Orange County, August 2017I'm visiting Los Angeles for a week, having dinner with my ex-boyfriend Lane, his husband Ben, and four of their assimilated married couple Orange County friends, all in their 50s and 60s. No nudity, no sharing, just discussions of aluminum siding and 401k accounts, and what I'm doing wrong with my career and personal life.
I try to steer the conversation away from what's wrong with me to celebrity hookup stories, and to my surprise, hear a number of new ones.
Lane and Ben hooked up with Keanu Reeves' boyfriend.
Stan hooked up with John Amos in the shower.
James dated Ricardo Montalban.
And Earle had public sex with 1980s teen idol Matt Dillon.
West Hollywood, May 1982
Earl grew up in Buffalo, New York in the 1960s and 1970s, which was just as conservative, repressed, and homophobic as it sounds. Gay people were never mentioned in school, except once in high school health class, where the teacher advised them not to engage in "self abuse," or they would turn into "he-shes."
There was lots of sex, but it was clandestine, guilty, never spoken of. Earl started having sex with his next door neighbor when he was still a pre-teen. In high school he was with
..
jmp000-ractically the entire football team, and got screwed by the coach.
There was public sex at Delaware Park, at the Greyhound Station, and at dirty bookstores. And as a last resort, there was the movies.
This was before VHS tapes or DVDS, so if you wanted to see a porn movie, you had to go to the a "dirty movie" theater downtown. Usually it showed legitimate movies until midnight, when the porn came out. Straight porn, of course, but an audience consisting of 30 or so horny, repressed straight men, all ages and races, all sizes and shapes, watching naked girls.
Gay guys would walk down the aisles, as if they were heading for a seat, looking for someone to hook up with.
But Earle wanted more. He wanted a place where you could go out on dates, hold hands, kiss.
In 1980, at age 23, he made the Big Move to West Hollywood. He changed his name to Earle with an E and threw himself into the heady, optimistic world of pre-AIDS gay culture. Dancing, drinking, muscles, Frontiers magazine, the Different Light bookstore, Gay Rights Marches, Gay Pride.
This world, though bright and glittery, had perils of his own.
He was judged on his looks, his belly, his small size, his less than stylish wardrobe, his lack of awareness of social norms.He met hustlers and manipulators. He tried to date, and ended up with tricks. He tried to trick, and ended up with an empty bed.
One night Earle had been stood up by a blind date and struck out at the bars. Depressed, lonely, and horny at midnight, he was driving aimlessly down Santa Monica Boulevard, when he saw the Pussycat Theater on Santa Monica, a few blocks east of Fairfax.
Closeted straight men having sex with anonymous strangers in the dark?
A wave of nostalgia hit him. A simpler time, when size, shape, bank account, and knowledge of social norms didn't matter.
A happier time?
The rest of the story, with nude photos and explicit sex, is on Tales of West Hollywood.