My Boyfriend Goes to Bed with a Baseball Player

Rock Island, June 1979

I've been putting off the story of Carl the Nazarene boy, because it's kind of embarrassing.

He was one of my brother Kenny's friends, a 16-year old sophomore at Rocky High (all models in the nude photos are over 18) .  I had seen him around, and talked to him a few times, but we didn't start dating until Kenny invited him over for a party on May 25th, 1979.

He was short, with a round baby face, wavy brown hair, dark brown eyes, a smooth pale chest, and slim abs with an outtie belly button.

Obviously too young for me: I was in college, a mature adult, and he was still a "little boy." It would be social suicide if anyone at Augustana saw me hanging out him.

But he was cute, and very enthusiastic, and besides, how many gay guys had I met during the year since I figured "it" out?  Two, and neither of them wanted to date me.  You take what you can get.

As it turns out, we started dating at the worst possible moment: the Friday before Memorial Day Weekend.

 I had a trip to Colombia and a week in Indiana coming up, and he had a family vacation to Minnesota and a week at Nazarene summer camp.

So between May 28th and the end of July, we had three "dates," but really sort of hookups.

1. Swimming at Longview Park Pool (with Kenny along as a chaperone).  Afterwards we went upstairs to our bedroom to change clothes.  Kenny finished quickly, but Carl and I dawdled so we could have some time alone.

2. Carl and I sat together in church, and then he came over for Sunday dinner.  Afterwards we went up to my office and got naked,


3. Broasted chicken at Mulkey's and then parking on the levee to watch the sunset over the Mississippi.  .

This wasn't working.  I wanted to hold Carl in my arms, feel his head against my chest, cuddle with him all night.  I wanted us to sleep together, like I used to do with Bill, but with full knowledge that we were boyfriends, that this was "real."

How to get him into my bed?

"Could you host a sleepover next weekend?" I asked Kenny.

"I'm sixteen," he said gruffly.  "I'll be a junior in the fall."

Sleepover were common in grade school, our main social event: four or five boys,with your brother invited by default.  They became increasingly uncommon in junior high, and they generally ended by high school.  But not always...

"You can still have them in high school, for sort of nostalgia.  Invite your old friends.  It will be fun."

"Hey, I practically had to pay you to get to have my last sleepover!" Kenny exclaimed.  "Why are you so hot to have one now?"

"Well, you could invite Carl, and then..."

"You're not going to do weird gay sex stuff in front of a bunch of normal guys, are you?"

"No, of course not.  Well, maybe a little, after everybody is asleep.  But we'll be able to kiss and cuddle under the covers, like boyfriends."

"Who knew that homos like to kiss?  I thought you were all about the dick."

"Well, dicks, too, of course, but kissing, cuddling, all of that romantic stuff."

"Ok, ok, you don't need to draw me a picture." He patted my shoulder.  "I wouldn't dream of standing in the way of two homos in love!  Don't worry, I'll give you your gay make-out sleepover. "

The full story, with nude photos and explicit sexual content, is on Tales of West Hollywood.