My 24 favorite autobiographical stories: gay hints, sausage sightings, a wiener, a goblin, the Pentecostal Porn Star, and Kevin the Vampire

 I've posted dozens of more-or-less accurate autobiographical stories here and on Tales of West Hollywood, moving from my fundamentalist Nazarene childhood through high school, figuring it out, college, grad school at Indiana University, a horrible year in...ugh...Texas, and on to the heart of the Gay World.  Some of the stories are minimal -- I was trying to cover every gay hint, boyfriend, hookup, and sausage sighting  -- but some are well-written, insightful, humorous, and occasionally erotic.  Here are my 24 favorites.

Childhood

I Fall Asleep in a Sailor's Arms.  On the train on the way back from visiting South Carolina.  He warns me about making friends with "sissies."

The Face of Pure Evil.  The Old Lady Schoolteachers' grandson, who may not have looked like this, rescues me from the Maniac who stalks the hallways of Denkmann Elementary School.

The Answer to the Naked Man's Question. A psychedelic Alice in Wonderland on tv on a golden afternoon, and a naked man who asks a question that I still can't answer. 

Comic Books and Cocks at the Furniture Store. Cousin Buster pranks me by claiming that you can get comic books at the furniture store -- and the delivery guys take off their shirts.  And sometimes their pants.

Grandpa Prater's Banjo  On the day after Christmas, Cousin Buster and I sneak into Grandpa Prater's room to borrow his banjo.

My Wild Night: Pancakes, Massage, and a Wiener.  I broke like six of my parents' rules that night, and was grounded for two weeks.  But at least I got to feel a...

High School

On My Knees in a Cute Guy's Bedroom.  When we went on vacation, we had to go to a local church, where they mistook us for sinners and tried inept soul-winning lines.  But once it worked to my advantage: A cute boy invited me to his bedroom "to pray."

The Preacher Pops a Boner.  Our Bible College invited prospective students to a weekend of campus tours, ball games, nature hikes, classroom visits -- and the boys' dorm lounge, where the only couch invisible to the monitor got quite busy.

Augustana College

The First Gay Rights March in Iowa. Passersby pull their friends out of stores to gawk.  The police watch closely, eager to arrest us if we happen to touch another marcher's hand

I Cheat on My Boyfriend with a Goblin.  The Goblin's name is Dale Schafer-Shit.  But Fred was cheating with him first.  Every friggin' day.

Sharing a Bed with Mary's Brother.  My friend Mary invites me to her horrible house in the suburbs for spring break.  But at least I get to share a bed with a cute bo.

More after the break

Spring break in Iceland: A hookup with a Nordic god

Augustana, Junior Year

Augustana was a small college, so there weren't many choices for Modern Language Majors: Spanish, French, German, Swedish, Latin, Greek, and occasionally Russian. We had to "become fluent" in two languages and "competent" in a third, so I chose Spanish and French, which I studied in high school, and German, because I spent the fall quarter of my sophomore year in Regensburg. 

We also had to participate in at least one language club, but the Spanish, French, and German clubs were kind of boring, with bake sales, foreign-language films, and field trips to the Goethe Institut or the Alliance Française in Chicago.

Everybody joined the Scandinavian Club -- they had an endowment from a wealthy alumnus, and paid most of the way for members to go on annual field trips to Scandinavia!  A different country every year, alternating between Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland.

In my junior year, it was Iceland.  I would have preferred Norway, but I wasn't about to turn down ten days in the land of the Old Norse sagas and Nordic hunks.

There were 12 of us, eight boys and four girls, plus two chaperones. We stayed in a youth hostel, four to a room, but everyone got a single bed, so there wasn't any late-night fondling, just a couple of less-than-spectacular sausage sightings.

No one came out willingly in the 1970s, so if any of the other guys were gay, they didn't let on.

Iceland was interesting, but not quite interesting enough for six days.  After you see the National Museum and the  Árbæjarsafn, an open-air museum of Icelandic history, there's nothing but glaciers, geysers, rocks, and scraggly mountains.  I've never found natural wonders as interesting as museums.

We never made it to Akureyri, famous for its annual strongman contest.

One day we took a bus to Hveragerði, about 45 minutes from Reykjavik, to visit Reykjadalur, "Steam Valley,"  an unearthly-looking region of volcanic boulders, spurts of steam, rocks, waterfalls, pools of water, and hot springs with wooden footpaths around.

Our guide told us that some intrepid souls jumped into the hot springs, but you had to be careful -- in some of them, the temperature got up to 80 degrees (175 fahrenheit), and would scald you.

None of us was brave enough.  Besides, it was cloudy and damp, with a cold wind blowing -- who wanted to strip?

When it came time to get back on the bus, we discovered that Erik was missing!

He was a junior Scandinavian Studies major, short, slim, sandy-haired, blue-eyed, with a round handsome face.  We had known each other since high school, but we didn't interact much: he was a fratboy, several levels above me on the social scale.

We went up and down the paths, calling his name.  No answer.

He couldn't have fallen into a crevice.  It was all open -- we would see him.

Could he have wandered off the path, into the wilderness of volcanic rocks?

We searched for 45 minutes.  Then, just as our chaperone suggested we drive back to town and stop at the police station, Erik appeared -- on a path we had just searched!

Seeing our anxious and angry faces, he said "What?  Chill out -- I was just looking at something.  We're only in Iceland once, right?"

He didn't believe that he had been gone over 45 minutes: "I guess I lost track of time.  Sorry."

More after the break