RG Beefcake and Boyfriends: Dad throws away my Book of Cute Boys

Are you checking out this guy's dick, or trying to read the titles in his bookcase?

I'm reading the titles.

I love books. I love browsing through used bookstores, driving home from the mall with a Barnes and Noble bag beside me, checking my recommendations on Amazon.

And reading every night before turning out the light, unless I'm on a date.

Well, sometimes the guy I'm dating has a well-stocked bookcase that distracts me from the bedroom stuff.

I've been buying at least two books per week since college. That adds up to nearly 5,000, but actually I have only about 2,000. Every time I move, I pare down my collection.

Where did this bibliomania start? Maybe with my parents, who disapproved of books. They were at best a waste of time, and more likely sinful. The only way I could get away with reading was to claim that it was a school assignment (evidently my teachers assigned a lot of science fiction and fantasy novels).

Or maybe it's all due to a traumatic incident that happened when I was about four years old, when we were still living on Randolph Street in Garrett, Indiana.

I had a Little Golden Book I couldn't read most of the words yet, but the front cover showed two boys hugging and waving. So I called it my Book of Cute Boys.

I think it was a retelling of the Disney movie The Swiss Family Robinson (1960), starring James MacArthur (left) and Tommy Kirk. I would not see the movie or read the original novel for many years, but I could tell that it was about a family living in the jungle.

One day we were driving somewhere on a scary country road, and I was reading in the back seat (this was before car seats, or even seatbelts). Dad yelled back, "Don't read in the car!"

He was afraid that I would get carsick and throw up. It happened once, but I was never allowed to read in the car again.

More after the break

But the book was too beautiful to look away. Look at this man hugging a muscular blond boy -- wearing red girls' shoes! They have v's of skin visible where their shirts are unbuttoned to their chests.

I said something like "I wanna see the cute boys."

"Dammit, Skeezix, do you want to get sick?"

I ignored him and kept reading...

Look at blond boy now: he's much bigger and taller. The elephant is trying to unbutton his shirt, while the boy in purple pants looks on, his hand jauntily on his hip.

Dad always got mad easily while driving. He may have warned me a few more times. Then, sucking his lower lip in his look of pure fury, he reached back, grabbed The Book of Cute Boys from my hands, and threw it out the car window!

It was lost forever!

There's a lot of gay symbolism in that distant memory:

Was Dad worried that I would get motion sickness from reading in the car, or that I would get sick from looking at cute boys?

He only called me Skeezix when I was subverting gender expectations.

When he threw away the book, was he trying to expel my same-sex desire in a sort of exorcism?

I understood. From that day on, I could never mention that I liked other boys. My same-sex desire would be denied, suppressed, challenged, excoriated, qualified, or explained away as someting else.

It would never again be allowed to just exist.

I've spent my life buying that book over and over again, but nothing will it back.

Nothing will bring back the joy of talking, openly, eagerly, without hesitation or comment, about cute boys.