world, so she cooked my meals and washed my clothes and cleaned my room, and she always made sure I had enough money to buy clothes and essentials, but she never again praised me or encouraged me or seemed to care whether I got an A or a C, passed or failed a test, got promoted or demoted or kicked out of a class! As long as I didn't involve her in my life, she paid me no mind. Or seemed not to, no matter how successful I was at school.

Dad had never paid me much attention anyway, but after that night, it seemed he had even more than his usual contempt for me. Although I lived with them for nine more years, that night we each moved away and apart from each other, and there we remained for the rest of our lives.

Knowing what I know now, it is easy to see why I got swept up in a passion for Religion at age 9 - after that horrible day and sleepless night, hearing my father’s furious voice, echoing over and over in my head : ”This is all your fault, you little bastard!” I desperately needed acceptance and approval, which was definitely not coming from either of them.

It never occurred to me, at the time, to think "bastard" meant anything but a "dirty, rotten, nasty" person. It took many long years before I even started to consider that I might not be "legitimate." Instead, it was just a word he used to hurt me. Like "Sissy," and "Coward," and "The damn kid."

We moved again, shortly after that incident, and probably as a result of it. My mother surely confronted her sister about her nasty children teaching me things she didn't want me to know. The house we were living in had been rented from them. We moved from Roosevelt to Vernal, next door to my Grandparents’ house in the western end of the valley. They had a little “Guest House” for visiting relatives, across the yard from the much larger main house, which had seen 10 children grow up and move out to have big families of their own.

Dad and Mom both got jobs, Dad as a lineman for the Utah Power and Light Co. and Mother as a cook in her brother's diner, downtown, called "The Rite Spot."

We stayed in the little house until Dad could build a home for us to live in. They bought 5 acres from Grandfather and within a year, they had built a very nice, livable house, a mile down the street from the Grandparents.

I wasn't encouraged to “get in their way.” Dad thought I was “too stupid” to help. "Aw, for cryin' out loud, not that one! That one! What the hell's the matter with you?" Etc.

While Grandmother Vernon was welcoming and loving, Grandfather V. was just the opposite. Grandmother had described him in her journal as “a handsome young convert from Tennessee,” but by the time I moved next door, he was an angry, bitter old man. He had once donated a stained glass window to the local Mormon Tabernacle (where I was confirmed, under the “W. P. Vernon window"), but things had gone wrong in his life and he did his best to be unpleasant to everyone, probably especially to my mother - for coming back home - with a baby. He probably treated Dad like a Loser. Neither one of them went into a Church in my lifetime, except for funerals. They both treated me as an unwanted presence.

Grandfather Vernon died of Cancer several years after we moved out of that little house. I can remember Dad getting dressed in a dusty blue suit to go to the funeral. It was the only time I’d ever seen him in a suit or in the Church House. And there was Grandpa, also in his Church suit, down in front of the alter, in an inappropriately ornate casket, surrounded with shiny white satin and beautiful flowers .

Both Mom and Dad worked weekdays, which left me alone much of the time. Grandmother saw the need and did what she could to fill it. She took me under her wing and taught me about God and Jesus. She had studied The Bible and knew many of the stories by heart. Everybody in the Ward knew Sister Vernon and loved her. I was loved and accepted because I was her grandchild and I did everything I could to live up to her expectations.

In the process, I fell in love with Jesus, meek and mild, loving and forgiving. In Sunday School we often sang “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam,” and I sang it like I meant it. I became a Sunbeam for Jesus. At school, the kids called me “Goody-two-shoes,” and a “pansy," but I didn't care. I was doing The Lord’s work and that was much more important than worrying about being called bad names. I was helping my Church pave the way for Jesus to return and turn the earth back into Paradise, the way it once was in The Garden of Eden. That's what Mormon lives were all about, or were supposed to be, getting Jesus to come back.

Even though the indoctrination process starts early, for toddlers in Sunday School, and then "Primary." Young Mormons are not considered real Mormons until they are baptized and confirmed at age 8, or later. At that age, they are considered old enough to decide whether or not they want to become members of the LDS Church. Kids get a lot of attention and love as they prepare themselves for Membership in The One and OnlyTrue Church On Earth! I studied the Mormon Articles of Faith and The New Testament. “The Gospel of Jesus” became part of my life.

In that closet He had told me to go into to pray, I repented many times for uttering ‘that’ word which I would not even allow myself to think, let alone say aloud. Jesus quickly became my mentor, my adopted, perfect father-figure, the one who forgave me for being stupid and a terrible sinner and welcomed me into his heart and home with all the love I could possibly want. Over and over, I listened to, and incorporated, his advice in my quest for something to believe in that didn't involve feeling guilty for reasons I didn’t understand.

I didn’t trust my parents any longer. At age 10 I discovered they had lied to me about Santa Claus, and that embarassing revelation ended my confidence in them. Once I realized they had lied to me, about so many things, it wasn’t difficult, setting them apart from me, like in a separate room of my life, and adopting my Grandmother as my substitute mother and Jesus as my substitute father. Although He was absent, physically, from my life, He had left His words in a book, especially for me! And His "spirit" definitely seemed to be with me 24 hours a day.

For the next 6 years, between 1943 and '49, I became intensely religious, spending every spare moment contemplating Mormonized-Christianity, imagining what it would be like, preparing myself and my soul for the imminent Second Coming. My mother had showed me a “Patriarchal Blessing,” she had received as a girl, which promised her that she would live to “hear His sweet voice,” when Our Savior returned. I read and reread the Bible and Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants and various Church books and magazines. I prayed often for God to forgive me whatever terrible sins I'd committed, and to be for me what He was for Grandma — a source of incredible strength in the face of adversity — a source of love and understanding, when all the world misunderstood and hated me.

I took part in all the church-boy-programs, Primary, The Boy Trail Builders: Blazers and Trekkers and Guides. I was ordained a Deacon at age 12, a Teacher at age 14, and a Priest at age 16.

Of course, I planned to go on a Mission when I was 19 or 20. I wanted to spread the True Gospel to the Heathens of the poor, disadvantaged countries, Mexico and South America. I planned to lead hundreds, perhaps thousands of questing souls, to The True Church, saving those souls for Jesus in the process! When I came home from saving souls, I would get married to a good Mormon girl and raise a family of good Mormon children (but not just one alone — I would never subject a child of mine to that affliction — but not 9 or 10 either; 2 or 3 maybe). We would all go to Church together, and sing the hymns, tell the stories, praise Jesus and rejoice together as we marched arm-in-arm into the Millennium.

I had no idea what I would do to support my anticipated family, except that it wouldn't be by farming. I trusted that God would make clear to me what He wanted me to be and do when the time came.

I had decided that when I was drafted, for service in World War II, I would tell them I was a "conscientious objector." I didn't understand the concept of "praise the Lord and pass the ammunition," lyrics of a popular song during The War. I hated that song! With absolute clarity the Bible said "Thou shalt not kill." Period! It didn't say "except for Germans or Japs," no matter how terrible they were, and Jesus had commanded: "Forgive your enemies," without excepting Italians, even though they were Catholics - "the Great Abomination!" according to Mormonism.

The only trouble with that idea was that nobody agreed with me! I was amazed how many supposedly religious people were sending their sons and grandsons to kill or be killed by "the enemy." They would become very angry with me if I tried to say what we shouldn't be killing anybody! I was being "unpatriotic" and even sinful!

It was like that with just about everything. The more religious I became, the harder I tried to be "Good," the more people avoided me, kids as well as adults. They started calling me "Goody-Two-Shoes." For some reason I couldn't fathom, someone who really practiced what they preached was regarded as simple-minded. Someone who tried to be good and honest and pure was treated as "holier than thou," and shunned, not cherished. It didn't make sense! The harder I tried, the less people liked me!

In 1947, at age 14, I became a freshman at Uintah High School, on the outskirts of Vernal. Across the street from the high school was the LDS "Seminary," a small church-like building housing a schoolroom and two teachers' offices. Once a week, all the Mormon children in the 9th grade studied The Old Testament. Sophomores studied The New Testament, and Juniors studied The Book of Mormon. In each grade, I applied myself to Seminary with much greater interest than regular schoolwork. I diligently perused all of the books of The Bible and was one of the few students who could actually discuss the various books and chapters and characters. I could recite all the names of the books. (Still can: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges....etc.)

My other major activity and interest besides Mormonism was in The Theatre - drama and comedy. As a freshman, I had discovered acting and directing and writing. I was good at all of them and they called me "talented" and gave me awards.

All of my extracurricular time was spent at Church or onstage, in one capacity or another.

I was allowed to skip Phys Ed and any of the sports that involved running because I couldn’t run more than a few steps without developing a “stitch” in my groin. It was the same feeling, I later learned, as being kicked in the balls. It was agony, but no doctor could figure out what caused it.

Girls didn’t like to go out with me, even though they were Mormon virgins looking for husbands. All I wanted to do was talk about God and Jesus. I rarely had a second date.

At the end of the third year of Seminary, in the spring of 1949, the "graduating" class was rewarded with a trip to Salt Lake City, where we would all be "Baptized for the Dead," a Mormon innovation and tradation, in the enormous marble font on the backs of 12 golden oxen, symbolizing the 12 tribes of Israel, in the holy inner-sanctum of the Temple! We would then eat supper and stay overnight in one of the largest hotels in town, the Hotel Newhouse! All we had to pay was a small share of the room cost — we split up 4 to a room, 2 to a bed — and for stuff like meals, souvenirs, movies, or special treats.

Grandmother had often told me the story about the boy who was being baptized for the dead in the Temple: When he came up from each of the immersions, he could see the spirit of the person he had just helped join the Church, until finally they were all standing in the air around the rim of the font, transfigured, smiling gratefully at him! And then, suspended above everything, Jesus, Himself, his arms outstretched, silently thanking the boy for the wonderful work he was doing!

I prayed night and day that something like that would happen to me. More than anything else in this world, I wanted to see Jesus, and to know for certain how much He loved me.

In the white marble dressing rooms in the Temple basement, we were given white loose coverall-like garments, which covered us from ankle to chin, and concealed any trace of sexuality — at least, when dry. In groups of twelve, we were guided into the font, which looked like a huge bathtub resting on the backs of twelve life-size gold-plated oxen. There were cold, wet steel steps going up, then marble steps leading down into the warm water, where the baptizer would take each of us in turn and prepare to dip us, saying loudly "Richard Fullmer, on behalf of...." He would pause as an invisible reader pronounced a carefully researched name from an unseen list, "John Jacob Jones," and the baptizer would repeat it, "John Jacob Jones ... I baptize thee in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen!" Dip, rise, move one space around the font. Around and around we went, getting dunked for more than a dozen dead people apiece, and as I worked my way around the tub, I prayed fervently to be allowed to see Jesus — but by the end of the session, I had seen nothing, not even any grateful ghosts!

I tried not to be disappointed. I tried not to read any "hidden meaning" into the non-answer to my prayers. But it was hard not to think that maybe God was still angry with me for that word I had said 7 years ago. Or, maybe the truth was, God just plain didn't like me, and wouldn't answer my prayers no matter how good I was or tried to be! He hadn't answered any of them yet — as far as I knew — so maybe He never would!

After supper in the hotel cafeteria, we all went to see RED RIVER, starring John Wayne and an exciting new actor, Montgomery Clift, and I felt curiously guilty for thinking he was handsome and very exciting. After the movie we all bought snacks and headed back to our hotel rooms, about 10 o'clock.

My roommates happened to be three of the most popular boys in high school, all athletes, all members of practically every club in school, and all presumably good Mormons. Arnie, Max and Dell shared another distinction, I discovered, when Arnie produced a pint of Jack Daniels Whisky from a sack of fruit and sandwiches he had brought from home, and I was the only one who had to be asked if he wanted a swig!

At first I refused, righteously indignant, and not a little amazed — these were three of the "best" boys in town! Our religion strictly forbade alcohol; without a doubt, they were breaking a sacred law! But they passed the bottle around between them, as though it were nothing more than a bottle of root beer. Impulsively, I decided to risk everything I had gained during my six years of devotion, and accepted the bottle the third time around. It became a way to get back at Jesus for not showing up when I had prayed so hard! It was like saying "I don't care! So there!"

I had never tasted whiskey, or any alcohol, not even beer, but I managed to swallow the first searing gulp before it made me nauseous. The second one went down much easier. By the time the bottle was empty, I was feeling very lightheaded and giddy.

When Dell drunkenly produced a package of Lucky Strikes, I excused myself and went into the bathroom. "Well, fuck you!" he called after me, then, "No, never mind!" They all laughed. Tobacco was forbidden, just like alcohol! I was extremely apprehensive about breaking so many laws at the same time! I was also still surprised and shocked that the three Good Mormon Boys, who had just been Baptized for the Dead in the Holy Temple, were out there drunk and smoking cigarettes, and talking about which girls' tits they had seen under those wet coveralls.

I hadn't noticed any tits; I had been preoccupied with the lumps I could see, through the warm clear water, in the crotches of the boy's coveralls. Some had looked like they might be hard!

I turned on the water in the bathtub, so I wouldn't have to hear what they were saying, then decided to take a bath. It seemed a little ludicrous, after having spent half of the day submerged to my shoulders, but the thought of a steamy, soothing bath was very inviting. and I had to get away from the smell of tobacco. I wanted very much to share that cigarette they were passing. After a little trouble undressing, I slipped into the warm water, quite drunk and relaxed. By this time, the boys in the next room were talking quietly, occasionally laughing, probably telling dirty jokes.

For a few minutes I relaxed in the warmth and buoyancy of the water, almost distracted from the events and disappointments of the day. Then someone coughed! It sounded like he was there in the room with me, but the door was closed, and there was no one behind me. The cough came again — from someplace directly in front of me! Then water splashed, as though someone had just moved in the tub — but it hadn't been me!

Then I noticed a tiny hole, slightly larger than a pencil, in the wall, carved through the plaster just above the water knobs and faucet. I knelt in the tub and leaned close to look through.

I saw a naked, handsome, well-built young man, his hair cut short, almost certainly a sailor or soldier, in a bathtub like mine, on the other side of the wall; he was facing me and I could clearly see that he was playing with his cock! As soon as I started watching, it got hard! He knew I was watching! I could tell, because he put on a show for me, arching his muscular young body above the water, stroking himself almost casually, until suddenly he groaned and shuddered and came, squirting all over himself!

I sat back on my heels, amazed, terrified — and more aroused than I had ever been! I had jacked off before, and had wet-dreams, of course, but nothing had come even close to the excitement I was feeling at that moment. It took only a few quick strokes and I shot more than I ever had before, and almost passed out from the thrill of it!

Guilt overwhelmed me immediately! I quickly soaped up and rinsed off — making sure that none of my semen remained on the tub — then hurried out to where Arnie and Dell were passed out on one of the two beds.

Max was sitting in the middle of the other bed in his shorts and t-shirt, smoking a Lucky. I secretly had a crush on Max. He was handsome and muscular, one of the school's star atheletes. I felt a frightening desire to get close to him, as close as possible, to press our bodies together and kiss. Instead, I quickly I picked up the package, lying beside him on the bed, and tapped out a cigarette. Max grinned and held out a lighter and flicked it for me. I took only one deep drag and the room started spinning and I almost toppled over. Max caught me, laughing, and then drunkenly guided and carried me back to the bathroom, where I threw up in the toilet.

He waited for me to clean up, then tucked me into bed and whispered "Sweet dreams, little buckaroo, you've had a busy day."

I had an almost overwhelming impulse to pull him close and kiss him, but I passed out instead.

Around the same time as the Seminary trip to the temple, during the spring of 1949, for all of my involvement in theatre-arts, I won a scholarship to a six-week summer Theater-Workshop at Denver University. It marked the first time I had been away from home, by myself, for more than a day or two, and I had been eagerly anticipating my escape from Mom and Dad, and the association with other young people who excelled in some form of Theater-Arts. In Vernal, I was the only student contemplating a career in "show business," and that choice was considered more or less insane by most of the kids I knew. This workshop would give me the chance to meet my real peers, and talk with someone who understood the excitement and fulfillment of acting.

The male scholarship winners, twelve of us, stayed in one of the fraternity houses, just off campus. We were not all actors; there were debaters, orators, stage-managers, etc. We would all be involved in the many different aspects of Theatre.

On the evening of my first day there, I had just unpacked my suitcase, and was sitting at the foot of the small bed assigned to me, looking out the window of my little room, trying to decide what to do next, when a deep voice behind me said "Howdy there, new neighbor! My name's Ray. I'm from Kansas. Like Dorothy!"

I felt a very strange rush of sensations as I turned to look at him. It was like going down in an elevator, or going very fast over a bump in a car! Ray Evans was a potential "leading man" if ever there was one! Brown, wavy hair, in the currently-popular "duck's-ass" cut, very chiseled features, with a small dimple in his angular chin. He could have played Cary Grant's younger brother! He was wearing the national high-school uniform: Levis and T-shirt, penny-loafers and argyle socks.

For some reason, I felt almost giddy, knowing he was talking to me."Looks like we're the early birds." he said. "I'm headed down to the Rec Room. They've got machines with sandwiches, and candy and all sorts of stuff. Also got a pool table. Do you play?"

“No. I don't know how." Playing pool was considered a sin in Vernal.

He seemed like a very nice, intelligent, outgoing, friendly person — and he was interested in me! He was fascinated by my stories about where I lived and went to school, and what I was planning to do with my life. I had never had anyone pay that kind of attention to me and my plans or desires. I told him all about wanting to be the first in my family to graduate college. Then I would either go to New York or Hollywood and make my living (to rave reviews, of course) as an actor.

He told me about his life in Hutchinson, and his plans to go to college, except that he was considering a career in television.

It seemed as though he kept posing for me! He would lean back against the wall with his arms crossed and his hips thrust forward so that I could plainly see a bulge in his crotch. Now and then he would rub the lump, not at all secretly, but when he knew I was looking. I tried to ignore his actions, but found them very exciting.

After several games of 8-ball, which I learned to play fairly well, we bought sandwiches and Cokes (cola drinks, like coffee and tea, were forbidden by the Mormons) and went upstairs to his room to eat. We talked long into the night, our first night in Denver. I had no doubt that Ray had something on his mind that he wasn't saying aloud, and I guessed that he, like me, would like to do something more to express this feeling that we obviously shared. But neither of us made the move.

The next day, we got together at the student union for lunch and chatted like old friends as we went through the cafeteria line. As we started to eat, he crossed himself! I was seventeen years old and only in the movies had I ever seen anyone actually make the sign of the cross! According to Mormon dogma, the Catholic Church was what the Bible called "the abomination of desolation sitting in the holy place" — the reason the rest of the world couldn't make Christianity work. Even the Jews, who had killed Jesus, were friends by comparison! Catholics were considered The Enemy!

This wonderful, charming, handsome, new person in my life was my mortal enemy, according to my religion! I felt like something invisible was ripping me apart, like a tornado crashing around inside me!

I avoided Ray for the next few days, and on Sunday went to the nearest Mormon chapel for Sunday School. In class, taught by the Bishop of that ward, I introduced myself as a brother from Utah, at DU on a scholarship, and said that I had met someone in the workshop who seemed like a nice person, but that I suspected he was one of those "you know, men who 'like' other men. What should I do?"

The Bishop rocked back on his heels and squared his shoulders and clenched his fist and shook it at me as he said "Run from that man as you would run from a snake! He is an abomination in the sight of God!"

Afterward most of the class avoided me, as though I frightened them, but one girl patted my arm and said "It must be the most terrible thing in the world, to be one of those people. You should pray for his poor tortured soul!"

Of course, the question had not been just about Ray, it also had been about me! And I went back to the Frat house that Sunday, knowing that, if I ever gave in to those forbidden impulses, my church would consider me an abomination! That would make Ray — if he really was "one of those people" — a double abomination: a Catholic Queer!

When I finally got up the courage to approach Ray again, he had found a new friend. They were both polite, but distant, as though they had decided I wasn't worth bothering with. I felt terrible! I had turned to my religion for help and comfort about something that was happening to me, and my religion had only gathered its skirts and screamed "Sinner!" It hadn't helped me understand why I was haunted by ideas and images of what might have happened, had I not refused to recognize his overtures, that first night. In my imagination, I kissed Ray Evans night after night, but we hardly spoke for the rest of the six weeks.

I gave all my time and energy to my role as Papa in I REMEMBER MAMA, and a tiny role in RICHARD III, which was presented in an outdoor theater for two weeks of balmy summer nights, as the "graduation" for the workshop. Then I got on a bus and went back to Vernal, knowing that something monumental had happened to me, but terrified of understanding just what that something had been!

As soon as I got home, I called Gwen, my girlfriend, for the last year, whom I tentatively planned to marry, when the time came, and suggested we get together soon, for a movie or something. Mostly I wanted to talk to her and, maybe, ask some "innocent" questions. She suggested that we go to see a new actor, Marlon Brando, in a movie called The Men, which was playing at one of Vernal's two movie theaters. We made a date for the next night.

I remember almost nothing about the movie, except that it was about a wounded soldier in a hospital. Marlon Brando looked almost exactly like Ray Evans! All I could see, all night, was Ray! All I could think of was Ray! After the movie, I deliberately picked a fight with Gwen and took her home, suggesting that we split up. I was angry and excited, and I jacked off as I drove home, imagining what it would be like to be with Ray, to touch him...kiss him..! But as soon as I came, I felt as though my world was about to come tumbling down on me!

I went back to see the movie again, the next night, and as I walked into the semi-darkened theater, before the movie started, I noticed that Leon Elkins was sitting in his usual seat, the second one in on the last row in the center. It looked like he was waiting for someone to join him, and I had heard that was exactly what he was waiting for; whoever sat there next to him would be "accidentally" touched, then, if that person didn't get up and move, fondled, and then be asked for a ride home. Whoever took Leon home from the movies got a blow job! Leon was Vernal's resident Queer, and most of the boys in high school seemed to know about his services.

Instead of sitting next to him, I sat in the seat across the aisle, and throughout the movie, kept turning to see if he might be looking at me. He did, several times, but gave no sign that he wanted me to join him. After the movie, he got up and went out and started walking along Main Street, toward his home, east of town.

I ran to my car, my heart pounding insanely in my ears, and followed him almost a block before he turned to look back, then I pulled up beside him. He didn't say a word, but just looked at me. "Would you like a ride?" I asked.

He studied me for a moment, then shrugged. "Sure. Why not?" I had never seen Leon outside the movie theater, and was amazed that, up close, in the light of the streetlight, he looked just like anyone else — a 20 or 25 year old man! (Being queer had kept him out of the Army; he was one of the few young men his age left in town.) His voice wasn't lispy — as it was made out to be, when the boys told each other about their adventures with Leon. He had a nice voice, and a pleasant smile. But he didn't touch me. We drove out into the boondocks, listening to romantic music on the radio. My heart almost stopped when I glanced over and saw his pants open, his cock arching up out of his fly. He met my glance and seemed to dare me to touch it. He even turned in the seat to make it easier for me to get to. "Suck on it," he whispered. "You know you want to!"

I was shocked that he would even suggest it. "No!" I wanted to tell him he was the queer one, not me, but I couldn't get the words out. That was what I had wanted him to do to me, and once he mentioned it, I couldn't stop imagining what it would feel like. How would it feel to take that satiny headed thing in my mouth! He reached over and took my hand and guided it to his cock, which jumped when I touched it! It was the first time I had ever touched another man's penis, and it felt like a kind of hot electricity was flowing between us!

"Jack it off," he said, as he unzipped my pants and fumbled to get my cock out of my shorts — but I came before he could get it out!

It took several more minutes for him to come. Finally he pushed my hand away and finished himself, catching the stuff in his handkerchief. He gave a long, satisfied sigh, stuffed himself back into his pants, and said "Now you can take me home."

Driving home with my shorts soaked with semen, guilt and remorse settled over me like a thunder storm!

I spent several days, afterward, thoroughly depressed and confused. I knew I couldn't discuss it with either of my parents. They were certain to over-react — or, even worse, not react at all! I had no close friends I could talk to, or even distant friends who wouldn't instantly despise me if they found out what I had done! It was driving me crazy and I had to do something! I finally decided to go to my Bishop, supposedly the most spiritual, understanding man in the Ward, and once again risk a humiliating rejection, to ask him why God would allow such a terrible thing to happen to someone as faithful as I had been.

I rode my bike to his house, about two miles away from ours. His wife said he was out in the barnyard, fixing something in the stable. She said to go on out and talk to him there.

I could hear his voice, low, but sharp and angry, before I could make out the words. I could also hear a cow, bellowing and gasping. I approached the stable from the feeding-side, and looked through the long window to see Bishop Mackenzie, pitchfork in his hand, stalking after a cow that was running away from him, around and around the corral, bawling and limping, with bright red trails of blood running down her flanks from where the pitchfork had obviously pierced her skin. He didn't see me looking through the manger.

"I'm gonna kill you!" the Bishop snorted furiously. "You Goddamned fucking sonofabitch!"

I backed slowly away from the window, my heart pounding insanely, his words echoing over and over in my head, then ran to my bicycle, and peddled as fast as I could, back home.

It was mid-afternoon and my parents were both at work in town. I marched out into the field where we had recently cut and bunched the hay. It was dry and hot and the air seemed to be humming. I planted my feet wide and looked up toward Heaven, and yelled "Fuck!" as loud as I could.

I clenched my fists and shook them at Heaven, took a deep breath, and yelled "Fuck God!"

In the silence that followed, my whole world wavered and then dissolved into ruins, but in that hayfield there in Vernal, everything else went on exactly as usual, as though nothing at all had happened.

My last year of high school was very schizophrenic. Almost everyone treated me like the person I had been, before that catastrophic summer, and I pretended that nothing unusual had happened, but secretly, I had changed drastically! I had stopped going to church and was trying to stop judging myself and the world by Mormon standards. I stopped believing that I, somehow, owned the world just because I was a Mormon!

I had decided that I no longer wanted to associate with bigots and hypocrites who lied and cheated and swore like sailors, then went to church and pretended to be pious and holy! I had discovered that there were good people in this world who were not Mormons, who were often not even religious, and that, just because a man is supposed to be saintly, that is not necessarily, or even probably, what he really is!

More and more doubts and questions had come into my mind, over the years, and I finally decided, at age eighteen, that religion was all a bunch of lies, designed to control people with their fear of the unknown, and to keep them paying tithing! I hated to admit it, but my father had been right to infer it was "bullshit" because that's exactly what it was!

Even so, I felt guilty and vaguely apprehensive, as though delayed lightening might yet strike. It wasn't that easy to get God and Jesus out of my life! There was an emptiness where comfort had been, questions for which there were no pat answers. There was a gnawing awareness that I had been duped, and I felt like the same kind of fool I had been as a child, tricked and cheated by those I had trusted most.

Even worse was the future! Suddenly, my expected exaltation with the resurrected Saints in Paradise was replaced with an enormous emptyness.

I decided that nothing in life was certain! And no one could be trusted! I was forging ahead into the unknown, all by myself!

Now, secretly, I looked at people in a brand new way - I was fascinated by penises - cocks - and felt terribly ashamed for it! Now I looked at boys' and men's crotches the way other boys looked at girls' breasts. I was amazed at the number of barely-concealed erections displayed by teenage boys! They got hardons at the strangest times! And whenever I saw the telltale protrusions, I felt a delicious but disturbing tingling in my own groin!

I pretended that I, too, went bonkers over big tits, but I had no comprehension of what that fascination was about. I secretly admired the flat, firm pectorals and muscular arms and legs of the basketball players and other athletes - like Max - and, of course, felt like a "Godless Sinner" because of it!

All of my life I had felt like something was "wrong" with me, but had never understood exactly what that was. Now I knew: I was Queer! I was something that everyone hated and feared. I was something that most people thought was evil and "abominable." I was also a criminal, illegal in most of the civilized world! I had heard men say they would kill a Queer who made a pass at them. Or they'd kill him, even if he didn't make a pass, just because he was Queer. Everyone seemed to agree that it was perfectly okay to kill or beat up Queers, because they deserved it, just for being Queer! I had heard frightening stories about marines or sailors beating up on some pervert who had somehow got into the service by mistake.

Now, I was that Pervert, a Deviate, a Sodomite, an Abomination in the sight of God, wretchedly and unforgivably Sinful - according to most religions around the world. Even though I vowed and consciously tried to do everything I could to become something else, everywhere I turned were bulging crotches!

I tried masturbating to pictures in National Geographic of naked native girls with huge breasts, but nothing would happen until I ignored the magazine and closed my eyes and thought about Ray — or Leon, or Max!

One amazing and likewise-memorable incident happened during my senior year, when I was directing and producing The Uintah Thespian Society's Radio Show, dramatizing Children's Stories, which I would adapt for radio, on our local station, KJAM, whose offices and studios were in the basement of the Hotel Vernal.

The parking lot was behind the hotel, and my car's windshield pointed directly at a first-floor hotel room window, with the blind and drapes open.

I was giving a ride home to two teenage girls who had been voices in the radio-play we had just finished. We had just got into my parents' car, all three of us in the front seat, and slammed the doors, when a man's hand and a hairy naked arm reached out from the left side of the window in front of us, using the drape to hide him as he reached for the cord to pull the blind down.

The window was wide and the hand couldn't reach the cord, so it reached up to a corner of the bottom of the blind, and pulled it down. You could see the man's shadow, move across behind the blind as he held it down. After a moment, he released it - apparently thinking it was locked in place - and started to stand up, but the blind zipped up and went flapping around the top of the window, and there he was "in Vista Vision!" good-looking, well-built, stark naked, with a large hardon that curved upward.

He wildly scrambled to grab the flapping blind, or the dancing cord, which he finally did, then pulled the blind down and apparently knelt down behind it until he was sure it would say pulled! It did this time.

I have often wondered if it really was an accident that exposed a horny naked man, or if maybe it was something he did on purpose, as an exhibitionist, and could claim "it was all an accident" if anyone complained.

I started the car and backed out of the parking space. None of us said one word about what we had all seen, as I drove away from the hotel parking lot, heading the car away from an incredibly vivid image - one that also has lasted all my life until now.

In a kind of "memory snapshot," his arms and legs are spread wide, jumping and flailing frantically as he tries to catch the flipping pull-cord, his balls and cock bouncing with each move. He looked like a spider, a naked human spider, a well-built and very well-endowed spider, scrambling for his web.

In the movies, instead of watching the faces, I found myself watching the crotches! Erroll Flynn and Tyrone Power often displayed exciting bulges in those tights! All the other boys went crazy over Jane Russell's big tits in The Outlaw, but I got thrills and chills and a hardon over her unknown costar, Jack Butel, as Billy, The Kid, who showed practically everything encased in skin-tight denim!

I hated myself for even noticing, let alone gawking at the bulges and protrusions in all the men's trousers and swimsuits, but I could not stop looking! (John Wayne and Roy Rogers never showed anything.)

As a "fuck you" gesture to Mormonism, at age 16, I started smoking and drinking: Fatima or Wings cigarettes (15 cents a pack) and Coors (3.2 alcoholic content) beer. And, of course, if anyone at an unofficial high-school party offered it, any of the "hard stuff," "Yes I do, thank you very much!" I was still too young to buy cigarettes legally, so I stole them from the drug store, or got them from a machine in the bus station - Luckies, Camels and Kools - or later, had someone else buy them for me.

That was the year Alaric Alexander came to UHS to teach Drama and Civics. He explained that his name was Teutonic, a family name after his great-great-great grandfather, or something. "Rick" smoked Pall Malls — secretly, of course; he would have been fired very quickly had the all-Mormon school board discovered that he smoked cigarettes, or drank beer, or secretly read George Bernard Shaw to his two favorite students, at his house, while all three of them smoked Pall Malls and drank Coors — or Hills Brother's coffee, or Lipton tea, or Doctor Pepper, or "real" eggnog for Christmas and champagne for New Years'!

I will never know for sure, but I think Rick was the first bisexual I'd met, although, probably, he was never consciously aware of it. He had come from a Good Mormon home, but had "strayed from the path." He was very interested in me, and in several of the other boys in the plays and drama class, and always managed to be in the dressing rooms back-stage, when the boys were changing costumes — but nothing ever happened that I knew about. He was equally fascinated by one particular girl, a senior, Marcia Warren, new also to UHS that year; her father was a doctor who had opened a new practice in Vernal that summer.

Marcia had grown up in Salt Lake City, and was extremely cosmopolitan, compared to the bumpkins of Vernal. She too smoked — Pall Malls, of course! Eventually, I heard, they got married.

My last year of High School, we became a threesome, "The Three Mousecatchers!" We read plays together, saw movies together, drove all the way to Sale Lake City to see plays at the University of Utah, or touring companies at the Rialto Theater, downtown. We also presented three very sophisticated plays that year: My Sister Eileen, Years Ago, and You Can't Take It With You. I student-directed the first, played "Papa" in the second, and a Russian ballet teacher in the third. That year reconfirmed my decision that I wanted to be An Actor! A Professional. Acting was fun! It was pretending to be someone else other than myself. It was a kind of temporary escape, or even "therapy." I was very good at it. I loved doing it.

I won a drama scholarship that year, to Brigham Young University, for a "reading" (a ten-minute monologue) of Hamlet, act I. It was a major triumph for me, but I had no desire to go to the Mormon school, or to anything even vaguely connected with the church. I decided I would prefer to go the University of Utah, and Rick and Marcia encouraged me.

Mom and Dad were not at all impressed with the scholarship. They had promised to send me to college if I wanted to go. They would pay my bills, scholarship or not, until I could get a job and support myself. They didn't seem to care about honors or scholarships. I don't recall either of them asking me why I had chosen the state university over the religious one.

Less than a week after I graduated high school, in June, I hitchhiked to Salt Lake City to register for Summer School at "The U." I wanted to get as far away from Vernal as I could, as quickly as possible.

I was picked up by a traveling salesman, in his forties or fifties, much too old to arouse any interest in me. We stopped for coffee at a truck-stop, about half way to SLC, where the grouchy old man behind the counter annoyed me about something.

When we were on our way again, the salesman said "You don't like old men very much, do you?"

It was quite true, I hated old men: they were grumpy and mean and judgmental, but I said "I don't know... Why?"

"Oh, really?" He paused meaningfully, looking sideways over his shoulder at me. "Well, I am."

Neither of us said another word for the rest of the trip. I sat hunched against the door, ready to open it and leap out if he tried to touch me. He let me off near a bus stop at the eastern edge of the city. As I got out of the car he called "See you in the park — sweetie!" He blew me a kiss as he drove away.

I was seething, and terrified. Apparently there was something about me that made people think I was Queer, but I didn't know what it was! I had often heard "It takes one to know one," but what unconscious signal had I given the salesman?

I didn't think I looked queer — I wasn't pretty, or even handsome, although I wasn't ugly either. I thought of myself as "very average." While I didn't look like a "Jock," or a "Stud," I wasn't effeminate. Having grown up on a farm, I had a naturally lean and fairly muscular body, and I had very deliberately maintained a "masculine" attitude and carefully avoided doing anything that would label me unmanly. Rick had directed me in the finer points of looking and acting "butch" in the plays. ("Don't put your hands on your hips! Never raise your pinkie! Keep your voice deep, and slur your words just a little; do not articulate!")

I found a place to live that afternoon, an upstairs room in a boarding house, only a few blocks from the university. Since it was summer, most of the students were away for vacation. There was only one other boarder in the house, a "Graduate Assistant" in Physics. Dick Rogers was very tall — maybe 7' — very friendly and helpful, with a deep resonant voice, and a very large bulge in the tight tan pants he always wore. Within a week he had invited me into his bed, and I masturbated the biggest cock I had ever seen — and the next day moved out of the boarding house in a huff, telling the landlady that her other boarder and I "didn't get along!"

She seemed to understand what I wasn't saying, but refused to refund any of my rent.

My next living quarters were in the barracks at Fort Douglas, at the far-east end of the university's campus, right up against the mountain. It was still summer, and the soldiers and cadets who usually lived there were off on some kind of maneuvers involving Korea. I had two tiny rooms, one with a bed, the other with a desk, and shared common bathrooms and showers with three or four other summer students, whom I rarely saw. I very deliberately avoided any situation that would put us together in the showers or at the urinals.

It was there that I started writing my first novel, TO THEMSELVES UNKNOWN. about a young college student discovering that he had homosexual desires, briefly exploring the "tortured 'Gay' lifestyle," but then finding the right woman, who would take him to bed and make a man of him! (I think by that time TEA and SYMPATHY had opened on Broadway, so I probably borrowed the improbable ending from that propaganda piece for the impossible ending for my story.) That ending got tossed before I finished college.

The window behind my desk looked out over almost the entire city, all the way out to the mountains by the lake, and I spent many nights sitting at my Royal portable typewriter, looking out over an ocean of sparkling lights, trying to tell my story - trying to figure out just what my story really was!

At the end of summer and the beginning of the new school-year, the regular occupant of my rooms returned, so I had to move. I found a basement "Pullman apartment" — two rooms connected by an arch, one with a tiny kitchen-dinette, with a hot plate for a stove, and the other with a couch that opened into a bed, plus a small bathroom with just a toilet, a tiny wash basin and shower that smelled of mildew and Clorox. From across the hall came the scent of cheap perfume!

Lyle Granville, about 30, and almost ugly, worked as a clerk at Woolworths, downtown. He would come home from work, to the rooms opposite mine, and get "dressed up to go out," dousing himself with Evening in Paris. At first, I thought it was his sister I kept meeting in the hallway between us. Then it dawned on me that he went out — to dinner, or the movies, or wherever "she" went at night — dressed as a woman! (It didn't really do much good — he simply looked like an ugly woman!) I avoided him, but he didn't seem to care, or even notice.

One afternoon I went home at a time that I usually spent studying at the Student Union. As I fixed a sandwich in my kitchen, I heard strange noises coming from the rooms across the hall. There was a crash and a thud, and then something that sounded like a lost soul, crying for help.

Lyle's door was locked. I knocked and called "Is anything wrong in there?" At first there was silence, then a faraway voice moaned: "Outside! Please!"

I ran up the stairs and around to Lyle's side of the house, and there, sticking out of the ground-level half-window, was a pair of denim-encased muscular legs, and a picture-perfect butt, with a belt loop snagged on a nail in the middle of the window-frame. His weight and the head of the nail kept him in that position, unable to move backward or forward. I grabbed him under the legs and lifted him to unhook the loop, then guided the legs through the window, which swung closed behind him.

I went back to my rooms, leaving my door open, wondering if I should call the police, or the landlady?

In a few minutes, a very sheepish-looking young man, about my age and kind of cute, came from Lyle's apartment and paused in my doorway. "Hi!" he said."Hello, again."He grinned sheepishly. "I guess you're wondering what I was doing."

"I guess you could say that," I said."Well....actually....uh....I was going to wait....for Lyle."

"He doesn't get home for several hours.""I know. I mean...well...usually...I go to sleep...I just got off work...and he wakes me up...when he gets home...you know what I mean?"

I was fairly sure I had figured it out. "I'm not really sure that I do," I said. "What do you mean?" I was beginning to enjoy this little cat and mouse game. Usually I was the mouse, but this time I was the cat! "Come on in and tell me about it."

His expression changed from a defiant glower to a wide grin. He stepped inside quickly and closed the door behind him.

"Would you like a beer?" I asked, taking one for myself from the small refrigerator, built into the kitchen cupboard.

"Sure! I'd love a beer! Helps relax me, you know?" He remained by the door, his hand still on the knob.

"Right! Oh, I know all right!" I gave him the beer. "So sit down and relax." I pointed toward the very-worn overstuffed chair, then sat on the couch. He took a long swallow of beer, then sat beside me on the couch, spreading his legs until his knee touched mine. At the same time he leaned back and groaned, and I could see the outline of his hard cock under the denim. My own cock was responding! Here was a masculine-seeming young man, very obviously inviting me to have sex with him. And I wanted to, desperately, but at the same time I was terrified of what I wanted to do for him!

He took my hand and placed it on his erection, then he leaned back, his arms across the back of my couch, and waited. I wanted to be angry with him. I wanted to stop doing what I was doing, and tell him to go away, but it felt so good! It gave me a strange sense of power: he wanted something that I could give him. I could give him pleasure and release. So I unbuttoned his jeans and pulled out his cock and jacked it off. He caught the semen in his hand and bounded into the bathroom, slamming the door. I heard the water running for a long time and began to wonder if maybe he'd slashed his wrists or something. Then he came out and walked straight to the door, without looking at me."Please don't tell Lyle about this."

"I won't," I promised. And I didn't. But I moved out at the end of the month. I discovered that Lyle had several other young boyfriends, and I would not allow myself to be caught in another situation like the last. It was humiliating how I so easily gave in and did what they wanted, without getting a thing done to me in return! I had to take myself out of harm's way.

I didn't succeed, of course. I ended up in an apartment building, right next door to Alex and John!

Alex had a beard and almost white, wild Albert Einstein hair; he was a graduate student, working on his doctorate in music. His thesis was on Bach's Art of the Fugue. John was very tall and thin and almost handsome; he was a waiter in Salt Lake's poshest restaurant, on the top of the Hotel Utah.They invited me to Christmas dinner, and we ended up, drunk on wine and eggnog, on the plush white rug in front of their twinkling Christmas tree, listening to Bach, sucking each other's cocks while performing very athletic twistings and turnings to the music!

It was my first "threesome." It was also the first time I had actually put one of those things in my mouth, and I was amazed when I didn't throw up! I discovered I could take it all the way down my throat and still breathe. There was something incredibly intimate and thrilling about it, and, in fact, it excited me more than anything ever had, especially when someone else was doing the same thing to me at the same time! As they were! To Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring!

But as soon as I came, the guilt and remorse returned, and I quickly excused myself got dressed and hurried next door to my own bed, where I cried myself to sleep because I had defiled Christmas!

At the end of spring quarter, I decided to take the summer off. My parents had sold their home in Vernal, and were packing to move to Citrus Heights, California, a farming and citrus-growing community about 20 miles east of Sacramento, where another of my father's brothers and his family had a little farm. I decided to help them move. Afterward, I planned to spend the summer exploring San Francisco and the seacoast, coming back to Utah in time for the fall quarter.

We had worked it out that I would meet Mom and Dad on a Saturday morning, in Salt Lake, where I would take over driving the rental truck, and they would follow in the Buick and trailer. That left me Friday night with nothing to do.I decided to go to a movie, but after wandering around downtown, trying to decide what to see, I passed by a place I had heard about: The Beehive Lounge, across from the Hotel Utah. Supposedly, it was a "semi-Gay" bar, where the college crowd hung out. I was still under age, but I looked older — I had definitely "aged" my first year in college; for one thing, my hair was beginning to recede.

After an hour or so, walking around and around the block, I decided to take a chance and go inside. I had fake ID if I needed it (I'd changed the date on my draft card) but nobody ever asked. It was so dark it was hard to tell how old or young anybody was. I sat at the bar, and when my eyes finally adjusted to the darkness, I noticed, in the mirror behind the bar, a pair of eyes looking directly into mine!

I turned away, then looked back, and he was still staring straight at me, or, my reflection in the mirror.

I turned to look toward him, sitting on a stool down the bar, and he turned toward me, grinned and nodded. I nodded back.

He bought two bottles of beer, then came over to me. "Let's sit over here." He led me to a dark booth. We sat across from each other and his leg tentatively pressed against mine. "Hi! I'm Dave," he said. "I've seen you at school. I work in the Union cafeteria. I guess you haven't noticed me."

I studied his face; it was unlikely that I had noticed him before; I would have remembered. His deep-brown eyes were incredible. They seemed to be sparkling! His grin was contagious. He laughed as though he was truly having a good time, and I laughed with him! I was captivated! He was wooing me! And he was certainly succeeding in getting me excited!

Finally we left the bar and got into his car, which he drove out west of the city and parked.

The springtime air was crisp and brilliantly clear — you could see the twinkling lights of towns many miles away.The radio was playing, and Rosemary Clooney was singing "Come on a my house, a my-e house, I'm a gonna to give you ca-an-dy..."

He moved across the seat, but instead of grabbing my crotch, he took my face in his hands and kissed me! I had never been kissed like that by anyone, let alone another man, and the most incredibly sweet sensations started cascading through my body! I wrapped my arms around him and kissed him passionately, feeling I had waited all my life for this! He responded with equal excitement!

With the doors open, we jockeyed into a sixty-nine position, where we took each other all the way down, and came into each other at the same time, and then lay there tenderly holding each other for what seemed like hours as Doris Day sang "Once I had a secret love...."

All the way to Citrus Heights, driving the rental truck, all I could think of was Dave Smith. I was in love! There was no doubt about it. He was gentle and sweet, but not soft or effeminate, and was very good at sex! The best I'd ever had! He was bright, and pleasant, and most important, he had liked me enough to give me his name and phone number! I assumed that meant that he wanted to see me again! I convinced myself that he might even be feeling about me the same way I was about him!

I had never felt anything quite like the sensations and emotions we had seemed to be sharing last night, and I couldn't imagine his not feeling the same things!

As soon as we had unloaded the truck and trailer into the old farmhouse Dad had rented, I caught the train in nearby Roseville, and went back over the mountain and the desert to Salt Lake City, where I called the number Dave had given me. His mother answered and went to get him."Hi, this is Dave. Who's this?"

Just the sound of his voice made my heart jump and skip a beat. "Hi," I said, "It's Dick."

"Oh! Oh, right...yes...right. I remember." he paused uncomfortably. "I thought you were in California."

"Why? I mean, you were right there, almost to The City! I mean, why come back here?"

It was not the response I had wanted. Clearly he was not overjoyed to have me back! It even sounded like he might be wishing I had not come back at all.

"Well...I, uh, decided...to, uh...try to... you know, find a job," I stammered, trying to invent an excuse. "Remember, right at first, we talked about working this summer? You said you were a supervisor at Lagoon, and maybe could get me a job, remember? Well...I decided I needed the money more than I needed to see the ocean."

"Oh...." he said flatly. "Well...okay. I'm going to be out there hiring all week. Why don't you come on out. I'll try to make sure you get something, okay, but I can't guarantee what. Okay?"

"Okay. Well, listen, they're waiting supper for me, so I gotta go. Nice talking to you...Rick. See you."

I sat in the large empty waiting room of the train station and wondered if I ought to just heave myself under the next locomotive to come through! What an idiot! I had thrown away a vacation in San Francisco for nothing! I didn't want a summer job at Lagoon! I wanted a lover!

Something inside me seemed to harden. A door closed. I had made a fool of myself once again. Love, like Santa Claus and God, didn't exist! If you believed in any one of them, you opened yourself to pain. Obviously Dave hadn't felt any of the emotions I had experienced. He had no desire to do it again! He didn’t even remember my name! He’d called me “Rick.”

I finally decided that somehow I had made it through the deaths of Santa Claus and God, and somehow I would make it through this similar crisis. And, maybe, some day, somehow, there was a chance that Dave would change his mind if we worked together every day.

I bought a paper and found a small apartment for rent, close to the railroad station, where I would have to catch the "Bamburger Car" (an electric trolley that ran between Salt Lake and Ogden, passing Lagoon on the way) to work. The apartment was in the basement of a typical sturdy Mormon brick house like those lining the streets of most Utah cities and towns.

Lagoon was an amusement park, halfway between Ogden and Salt Lake City, which boasted an enormous swimming pool. Signs along the highways and all around the park proclaimed "Swim in water fit to drink!" They hired mostly college kids, for very low wages and small percentages of the "take." There were carnival rides and games, a dance pavilion and a fun-house were a woman's recorded voice laughed raucously, constantly, endlessly, over and over and over, from ten in the morning until ten o'clock at night. (There is a recording in my head of that loop of boistrous female laughter! I can hear it now! Alfred Hitchcock used it in one of his movies.)

My game-booth was right next to the fun-house, and right across the midway from the dance pavillion. I had charge of the "Greyhound Races"— eight metal "dogs" which "raced" up a track according to which player could bounce his ball through the hole fastest. Winners received tickets called "points" which they could eventually trade for ashtrays or kewpie dolls, or, for the really big spenders, a giant stuffed Panda or Teddy Bear, at the Prize Center.

Dave was my boss that summer — he was Supervisor of Games. — and he treated me like all of the other employees, as though we had never shared those incredible hours which had been for me some of the most exciting of my life! "I'm not really Gay," he told me. "I was just out for a little fun that night." Actually, he was engaged to a beautiful girl named Donna. He was perfectly friendly, and helpful, and encouraging, but he was like that for all his charges. Everybody liked working for Dave. I wanted to hate him, but I couldn't — he was too nice a guy! So I hated myself instead.

I felt more rejected than I ever had before! Apparently I had been born with some kind of flaw which made me unpalatable to most people. Everyone from my father to Dave Smith considered me less than important. I seriously considered suicide.

I also started hanging around the Beehive Lounge, hoping that lightening might strike twice. It didn't, but one night, after the bars had closed at two o’clock, I was drunk and horny, walking alone on an empty street, headed back to my basement room near the train station, after several frustrating hours at the bar. I noticed a car driving slowly past, turning at the corner ahead, then, in a few minutes, driving past again. There were five passengers in the car, and they all looked like teenage Mormon boys! They drove around the block three or four times, then finally pulled over to the curb and one of them leaned out the window and told me "We're looking for a Queer to suck our cocks."

With hardly a hesitation, I told them they had found what they were looking for, and they took me to the City Cemetery, where I sucked off each one of them, as they took turns lying on one of the graves. I fully expected to be at least beat up, if not killed, but something I did or said — or didn't do or say — changed their minds, and they even took me back to where they had picked me up! I wished, then, that they had killed me because I felt like the most contemptible whore on earth and wanted to die!

A few nights later, after everything in the park had closed except the dance pavilion, I was sitting at the train-stop, waiting for the next trolley into Salt Lake. It was after midnight, and most of the park's workers had gone home. Suddenly a huge dark shadow stepped out of the darkness and sat beside me."Why are you looking so fucking depressed?" It was Chris!

"Chris" Christensen worked "the Whip," an adult version of the Tilt-a-Whirl. It had huge levers and gearshifts that usually required a man to manipulate, but Chris was bigger than any of the men at Lagoon. She was about 6'6" and exercised with barbells. In the pool, she wore men's trunks and a woman’s brassiere.

I was terrified of her and tried to be polite but distant."Oh ... hi, Chris! It's okay. You wouldn't understand."

"Oh? Wouldn't I?" she asked. "You're Gay, aren't you? You know I am, don't you? What makes you think I wouldn't understand?"

"Yeah, right. Some people think I'm a hermaphrodite, but I'm not! I'm just a Lesbian! You know about Lesbians, don't you? What am I, your first Dyke?" She laughed and squeezed me so tightly it hurt! "Hell, you're still wet behind the ears! You need to learn a lot more stuff about the world before you kill yourself."

"You reminded me of me, a few years ago, when I first figured it all out. I used to sit right there where you are and look at the trolley car coming, figuring I could jump right in front of it, and they wouldn't be able stop in time to keep from running right over me. What a messy way to go! And you might just get mangled and not die, y'know? Have your arms or your legs cut off, or something else, and then where would you be?"

"It rides two. C'mon. You'll love it!" She practically dragged me into the parking lot. I was terrified the entire way into town! It was a "Harley Davidson, top of the line," with shiny black fenders and lots of chrome, but still, it had only two wheels, and I knew that a little tilt too far on either side could send it spinning! I sat scrunched on the hard little seat behind her, over the rear wheel, with the wind screaming past my ears, holding on for dear life! It was a thrilling experience, but not one I was eager to have again!

I could hardly move when we finally stopped — not in front of my apartment, but in front of a bar on State Street, one I'd heard about but had never had enough courage to go inside. The Crystal Lounge was where the hard-core homosexuals hung out — Salt Lake City's "dykes and faggots."

"Well, prepare for baptism by immersion! In we go!" She pulled the door open for me and ushered me into a new world.

The Crystal Lounge was physically similar to most of the other "lounges" downtown: a long narrow room with a high ceiling, booths along one side, a bar with stools on the other; behind the bar was a huge mirror with displays of stacked glasses, punch boards, and miscellaneous bar stuff. Lots of neon signs for different beers reflected in the mirror and glasses. It wasn't strictly a Gay bar — there was no such thing in Utah in the '50s — other regulars included several whores and a group of deaf-mutes, all of us outcasts who put up with each other for a safe haven, but it was the closest Salt Lake City could come to "the real thing."

That night there were three or four men sitting along the bar, and about a dozen others in small groups in the booths. The music was so loud, it was difficult to talk over it. The sound was punctuated from time to time with even louder squeals of laughter from one or another of the booths. It was a sound that I learned to associate with Gay bars everywhere in the country.

We sat in a booth near the front door and ordered beers. As I watched the often-extravagant action in the room, I told Chris, "I feel like this is the point of no return!"

"Oh, no," she laughed. "You passed that point a long time ago. You've been what you are all of your life. This is just...well... like turning on the lights to see where that is. Y'know? Wherever you are, you're still you, right? It's like click! 'Well, sonofabitch, I'm here!' And, let me tell you, Richard, it isn't nearly as bad as they say!"

Everyone seemed to know Chris, who seemed to know all the habitues of the Crystal, and I met most of them, over the summer. Almost all of the regulars were male, but there were several Lesbians who took an active part in Salt Lake City's Gay-life, such as it was. There were occasional parties, where most of the active Gays (20 or 30) were invited — drag parties more often then not, where the women would dress like men with penciled sideburns and moustaches, and the men would dress like whores and travesties of women. According to Chris, there was always a drag-party somewhere for Valentine's Day and Halloween and New Year's Eve.

Chris spent the rest of the summer shepherding me (she got annoyed if I suggested she was "mothering" me) into my new lifestyle. She helped me understand that it was not a bad thing to be Gay, it was just different. "True, it's illegal," she would say, "but that's because the rest of society are stupid idiots! In Utah, they're twice as bad because they're stupid Mormon idiots!" She hated Mormons with a passion I had not yet encountered, but would see again and again over the years as I met other Gays who had left — or been kicked out of — the church. She tried to help me stop hating myself by introducing me to others who didn't hate themselves. She obviously had no problem with what she was, and several of the others seemed quite content with being what they were. I resolved to try very hard to accept being who and what I was — except I hadn't quite decided what that really was, or might be.

I knew I was not a "nellie queen," even though almost everyone seemed to automatically assume that I would be — with proper care and training, if necessary. Acting like that just embarrassed me. I knew there was no doubt that I was sexually attracted to men, but I was repelled by the outrageous effeminacy that so many of the "Gay boys" seemed to consider their true nature. I had never felt like a woman trapped in a man's body, and I didn't want to have sex with someone who did. I had no desire to wear dresses. What I really wanted was another man. Someone like myself. Someone queer like me!

In the novel I was writing, instead of meeting the woman who would seduce and save him, the hero instead met a Lesbian who introduced him to the man of his dreams, and, after a brief boy-loses-boy twist in the plot, the two of them bought a little farm in Arizona where they raised championship horses and lived happily ever after!

At some point in my early college years, I took Abnormal Psychology. One of the texts was Donald Webster Cory’s The Homosexual in America. It was the most enlightening, insightful, up-to-date books I’d read about the subject and I mailed a copy to my mother, and asked her to read it and then give it to Dad after she had finished reading it. I told her in the letter with it that I was “Gay” and that this book would explain what that meant.

Several months later, when they were in Salt Lake, visiting Grandmother, I got Mom aside and asked what Dad had said after reading the book.“Oh, he didn’t read it. He said it was too much like school.”

And that is all my (presumed) father ever said about my lifestyle. "What fun is that?"

Many things he did or said let me know that he didn’t approve, either of me, or my way of life or the people I brought home to meet the folks, but nothing was ever said aloud. It was like when I told him I wanted to be an actor: All he said was “Ok. If that’s what you want.”

He wasn’t being broad-minded, or accepting, or fatherly, he just really didn’t give a damn.

In fact, now I think he secretly hoped I would make a mess of my life - as I seemed to be doing - and it amused him to watch me destroy myself. He probably taunted Mother with his assessment of me and my boyfriends. I was his weapon against her! And I didn't know it or even have a clue.

CHAPTER 7: SAN FRANCISCO,MOBILE and NEW YORK CITY!

Late in the summer of 1952, I sent a letter to my draft board, telling them that I was an active homosexual, and soon received a new draft card in the mail, featuring my new status: 4F. I promptly altered the card so it looked like I was old enough to drink beer. After Lagoon closed, Chris moved to Los Angeles to live with a "fem" she had met while visiting a friend there. I decided I was sick of Salt Lake City and Mormons and drag queens and dykes, so I took the bus to Roseville, where my parents met me and took me to see their new home, a neat little 2-bedroom frame house on 3 acres of farm land in Citrus Heights. They had built it themselves over the summer.

Mother's headaches had been getting worse. I tried to talk her into getting help, tried to convince her that seeing a psychiatrist did not mean you were "crazy" it simply meant you had a psychological problem which made you tense, which made your head ache! Finally she tentatively agreed and I asked her medical doctor for a referral, made the appointment, drove her to the office, where I asked to speak to the doctor first, before he interviewed her. I told him the history of her headaches, and then added that I was a homosexual, thinking that was something she probably wouldn't tell him, but that he ought to know.

He leaned back in his chair, appraising me, grinning smugly: "Well, that's what's causing the problem," he said, with absolute certainty. "If you'd just straighten up and fly right, your mother's headaches would go away!" He snapped his fingers. "Like that!"

She spent a few minutes in his office, then came out shaking her head. She smiled at me briefly. "No." she said, with definite finality. "No."

I was in something like a state of shock, and furious with the man — his attitude didn't reflect the "newer" ideas in the "modern psychology" field, which I had been studying in college, which held that homosexuality was a natural state, but that society's treatment of homosexuals often made them neurotic or psychotic. I believed that mother's headaches were, indeed, in part, a reaction to my being Gay, but had much more to do with her unending, undeclared war with my father. I dropped the matter. But I couldn't get his smug voice out of my mind: "Straighten up and fly right!" That was the name of a song by The Andrews Sisters, during the war, which I hated - the song and the war!

I decided to stay in the area for a while, and got a job at McClellan Air Force Base as a clerk-typist. I managed to locate the two Gay bars in Sacramento; one was The Topper, downtown Sacramento, and was very much like the one I had fled in Salt Lake City, where the "piss-elegant" crowd called each other "bitch," or "cunt" or "nellie faggot," and referred to themselves as "queens." The other place, called "Sully's Stop," was on the old highway 99, just outside the city limits, where the crowd was split about half-and-half Gays and Lesbians. The regulars were much quieter and less flamboyant, and I started hanging out there on Friday and Saturday nights.

One Saturday afternoon in November, 1952, I was playing 8-ball with my "pool buddy," a Lesbian named Pat, about my age, 19 or 20. We started talking, jokingly at first, about getting married and moving to San Francisco — not for sex, but for convenience. There was no doubt that single people who were suspected of being Gay were very much discriminated against, but even if a married couple acted Gay, they were not suspect. Marriage was obviously a ticket to acceptance, or at least, less intolerance.

We were both drunk, and got carried away with the idea. We bought a six-pack, then drove her car to Stateline, Nevada, two hours up the mountain from Sacramento, and got married by a Justice of the Peace with his wife, in her bathrobe, hair in curlers, as a witness. We drove back to Sacramento, to our separate homes, and made plans to move to San Francisco, where Gays weren't treated as badly as in Sacramento or Salt Lake City. There were dozens of Gay bars in The City — as well as bath houses and huge parks where Gay men cruised more or less openly.

I quit McClellan and moved, with Pat, into a two bedroom apartment on Haight street. Our first day there, Pat went out with long blonde hair and came back with a crewcut! Several days later, our landlady asked me, "Whatever happened to your wife? I see your little brother now and then, but I haven't seen your wife since you first moved in."

Actually, neither had I! The rather attractive and relatively feminine girl I had married had very quickly found a niche with a bunch of "Leather Dykes," most of whom rode very noisy motorcycles and dressed in black leather with skulls all over them. Pat said she was planning to trade her car for a "Bike." It all terrified me!

I said as much to a man I met in one of the bars. Bill Jenkins was probably in his early 30s. He was from Florida, and seemed very wise, and very nice, and very interested in me! He suggested that I get out of the marriage as quickly as possible, before the Leather Dykes decided to torture or kill me just for fun - maybe as Pat's Satanic Sacrifice so she could join the club!

I agreed that I had made a terribly stupid mistake, and he offered to help me extricate myself from the situation.

The next day, he helped me buy a car! That is, he made the down-payment; I would have to make the future payments. He said he was in love with me and wanted to give me something special! It was a Morris Minor, England's answer to the Volkswagen. We drove it to Reno where he helped me get the marriage annulled.

There was a "condition" to the gift of the car: that I go with him to Florida, and do most of the driving; he hated to drive, he said. He said he had a back-condition that would cause excruciating pain, sitting in that position for very long. There was also an unspoken condition, that of playing his strange sexual game, which was for me to let him seduce me, whenever he felt like it, then to verbally abuse him while he sucked me off and masturbated himself. He did not want to be touched, or kissed, and especially not fucked! He wanted nothing to do with what he called "romance." He wanted to be called nasty, dirty names and commanded to do lewd and indecent things to me.

He gave me more attention and sex in our cross-country trip than I'd ever had, or even imagined. In return, I asked no questions when he would tell me to wait in the car while he went into Antique stores in each city and town we passed through. In each store, he would buy a trinket or two — a silver salt and pepper set, a Dresden figurine (he was incredibly knowledgeable about Antiques) — which he would then sell in the following town!

In this way, he told me, he kept us in cash ("just a game to prove I can do it") from San Francisco to Mobile, Alabama — where we were arrested, with sirens wailing and red lights flashing, in the parking lot of our hotel! We were taken in separate Police cars to the Mobile County Jail, where, without any process at all, due or otherwise, I was shoved into a jail cell populated by seven other "criminals," and then ignored.

I had no idea what was wrong! I was not allowed to talk to Bill Jenkins, and, in fact, never saw him again. I could only assume that we had been arrested for being homosexuals. I had heard that they really hated queers in the South, and could send me to a prison where some guy with tattoos would beat me to death if anyone found out my terrible secret!

I discovered something during my stay in that jail: none of the "crooks" in my cell, or those adjoining, were anything like the images I had seen, or read about — and accepted as true — in books and the movies. These men ranged in age from 19 (me) to 50, "Doc," and were like "regular" guys, but down on their luck. Maybe less-educated, but nice guys. Nobody was evil or mean. They were all awaiting arraignment or trial for misdemeanors, mostly robbery.

"Doc," the oldest of the group, a good-looking man with silver-grey hair and a beard, had been a college professor, fired for some infraction, and had become a "hobo," moving across the country with the seasons, working as a farm-hand. He was a brilliant man who knew all sorts of information, but he hated the cops with a passion, and had an endless war going with them. He had been arrested this time for stealing some fruit from a market. It was there, in jail, that I first learned that the police were not necessarily the good guys! Or vice versa.

Through some inter-jail connection, Doc could buy cigarettes and candy. Several times he bought several 3-Muskateers bars and made hot chocolate for all of us. He broke the chocolate bars into small pieces, which he then mixed with water and heated over a toilet-paper roll stuffed with toilet paper burned in the sink. We each had a small cup of hot chocolate, courtesy Doc, the Hardened Criminal.

The FBI, on the other hand, were perfect gentlemen! It was like they were the "good guys" to the cop's "bad guys." They questioned me twice, briefly, on the seventh and tenth days, and finally explained to me what had been going on: Bill Jenkins, aka Bud Brewster, aka Felix Cattell, and probably many other aliases up and down the coasts and across the country, was wanted in Florida on several outstanding warrants for everything from robbery to fraud - for spending an old woman's fortune while he posed as her male nurse and kept her drugged out of her senses until she finally died and he left the state!

One of the agents took a checkbook from a manila envelope and showed it to me. It was an old one of mine, on a Salt Lake City bank, that I had closed years ago! "This checkbook was in Mr. Jenkins' pocket when they arrested him. He finally told us that he found it in your apartment in San Francisco, and used the first check to make the down payment on the car he supposedly 'gave' you. He gave other checks to antique store owners, all across the country, while he was posing as Richard Fullmer, an antique dealer from Salt Lake City."

He would go into an antique store and buy a couple of expensive items, usually totaling a thousand dollars or more. He would give them one of my checks and tell them "As soon as the check clears, send the item to my Antique Store in Salt Lake." Then, on the way out, he would pick up some small item, for twenty or thirty or fifty dollars, and say "I love this! How much more do I owe you for it? I'll write another check. "

Almost always the response was "Oh, please, just take it! I won't charge you any more." Even if he had to give them a new check, he still got the trinkets for nothing. Bill would thank them profusely, put the small item in his pocket — and sell it for cash in the next antique store along the way. Then he would repeat the process in the next town. He knew that the checks would bounce, but nothing had been lost by the Antique Store Owner except a couple of trinkets. No need to report an embarrassing scam.

The owner of a store in Mobile had recognized a set of Dresden China, which Bill had tried to sell to her, as having belonged to a friend of hers who owned a store in Baton Rouge. When she called to ask about it, her friend said the china had been purchased with a bad check — one of mine. The police had been called and were waiting for us at the hotel when we returned from a day of sightseeing.

Finally the FBI agent said "Did you know your friend was a practicing homosexual?" He spat out the words as though they had been "insane murderer."

I tried to look as shocked and outraged as I could without overacting. "No!” I lied! “He never said a thing! He never touched me!"

His expression clearly told me he knew I was lying. "Well," he said, "he would have! He would have filled your veins with Heroin and done whatever he wanted with you! He's done it before, and you can bet he was planning to do it again! You're lucky we stopped him in time!"

On the 18th day I was taken to the same little room, where a police detective tossed a manila envelope onto the table between us. "Make sure everything's there, then sign that paper." The envelope contained my wallet keys, and about $15 cash."Consider yourself lucky," he growled, "and get the fuck out of Mobile. And don't come back! We don't like your kind around here."

My Morris Minor had been repossessed and returned to San Francisco. I called my parents from the lobby of the jail, and they sent enough money by Western Union for me to take the Greyhound bus back across the country to Roseville.

They met me at the bus station with bad news of their own: Dad had leased a service station near their new house, but in the year of the lease he had used up most of the money he had saved over the years. He had written to Utah Power and Light about his predicament, and had been offered the job of building and grounds maintenance helper at a substation west of Salt Lake City, where the job included a 2 bedroom house on the substation grounds. He had accepted the job.

They had already found a renter for their new house in Citrus Heights, so I helped them pack up and move back to Salt Lake City, Utah.

I decided I didn't want to go back to college, but to try finding some kind of work in the Theatre, in New York City. I packed a suitcase and had a friend drive me to the edge of Salt Lake, where I started hitch-hiking across the country, spending each night and sharing motel rooms with the men who picked me up, surprised at the number of married men and fathers who gladly accepted a blow job or two in payment for the ride and bed. I didn't spend a penny for lodging the entire trip!

The idea of being in New York City was incredibly exciting, but the actual experience of the city was overwhelming. I had never seen so many people, packed so closely together, except in movies and newsreels. It was claustrophobic! I found a job almost immediately with a theatrical press agency, but I discovered I couldn't concentrate. It was as though some kind of sputtering electricity was churning around in my brain, confusing and diverting me. Even though I got free passes to any of the shows we were promoting — Porgy and Bess, The King and I, Picnic — I couldn't relax and appreciate the shows; it was like trying to enjoy sitting on an ant hill!

With one notable exception, all of my sexual adventures in New York were unmemorable. I had discovered a Gay bar fairly close to where I had rented a tiny room in a huge brick apartment house. The Blue Parrot seemed to attract at least some of the kinds of men I found interesting. One such cruised me, one night, and took me home with him. He was shorter than I, very sexy in Levi's and t-shirt, well-built and, as it turned out, well-hung, and an excellent cocksucker! The only thing unusual about him seemed to be that he shaved his body and he needed a shave!

When it was over, we were smoking, lounging naked in his living room, talking about me and Mormons and Utah. I remarked that in Salt Lake City, I couldn't find the kind of "butch" Gays that excited me. "They're all screaming drag queens," I said.

"Don't get me wrong,” I said flippantly. "I mean, they've got as much right to scream and wear drag as anybody. I just don't want to go to bed with them!"

"Just a moment." He went to a desk and took out a manila folder, from which he extracted an 8 x 10 glossy of Marilyn Monroe — or so it seemed. He grinned at me, then took a pen and signed the photo: "Wishing a Speedy Recovery! Love and Kisses, Ricki Renee." "I don't get it," I said."That's me," he told me. "I'm Ricki Renee. I'm headlining the drag show at the Parrot. You should come see it sometime." That was why he shaved his body!

I apologized, profoundly embarrassed, and left as quickly as possible. I never returned to the bar. But I still have that autographed picture!

I left New York after only six weeks, without having auditioned for anything, and took the Greyhounbd bus back to Salt Lake City, where I moved back in with my parents at the power company substation, and returned to college.

During the last year of college, I wrote a brief memoir of my visit to NYC. Several years later it was published in ONE Magazine.("A mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one." Carlyle.) It was my first Gay publication, April, 1961:

On certain evenings you remember. When the sky glows with that haunting yellow—long after the sun has gone down; when sounds are muted and seem far away. You need not even close your eyes--it is there as tangible as it ever was. It never did seem real.

There is a vast coolness along the sidewalk beside the short, colorless cement wall which runs dipping and rising in easy solid waves along Central Park. As far as you can see along the sidewalk there are concrete benches and old men, and dogs and baby carriages, and tight indecent Levi's, and icecream pushcarts, and tight indecent dresses, and tipped-over icecream cones that stand in sticky, shiny puddles on a sidewalk that won't cool down till after midnight.

You can smell the cool wetness from the little lake, hidden by a thick screen of dark trees and bushes. And there are children in the graveled playground, screaming higher and higher in the swings and gurgling into the water fountains.You hear them playing in the shadows, kids yelling "Run my sheepie. run! Red, green. orange . . ." and you think of children times and think, dear God! they're playing the pretend is real; too soon they'll discover they are at it backwards!

You stand by the wall like you do almost every night. You've learned how it is here—like the game the kids are playing—a game for grown-ups, or those pretending they are grown-ups. It's the same in every city. The rules vary because the playing fields are different.

A man and his wife (you guess) walk by, and the woman has a little dog. You can see how much she loves that little dog.The guy is talking with his hands, like in those comic movies. “‘But what’s it got to do with me?' I say. He says. 'It has a great deal to do with you.' A great deal, my ass! You know? And he blows that rotten cigar smoke in my face and I want like hell to tell him where to shove it. but I don't. I say `Okay, sir, okay.' Just like a goddamn parrot. For ten years I say 'Okay, okay, okay', just like some parrot. And God! I hate myself! You know? Ten years!"

The woman doesn't look at him. She says "Honey . . . let's just walk, huh? I mean, it's hot!"

"Honey," she says - and you can tell she means another word, "Every night! You know? I mean, it's old. It gets old, honey!" She gathers up that little dog and loves it.They pass. Other couples follow them: the conversation is the same: each pair a different chapter.

You walk along and look and wait. Finally you go through the gate and down the path toward the rocks that stand like battleships beside the little lake, where there are kids and toy boats. You see the guy sitting on the bench: you see his eyes. You stop to light a cigarette, and look again, and you know for sure. You walk slowly to the water, hearing the kids laughing; you watch them, trying to keep from remembering. And then this little dark-haired kid comes up, with his big brown eyes wet with a sadness that rips you up inside."Mister, will you get my boat?"

But you can't reach it, and the kid just stands there looking at you. You feel like a balloon deflating.

"Here," a voice says, and the guy from the bench hands you a long stick. You meet his eves.You give the kid his boat and he forgets he ever spoke to you.

The black pavement almost steams beside the park. As far as you can see there are cars, bunching along the streets. from one light to another, to another. to another. But when you cross the street at the intersection, walking toward the leaning mass of brownstones, the pavement parts into iron grillework and stairs where people gallop underground to where the tile is a dull ivory and there are hundreds of penny machines which spill little brown peanuts and juicy-fruit wrappers across the blackened platforms, and there are crayon and pencil and even lipstick dirty words encased in tile squares, and advertisements made lewd by amateurs, and cave-man pornographs, framed in tile like artwork. And people stand impatiently until the cold blasts of air announce the train from the dark tunnel, and the clatter sounds rush out, and then the light. and then the sliding, sighing doors, and then the herd.

You sit there reading the laxative advertisement and wonder how they had the guts to print it. You say "You know. I like the subway. I hate taxis. I hate the smart-ass drivers. I hate the buses too. But I like the subway. I don't know why."

He says, "I'm going to buy a car. Sometimes you need a car. I like to drive. Do you like movies?"

"I know. Do you like martinis? I've got some vermouth if you like martinis. We can buy some gin."

When you come up from the subway, the sky, above the buildings, is like a mirror by a shower. Way high there is the dusky orange circle of a moon, and electric oval echoes of it all along the street. There are iron grilleworks and thick steps and dirty windows, and yellowed curtains that hang unmoving in the open windows, and you hear a man say "Honey... " and then a woman saying "Not now for Christ's sake, Charlie!" And there are radios, and gunshots and music, and loud voices. And you can smell the onions and the cabbage and the ground beef that old man Jergens had on special—three pounds for eighty-five. There are girls sitting on the steps, and men in undershirts, and children almost naked, and big fat women fanning themselves with confession magazines, and four black men standing by a car and laughing with that dark laughter.

There are heavy steps that go up five times to a penciled sign that says NO PEDDLERS, and beneath those steps, four shadowed ones go down and under."I can never find the key," you say because your hands are shaking. He says "Am I in your light?"And you say, "No." because he is. "No....there!"

You leave the windows open and you pull the shades and turn the dim lamp in the corner on. And then you look to see if he is watching you; he is. You feel you want to say "Hello" because it wasn't said before. Instead you say "Well, how about that drink!" As though either of you wanted it—but that's the way the game is played. The rules. And he says "Yes" on cue.

You drink and wait and feel the warm sadness of it.You want to say "Please—what's your name? Who are you really? I wish—Oh God! I wish I'd met you twenty years ago! I wish we'd grown up together, and gone to school, and learned each other then with long, long evenings talking." And you want to say "Do you suppose that child with the boat was a real child with a real boat—or was he some guiding angel, some Fate directing traffic?" But instead you say "It sure is hot!"

He looks at you above his martini glass and you know he's thinking more than what he says. He says "Yes, it sure is."

But there is no time for talking now. Not now. Now there are no words. Inside your brain are only feelings now, warm, tight, rushing, pleading, crying feelings. Somewhere are warm rains and warm rain clouds and a river starting with a single raindrop slipping down from leaf to leaf, and more, until a little brook is flowing through high trees and soft grass and across smooth stones and warm, and then there is a roaring sound, a throbbing sound, until the river fills the world, the universe, the endless void of time, warm rushing into blackness. Please, God! Stop now! Please. And there's a falling. Life drains and now you know what dying is. Night by night we die.

The empty glasses sit there in dried rings on the cigarette-scarred table, and the radio is playing, and suddenly you laugh. He says "What?" But how can you explain? How can you tell him you had to laugh because it wasn't funny? How do you explain a hurt too pure, too deep, and that you have to laugh to keep yourself from saying something else.

You're sitting on the green frieze sofa with its shredding cushions and the holes and stains: but now you've known each other all your lives; you sit apart now, like old friends: like old friends leaving: like students graduating; like strangers.

Just past the open window there are children shadows telling dirty jokes. Three boy shadows and a tomboy girl one. You can see his eyes are closed, as though he doesn't want to look at you. And from the radio a woman's voice is bedroom whispering about Firm-Form Brassieres and pantie-girdles. It sounds as though....

Two men are passing on the sidewalk. One says "What if she don't like me?" And the other says "She'll like what you got. She likes it. You take my word. You'll enjoy her. You really will. Believe me." An old truck rattles by—the grocery truck from old man Jergens' place around the corner, squeaking like it always does. He stands up. "Well, I've got to go. It's late."

"Sometimes," he says. "I came to see my sister. She wasn't home. Look, I'll see you, huh? Thanks for the martini."

Another day, and again another, and the bumping people gallop up the subway stairs onto the sidewalks, and you pass up out from the cool tiled undergound into another evening. All along the sidewalk by the park are concrete benches and dogs and old men and baby carriages and ice cream pushcarts and tight indecent Levi's and tight indecent dresses. And past the subway entrance the stone is painted grey and reaches up from the sidewalk to the first dirty window ledge, then edges out into a narrow shelf which runs unceasingly at the same useless height as far as you can see. The paint is thick and lumpy and the grey color has a liquid shine.You watch the traffic light and then hurry toward the wall; you try to slow yourself, looking casual, as you go through the gate and almost run along the path beside the rocks that look like battleships. The kids are still there, playing with their little boats. The bench is empty.

Now, on certain evenings you remember, when the sky glows with that haunting yellow—when sounds are muted and seem far away. You need not even close your eyes....

Chris had introduced us during one of our forays into the Crystal Lounge, last summer, but I had quickly decided that I didn't really want to get to know "The Queen-Mother of Salt Lake City!"

Adriel Kurtz was young and thin and as tall as Chris, with jet-black hair — which, on the night we met, was streaked with glittering silver. His eyelids were painted a deep lavender, which also glittered. He wore chartreuse bell-bottoms and a brightly-multicolored Calypso shirt, high-heeled cowboy boots, and a lavender kerchief tied around his long dark neck. After Chris's introduction, he curtsied with an incredible flourish. "Enchanté, m'petit'chou! And welcome to our humble Sanctum Sanctorum. Won't you join us, s'il vous plait?"

He gestured toward the corner booth, where several other familiar faces smiled at us.

I excused myself to get beers for Chris and me, but I heard his remark as I turned away: "Masculine Protest on the hoof, my dear!"

"You shouldn't, my darling! Just testing! Sit, sit, sit, I have a divine joke to tell you." He waited until I returned with the beers and slid into the booth next to Chris.

"Well...it seems there were these two queens, and one of them insisted that Jesus was gay, and the other one was equally adamant that he wasn't. So the first one says 'Well, what about that drag he always wore?' and the other one says 'You nellie twit, all the men wore drag in those days!'

“‘My dear, all the men had their hair long and Marcelled in those days!’

"'Okay,' says the first one, 'But what about all those men who kept following him?'

"'You really are exasperating, you silly goose! Those were his Followers. That's what Followers do, Precious, they follow!’”

"'Oh, all right!’ says the first. 'I'll give you the drag, and I'll give you the long, wavy hair, and I'll even give you his followers -- all in drag themselves, I might add -- but please tell me this: Who...who but a queen...would get out of a boat...in the middle of a lake...in the middle of a storm... and say ‘I'll walk!’?"

My first reaction was to cringe, expecting lightening through the ceiling! I laughed loudly with the others, apprehensively, and a new image entered my mind: of Jesus in a brilliant white gown, a neon halo above his head slightly tilted, flouncing gaily across the waves on the Sea of Galilee, with all of the disciples on the boat applauding and cheering!

I soon learned that "Kurt" Kurtz was a legend in Salt Lake City. Everyone seemed to know him, and to my surprise, everyone seemed to like him. But if I saw him walking down the street, I would cross to the other side. And he seemed equally eager to avoid me.

In the fall quarter of my second year of college, I began taking ballet as an elective in my Theatre Arts major. To my surprise, I was fairly good at it, and in fact, the ballet teacher told me I could be a very good dancer — if I wanted to devote my life to it. I thanked him, very flattered, but told him it was not something I really wanted to devote my life to.

One of my fellow danseurs, Kip Walden, also Gay, was studying "Modern Dance" with a group in Provo (about 30 miles southeast of Salt Lake), and asked me to go with him to watch a recital they were doing at a local high school. I was very intrigued by Modern Dance, having recently seen a touring company of Oklahoma! so I gladly agreed to tag along. I had become a Martha Graham fan.

I was amazed when one of the dancers turned out to be Adriel Kurtz, who turned out to be very talented! He did a five-minute solo, dressed as a cowboy, to music from Aaron Copeland's Rodeo, and was spellbinding! The small audience gave him a standing ovation!

According to the program, Adriel "Kurt" Kurtz was one-quarter Navajo. He looked like one of the caballeros painted by "Quaintance,” an artist I had recently discovered, whose incredibly sexy paintings were published in several of the Gay-oriented muscle magazines, sold at the cigar store, next to the Crystal Lounge. Quaintance painted Mexican and Native American men with perfect muscles and bulging crotches! In his skin-tight Levi’s, Adriel Kurtz also displayed beautiful muscles and a very large bulge! I found myself more and more fascinated as I watched him, both during the dance and afterward.

In the dressing room, removing his makeup, Kurt studied me in the mirror, then asked "Dickie, right? Dickie something ....?"

“Dick,” I correcting him. "Fullmer." I was annoyed by the diminuative nickname, but impressed that he remembered at all.

"Kipper tells me you are learning terpsichore. Bravo! The world needs all the butch dancers it can get."

"My dear," he said, "you are so butch, you squeak like leather when you walk! But que sera sera, as they say. It takes all kinds."

"Don't be outre, Kipper! When in Provo, do as Provonians do: Pretend not to notice." He smiled wickedly.

I decided I liked Kurt after all. One thing that kept surprising me, each time it happened was the basic decency of most of the Gay people I was meeting; I had expected depraved sociopaths but kept finding sweet, gentle people! Chris was the most "realistic, down-to-earth" women I had ever met. Underneath that screaming-queen persona, Kurt was a very bright, talented and decent human being — with a wonderful sense of humor. It was fun going places, doing things with him.

At first, everybody thought we were having an affair! We weren't, although I would not have resisted had Kurt given any indication he wanted sex with me, but he didn't. We were becoming "just friends."

It turned out that we had many interests in common: We both liked science fiction, foreign films, especially British comedies, Pogo Possum, Hollywood Musicals, Sebeilus, and fellatio. Kurt's motto, as he told me many times, was: "Why stick something up your ass that's good enough to eat?" He worked as a civilian computer programmer at Hill Air Force Base, between Ogden and Salt Lake City — not far from Lagoon. It took a few months, but we grew to like one another enough to make plans to go on vacation together to Los Angeles, as soon as spring quarter was over.

One of the first things we did, of course, was visit Disneyland, then Tijuana, where I saw my very first item of pornography. We had decided to see if we could find any and Kurt would ask anyone who would stand still, "Where buy durty peechurs?" It's a wonder we werent mugged, but sure enough, a little man in the dark men's room of a stinking bar sold us 3 "durty peechurs," for like $5 each. They were Kodak snapshots of a man and a woman fucking. One had the man's face up close to the camera and the woman's pussy open and wet. The expression on the man's face said clearly "I do not like to do this!" Kurt wrote underneath that photo: "All It Needs Is Holly Sugar!"

The original idea had been to get me back in time to return to Lagoon for another summer, but we ended up falling in love with Los Angeles and moved there as soon as Kurt could get out of his job.

Before the end of summer, we were living in a nicely-furnished apartment on Bundy Drive in West Los Angeles. He got a job fairly quickly with a large Life Insurance company, once again in the computer department, and I found work in the payroll-processing department of Douglas Aircraft. I ran the tabulators and monitored the check-printers.

Away from Salt Lake City, Kurt started wearing tight jeans and cowboy shirts, willingly trading on his resemblance to the Quaintance paintings — which we discovered had become gay icons. He was as good at acting "butch" as he was at acting "nellie." He was a Performer! The Kurt that I knew was a sweet, very smart, good, gentle man.

A new phenomenon was just beginning in the big cities across America — Levi/Leather bars. We found ourselves fitting in places such as The Club, a Gay-Motorcycle club hangout, on Melrose, like fingers in a glove!

At last I began to meet the kinds of homosexuals I could respond to. Sometimes there were sheep in wolves clothing, but mostly I met men who didn't see themselves as immitation women. I began to hope that I might meet "Mr. Right," and perhaps move into a lifelong alliance with someone I could respect and love!

Meanwhile I "auditioned" as many as I could, and finally began to lose that awful sense of guilt from one-night-stands — as well as other sexual adventures!

I had heard about orgies, but had never expected to be invited to one. A gay couple Kurt had met gave "gang-bangs" in the "attic" of their home in Hollywood, and we were invited one Sunday afternoon. Wally and Harvey were both involved in movie-making; one worked in costumes, the other in makeup, but I never found out which was which.

It was for this occasion I learned a new (to me) Gay principle: if you might get fucked, be clean, take an enema. We both did.

In the olden days, they called it "browning." Someone actually said to me, one drunken night, "hey, let's go pack a little shit!" I had caught clap & immitation-clap (Non-Specific-Urethritis) NSU, every time I fucked someone. My doctor had told me to wear condoms but I simply lost my hardon if somebody wanted me to fuck them. & I never learned to enjoy being fucked. It always hurt more than I wanted it to.

After a beer on the patio, waiting for everyone to arrive, more than a dozen of us undressed in one of the bedrooms, then followed the hosts up a pull-down staircase into a black-carpeted attic, strewn with pillows, towels and cans of Crisco. I had never seen that many goodlooking men naked! There were black packing-quilts covering all of the ceiling rafters, and over the windows. It reminded me of Anne Frank's hideout, blacked-out for air-raids. As soon as the door was closed, it became completely dark. I heard movings and rustlings and then groans and moans, I was tingling all over with excitement! I took a deep breath and felt along the floor until my hand touched a hairy leg, which my fingers followed upward until I was holding a very large, warm, soft cock.

I jerked my hand away and whispered "Sorry!" I tried to keep from laughing, and instead made a strange choking-gurgle!

Kurt snorted. Someone else giggled. In a few moments, the entire room was filled with raucous laughter. There were other strange sounds of disengagement, choking and sputtering!

It took several minutes for the merriment to subside and for everyone to get back to business. Then Kurt chuckled.

A hand grasped my shoulder and one of our hosts whispered "You guys had better go. You're spoiling the party."

Of course, everybody started laughing hysterically. Wally, the sterner of the hosts, herded us downstairs to the bedroom, where we quickly dressed. He saw us to the front door, naked. “See you later...” he whispered, leaning out from behind the door, adding:“Mother!” in a loud whisper. He was laughing as he closed the door.

It was the last such gathering we were invited to, at least together, and that was the closest I ever got to having sex with Kurt. I've often thought about it and wished he hadn't stopped me. He might have enjoyed what I would have done, and that could have opened the door to a deeper relationship — but, it never happened, and I have to suppose it was just as well.

Kurt and I lived together, off and on, for a total of 5 years. We kept in touch, via letters and phone calls until the fall of 1969, when he sent me a note, saying briefly that he had been arrested in a raid on the steam bath in Glendale, which resulted in his being fired from his job with the insurance company where he had worked for 15 years. He added that he had decided to return to Utah, repent his sins, and pray that God would forgive him and allow him to get married to a nice Mormon girl and have children!

Reading the letter, I remembered an afternoon we had spent together, shortly after the breakup of one of his several romances. "Being Gay," he proclaimed dourly, "is like wading through shit to pick strawberries."

After a moment I took his hand and squeezed it. "You could say the same thing about Life," I said.

He sighed, smiling sadly, then hugged me. "Touchez, mon petit chou!" he said. "Tou-fucking-chez!"

The last I heard, Kurt was living in a little Mormon town near the Utah-Idaho border, married to “a nice Mormon girl,” a widow who had 2 or 3 children from that marriage. All girls.

I think about him often and wonder what his life is like. I was in love with Kurt. He even called me "My little love." but he would never allow it to blossom.

In January of 1954, while living with Kurt in West L.A., I discovered The Little Theatre, a theatre-in-the-round, built in an old Pigly-Wigly market in Long Beach.

I had seen an ad in the Hollywood Reporter for non-professional actors to audition for The Time of Your Life, by William Saroyan. In college, I had played Nick, the bartender, and had received a "Best Student Actor" award for it. Unfortunately, I was only 20, and there were at least a dozen older actors who looked the part far more than I. So, I offered to work on the crew if they needed me.

What they needed was a Stage Manager, who would also understudy the men's roles. I was excited by the possibilities and accepted the job on the spot. It paid nothing and took up most of my spare time, but it gave me a chance to "practice and perfect my art!"

The Time of Your Life ran for 12 weekends, followed by The Glass Menagerie, then The Moon Is Blue. There continued to be no acting roles for me, so I continued to stage manage. I discovered that I really enjoyed the work — it was almost like directing, and I had decided I wanted to be a director. The resident director, Pamela Meyers, was impressed with my work and dedication, and made an obvious effort to include me in her directorial insights. She would ask "Which looks best, if he goes over here or over there? Dick, what do you think ...?"

Several times she invited me to her home for consultation and coffee, usually to talk about a new set, or new cues, or plays for possible production. One night I was invited to dinner with the family — her husband Martin and their two boys, Matthew and Samuel.

Martin was one of the theater's producers, and told me they were considering making the Stage Manager a paying job. He asked if I would be interested, and I said I definitely would be. Even at Equity-minimum salary, it was a giant step up from running sorters and tabulators for Douglas Aircraft.

It took several weeks to make it official. I gave notice at Douglas and submitted the application to Equity.

We celebrated with a special dinner at the Meyers' home, and after the boys had gone to bed, we were toasting my new job with champagne.

"There's one thing I've got to tell you," I said. "I've meant to say something before, but...the chance never came. Before we go any farther, I want you to know that I'm Gay."

Martin yelled "You're what?" He stood up and stepped away from me as though I had threatened him. "Get out of my house!" he yelled, gesturing dramatically. "Now! Right now! And don't come back. Ever! Get out!"

I glanced at Pam on my way to the door. There was a look of pure terror on her face, and I knew I should hurry away and not look back! He slammed the door behind me as I ran down the sidewalk, and it sounded like a shot! When I got to my car, I carefully inspected myself to make sure a bullet hadn't punctured me someplace. I was so frightened I could hardly drive away; my hands were shaking and my foot wanted to shove down the accelerator all the way through the floorboard! I knew I had come very close to being hurt, possibly seriously. Pam had obviously been afraid of that. It had probably happened before.

I was in a state of shock for days. Martin's reaction had been the last thing in the world I'd expected. From many remarks Pam had made, I was sure she would be understanding and accepting, and I had expected her husband to be the same. To be yelled at and ordered out and told "Never come back!" was incredibly humiliating. Things had been going so well! All my wonderful plans were suddenly meaningless. Once again it seemed my life was hopeless! Meanwhile, Kurt had invited a new lover, Mark, to move in with us, and the apartment suddenly seemed very crowded. I decided to go back to college and finish my degree.

I intended to make the trip back to Salt Lake as quickly as possible; I had done it before, several times, using Dexedrine to keep me awake — but I didn’t have any of that stimulant. Kurt didn’t have any, either. I had become “buddies” with the other of the Little Theatre’s two producers, Dr. Henry Seymour, who had given me the little green pills to keep me going in rehearsals several times. So I called him, told him what I needed and asked if I could have a couple of his “samples.” He agreed and I went to his office to get them. The little foil containers had a name other than “Dexedrine,” but I didn’t protest, thinking that he had given me a similar drug with a different name.

Before I left, I called my assistant, Maggie Bartholomew, to give her an excuse for my sudden departure. I didn't think Pam, or even Martin, would talk about this, but I didn't want it to seem I had irresponsibly disappeared. I told Maggie that I'd had an urgent call from my mother, saying that my father had suffered a heart attack and wanted me to come home.

Maggie had been a wonderful friend, during the time I had been at the theatre. She ran the sound and lights while I ran the show; we worked well together. She obviously liked me and had hinted several times that we might get together away from the theater. I promised I would call her as soon as I got to Salt Lake City.

I left Los Angeles in the afternoon, pulling a small trailer filled with furniture and stuff I had acquired over the last year, and made it to Las Vegas around seven in the evening. I stopped for coffee, had them fill up my thermos, and took one of the little white pills from the half-dozen foil containers Henry had given me. In another two hours I had crossed the state line into Utah and around midnight I stopped again for coffee in Cedar City. For some reason, the pill wasn’t working the way I’d been expecting and I felt very lethargic — not really sleepy, but strangely apathetic, as though I really didn’t care how long it would take to get home. I took another pill and started out again, this time into the cold, snow-covered desert of southern Utah. By about 3 o’clock, I was so groggy and dopey, I stopped at a turnout area and drank all the coffee that was left in the thermos and took another pill.

Sometime around five I suddenly opened my eyes and realized I had fallen asleep and the car was bouncing off the road, going 60 or 70 miles per hour, headed down into a ravine, with huge boulders brilliantly illuminated by my headlights at the bottom. Without even thinking, I twisted the steering wheel sharply back toward the road, and somehow the momentum lifted the car and trailer up and around and slammed them down in the middle of the two-lane highway, pointing sideways, blocking both lanes! There was no room to back up or move forward as the ground dropped off into the gully on both sides of the pavement.

I could see headlights approaching from the east, and could vaguely make out the outlines of a big truck, its clearance lights twinkling in the pre-dawn light.

I calmly got out of my car and started walking toward the oncoming truck, in the middle of the highway, waving my arms over my head as the truck roared closer and closer. Suddenly the driver saw me and put on his brakes; they squealed in frenzied protest in the freezing air; there was a loud groaning, as though the truck itself was complaining at the insane attempt to stop.

The semi, pulling a huge trailer, stopped within a few feet of my car, and the driver got out looking like he was ready to kill me for causing such a dangerous mess. He calmed down when he saw the predicament I was in, and finally backed his truck up, attached a chain between my front bumper and his, and pulled me around until I was facing east on the road again.

I thanked him sleepily, and watched him drive away and eventually disappear over the horizon to the west. I got back in my car and drove to a little town called Nephi, about 40 miles outside of Provo, where I stopped at an all-night cafe and ordered coffee, practically fell asleep over the steaming cup, and finally used their pay-phone to call my parents.

Two hours later, early in the morning, they found me asleep in my car, almost frozen, completely unconcerned with my plight. Mother drove my car home, followed by my father in their car. I slept all the way. Once in bed, I slept another 12 hours, got up for a few minutes, then went back to bed for another 8.

When I was finally alert enough to think about what had happened, I called my parent’s doctor’s office and asked about the drug-samples I had taken. I was told they were a new tranquilizer, just on the market. I was shocked at the implication that apparently, someone had tried to kill me! There was no way in the world that Dr. Seymour could have misunderstood when I asked for something to keep me awake because I was taking a long trip and would be driving. I could only conclude that he had deliberately given me the tranquilizers, hoping that I would fall asleep, just as I had, but that my car would end up crushed at the bottom of some rocky ravine, and I’d never wake up again. Which almost happened.

I imagined that the two producers had discussed my confession of being Gay, that Martin had wished me dead, and that Henry had decided to grant his wish for him!

When I remembered to call Maggie, she told me she had been worried sick about me and was very relieved to know I'd arrived safely. I didn’t tell her about the pills, only that I’d been very tired by the long drive and had slept until shortly before calling her. Just before the end of the conversation I impulsively added: "Hey, how would you like to get married and come live in Salt Lake City for a year while I'm finishing school?" I was sure she would laugh and say “Thanks but no thanks.”

"I think I’d like that,” she said after a brief silence. "Are you asking me to marry you?"

I was amazed by her response, and before I could stop myself, I said "Sure," and she laughed and said "Okay! When?"

"Soon," I said, thinking that if she quit the show before it closed, everyone would know it was to marry me! Then even if Martin or Henry talked about my admission, people wouldn't believe it because Maggie and I would be married!

We were joined in wedlock in Las Vegas, between summer and fall quarters at the University of Utah, in September, 1957. In our separate cars, we drove to St. George, where we had planned to spend our "honeymoon," exploring Zion National Park. Up to that point, I hadn't really believed it would actually happen, or that I would actually have to have sex with my new bride! I had never had sex with a woman, and had no idea what to do!

In the motel, I went into the bathroom to check a strange discomfort I'd started noticing, and discovered what looked like a huge red boil on the head of my cock! It looked like the pictures they showed in Phys. Ed. when they talked about venereal diseases. "Oh, my God!" I yelled.

"What's wrong?" Maggie ran into the bathroom and looked at it. "Oh, my God! What's wrong?"

We didn't finish the honeymoon; we didn't consummate anything. The next day, in separate cars again, we drove to Salt Lake, where we moved into the apartment I'd rented, a few blocks from the University. I slept on the couch.

I went to a doctor the next day who examined me and took a blood test, and told me to call in three days for the result of the tests. "Don't worry," he said. "We have drugs that can cure syphilis."

But it wasn't syphilis! There was nothing in the results of the tests to indicate what it was! He gave me a shot and had me take antibiotics for several weeks, until it was obvious they weren't helping. The boil wouldn't go away!

Meanwhile, Maggie was getting tired of the whole situation, and about a month after our marriage, we had a nasty argument and I spent the night at my parents'. When I called her the next day, she said she had made a decision to get the marriage annulled and move back to Long Beach. I told her I'd pay all the costs and apologized for getting her into this mess.

Twenty-four hours later, the "boil" was gone! Without a trace. It never returned!

Many years later, I was directing a series of Children's plays at the Valley Music Theater in Sherman Oaks, just over the hill from Hollywood, and one afternoon, after a performance of Cinderella, I found Maggie waiting for me outside the stage door.

"I saw the ad in the paper," she said, "with your name as both writer and director! I had to see if it was really you!" She had two little boys with her, and introduced them as her sons, Bryan and Scott. They were beautiful children, and I couldn't help thinking they could have been mine.

They politely shook my hand, then ran off to play with their friends, who had come with them to see the show.

After an awkward beginning, we told each other brief, carefully-edited histories of our lives since those embarrassing days in Salt Lake City. It turned out that, instead of returning to Long Beach, after the annulment, Maggie had found a job in Salt Lake, as a receptionist in a pediatrician's office, and, a year later, had married the doctor. Then, so the boys could go to California schools, they had moved to Whittier.

I asked "Are you happy?" I expected her to tell me about her picture-perfect middle-American home-life. The Perfect Life of Maggie Trent!

"Yes," she said, "I do. Thank you." She smiled and sighed, then took my hand. "I'm happy for you," she said. "It was a beautiful show. Congratulations." Then she joined the group of children and herded them off toward a station wagon waiting in the parking lot. She looked back once and waved.

On June 9, 1958 I finally graduated from the University of Utah with my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree!

For reasons I can't remember, my parents did not attend the ceremony; I was the first Fullmer, at least in our immediate family, to get a college degree. I thought that was a big deal, but Mom and Dad were not impressed.

I had planned on moving back to Los Angeles, and back with Kurt, as soon as the rituals were over, but I stayed an extra two weeks to attend a Writer's Conference.

A few weeks earlier, I had submitted To Themselves Unknown to a panel of English professors, fully expecting them to reject it out of hand because of its subject matter. Instead, they gave me a "scholarship" — waiving the cost of the conference — and gave the novel to the visiting lecturer, Albert Guerrard, who had written several currently popular novels, for his evaluation and criticism.

On the final day of classes, Mr. Guerrard said he wanted to start things off by reading a scene from a manuscript which had been submitted by one of the class members. To my amazement, he started reading from my book! It was the part where the hero hitchhikes back to the farm to visit his widowed father for the first time in years, but reconciliation is impossible and so he catches a ride back to where he came from.

Reading the chapter took at least ten minutes, and everyone in class listened raptly. When it was over, Guerrard said: "That scene is as good, and as well written, as anything I have ever read. It is from a novel called To Themselves Unknown, by Richard Fullmer, one of your classmates." He pointed to me and everyone turned and applauded!

The euphoria passed almost instantly as Guerrard continued his lecture: "Unfortunately...the subject of his novel is homosexuality, which greatly limits its publishability and readership." There was an audible intake of breaths and the students all slowly turned away. "So Mr. Fullmer's task is not an easy one, but I wish him well. And I wanted to acknowledge his impressive ability."

After the class he gave me the manuscript. "It is very well written," he said. "but I have no idea where you could ever get it published. You might consider adding some graphic sex scenes and selling it to one of the porno houses — but I hope you don't. It's too good for that. I wish I could be more helpful or optimistic." He patted my shoulder. "Go home and write about something that's interesting to more people. You've got the talent, just broaden your audience!"

I felt as though I had been saved from drowning, then thrown back into the river! I had spent many hours dreaming of the day someone published my book which told "the truth" about being gay — that it wasn't any more sordid and depraved than so-called “normal” life; to the contrary, gay people were often more sensitive and loving than straights. Also, my book had a happy ending! None of the few gay novels I had read (City and the Pillar, Quatrefoil, The Well of Loneliness,) ended happily. They were all wallows of self-pity and self-loathing, inspiring suicide at best. I wanted to be the first author to write a gay novel that ended "Happily Ever After!" But, according to a successful (straight) novelist, my chances of doing that were not good at all.

Virtually everything I had heard or read about writing emphasized using material from your own life and experience. If that happened to be homosexual, too bad, forget it! Write about something "more interesting" to a wider audience! But then, it was much more than I had expected! To be publicly acknowledged as having written something "as good as anything I have ever read" was very satisfying. For a few incredibly exciting minutes, I was sure that Guerrard would say "Sure, I

All the way to Los Angeles, I considered something that had never before seemed possible: a career as a writer! Albert Guerrard had started an excitement in my mind. Even though it might be difficult or impossible to get my novel published, why couldn't I write plays, or movies, or television scripts? Or another novel!

Kurt had broken up with Mark just after Christmas, and had given up the apartment on Bundy. He had rented a tiny furnished studio apartment on Cherokee, just off Hollywood Boulevard. Even though the quarters were extremely cramped for the two of us, my arrival seemed to cheer him up and we started planning on finding a larger place for us to live.

I found an ad in Variety for a typist, needed at the CBS Script Department. I called immediately and had the interview the next day, and started the following Monday, in the basement of Television City, next to the Hollywood Ranch Market. I helped type mimeograph stencils for shows such as Gunsmoke, Rawhide, Have Gun, Will Travel and The Twilight Zone. After the stencils were printed, I helped assemble and staple the scripts. It was fascinating to work with a script from early notes to a finished product. Then, later, to watch the show on tv.

"I typed this part!" I would tell Kurt, with affected pride. "Pages 17 through 25!"

Unfortunately, working in the script department didn't qualify anybody for a pass to watch the broadcasts or tapings. I got to watch one really stupid game-show being taped, and, occasionally, the cast of Rawhide could be seen around the catering-truck at noon. I had lunch several times sitting at picnic tables, close to Clint Eastwood, who played Rowdy Yates, Roustabout. Even so, the work was interesting and instructive, and the scripts department crew was pleasant, and I was making more money than I ever had — sufficient to save enough for the down-payment a brand new car! A white MG-A!

I bought a brown leather "flight jacket," a matching leather cap, and sports-car-driver's gloves, and tried my best to appear "sporty." I wanted a variation on the "leather-look" without the implied S&M predilection of the black motorcycle outfits.

It was the MG which attracted the attention of a young man in the parking lot of The Club . He was driving an Austin-Healy. We were even dressed alike, in Levis and plaid shirts (it was fall). We had a beer inside, then adjourned to his house.

Hal Aldridge lived on Oakwild Lane, an offshoot of Laurel Canyon, which wound around tree-lined canyons, almost to the top of the Hollywood Hills. Hal's was the highest house on the street, so we looked out on an enchanted landscape, but no one could see us, so we had sex on his patio, under the stars.

Hal was about 10 years older than I, but he looked younger. He looked like a perennial teenager. He had been a dancer in MGM musicals until a few years ago, when he got a "steady" job as a ticket agent with American Airlines. He still worked out and took dance classes, so his body was muscular and agile.

We fell madly in love, and within a week I had moved in. Kurt moved in a month later. Both of Hal's previous co-renters had been transferred to another city, and two bedrooms needed renting. I took one and, as soon as he could give notice where he was renting, Kurt took the other. That was October, 1958 and we all lived there until 1961.

Hal and I did not remain "lovers" long, partly because he couldn't keep an erection, or sometimes even get one, for me. He said that all of the sex he'd had as a young dancer in the movies had made him almost disinterested in sex now; it was companionship he was looking for, he said. The number of affairs he'd had with well-known movie actors and dancers was amazing, but, Kurt assured me, quite possible. Finally we agreed that we could be friends and housemates, but not bedmates or sex partners.

For the most part, we enjoyed living together, and had fun doing things together, the three of us. We saw a lot of foreign movies and musicals, some with momentary glimpses of Hal in the chorus. We even gave a few small orgies — on the patio, under the stars!

Hal and Kurt both loved To Themselves Unknown, and encouraged me to try to get it published. Hal knew a friend of a friend who had an agent in New York. Mike Pate not only gave me the address of Martha Winston, his agent with Curtis-Brown, he also asked if I had ever done a "treatment" for a screenplay. I told him I hadn't, but was more than willing to learn. He invited me to visit his home in Beverly Hills and learn more about several projects he didn't have time for.

Mike was an "Ausie," with a delightful accent. A large, horsy, almost mean-looking man who did "bad guys and crowd work," he was actually very soft-spoken and gentle, but straight, and married. He wrote scripts for several popular television series. People brought him ideas for screenplays or teleplays which needed development before they could be submitted to producers. He did not have the time to work on most of them, but showed me the format and gave me several file folders full of scribblings and memorandum.

I worked with Mike for almost a year, doing treatments for more than 20 possible projects. Three of those were optioned by producers, but went nowhere, and I wrote my first screenplay to a story by Mike Pate: To Ride a Wild Horse, a rodeo story.

It was a heady time. Success seemed imminent. I had been accepted for representation by a big, well-known New York agency; I was being paid very good money just to develop plots and characters from other people's ideas. I had learned formats and procedures for screenplays and teleplays, and was working on several ideas of my own. Hal and I had plotted two novels, which could then become screenplays. I was living in the Hollywood Hills with two good friends, driving a new MG! I had a steady, salaried job with CBS, which was good for as long as I wanted to stay. It seemed just about perfect.

Todd Allen was a friend of Kurt's, who lived with his lover, Neil, in San Bernardino. We were invited there for a barbecue, one weekend in the late summer of 1960, and I ended up spending most of the day talking to Todd. He was involved with a local theater group and had considered writing a novel of his own. We were like kindred spirits, touching each other where no one else had touched. Shortly after we met, but before we'd had sex, Todd and Neil split up, and Todd invited me to move to San Bernardino and share his apartment with him. Kurt was furious, blaming me for coming between his good friends, and Hal disapproved on general principles, but I told them "I don't care! We're in love!"

Meanwhile, the agent from Curtis-Brown, having reported rejection after rejection for To Themselves Unknown, finally returned the manuscript, saying she was sorry, but she didn't feel the book could be published by a reputable publisher. Then, Mike Pate moved back to Australia, saying he was tired of messing around with Hollywood, and was going home to make real movies.

I moved out to San Bernardino and commuted each day to work at CBS — 60 miles each way! That became impossible almost immediately, so I quit CBS. But even before my two-week notice had passed, Todd and I decided we were not suited to living together! He wanted to be fucked, and I did not want to fuck anybody! Over the years, I had contracted clap a number of times, each and every time after having screwed some guy. And several other times, I had contracted "NSU — Non Specific Urethritis," which mimicked the symptoms of gonorrhea, but had no known cause, except that it was cured by the same stuff that cured clap! I was "gun shy" by the time Todd Allen came along, and couldn't even maintain an erection for him.

Christmas was coming, and I did not want to spend the holidays with anyone in Southern California. As far as I knew, they felt the same way about me!

Dad had retired that summer, and my parents had moved back to their home in Citrus Heights, so I ended up spending Christmas with them. They hadn't even decorated, so I went out and bought a tree and set it up and draped it with tinsel and new twinkling lights and old ornaments dating back to my childhood.

While licking my wounds at my parents’ home in Citrus Heights I tried to decide where to go and what to do next. Too many things had gone wrong in my life! I was only 27 years old and more things had happened to me than to any three of the kids I had gone to school with! At times I felt much older than 27 — very old: 50, 60 even! Suddenly I was “old and gay.”

“Nobody wants you when you’re old and gay!”

I had lost my innocence many times, it seemed, each time moving to a new level of “reality,” each level with less guiding principles than the one before. Again, at this point I seemed to be flying blind!

I needed grounding. I needed something to believe in. I needed to do something positive. I decided to return to college and get my Masters Degree in Psychology — and try to figure out everything that had happened to me. It had to make sense in some kind of framework.

So I applied & was accepted at the University of California at Berkeley, found a room for rent near the campus, and registered for the Spring Semester. The class of Abnormal Psychology 101 was taught by a professor on Sabbatical from Harvard, Dr. Richard Alpert. I’d never heard of him, but to some of the other students in the class seemed to think he was famous.

After Ab Psych 101, MWF, I had a free period and started hanging out in the Student Union cafeteria, drinking coffee and studying for my next class. During the second week, Dr. Alpert came in, looked around, recognized me from his class, and asked if I minded if he sat with me. Had I known anything about him, I would have been thoroughly intimidated, but, to me, he was just another college teacher, barely older than I was, or so he seemed. We chatted amiably while he finished his coffee, then he hurried off to prepare for his next class and I went back to studying for mine.

Two days later it happened again and by the third week, we were “coffee buddies.” I got up nerve to ask him if he would look at something I had written, a few pages on an idea for my Master’s Thesis, on the causes of homosexuality. He said he’d be happy to read it and give me his suggestions.

I had written it between the holidays, closed off in my bedroom in my parents’ house, based on many ideas gained over the last few years; then I’d got interested in going back to college and had filled it in and rounded it out, and called it “A Matter of Lost Innocence.” I opined that homosexuals are not necessarily born that way, but are born with a certain kind of intelligence, which, when identified, ought to be definable and measurable. Because of that unnamed type of intelligence, those people took things more seriously than others. They believed more strongly in something — religion, for example. Their reaction to disappointment or doubt of something they had devoutly believed was to react against it. One of the antonyms for “religious” was “perverse,” which is what homosexuality supposedly was. Most of the gay people I had met had been, like me, very religious when younger. I reasoned that we unconsciously chose homosexuality as a “fuck you” gesture at religion. “Look! I’m doing exactly what you told me not to do and God isn’t striking me dead!”

“Besides, it feels good and I’m having fun!”

When something feels good, people tend to repeat the experience — especially people with a certain kind of intelligence.

I typed up my notes and gave them to Dr. Alpert and waited. The next week he tossed “A Matter of Lost Innocence” on my desk and grinned at me.

“That told me a lot about you, but it’s not really a good subject for a thesis. The cause of homosexuality is already known.” Dr. Alpert was a Freudian, and he told me that Freud had clearly established the causes for that particular deviation. If I were interested in finding out more about that, there were some books he could recommend.

Apparently, learning “a lot” about me had made Dr. Alpert somewhat leery of having coffee with me after class. As I sat there alone, it seemed like my new level of reality was coming unraveled. I wandered around campus for an hour or more, feeling lost and helpless. I sat on several benches, smoking Marlboros, and watching students hurry by, on their way to or from class, late or early, all wrapped up in what was happening to them. I started hallucinating that I could slow time and turn everything into slow-motion — or I could speed it up and send everybody scurrying along the sidewalks at double speed.

I carefully walked to where my car was parked, feeling like I was hurrying and going slow at the same time. I drove very carefully to the room I was renting, where I packed my few belongings into the car, told my landlady I was quitting school, and drove south, away from Citrus Heights and Sacramento, down the Coast Shore Highway, until I finally stopped in a deserted pull-out area, then sat in my car and stared at the ocean.

It was late afternoon by then, and the sun was a dimly glowing orange ball somewhere out in the gray fogbank. It got dimmer and flatter and finally disappeared, and it seemed that I could sense the darkness creeping over the land from the east, as the ocean turned gray and then black and then vanished in the fog. I could hear the waves breaking, dimly and distantly, and that seemed like the only sound in the universe. I felt more alone than I ever had before — and yet, I was still alive! I hadn’t driven off a cliff or swerved into the path of an oncoming truck. I had survived disillusionment once again! And I finally decided that it didn’t matter what caused me to want sex with men, or to want love from another man, or to want to live with another man, to be part of a homosexual couple — that’s how it was. Whether I liked it or not. Whether Richard Alpert liked it or not. Whether anybody in the world, including my father, liked it or not. That’s how it was!

Around midnight, I started the car and headed back to Sacramento. Reality had returned, almost the same as it had always been.

I couldn’t afford to go to Berkeley anyway! I was almost broke. What I needed was a job.

Years later I learned that Dr. Richard Alpert had returned to Harvard where he got together with another professor named Timothy Leary, and started conducting experiments with a drug called LSD. Eventually they were both fired from Harvard and Dr. Leary became famous for coining the slogan: “Turn on, tune in and drop out.” Dr. Alpert forsook his Jewishness and Freud and became Baba Ram Dass, and then, finally, Ram Dass — whom I have sometimes uncharitably called “The man with a Freudian Slip for a name.”

"Spectacular lighting effects, wild imaginative makeup, and excellent acting highlighted the opening performance of the Sacramento Civic Theater's production of 'Hansel and Gretel.' Under direction by SCT's new Children's Theater Manager, Richard Fullmer, the cast played to a capacity audience and provided a delightful and amusing afternoon of children's theater.
"Fullmer has written an original version of the famous fairy tale and has come up with a charming, humorous, and completely entertaining children's play... Fullmer has directed his original work with style, humor, and skill... I wholeheartedly recommend this production as a must-see for children of all ages!"
The Sacramento Union, September 29, 1961

"Richard Fullmer and the SCT Children's Theater group have done it again. They have combined their individual talents to make this production...one of charm and enjoyment...with taste, style and outstanding special effects. Fullmer's last two productions have been of remarkably high caliber and are some of the finest children's theater productions I have ever seen in the Sacramento area.
"Beauty and the Beast" has been adapted for this production by Fullmer, and his adaptation is full of humorous and delightful adventures and situations."
The Sacramento Union, January 7, 1962

"The SCT Children's Theatre final production of the year, "The Wizard of Oz," based on Frank Baum's classic children's story, is an appropriately fitting climax to a season of exceptionally fine quality. Credit must go to Richard Fullmer, who took over the Children's Theater last fall and developed it into a workable and first-rate children's group."
The Sacramento Union, April 8, 1962

In the spring of 1961, I had gone to tryouts for The Caine Mutiny Court Martial at Sacramento Civic Theater — Sacramento's premiere theater group — and had ended up as Stage Manager. Again! I ran the show and took one of the small roles.

They needed a director for their Children’s Theater; the previous director had quit because of a family emergency and they needed somebody quick. I revised the script and directed the first CT “hit,” Sleeping Beauty as a pantomime with mucis by Tchaikowsky. It was very popular. Eventually I was hired as manager for both Children's theater and the experimental Harlequin Stage.

One of the young men who tried out for Prince Charming in Cinderella, was an extremely handsome high school senior named Winson Strickland.

We had both worked crew on the summer's Music Circus tent shows, the previous summer and I had invited him to tryouts in the fall. It had taken him 9 months to get up the nerve to actually audition for something. He definitely looked like Prince Charming, but, unfortunately, he was a terrible actor! His reading was stumbling and awkward, and he looked stiff and posed. Offstage, in person, he was delightful! He was charming and energetic, and his enthusiasm rubbed off on everyone around him. I offered him the job of Stage Manager, and he eagerly accepted, saying he knew he couldn't act, and didn't really want to, but he wanted to work with me. He had decided he wanted a career in theater, but hadn't decided exactly what appealed to him. He was an excellent, if untrained, artist, and was soon helping paint and design the CT scenery.

I tried very hard to treat him like just another member of the crew, but it was impossible to ignore him. He seemed eager to do anything I might want him to do, and very soon was spending almost all of his spare time working at the theater, helping anyone who needed it– in the scene or costume shops, or backstage, moving scenery, hanging drapes – he was an excellent worker and people enjoyed being around him. Everybody loved Winnie! But then, he started knocking on my door, sometimes an hour or more before a production or rehearsal, with some kind of "problem" that required my suggestion for solution. It quickly became obvious that the problems were simply excuses which allowed him to come up for a visit. It also became obvious that he wanted to be seduced.

He talked about several Music Circus singers and dancers who were Gay, describing their attempts to get him into bed with them. Their cruising apparently didn't annoy him, and he didn't seem at all prejudiced, but "the right man" still hadn't come along. There was no doubt in my mind that he was Gay, but he said he'd never had sex — with anyone, male or female.

I was adamantly opposed to the seduction of teenagers by older men, and was determined to make no move that could be interpreted as a "pass," even though I ached to give him the love and acceptance that he so desperately wanted — and apparently was not getting from his parents and friends.

It happened one Saturday afternoon in May, 1963, after a particularly good performance of Wizard. The older members of the cast had gone to a nearby Hoffbrau for beer and sandwiches, to celebrate, and I had gone up to my apartment to change clothes, so I could join them. I was naked when a knock came at the door and Winson called: "It's me!"

For a moment I almost panicked, then grabbed my shorts and pulled them on. "It's open!"
He started to say something as he came in, but the words stopped as he saw me. He closed and locked the door and walked across the room, looking straight into my eyes and grinning mischievously. He knelt in front of me and slipped the shorts down, then took my cock into his mouth, making a soft humming noise as he did. We ended up on the floor, in a 69, which he said afterward was his first sexual experience with anyone!

He said he'd been practicing on bananas!

Winson insisted he was in love with me, and wanted to be with me as much as possible. He wanted to learn everything I could teach him, about theater and being Gay. He said he had been attracted to me because I wasn't "faggy." That melted me, and I finally admitted to myself, then to him, that I loved him too! If the truth were known, I told him, I had fallen in love with him the moment we'd met, a year ago. But he was still only 18, and I could get myself into serious trouble if anyone ever found out what was going on. He promised he would do everything he could to avoid suspicion, but he was determined that we should be together as much and as often as possible. And we were!

at Bridge Bay Summer Theater, where I directed "Come Blow Your Horn" and "The Pleasure of His Company." I became a Professional Director by joining Actor's Equity. Winn worked backstage, volunteered, and everybody loved him.

At first, it was wonderful! A bright and talented and very good looking, very horny young man was in love with me, and I with him! And we had great sex! He learned how to do all the things I enjoyed having done, and to do them very well, since that's what we did every time!

We also worked together very well. That year we did four children's shows, Cinderella, Rumplestiltskin, Snow White, and Twelve Dancing Princesses, all my own adaptations, all of them very successful and well-received. Attendance for the CT productions was the largest it had ever been.

And then I was given the opportunity I had been waiting and working for: directing a mainstage production of Death of a Salesman!

In March of '64, a week before Salesman opened, and almost exactly a year from the date Winson and I had first had sex, my boss took me to the neighborhood bar for a beer.

He got straight to the point: "I know what's going on," he told me. "Everybody knows. Everyone except the producers. If you don't stop seeing him, I'll have to fire you. I'll have no choice, and I'll have to tell them why. Is he worth throwing your career away for? A few more years and I'll retire, and you play your cards right, you could take over here. Managing Director! If you just end it with him, right here and now, I'll never say another word."

"Tony," I said, "I'm in love with him. And he loves me. But he'd hate me if I did what you wanted. I'd end up hating myself and I couldn't stand that!"

I submitted my resignation to the producers on February 28, 1963, opening night of Death of a Salesman, which ended up being an enormous success, with rave reviews and sold-out houses!

At first, we planned to get him a screen-test and maybe hire an acting-coach, but neither of us knew how to start the process, and neither of us really believed that Winn had a future in movies or tv, at least, not in front of the camera.

I deliberately avoided calling Kurt, knowing his prejudices about "cradle-robbers." Amazingly, we never ran into each other.

Winn got a job as a busboy with a cafeteria in Glendale, and I got a job driving Yellow Cabs. We moved into a cottage in a Mexican-style courtyard in Glendale and stayed there until January, '65, when he hurt himself playing parking-lot football, and needed an operation to repair a ruptured disk. He had to quit his job and return to Sacramento, where he was still covered under his father's insurance, and I had to move to a smaller, cheaper apartment in an ancient-looking building in a rundown area near one of the freeways into LA.

The operation and recovery took 2 months, which seemed like the longest, lowest, emptiest part of my life — living alone in that roach-and rat-infested, dirty, greasy apartment, with the constant roar of traffic and the smell of gas and diesel coming from the freeway.

To fill the time, I bought a canvas and some oil paints and tried painting a portrait of Winson, taken from one of our many photographs. It turned out very well, and I showed it to the owners of a new bar I'd discovered, The Gauntlet, a leather/motorcycle bar in Hollywood, who were so impressed, they hung it in the game-room.

By the time Winn returned, his portrait was hanging on the game-room wall of the most popular leather-bar in town! Men would walk up to him and say "I know you. You're him! I want you!" That was when we started going out separately, and although the process took 2 more years to complete, that portrait was what started our breakup.

Of course, no split would have been possible had we stayed as close as we had been the first year, but the difference in our ages was beginning to become uncomfortable for both of us. We were of two very different generations, mine from the 30's, his from the 40's. I had grown up under incredibly conservative conditions; he had spent his entire life in Sacramento, which, although not a hotbed of liberalism, was vastly more radical than Vernal. We had different values, different ideals. He was a cynic; I was an optimist. We still loved each other, which is what had kept us together, but the edges were beginning to fray.

In June, 1965 I was hired to start a new children's theater for Valley Music Theater, a "cement-dome" arena-theater in Sherman Oaks, in the San Fernando Valley, just over the hill from Hollywood. With Winn as my stage manager, we produced four of the shows we had done in Sacramento: Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, and Cinderella. The audiences loved them, but there were never enough children to fill the enormous auditorium. We finished our last production about four weeks before the producers declared bankruptcy and closed the theater.

While working on the plays, Winn met a scenic designer who was very impressed with his work — and with him. Glen Holse had a small studio in Hollywood and made scenery for various movie companies, legitimate theaters, and for some of the musical extravaganzas in casinos in Las Vegas. As soon as the children's theater closed, Winn started working for Glen, and was soon commuting to Nevada. I found a job mimeographing, assembling, and mailing texts for the California Bar Exams. It was excruciatingly boring — I was the only one in the office — but it gave me the time (and materials) to start work on a new book: Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son — about a Mormon father discovering that his son was Gay, and so was he!

In the spring of '67, a story in ONE Magazine ("A mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one." Carlysle) about a new Gay publishing house in Washington, D.C., caught my attention, and I sent a letter of inquiry to the address noted in the article. In only a few days, a letter from Guild Press invited me to submit To Themselves Unknown as soon as possible, which I did the next day. They loved the book, and in less than a month, I had a check for $200 as a payment against royalties; they expected that printing could be finished by the end of the year, and predicted that the book would be very popular as soon as it was published.

A few weeks later, another letter arrived from Guild Press, advising me that my book would not be published after all. A gang of kids had broken into the building where all the manuscripts had been stored. They had trashed everything, then started a fire. By the time the fire was put out, every book and manuscript had been destroyed, along with everything else in the office. Nothing had been insured, so there was no money to start over again. The editor encouraged me to find another publisher: "Your book should be read!" he wrote. "Keep trying!"

On a Sunday afternoon, in July, '66, we went to the weekly beer-bust at The Gauntlet, and the bartender gave me a book to read. "It blew my mind! It's the most incredible thing I've ever read in my life!" he declared.

Song of the Loon — A Gay Pastoral, by Richard Amory, was, indeed, incredible! Virile mountain men and well-endowed, unclipped Indians sucked and fucked and fell in love in a redwood-covered paradise somewhere along the Pacific coast, during a time that seemed to resemble the late 19th century. I had never read anything like it! There were several excitingly graphic sex scenes, after which neither of the partners threatened to kill themselves! In the course of the story, the hero learned to love himself and other men. Ephriam and Cyrus did not end up "happily ever after," but the promise of such an ending was definitely there.

I quickly mailed a copy of To Themselves Unknown to the Loon-publishers, Greenleaf Classics, in San Diego. They returned the manuscript with a note that they really liked the story and my writing, but wanted more hot Gay sex. A red-penned note in a margin read “Good spot for Fag-Hots!) They even sent me several of their current titles, The Story of O, Emmanuel, and some really terrible hetero-porn, as examples of what they wanted. “Hot sex on the first page and as often as possible, the kinkier the better."

Reluctantly I rewrote To Themselves Unknown, which I had sworn never to do, inserting several "poetic" sex scenes and soon had a check for $500, and an invitation to submit my next book. "We are interested in erotic novels, hetero and homo, with hot sex on the first page and as often as possible thereafter, wherever the plot permits."

After getting past the insult to my writing: that I needed "fag-hots" to make it acceptable, the idea of writing jack-off books began to intrigue me. Although Albert Gerrard had mentioned selling the book to "one of the porno houses," I hadn't really believed there were such places. Song of the Loon had inspired me! I resolved to write the best Gay pornography ever written! And, I decided, my books would all have happy endings!

Once To Themselves Unknown was published by Greenleaf, I reasoned, I could show it to a legitimate publisher and offer to let them publish my next novel, without so much explicit sex.

Meanwhile, I started working on The Stag In The Tree, an examination of the Sado-masochistic elements I was finding in Gay life in Los Angeles. The title came from a puzzle-picture, given to the hero by his ex-girl-friend, which featured a rabbit hidden in a rose bush, a bear in the clouds, and a stag in a tree. After experimenting with the S side of S&M briefly, the hero found true love with a Gay police detective, and settled down near San Francisco.

I decided to use a pseudonym for the pornographic stuff, but to use my real name for the more "legitimate" books. I considered a few suggestive names, such as "Jack F. Hancock," or "Peter Harden," or "Hugh Lance," but my favorite was one I had used to sign my artwork, “Dirk” Dirk What? I considered my mother’s maiden name “Vernon,” but I didn’t want to be even remotely associated with that tribe. Dirk Vernon didn't sound right to me.

It amused me to imagine one or more of my Mormon Vernon relatives discovering that a cousin or nephew of theirs was a Pornographer, even worse a Gay Pornographer! It would have given my dear grandmother a heart attack. Luckily she didn't live to see it.

It was the era of Gay artists' using single names: Quaintance, Etienne, Stephen, Colt, et. al. I had called myself "Dirk" after an exceptionally sexy Dutch exchange-student I'd met in college, Dirk van der Elst. Then I saw “Vanden” in a telephone book and decided to use that. It was a kind of gesture to my father, Van, but not him! Dirk Vanden. It looked good on the manuscript page. What I didn’t realize at the time, was that it was very near the bottom of an alphabetized list, and thus on the bottom shelves of bookstores.

In June of 1968, Winn got a new job at a scenic studio in Las Vegas, which required that he move there. Nothing was gluing us to Hollywood, so I went with him. As soon as he had found a place to live, I quit the Bar Review Course and joined him. By then,"Stag" had been accepted by Greenleaf, who encouraged me to give them more. I decided to try to spend all of my working-time writing. I had no desire to do anything else in Las Vegas. Gambling had never appealed to me, nor had musical extravaganzas featuring near-naked women. Winn was making enough money that he didn't care how much I made. He was working ten to twelve hours per day, and when he wasn't working, he was partying, and so, to provide myself some companionship, I bought a puppy! A male white German Shepherd who was so sweet and loving that I named him Luv.

In October, I had almost finished my second S&M novel, Hatters & Hares, when Winson announced that he had fallen in love with one of the dancers at the DUNES. He had finally met someone, he said, with a sense of real accomplishment, who loved him and enjoyed fucking him!* I had that old phobia about fucking anyone & it had become an issue between us.

It had been obvious to both of us, for a long time, that our relationship had run its course. We had stopped doing things together, rarely talked, and almost never had sex. So, I wished him well, packed up everything I could get into the MG - my typewriter, manuscripts and a few photo albums, and with Luv, fidgeting and fussing in the passenger seat, I drove, once again, to Citrus Heights, California.

I have just learned what happened to Winn after we split in Las Vegas, 1969. He became a famous Porn Star named Mike Davis!

An old friend who knew us both in the early 60s found my website with the early information about Winn & emailed me to inform me of Winn’s death by AIDS in 1986, after he had joined COLT STUDIO sometime in the early 70s. He appeared in a long list of Colt & Halstead movies. He was 41 when he died.

There are a number of websites devoted to him, so he must have had some adoring fans & friends. Apparently he found the fame & admiration he wanted so much. It killed him, but at least he had it for awhile.

For some pictures of him, AD (after Dirk), copy & paste the "bjland" address below into a search engine.

In the fall and winter of 1968, I set up my typewriter in the second bedroom of my parent's home in Citrus Heights, and there I finished Hatters & Hares, another S&M study, this one from the masochist's point of view — the title coming from Alice in Wonderland" — and Exile In Paradise, Gay science fiction - actually "fantasy" - my "answer" to Song of the Loon - in which, after World War III, all Gays were rounded up and shipped off to an alternate world, where they started a new civilization. I mailed the manuscripts to San Diego as each was finished, and both were accepted. For $750 each, no promise of royalties.

On January 15, 1969, a package arrived from San Diego, and I eagerly opened it to find a dozen paperback books, with amateurish ersatz woodcuts on the covers, which were upside-down on the backs of the books! My novels began on the last-page of the book, the "back door," a publisher's little joke, a statement of his own homophobia! They were my novels — three each of the four — except that the names had been changed! Tom, Tom, The Piper's Son, (originally To Themselves Unknown) had become Who Killed Queen Tom? The Stag In The Tree had been changed to The Leather Queens. Hatters & Hares was now Leather, and Exile in Paradise had been renamed Twin Orbs (taken from my description of the hero's lover's testicles on page 2), with two earth-like globes superimposed over a naked man's ass on the cover!

After I had calmed down a little, I turned the book over to read the back cover of Who Killed Queen Tom? and read a first paragraph that I surely didn’t write:

"There are times when it all comes flooding back over me, when I see a young guy with an arrogant bulge in his pants, or a sculpted ass encased in faded denim, then I hear a familiar voice chanting in my head: 'You left your wife for a husband! You traded her breasts for a pair of dimpled buttocks, and her cunt for a cock! You conformed before your rebellion, and now you are conforming again.'"

My "poetic-porno" rewrite of TTU had not been quite "hot" enough for their standards. The entire novel had been infuriatingly edited, and "augmented" with livid "fag-hots." All of my carefully-crafted, poetically-described sexual encounters had been rewritten to include bullshit like "pulsating purple cockheads spurting fountains of creamy ambrosia!" (Semen doesn't taste like ambrosia! It tastes like thin wallpaper paste! Sometimes with garlic.) And there were hundreds of typos and spelling errors!

I hurled the book across the room, and the cover popped off when it hit the wall! Pure trash! There was no way I could ever show any of those books to anyone other than Gays who thought of themselves as "Queens" or "Fags!" A legitimate publisher would take one look and toss them all into the garbage!

I remembered a saying of Kurt's which came close to expressing my outrage and frustration that day: "I felt like I'd been used without being asked, and then put away dirty."

His real name was Irving, but the little neighbor boy couldn't pronounce "Irving," and called him "Erbie." His nickname became "Herbie," then, when he started school, he called himself "Herb" Finger. In school, the other kids teased him about his funny name, but they also teased him about being skinny and Jewish — the only Jewish boy in a predominantly Catholic neighborhood in Brooklyn. He quickly learned to turn such teasing into his advantage. All of his life, he was able to deal with prejudice by finding a challenge in it — to charm his detractors right off their perches. He started smoking when he was 10, and was cruising the New York Public Library, having sex with older men at that same age. By the time he graduated high school and started college, he was being kept by a well-known dancer on Broadway named Jimmy Jewell. I met him on the day after Valentine's Day, 1969.

I had deliberately stayed away from the "Sweethearts' Balls" at Sacramento's various Gay bars. I was still thoroughly depressed over the books, and most of the rest of my life, and had no tolerance for anything approaching frivolity, but I hadn't had sex since before leaving Las Vegas, and I was ready to climb walls. So the next night, Saturday, February 15, I went to the Hide and Seek Bar in West Sacramento.

The pink and white streamers and balloons were still up from the night before, and there were cardboard hearts and cupids everywhere. The normally-sawdust-covered floor was blanketed with tiny pink and white confetti hearts. I bought a beer and went to stand by the jukebox — my favorite spot in a Gay bar — and surveyed the crowd.

Suddenly, it was like in the movies: "Across a crowded room," I saw him! The room and the people faded and vanished as he walked toward me, with a somehow appropriate musical background, grinning as though sharing a private joke. We were wearing almost identical outfits: boots, faded jeans, and plaid shirts. Both of us were bald, with what was left of our hair cut short, Roman style. I had a full short-cropped beard and he had a bushy moustache! His hair was brown, mine was dark blond; his eyes were blue, mine were green. We looked enough alike to be brothers, if not twins!

"Haven't I seen you someplace before?" he asked, as he reached to shake my hand.

It turned out he liked to do just about anything sexual, and was very good at it all. He first produced a joint, which we shared — I hadn't had good weed since leaving L.A. — and all the hard lines of the world seemed to soften and relax. My anger and frustration floated away with the smoke. The sensations of my body seemed to be amplified, and kissing another man with a moustache was absolutely delicious! When it was over, we fell asleep on top of the bed, cupped against each other, as though we had always slept that way.

We spent most of Sunday together, obviously fascinated with each other, driving through the foothills in his Volkswagen Beetle, stopping in quaint little towns like "Rough and Ready," and "Cool," to explore a few stores, then driving some more, always talking. I told him more about myself than I'd ever told anybody, including the fact that I was a published pornographer! "Erotician."

"Hey," he said, "it's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it!” Then, he sang, very much off-key “‘Masturbation can be fun...!'"

He told me the story of his name, and about growing up in Brooklyn, where both of his immigrant parents worked and his teenage sister was often too busy to notice where he was or what he was doing. He had always seemed to be the best little boy in Brooklyn, and it was assumed that he would never do anything even vaguely "naughty," let alone "perverted!" He said he had learned to entertain himself, (and to make a little money) by seducing older men in the park, and jacking or sucking them off in the bushes, or men’s room, then going home and pretending that absolutely nothing unusual was happening in his life.

He had been to New York parties attended by such people as "Lenny" Bernstein and "Jerry" Robbins, when his parents thought he was staying overnight with a high school chum.

He invited me to spend the coming weekend with him in San Francisco, and I accepted without hesitation. A relationship between us seemed inevitable. He had a beautiful apartment on the corner of Buena Vista Terrace and Roosevelt Way, overlooking The Castro. His roommate was just in the process of moving out to live with a new lover, and, at the end of the weekend, Herb invited me to move in with him."I don't want to play house," he said, "but I've never felt like this before about anybody!"

I traded my MG for a used Fiat station wagon because Luv had gown into a very large dog and didn't fit in the tiny sports car. A mini-station-wagon suited me! And Luv loved it! It was white like him, and looked like his own special chariot.

Herb was the Art Director for Fireman's Fund Insurance Company, and had art-related contacts all over the bay area. He was impressed with my paintings and drawings, and kept me busy designing logos and letter-heads, painting annual report covers, and all sorts of other freelance artwork. I was able to work at home, which I much preferred — I hated driving anywhere in The City (the streets were too narrow and hilly, the tourists too overly-cautious and the locals too crazy!) Herb drove us anywhere we had to go.

Even though we slept together, we never did have a traditional love- or sexual-relationship, an “imitation marriage.” Both of us had been sexually active for many years: me for 17 years, him for 23. Neither of us expected "fidelity" of the other, and didn't want it to be expected of us. He confided that he enjoyed getting fucked more than he liked sucking, and I told him about my problem with fucking (I kept getting clap or imitation Clap, NSU, Non-Specific Urethritis, whenever I fucked anybody. At this point I was gun-shy and would lose my erection very quickly if I tried to fuck anyone.) We decided to live more like brothers than lovers. Both of us, all of our lives, had wanted a brother! Now, it seemed our wishes had been granted. Sleeping together was comforting.

But in the bars, we made out like bandits! We would dress alike, but not identically, and cruise together, sometimes other couples, often singles. It amazed us how many Gay fantasies had to do with twins or brothers! It was fun! It was the first "fun" I'd had for a long time. We enjoyed being together. We augmented each other. Even though we looked alike, we were very different people. I was an introvert and shy around strangers; he was extroverted and charming, completely sure of himself. He took charge and I let him, relieved to have someone else making the decisions for a change — I had made so many wrong ones! And I trusted him to make the right decisions because I loved him, and knew that he loved me!

He read the books and persuaded me that they were better than I had imagined, and that some of his friends had already mentioned my name as a Gay author. He suggested the plot for the next one: His favorite sex-fantasy was being gang-raped by Cowboys. So I wrote I WANT IT ALL for, and dedicated it to him. He got a big kick out of that! When the book was eventually published, we had an "Autograph Orgy."

I was accepted in the Folsom Street bars, Herb's crowd, as a genuine, published Gay Author. The books were much more popular than I had imagined they would be! But it was about then that Greenleaf Classics published The Illustrated Presidential Report on Pornography, (a photograph-illustrated version of the well-known report made for President Nixon — without permission) and the publishers and editors were arrested and fined and put in prison for plagiarism, and, suddenly, Greenleaf Classics was no more. And suddenly, my novels were out of circulation!

One evening at The Stud, a man introduced himself as Phil Andros, another Gay author who had been published and abandoned by Greenleaf. He said he had been approached by the owner of Le Salon, San Francisco's infamous porno bookstore on Van Ness, who was starting "Frenchy's Gay Line," a new publishing company. “Frenchy” had asked Phil to help find other Gay authors. I submitted I WANT IT ALL to "The Dirty Old Frenchman," and soon had a check for $500 and a promise of royalties, plus a commitment to publish anything I wanted to write!

Also I got to draw my own cover! Herb and I set up the covers for several of FGL's books; I did an appropriate pencil drawing and Herb set the type and the final print of the cover, at work. (He was the Art Director at Fireman's Fund.)

I WANT IT ALL was published in December, and Frenchy reported brisk sales. Even though it got good reviews in the local Gay newspapers, I was very disappointed in the final product. In his review for California Scene, Charles McAllister concluded: "Perhaps now that Frenchy's has a writer of Dirk Vanden's caliber they will try to do justice to his obvious talent by turning out a less sloppy product." I asked Frenchys' editor, a middle-aged straight man named George, why there were so many spelling errors and typos.

In April, 1970, FGL published ALL OR NOTHING— in which the "best friend" of the hero of I WANT IT ALL, went looking for the "Queer" he and the gang had raped in the first book, to beg forgiveness, and discovers his own homosexual desires in the process. Like I WANT IT ALL, it took place mostly in San Francisco, using the Folsom Street bar scene as background, from Western at THE BRANDING IRON (Ramrod), leather and motorcycles at LEATHER COUNTRY (Febe’s) to S and M, downstairs at THE PHOENIX (The No Name Bar) to the Acid-Head bar, HYPERION (The Stud). Both of the books were reviewed nationally and the acclaim was unanimous. The reviewers agreed that I was one of the best Gay authors in America! Even the heterosexually-oriented SCREW gave its review a huge headline:

"I Want It All is the best homosexual fuckbook I've ever read. ...Vanden is so good at taking his reader step-by-step through the stages of homosexuality that Gay people will find themselves remembering their own beginnings, and heterosexuals, well, they'll get a vicarious trip through what many of them have wondered about, behind the eyes of a character so 'normal' he is totally empathetic." - Michael Perkins, SCREW, October 5, 1970

"Always written in a style and with smoothly structured syntax that rivals those of our top-flight novelists. ...I recommend this novel highly, but at the same time realize that it is not for the sexual novice nor for the old-fashioned sexualist. Of its genre, it has to be the best book ever written. If you thought Dirk Vanden's I Want It All said it all, you are mistaken. Read All Or Nothing and see what I mean." Victor DeStefano, California Scene, Feb. 1971

I was living in Gay Mecca, with a man I loved, who loved me, and we had a wonderful white German Shepherd named Luv! My name — or pseudonym, at least — was being praised from coast to coast! I thought I had it made! In the shade. With lemonade!

In August, 1970, Luv had a terrible accident. We were walking in an unfamiliar area, when he jumped over what looked like a low wall and fell twenty feet on the other side, injuring his right-front paw badly. He had to wear a cast on his right front foot, plus a large crutch-like contraption that fastened to his body with a harness and kept his foot from touching the ground. This required that someone had to be with him practically all of the time for several months.

Herb and I had been planning to go to the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, in the Black Point Forest near Marin, in September. We had even made monkscloth robes to wear as Monks, but Luv's situation forced us to change our plans. A friend from Los Angeles unexpectedly arrived for a visit and offered to go to the Faire with me on Saturday, and Herb on Sunday.

He also offered "a little something extra," a special gift he had brought along, intending to party: LSD. Bud gave each of us a small white pill that looked like a saccharin tablet. "It's Owlsey Acid," he said proudly. "White Lightening! The best there is!"

I wasn't sure I wanted to try LSD. I'd heard many stories about people freaking out, jumping off roofs, thinking they could fly. People supposedly had done terrible things while stoned on LSD. On the other hand, The Beatles had recommended it highly! (But, then, the Beatles were breaking up, so what did they know?) Herb had already tried acid, and helped talk me into it. "You'll love it," he promised.

Bud said he wouldn't take any himself, but would smoke some pot, and promised to stay close by me all day. We would also take along a tranquilizer, in case something went wrong. On Saturday morning, I took the pill just before leaving home, and by the time we reached the parking area, I felt as though my body was shifting gears, like going from low to second to high, and finally into overdrive! My awareness seemed to open like an incredible flower with each shift of my gears! I had never been so aware of physical sensations — my heart beating, the blood rushing through my veins, my lungs expanding and contracting — and it seemed like a million delicious little butterflies kept fluttering up and down my spine, and dancing all over my body!

As we walked through the Faire's gates, it was like stepping into a new world, completely disconnected from the one we had just left.

There were hundreds of people, dressed in Elizabethan costumes of every variety, as well as brilliant and colorful "Hippie" outfits, and they were frolicking like children, pretending and posturing, and having a wonderful time! And there were real children putting on a show of their own — laughing and squealing and chasing each other and climbing trees! The delight was contagious. The combined good-feeling seemed to lift everything up onto a whole new level. It was all still the same, but cleaner, clearer, more in-focus, more "real!"

I became very aware of the love that seemed to be everywhere. It felt delicious! I had never felt anything like it before! We all seemed to be immersed in it — like a slightly-heavier-than-air ocean of warm ambrosial sweetness that drifted and eddied around us, buoyant and uplifting!

I felt a profound sense of well-being and belonging! It was as though my eyes had been clouded all my life, but now were clear, and I could see things as they really were — as they always had been! Everything was so fantastically beautiful, I wanted to weep for sheer joy.

Then it seemed that my mind somehow made contact with a much larger intelligence, which seemed to be everywhere, permeating everything. All I had to do was think of a subject, and suddenly I seemed to have knowledge that I'd never suspected I had. I realized, as though I had known it all along, but had pretended not to understand, that I, alone, was in control of myself, of my life — not fate, not God, not Nature, but me! I was the one who ultimately made the decisions — to be sick, to be well, to be happy, to be miserable, to die or to go on living! I could be as angry and disappointed with my parents as I wanted to be, and for good reason, but they were not to blame for the life I was living! Neither of them could have done anything to change that. I had chosen to take every single step I had taken! Unconsciously, perhaps, but my own choice. Period.

I knew I could stop having headaches and catching colds, because neither one was "real," both were products of the mind! All I had to do was decide to stop hurting myself! I could stop being sick and allow myself to "grow old" naturally. Without illness, the human body might be able to last a very long time! The unexplainable ages of Methuselah, et.al. might have happened at a time before all the "Sins" of the Jewish priests diminished the average lifespans from 900 to 33 years. If I could get rid of all those imaginary sins, I might live to be a hundred, or more.

It was very much like waking up and finding that the terrible dreams which had seemed so real during the night, had suddenly vanished, and morning was shining through all the windows!

The Faire offered a million delights, affecting all aspects of my awareness — sights and scents and sounds and sensations, and I welcomed them all and indulged them like a starving man gorging himself on an amazing banquet of flavors and textures and sensations, each more exquisite and delicious than the others!

But then the darkness and the dream returned! "Reality" descended like night. Long before I wanted to leave, we were headed back toward San Francisco in a gathering fog. It seemed as though I had been huge, and was shrinking! I felt like I had as a small child, leaving Grandma's warm and wonderful kitchen, going home to where nobody talked to each other. As I watched the foggy headlights and taillights, stoplights and streetlights, weaving themselves into kaleidoscopic patterns, tears streamed from my eyes as though I had lost my dearest friend!

I tried to describe the experience to Herb and Bud, and they both smiled knowingly, like parents indulging a child's exuberant exaggerations, but I simply could not find the words to truly express the incredible adventure I had been through. Bud carefully explained: "You only saw what was already in your head. That's what Acid does: It lets you see inside your head!"

The next day, while Herb and Bud were at the Faire, I got stoned on marijuana, and tried to recapture the enchantment, but it remained inaccessible, just beyond an impenetrable threshold. Finally, I settled on trying to write down some impressions of what I had discovered:

"It was like returning home! It was like coming back to a beautiful and beloved place where I felt safe and loved and appreciated. It was like the way coming-home was supposed to be, the way I always imagined it was for others, but never was for me! Everything was so bright, so clear and clean. Things used to be like that for me; things had a beauty and simplicity which got hidden more and more with each successive year of school — where they taught me "the truth" about their counterfeit civilization! Liars and Hypocrites! They ought to be shot! Too late, they're all already dead!

Civilization is garbage! Layer upon layer of garbage all over us! Civilization stinks!

The struggle between good and evil is nothing more than an anthropomorphic battle between the inner and the outer man. The Inner is innocent, open and loving, welcoming and loyal, whose ultimate is sharing. The Outer is civilization, base and mean, full of rules and laws, hateful and distrusting! Civilization is drubbed on us like plaster, layer by layer until everything good and sweet and pure is covered up and smothered!

That clarity, that "super-reality" really exists! I did not imagine it, I experienced it! At other times, I see it only dimly, vaguely, out from under my great overcoat of social do's and don'ts and whatwillpeoplethinks! But yesterday, I saw it clearly! And I believe it saw me! And I think it said ‘"WELCOME!’

***

Chapter 16: EUREKA!

We spent Christmas Eve, 1971, with my parents in Citrus Heights. Then on Christmas day Herb and I observed a tradition we had started the year before: In the morning, we left Luv with them and drove back to the City to have "Jewish Christmas" breakfast (all sorts of wonderful kosher-deli treats) with his sister and her family, then spent the afternoon at Dave's Baths! Unlike last year, we took LSD just after leaving Sid and Rachel's.

As we parked the car and walked the block or so to Dave's, a nearby church was broadcasting recorded bells playing Christmas Carols, and we almost fell down laughing when they started pealing a very scratchy "Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful!"

Inside, we wished each other "Merry Christmas and Good Luck," and went to separate rooms.

There were only a few others wandering around in the halls or watching tv. The steam room was empty, so I climbed to the top shelf and moved back into my favorite spot, the darkest, hottest corner of the room. My body was doing that "shifting gears" thing. It seemed like my mind was unfolding...

Suddenly the room vanished; the earth vanished! I seemed to be a sphere of light, suspended in space. All around me was enormous lonely emptiness. But then, other lights appeared in the darkness. One or two, vastly separated at first, but then more and more until there seemed to be millions of us. We were all moving — it was impossible to judge how "slow" or "fast" — but it soon became obvious that we would all converge at the same point, where now I could see a brilliant white light, far brighter than the lights that were zooming toward it. The sphere of light grew as I flew closer, until it finally filled the entire range of my vision, and then I went crashing into it - and came! The Universe exploded and became fireworks in space! Then, dimly, a bearded face, surrounded with long blond hair that sparkled like a halo in the dimly lit steam, rose up from my crotch and kissed me wetly. "Merry Christmas," he whispered, then vanished into the mist.

When I finally regained enough strength to move, I went to the showers and turned one on full blast! It felt amazingly fantastic — like a refreshing drink of cold spring water on a hot summer day. The splashing water seemed to be drawing something out of my body! I watched in awe as writhing creepy-crawley little cartoon-monsters came oozing out of my skin to go swirling down the drain. They were my "Sins!" I recognized them!

When the shower was finished, I felt refreshed, renewed, amazingly clean! I felt "reborn!"

Just then, on the background music tape, Barbara Streisand sang "On a clear day.....rise and look around you...." and I had the most overwhelming impression that God was speaking with Barbara’s voice and that She was talking to me, directly, telling me to look around. So I did. I turned and looked into a room which seemed to be behind a large window behind the wash basins, near the doorway, where a naked man stood looking back at me. He grinned and winked at me, and Barbara sang "...and you'll see who you are!"

There was no doubt in my mind who it was; I recognized him easily, immediately! It was someone I had once loved very much, but had abandoned, many years ago because it seemed he had abandoned me! I had seen that face, that beard and long hair, in a thousand religious illustrations: It was Jesus! The Come-Unto-Me Jesus - Jesus knocking on your door - Jesus and the little lamb - even the glow-in-the-dark plaster Jesus who stood guard in my grandmother’s bedroom.

But then, the door opened and the window wavered, and I realized I was looking at my own reflection in a mirror.

The conclusion was obvious: I was Jesus!

The idea should have terrified me, but instead, something in my brain went "Oh! All right. Of course! Why didn't I see it before?" Suddenly it all made perfect sense!

Then, through the open doorway, another long-haired, bearded man came in. Obviously he too was Jesus! He smiled beatifically and nodded — almost a little bow — and went into the showers. As I stepped out into the theatrically-lit, purple-carpeted corridor, a dozen other naked Jesuses — black ones, brown ones, white ones, were moving to the music like some kind of bizarre avant-garde ballet! And God was singing in Barbara’s voice: "You can see forever...and ever...!”I joined the parade and went up to my room with a happiness welling up inside me, ready to explode. I had the impression that I was the last one to discover the incredible Messianic-Secret. Today was like a “Surprise Party”for me! It seemed that everyone else had been waiting for me to solve the final mystery, and then the celebration would begin! It was going to be the biggest party the world had ever known!

And then we were going to merge!

There was something divinely ironic about learning all this on Christmas day, in the House of David. Homosexuality was the "Key of David!" Half of our Gay institutions were named after the King of the Jews who had loved Jonathan more than Bathsheeba! The other half were named "Lambda!" We were the “Lambs who had gone astray!” We were the "firstfruits of the Lamb of God!” mentioned in The Bible! We were the “last” who would soon be “first!” We were those "redeemed from the earth, who sang, as it were, a new song!"

In us were all the prophesies fulfilled!

And now we could throw off our shrouds of "sinfulness" and dance together proudly in the light! Now we could properly save the world!

I opened the door to my cubicle, ready to join the jubilation, and almost fell headlong into darkness, an angry, roiling, crackling smokiness, just beyond my door. Dave's Baths had gone away, and in its place was something absolutely terrifying! It seemed I could hear grotesque whispering and muttering as though an incredible monstrosity was out there, sighing and slobbering, impatiently waiting to devour me!

I slammed the door and locked it! Terror engulfed me, almost paralyzing me, but I had enough control left to shakily find the tranquilizer I had brought along for just such a situation. I swallowed it quickly and sat on the edge of my bunk, gripping the mattress for what seemed like hours until the fear finally subsided.

I kept the door closed and locked until Herb knocked and asked if I was ready to go. I had been dressed for an hour.

When we got home, Herb asked "What's wrong? What happened?"

"Sit down," I said, "I need to tell you something."

We sat across the table from each other and I took his hands in mine. "I found out something tonight."

"Oh, what?"

"Who I really am," I told him passionately.

He nodded patiently. "All right," he said, "and who would that be?"

"Jesus," I said.

"You're kidding, right?" he said.

"I never knew who I was before, but now I know!"

"Jesus?"

"Isn't it wonderful?"

"Oh, Shit, Dirk!" Herb said softly, putting his head into his hands. He hit his forehead with this fist: “What have I done?”

"No, no, wait!” I grabbed his wrists, pulling his hands down from his eyes. “You don't understand. So are you!"

"What?" He pulled away and looked at me as though I had gone totally insane.

"We all are! All Gays are Christ! 'The last will be first, and the first will be last!' 'The meek shall inherit the earth!'" I laughed happily. "Look out, world! Here come the meek!"

Herb put his head into his hands again and sighed wearily. "Oh, God! Oh, Dirk!" he whispered. "I'm so sorry! I am so very,very sorry!"

“Sorry? Why? It’s wonderful! Herb? ” But as I studied him, waiting for his response, I realized that, to him, something had gone terribly wrong! He was thinking I'd had a "Bad Trip." But to me, that trip had been the most incredibly beautiful thing that had ever happened to me! But to him, it was insanity. Raving madness! And he blamed himself: for talking me into taking Acid in the first place!

***

CHAPTER 17: SHEWBREAD/LSD

In 1969, Charles Manson claimed to be Jesus. In 1970, someone named Mel Lyman wrote a long, rambling letter which was published in The Rolling Stone, announcing that he was Jesus. (“No miracles this time, just hard work to save the earth.”) New Year's Eve, 1971, in a well-known Gay restaurant on Polk Street, someone (the CIA, it later turned out, testing biological warfare weapons) had put LSD into a cocktail consumed by one of San Francisco's best-known Gay businessmen, who subsequently freaked out and proclaimed himself Jesus! He was hustled off to San Diego! One did not need to be a genius to figure out that I had been on a very popular Acid-trip! A local joke had it that there were "more Messiahs in San Francisco that you can shake a stick at!" (Of course, the response to that was: "Never shake a stick at a Messiah!")

Except that, not every Acid-taker took the Jesus-trip. Herb had no idea at all what I was talking about, when I tried to explain to him what an incredible thing had happened to me. He had felt "good," physically, and had had wonderful sex, but nothing more. No deep psychological or spiritual insights. Just great sex.

Even though I understood, logically, that I had taken the same trip that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others had also taken, the experience itself stood out in my mind like a lush green oasis in the middle of a vast and barren desert. It still seems to be one of the most "real" things that have ever happened to me!

Herb flatly forbade me to take any more Acid. As far as he was concerned, the thing that had happened to me was horrendous! It would have been the same as his hallucinating that he was Moses! Such an experience would be clearly insane, and it frightened him.

In attempting to make some kind of sense out of my adventure, I made the mistake of telling several friends about it. Their reactions were amazingly similar: at the first mention of the name "Jesus," their expressions froze, their eyes focused on something far away, and they suddenly remembered forgotten appointments; my "good friends" would get away from me as quickly as possible, and then virtually vanish from my life!

One Lesbian called me a "Gay Charlie Manson," stormed out of my house, slamming the door, and refused to have anything to do with me, ever again.

Another Lesbian, one of Herb's co-workers, telephoned me, very late one Saturday, apparently Acid-tripping herself, and said, "Hi, Jesus! This is God." I recognized Ralf's voice and said "Hi, God! How are you?"

"Sad," she said. "Very, very sad."

"Oh, dear," I said. "What's wrong?"

"My children don't love me. Some don't even believe in me. Some are angry with me, and some even hate me! And that makes me very sad."

"I'm sorry."

"Oh, that's ok," she said quickly. "I'm going to forgive them all because I love them so very much. I've decided to save the world!"

"Good for you, God!" I said. "Thank you."

"But, the thing I wanted to tell you is..." she paused dramatically. "I am a network." She hung up without saying goodbye.

About that time, I read an article in one of the Gay papers about a newly published translation of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a book called The Gospel According to Thomas, which the article’s author called "The Gay Gospel," because of the final verses, which they quoted:

"Simon Peter said to them, 'Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life.'" Jesus said, 'Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.'"

I found a copy of the small, thin book in a hippie boutique, and was amazed to discover that, instead of "God," or "The Father," Jesus referred to the power behind him as "The All!" "It is spread around you, but you do not see it." he kept telling people. "You already have what you want, but you know it not." I had just published two books with "All" in the title:I Want It All and All or Nothing, and had almost finished writing a third, called All Is Well! At the Pleasure Faire, I had connected with something I thought of as "the All-Mind," and Ralf had recently informed me that God was a Network. I wanted desperately to talk to someone about all this, but no one would discuss it! It was very much like discovering I was Gay, all over again, except at a "higher" level! The rejection was just as overwhelming. Even Herb withdrew a little. He never talked about splitting up, but he made it perfectly clear that he would walk out if my “insanity” didn't end, and soon. If I hadn't had the responsibility of talking care of Luv during his long recuperation, I might have jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge — just to see if I really could fly!

Instead, I stopped talking to anyone, especially Herb, about anything even remotely connected to Jesus or my two Acid-trips. They became my deep, dark secrets. I couldn't stop thinking about them.

By myself, while Herb was at work, I pursued the mystery secretly. In the process of comparing The Gospel of Thomas with those of the New Testament, I rediscovered something that had bothered me, many years before, in “Mormon Seminary,” when I had seriously studied the Bible. The story, reported by Matthew, Mark and Luke, had made no sense whatever, because it had seemed like a non-sequitur — the original and real meaning seemed to have been lost in the many translations between now and then.

Jesus and the disciples had been in a "cornfield," outside Jerusalem, on the Sabbath day, picking up the "corn" that had been dropped by the harvesters, and eating it. The Pharisees had come flapping out of town, accusing them all of breaking the Sabbath, but Jesus supposedly told them: "Have you never read what King David did, when he was hungry, he and they that were with him? How he went into the house of God, and did eat the Shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests alone, and gave also to them which were with him? The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore, the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath."

It didn't make sense — until I discovered that "corn" was a generic term, meaning whatever grain the locals used for baking bread. It didn't mean "maize," which was native to America. It was much more likely to mean "rye" - what is more Jewish than rye bread - which is subject to a kind of fungus called "ergot of rye" — which was the predecessor of LSD!

It was like a lightbulb had suddenly flashed “on” above my head, illuminating the darkness!

It was a “revelation!”

Jesus had been talking about "Show-Bread" - "Vision-Bread!" Legal for the priests alone! You eat it and it “shows” you “visions!” The conclusion blossomed in my mind: The story in the Bible was simply the "cover story" for a piece of information they wanted to communicate without letting the authorities know what they were talking about!

The story was not about breaking the Sabbath, it was about a priestly secret called "Shewbread!" They had been gathering heads of rye that had been left by the harvesters and were now dusted with a bluish-green powder. They intended to grind those "contaminated" grains, and mix and bake their own Shewbread! That was how they got "into the spirit!" They were getting ready for Passover.

Or maybe they were all getting stoned, "in the spirit" right there in the field! A few blue grains should do it.

Twice recently, I had taken the 20th century version of Shewbread — LSD — and had touched the same thing they had touched, two thousand years ago! “The ALL!” I understood the passion and amazement of those whose visions had been guided by Jesus of Nazareth.

It was probably Shewbread which Jesus gave to the multitudes on the Mount, when two loaves of “bread” supposedly "fed" all those people. He fed them visions! No wonder he seemed to glow! He preached to them while they were stoned on LSD!

It must have been Shewbread which he put into the water barrels at the wedding feast at Canaan, when a guest told the host, while drinking the new “wine,” “You’ve saved the best for last!”

It was surely Shewbread which he gave to the disciples on what was to become "The Last Supper," Passover eve. He and the others were "In the Spirit" in the Garden of Gesthemane when the soldiers showed up and caught Jesus and Judas "kissing." Jesus was probably tried and executed for being a Sodomite - a Jewish crime punishable by death by crucifixion - not for claiming to be a messiah. Judas was probably executed alongside him as his sodomite lover.

Jesus was the earth's first Hippie! The pansexual prototype.

Peter denied the whole thing, hid the body, and made up the incredible lie upon which Christianity and most of "civilization" is based. That Jesus rose, alive and well and bodily floated up to heaven! Or maybe Peter hallucinated that he saw Jesus doing what he wanted him to do.

All of the applicable prophecies about the expected Messiah were incorporated in the story his apostles told, that he would be born of a virgin, that he would rise from the dead 3 days after his death, etc., etc. No one contradicted them. It was all magical. The three wise men from the East, who had taught him about Shewbread and The All, were turned into kings of Egypt, bearing gifts to the newborn son of God.

Like John ("I leaned on His breast!")-the-Beloved and his "Revelations," (now there's an Acid trip for you! A Shewbread Trip!) I had simply seen what was in my own head, which I had put there, myself, long ago, based upon all the myths and fables my church and community had taught me, which I had accepted as absolute truth. Those images were still alive and well, and living in my mind. Growing up, I had patterned myself not on the father I hated, who hated me, but on the"father" I loved, Jesus, who loved me unconditionally; why should it surprise me to find out that's what I still was? A Jesus-clone — a carbon-copy without magic powers! (“No miracles this time...”)

The sower of seeds went out and sowed some seeds. Some fell on stony ground, some fell in thorny bushes, some fell where the birds ate them, but some fell on good soil and sprouted and yielded bountiful returns. I was one of those sprouts. Surely there were others!

As the months went by, it became obvious to me that I was not alone in my background and the problems engendered by early religious conditioning. Malcolm Boyd had once observed that "Gay men and priests come from the same boy-pool." In my experience, Lesbians and nuns seemed, more often than not, to be cut from the same cloth. Except for those members of ersatz religious groups, Gay people seemed to regard Jesus with the same hostility usually reserved for ex-lovers. I assumed they had all been disappointed much as I had been, and had become homosexuals at least partly in a kind of "Fuck You!" gesture toward anything having to do with religion. Like my first cigarette and first drink of whiskey — and now that I think of it, my first homosexual experience — the guy in the bathtub — it had been a way of taking revenge at Jesus for not coming back, for being a lie, for leaving us — the “Brides of Christ” — "waiting at the church."

But, if I was correct in my new theories, then all of our anger should be directed at Peter and all who followed him, perpetuating "The Greatest Lie Ever Told!"

Jesus was trying to teach men how to live together and love each other, not how to die and go to Heaven. Or feed each other Jewish Guilt! The "closet" from which we supposedly came when admitting our deviation and defiance was surely the same one Jesus had advised us to go into when we prayed — instead of the synagogues and street corners — talk to The All in private. The teachings of the rabbi from Galilee - at least those not "corrected" or "interpreted" by generations of pious Peterites: Popes, priests and scribes - were still valid and helpful, if not "sacred” or “holy.”

But, trying to tell that to someone who had decided it was all bullshit, to be rejected and ignored, was like insisting an ex-lover was "still a nice guy, after all."

Of course, all of this had nothing whatsoever to do with non-ex-Christians, like Herb. None of that stuff was in his head, and he regarded it as myths and fables, with no more application to his own life than, say, the story of the ant and the grasshopper, or the tortoise and the hare. Relevant, maybe, but just barely.

I finally decided that someday I would write a book called THE GAY MESSIAH, but for the moment, I tried to put it behind me and get on with my life.

It was about then that I started making notes to myself.

THE LSD/SHEWBREAD EXPERIENCE opened a "Window of Inspiration" in my head, which still functions, but without the physical experience - thank goodness! I've been making notes to myself for all the years since then - about the ideas that come through that opening, collecting them in envelope boxes labeled THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO GABRIEL HORNY.

For example :
"A new religion is not the solution.
Religion is the cause, not the cure.

Religion turns good, decent people
into bigots and hypocrites."

To read more of those notes, please click> GOSPEL<

***

"ALL IS WELL"

Katherine Mansfield - 1889-1923 - said it so well:
at the end of her Journal:
"I want, by understanding myself, to understand others.
I want to be all I am capable of becoming....
This all sounds very strenuous and serious,
But now that I have wrestled with it,
It's no longer so.
I feel happy - deep down.
All is well."

All of my adult life I have been Queer
& until recently, baffled by the reasons why.
I never have accepted the idea that we're born Queer.
I believe we are born with a certain capacity
& that certain life-factors activate it
Jesus's "Secret Message" activated it for me.

It took me a while to figure out my LSD/SHEWBREAD Vision,
that I was Jesus
but it finally made sense.
I had programmed myself to be a Jesus clone.
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
who said "Come unto me! I will make you fishers of men,"
who loved John the Beloved
and Judas
and probably some if not all of the other 10.
& maybe even Mary Magdalene - who may have been a Lesbian, not a whore!!
Whatever the truth of that ancient happening,
Jesus's central teachings have endured,
surrounded by the bullshit added by Peter & Paul's Christian Church.
They not onlychanged the facts of his life to suit the predictions
of the Jewish Messiah
They tried to turn his basically homosexual teachings
into a Christian Heterosexual Religion.
It hasn't worked in 2000 years.
It never will. It doesn't fit!
But as a way of life, as he intended it to be,
Those of us who love each other
men loving men & women loving women
can be happy, knowing why.

It's Jesus's fault!

Maybe you, too, sang "I'll Be A Sunbeam for Jesus!"
And maybe you became that sunbeam,
& people said "what's wrong with you
Are you Gay?!"
Well, yes.

"We are called Gay
not for what we are,
but for what we will be
when we discover what we are."
***
"Inside drab and ugly outer shells
we are creatures of exquisite beauty
hiding from each other
and ourselves."

from The Gospel According to Gabriel Horny > GAY LIFE

***

Now, what?
Is something magical going to happen?
Did a very wise man, 2000 years ago, know what he was doing,
"sowed the seed?"
Or did it just accidentally happen & we're just all better off for it?
Or was there some kind of Mystical planning involved?
Maybe so, maybe not.
Either way, I'm enriched by it:

I am 75 years old.
I've been homosexually active for 59 years.
During my early years, from 21 thru 49,
I had sex with a different man, or men at least once a week.
Our favorite hangouts were The Baths on Sunday afternoons.
Say at least 4 different men per month
That's around 48 men per year
for 28 years = at least 1344 different Gay & Strait cocks I have sucked!
More, I'm sure!
That's a lotta love-juice!

I have lived with 5 Gay Men,
2 of them "Brotherly Lovers"
for 6 & 18 years,
Winn & Herb.

I've also had 7 wonderful dogs:
Luv, Frankie, Ernie, Buddy, Andy & now Buddy Jr.
That's a whole lotta absolutely pure love!

Recently it seems to me that the number of
sweet, horny men in my life
is a reward
for, somehow, blindly, doing it right.
But much of my life was spent without a clue!

ENJOY YOUR LIFE! IT'S ALL YOU'VE GOT.

PS:
I need to add that
I've felt a "connection" with SOMETHING for many years.
I've never been able to conceptualize it,
but I'm fairly sure it's functioning in my life.
I'm fairly sure it had something to do
with at least 2 "miracles" that saved my life.
I believe it has something to do with the fact that I'm "a survivor,"
still alive
and "partaking" of whatever it is,
while all my friends who didn't believe in themselves are gone.

I think it is quite possible that you and I are both hooked up
to the same thing that Jesus & John & Judas
& David & Jonathan before them, were hooked up with.
Jesus called it "The All."
I think it is what is meant by "the holy spirit,"
or "holy ghost,"
or "The Presence of God."
It's not "God," it's the communal Us.

It is that overriding invisible entity that I met at The Pleasure Faire;
"I became very aware of the love that seemed to be everywhere. It felt delicious! I had never felt anything like it before! We all seemed to be immersed in it — like a slightly-heavier-than-air ocean of warm ambrosial sweetness that drifted and eddied around us, buoyant and uplifting!"

It was the "Divine" oneness of the Gay audience
at the Bette Middler concert.

"Multiplicities of Onenesses."

It is that connection you get at a stoned rock concert,
or in the mosh pit - I suppose.

HAVE FUN! BUT PLAY SAFE!!
Dirk

Please let me know if you want to read more: Dirk@DirkVanden.net

Also read Chapter One of ALL OF ME - The Dirty Book Murders - a Gay Romance

Thanks for coming!

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