I Cheat on Fred with a Goblin

Davenport, Iowa, March 1980

In December 1979, when I was a sophomore at Augustana College, I got my first actual boyfriend: Fred, 27 years old, a graduate of McCormick Theological Seminary taking his internship year at the First United Methodist Church in Rock Island.

After Christmas I started spending two or three evenings a week with Fred -- dinner (he cooked), tv, and sex, then rushing home at 11:00 pm to tell my parents I had been studying late at the library.

By March  I had introduced them to Fred, and was openly spending the night on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday.

In June we moved to Omaha together.  After an execrable six weeks, we broke up, but stayed friends for the rest of his life.

Fred actually was from the Quad Cities, or nearby; he grew up in the small town of Aledo, about 30 miles south, and got his undergraduate degree in psychology at Knox College in Galesburg.  He was still in contact with several of his Quad Cities friends, some that knew he was gay, some that didn't.



One who did was Dale Schaefer-Shit (his real name, except for the shit part), a nasty little goblin, about 3 feet high, with a very thick, heavy torso, very long, hairy arms, long sharp claws, an ugly, warty face, pointy ears, green skin, prehensile toes, a tail...

 Ok, he looked more like the top photo: Fred's age, tall, buffed, with a black beard and a hairy chest. But it was fun imagining him as a goblin.

I arrived at Fred's apartment, across the river in Davenport, about 4:30 pm -- dinner was at 5:00 pm, standard for the Midwest -- and at least once a week, often more than that, Dale Schaefer-Shit was there.  Apparently he  had some sort of late-night goblin job with the city, so he got up around 2:00 pm, and came to visit Fred in the late afternoon to do morning-type activities.

Sometimes he was sitting at the kitchen table, slurping on Cheerios.

Sometimes he was on the couch, watching Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat.  

Sometimes he was coming out of the bathroom, toweling off after a shower, naked, his hairy chest glistening, his equipment out.

I should have been turned on, but I wasn't.  Seeing Dale Schaefer-Shit made me angry.  I could be in a perfectly good mood, on top of the world, but when I walked in and saw the goblin, my hackles raised.  There was just something about him that seemed unclean, disturbing.  Evil.


Apparently the feeling was mutual.  Dale Schaefer-Shit rarely spoke to me.  Usually he pretended I wasn't in the room.  And he never stuck around long after I arrived.  He said "See ya, Flintstone" to Fred, flashed me an evil smile, and slithered off to do nasty goblin things.

Where did Fred, the ministerial intern, the theologian, the trained pastoral counselor, even meet that creepy little gremlin?

"He's my oldest friend.  We grew up together.  We were both in the same Cub Scout troop.  We went to sleepovers together, and trick-or-treating on Halloween."

With that face, he must have gotten a lot of candy...

"We were both on the basketball team in high school.  We called each other Flintstone and Rubble, because my name is Fred.  He's the first one I told when I realized that I was gay."

I get it...he was your shadow-self, the yang to your yin, the darkness to your light, the squirrelly  snivelly Gollum to your Frodo.

"Well, he strikes me as...um.."  A nasty little gremlim!  "As sort of creepy."


"He's a little on the shy side, but he's a good guy, really."


One wet, blustery day in March, before we took our trip to Des Moines to visit the Priest with Three Boyfriends,  I arrived at the apartment to find Dale Schaefer-Shit sitting on the couch under a blanket, shirtless, eating Cheerios and...reading one of Fred's Playgirl magazines!

"Um...hi..."  I said tentatively.

"Fred is running late -- something held him up."  He laughed at a secret joke.  "Have a seat.  Want some blanket?"

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