Actually, he didn't like talking about his past at all. Most guys in West Hollywood loved swapping stories about coming out, seducing a straight man, or seeing a celebrity penis, but Alan generally kept mum: "Who cares about the past? It's dead and gone. We're alive, we're young, we're in the greatest place in the world. This is our time to LIVE!"
Still, when he was tired and loaded up on sugary snacks, he could tell a good story. Here are his top 20 boyfriends, hookups, and back room exploits.
Alan was born two days before Halloween, 1956, under another name, in a small town near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When he was ten years old, he began going to a Pentecostal church, got saved and filled with the Spirit, and began speaking in tongues.
2. The Preacher at the Bathhouse. After graduating from high school in 1974, Alan enrolled in the ultra-fundamentalist Waynesburg College. He majored in either English or History, and played football to become more "macho." He also began going to the bathhouses of Pittsburgh, where he ran into the minister of his hometown Pentecostal church.
After he got his degree in either English or history, he told his parents that he was gay. They had a big blowup, and didn't speak to him for year. He moved to Los Angeles, and got a job teaching ESL to new immigrants.
3. The Son of a Gilligan's Island Star. One of his first boyfriends was David Johnson, son of Russell Johnson, the Professor on Gilligan's Island.
4. The Star of Land of the Lost. Alan made the rounds of closeted and semi-closeted celebrities, including Wesley Eure, who played the teenage son on the Saturday morning live-action series Land of the Lost.
5. Porn Star Kip Noll. He also began going to the bathhouses and bars of pre-AIDS Los Angeles. One night he met someone who, impressed by his size, introduced him to porn director William Higgins, who cast him in a movie about a boy who wanders around West Hollywood picking up guys.
In all, Alan appeared in five porn movies.
7. The High School Boy. He got a job teaching English at a Catholic school, and began seeing one of his students -- after class, right in the classroom.
8. A Drag Queen Fairy Godmother. After a series of crises in the early 1980s, including getting fired from his teaching job, the death of a close friend, and a sexual assault by a vice cop, Alan turned "ex gay," proclaimed that God had "cured" him, and joined Homosexuals Anonymous. To prove to himself that he was really straight, he went to one of the dive bars in Hollywood and picked up a "woman" -- who turned out to be a drag queen.
In the morning he realized that God loves gay people after all. He retired from porn, changed his name to Alan, turned blond, grew a beard, and joined the gay-positive Metropolitan Community Church. He became Student Clergy.
9. The Norwegian Con Artist. Alan and I met in the fall of 1985. We dated briefly, until he dumped me for a Norwegian con artist (the relationship didn't last long). Then we became friends, and roommates for about a year.
10. The Bed-Hopping College Boy. In the summer of 1986, Alan returned to his old idea of becoming a missionary, with a gay twist: he moved to Japan to start a gay Pentecostal church, but returned to West Hollywood at the end of the summer. When I went to visit him, he picked up a college boy named Minoru, who kept switching between our beds all night.11. My Celebrity Boyfriend. In the spring of 1987, I dated the Celebrity, a still-closeted former teen idol. Alan asked him out immediately after we broke up -- or maybe before -- and they dated twice.
12. The Kept Boy. Alan found three in a bed distracting, so he didn't do much "sharing." Our first "sharing" experience was accidental, with a kept boy who we didn't realize was drunk
13. The Father and Son. Alan moved to Thailand to start another gay Pentecostal church, and backslid into "God hates gays" before being cured by a trip to Pattaya. Before returning to the states, he took a weekend trip to Hong Kong, and picked up a father and son -- a biological father and son!
15. The Lapp. The nice thing about Paris is, everyone in the world eventually gets around to visiting, including a member of the Sami people, the nomads of northern Scandinavia.
16. The Hong Kong Hustler. Alan loved Hong Kong, and visited as often as he could. Unfortunately, it didn't have quite the sexual freedom as Paris. In the summer of 1992, feeling deprived, he hired a hustler, and didn't practice safe sex.
A few months later, Alan discovered that he was HIV positive. Deeply depressed, he moved in with his sister in Norfolk, Virginia, became "ex gay" again, and cut off all contact with his former "sinful associates."
17. Sandy. Soon Alan changed his mind -- God loved gay people after all. He started going to the Norfolk Metropolitan Community Church, where he met Sandy: middle-aged, African-American, rather feminine, also a recovering Pentecostal. They eventually moved to Washington, DC, where they stayed together until the end of his life.
18. The Substitute. I visited them twice in the early 1990s, once in Norfolk and once in DC. Since becoming HIV positive, Alan insisted on monogamy -- no "sharing," not even with safe sex. But when I spent the night with them, they brought in a substitute. Ok, that's my scene, not Alan's.
20. The Male Nurse. We gradually lost contact in the 1990s, as friends who live across a continent from each other do. But one day in the 2000s, Sandy called to tell me that Alan had died of AIDS-related cancer. He was in good spirits during his last days, content with his life and certain of his place in heaven. Almost his last words were "Isn't that male nurse hot?"
Alan LIVED until the end.
The uncensored post, with nude photos, is on Tales of West Hollywood.