Back to work!

Maybe it was getting to sleep late three days in a row or maybe the summer sunshine or whatever, but I'm finally back to writing and on a new story at that. It involves a bar, a phone booth and a really, really big fire. More soon.

New Posts soon, I promise

It's been since March that I've posted a story but it's been a busy, busy time. Now that I get a summer break in another week, I have two stories in progress that, I hope, will find completion. Some time off - and some time at the beach - should allow for that.

Driving to the Great Smokies to Get Naked (March 1971)

This is the most recently completed story. In chronological order, it would be the twelfth of the nineteenth finished so far.

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Driving to the Great Smokies to Get Naked (March 1971)


The two-room apartment was spare but homey. It was actually half of a small house. The other half had a separate kitchen. Mine had a front room and a back room and a bathroom. The front room was the "living" room, the back was the bedroom and kitchen. And the bed was barely a bed, more a cot and not a good one at that. I had moved there with a roommate who had bunk beds but when his ultra-conservative parents found out he was gay, they drove up from Chattanooga to take him home for therapy and took the bunk beds with them. That left me with a very modest and worn twin bed, one Charlie has offered me when I moved out of his and Danny's apartment.

The rest of the furniture was not much to speak of either, but it was adequate for my needs.
But it wasn't a place to bring a trick home to. A trick might not pay attention to the ratty couch or what barely passed for a dining table, but the bed would be another matter. It's difficult enough for two people to share a twin bed, but this particular bed presented even more of a problem.

In my previous apartment, the one I rented the day I fled Atlanta for Knoxville, I could easily move the two parts of the sectional couch together. The enormous living room allowed for that. The current living room was too small to make that convenient.

This all became apparent one night shortly after my roommate had been abducted, er, had left.
I was up for a trick or at least an evening of hunting for one. You know how hunters say they really aren't in it for the kill, but for the thrill of the hunt and being out in nature. I was a hunter of tricks. If I didn't find one, there was still the thrill of the hunt and being out in gayville.
Knoxville hadn’t yet entered the age of the gay dance club. K-town gave gay boys a choice: either a dive of a beer bar located down a dark alley or a dive of a beer bar located near another dark alley a few blocks away.

I took the first choice. Both bars were run by lesbians (most gay bars were then), but I liked the, um, ambience of the one down the alley. All bars, gay or straight, had to close at midnight sharp and would begin shutting down around eleven-thirty to be sure to be in compliance with any Knoxville Beer Board inspectors who might be driving around at that hour. Beer only. No booze, no setups, no BYOB. And, of course, no dancing. Sounds grim, but it could be fun.

What was grim this particular night was the crowd. There was no crowd. The bar staff outnumbered the customers and there were only four people working.

I was about to head for the other bar but decided to stay long enough for a beer. The other place sort of scared me, unless I was there with some friends. And since I was trick hunting, I was flying solo.

In scanning the empty booths to decide where I would sit alone I realized one of the booths wasn't empty. It was occupied by someone I didn't know, but someone I realized I would like to know. At least for a night. So I grabbed my beer and headed for his booth.

I don't recall what tired cliché I must have used to explain why, with all the other booths empty, I chose to sit in the one he was already occupying. I guess I just assumed he was looking for someone to join him. This was a gay bar, after all. He must have known that. If I wasn't what he was looking for he would certainly let me know. But he apparently had no problem with my joining him and the hunt was on.

Whether I was hunting for him or he for me didn't matter. If we left together, if we tricked together, it didn't matter who had propositioned whom.

The conversation–what there was of it–was awkward at first. That wasn't so unusual then. In later years, in a crowded dance bar full of buff, mostly shirtless men, a guy could be more direct with a pickup line. We knew where we were (a gay club) and we knew what we wanted (a trick.) In a back alley neighborhood beer bar, however, you had to exercise some care. Maybe he was just there for a beer. Maybe he didn't know it was a gay club. We didn't have rainbows everywhere then. And the place was almost empty he might have just figured it a good place to grab a beer or two.

This guy was too young, too small-town to be part of the vice squad and those guys didn't hassle the bars anyway, just the restrooms in public buildings. And they did that during the daytime.
Back then I never gave much thought to the possibility of what we now call gay bashing. Maybe it was because I was usually drawn to guys not likely to overpower me or who were so likely queer as to fear that I might bash them.

This guy was tough to figure out though. Most pickup conversations avoid direct propositions but this one was indirect to the point of near obscurity. I began to think the night would end right there in the booth.

Yet somehow, I don't recall how, he left with me and followed me in his car to my house.
We were undressed and in bed within minutes, perhaps seconds.

And then a problem arose. Or, rather, didn't, um, rise.

No, it wasn't what would be today a Viagra moment, but neither of us somehow could get turned on enough to do anything.

It wasn't our hormones' fault.

It was the bed's fault.

Then I got an idea.

“Why don’t we drive to the Smokies?”

“Huh?”

Somehow I managed to explain my idea. The bed just wasn’t working and maybe what we needed was something radically different. Like sex in a car on a lonely road. Or sex in the woods. I told him I knew of several out-of-the-way places in the mountains – about an hour away – where we could get it on. How this would be more comfortable than an a bed indoors wasn’t really clear to either of us. But he bought into the idea and off we went to the Great Smoky Mountains.

Now where did I ever come up with such an idea? A few years earlier I had worked for a radio station in the Smokies that was a thirty-mile drive from Knoxville. And most of that thirty miles was very rural, although the road was a wide four-lane. One day, while rounding one of the road’s many curves, I saw a young guy standing by the side of the road hitchhiking. Only as I passed did I notice something unusual. He was wearing jockey shorts. Just jockey shorts. For some reason—maybe I was just in a hurry to get work or didn’t believe what I saw—I continued on without stopping. But I didn’t stop thinking about what I saw. Or letting what I saw develop into a fantasy.

No, it wasn’t a fantasy about being stranded on a lonely highway in only my jockeys. On that stretch of highway I wouldn't want to be stranded fully clothed – and armed.

Instead I imagined being with this hitchhiker somewhere in the Smokies, somewhere secluded and safe. Somehow the phrase, "sex in the Smokies" kept running through my horny mind.
Now the guy in my bed wasn't the hitchhiker and he wasn't wearing jockeys. Or anything else. But, hey, fantasies are flexible and he was flexible enough to agree with the idea. So off to the Smokies we went.

Where exactly we were going I wasn't sure. And I was the one driving. But the nearest place I had in mind was almost an hour away so I had time to think. Or so I thought.

But after we had passed through Sevierville and Pigeon Forge on the way to the mountain bypass around Gatlinburg, I still wasn't sure of a safe destination so I pulled over into an parking area - a scenic overlook they call it - with a view of Gatlinburg far below.

Trick - let's just call him Trick - apparently thought this was our final destination. He began undressing, although I was so occupied I didn't notice. Until he spoke.

"I am now completely naked," he announced.

I looked to my right. He sure was. Completely.

So let's review. It's a weeknight and I'm parked at an overlook above Gatlinburg in the Great Smoky Mountains after midnight.

With a naked guy in the passenger seat.

A naked guy whose name I did not know. His name? I didn't even know him, much less his name. (Thus I’ll call him Trick.)

So, I wondered, what do I do now?

Option one: get naked as well. Option two: pretend I hadn't heard Trick and visually confirmed his nakedness. Option three: Stay clothed but take sexual advantage of Mr. Naked Trick.

I went with Option Four: Get naked and take sexual advantage of Mr. Naked Trick. Now that might have been easy if we’d been in the back seat of my Camaro, but we were in the front seat! In bucket seats. With a stick shift between us.

That configuration caused a number of problems. First of all, Trick had it easier getting undressed. He didn’t have a steering wheel to contend with. Or three pedals on the floor.
Second, even when I managed to get undressed without putting the car out of gear, I had that Hurst shifter between us. And the parking brake.

So, you say, why not get in the back seat? Let me draw you a picture.

We’re in a Camaro. It has two doors. To get from the front seat to the back seat you have to first, open the door nearest you and, second, step out of the car to move the seat forward in order to get in back.

Would you really want to do that naked?

(And, no, you wouldn't want to - or be able to - climb over the high-back bucket seats - either naked or clothed.)

True, there were no other cars parked on the overlook, probably because of the late hour on a weeknight in the fall. That was one of the reasons I chose the place. I certainly wouldn’t have done it in the heat of summer and the height of the tourist season. And there were likely not going to be any other cars, but how could we be sure?

The Camaro was becoming a much bigger challenge than my bed. Try as we might, there was no comfortable way to do, um, it, whatever “it” might be. The bucket seats, the stick shift, the parking brake, even the location conspired against us. Sure we could reach across the console and grab and grope each other, but what we both wanted was more than that; we wanted sex but we wanted full-body-contact sex. And that was just impossible in the front seat of a Camaro.

I signaled surrender by starting to get dressed. Trick followed my lead but only to the point of pulling up his underwear. We were halfway back to Knoxville before I convinced it might be a good idea - in the glare of city lights - to be a bit more clothed. He agreed.
We got back to my place just over two hours after we’d left it.

The hour was late, we both were tired, so we both made it back into my bed, but not to sleep. At least not right away.

Perhaps it was all that mountain air, but this time the bed didn’t cause us any problems.

How a Cat Led to My Coming Out (1969)

Preface II: How a Cat Led to My Coming Out (1969)

James had a cat. James was cute.

Actually, the cat wasn’t James’ cat. He didn’t know whose cat it was, but he was playing with it the day I met him.

James was a neighbor of Sandra and Rick, a couple I knew through grad school. Neither one was a student, but Sandra liked to hang out at the university and through her I met Rick, who was her boyfriend and, later, husband.

Sandra was a Jewish girl from a small town in eastern Kentucky, where her daddy owned a clothing store. Rick was an East Tennessee gentile. They were a volatile combination, sometimes fighting, sometimes loving, and sometimes doing both at the same time. They were unpredictable and they became my good friends.

They had taken an apartment a few blocks from me, so I dropped by often, especially during the early summer months when neither my class work nor my broadcasting job occupied much of my time. We’d listen to music or talk politics or watch TV, go out to eat on the Cumberland Avenue “strip,” or, on a warm summer evening, sit outside the house their apartment was in and just talk.

James lived in a house across the street, with his aunt as I recall, although it might have been his grandmother. I don’t recall and I don’t believe I was clear about it at the time. When I would visit him later, he seemed to be the only one home.

Sandra was, um, outgoing. No, she was more than that. Spotting a person she didn’t know, she’d go right up to them and just start a conversation. Eventually she’d introduce herself to the often-startled individual. She’d spotted James on his porch and soon she considered him a good friend. There are those of whom it’s said, they’ve never met a stranger. Sandra didn’t know what a stranger was, although some she met probably wished that she had understood the idea better.
One evening as we were sitting on her front steps, she spotted James on his porch and insisted I meet him. We walked over and Sandra introduced me. So maybe it was Sandra, more than James’ cat, that was a proximate cause of my coming out. But I have to give the cat some credit, since, from a distance, it was the cat – and not James – that I noticed.

Then we got closer and I noticed James.

Did I mention James was cute?

Actually, I doubt that I thought of him that way at the time. I wasn’t really out to myself, and I’d grown up being told that boys didn’t refer to other boys as, “cute.” Handsome, maybe. But never cute.

Fear of coming out isn’t just fear of what friends and family will think of you. It’s also about what you will think of you. And it’s not just trying to imagine yourself having sex with another guy. Before coming out, most gay guys aren’t at all sure what gay sex might involve.

Society raises all males, gay or straight, to have a certain discomfort with intimacy and even with gentleness. Even straight boys don’t refer to attractive girls as cute, but maybe “nice,” or maybe “hot.” Somehow they have to keep a rougher edge about it, so as not to seem “girlish.”

So when a not-yet-out gay boy finds himself attracted to another boy, he knows the other boy looks good, looks appealing, but he can’t quite bring himself to say – even to himself – that the boy is “cute.”

But James was cute. I guess I’ve already mentioned that.

Somehow, I also knew James was gay.

Somehow, James also knew I was gay.

Somehow, I also knew that James knew that I knew that he knew.

How? I can’t explain that anymore than I can explain gaydar. It’s really a sensation in a moment of time – or perhaps out of time – an almost instant recognition. Most gay people have it. Some straight people even claim to have it. At the time, I would have claimed I was straight and that I’d never heard of gaydar. That didn’t matter; I knew James was gay and James knew I was gay. And I knew that he knew that I knew.

And though I would have said I was straight, I knew that I wasn’t. But I had no clue of what being gay really meant. No clue? Yes, no clue. There were no gay role models. Gay characters in movies committed suicide or were killed. Even the most sympathetic psychologists called gay people “inverts” or “deviates.” Was being gay just about furtive sex acts, likely performed in some dangerous place? Was being gay being effeminate, wanting to be female rather than male? So it would seem from all the information one could gather from books or from teachers or from friends. And if I didn't find myself in those books, then I must not be gay.

It was the early summer of 1969. Stonewall had already happened in New York City, but we knew nothing about that event in East Tennessee. (I first learned of the June event in December, while job hunting in Atlanta.) All I knew was that James was cute, James was obviously (to me, at least) gay, and I wanted to get to know him better. What that meant, I didn’t really know.
The way to some men’s hearts may be through their stomachs, but the way to James’ heart, I suspected, was through his (or whoever’s) cat. But I wasn’t even sure I wanted to get to James’ heart, just to his body. What I would do with it once I got to it, I also didn’t know. First things first, though, which meant focusing first upon the cat.

Since I hadn’t come out yet, not even fully to myself, Sandra had no idea what thoughts James was putting in my mind. And I thought it best that first night on James’ porch not to put any thoughts in her mind. So the three of us just talked about this and that and I asked James about the cat.

The cat in question, as I said, wasn’t actually James’ cat. It had shown up on his porch recently and essentially adopted James. Apparently the cat found something attractive about James as well.

It being early summer, my only school work involved thesis hours I registered for while (supposedly) working on a master’s thesis in philosophy. I had already been accepted to Ohio University in communications for the fall and I was working five days a week at an AM/FM radio operation in the Smokies. So I had evenings (and a lot of other time) free.

I began to spend some of that free time visiting James on his porch – without Sandra. We did quite a bit of verbal dancing, deftly stepping around the subject both of us wanted to bring up. It was a behavior not uncommon for not-yet-out gay guys who wanted to let the other guy know about themselves but not risk too much self-disclosure. We would use a kind of code and a lot of body language.

The code could be cultural, involving mention of supposedly gay-identifiable personalities, writers or musicians. Urban gay-guys-in-waiting might find references to Judy Garland or Broadway show tunes to be good for testing the waters. That didn’t work well this far from the Great White Way. All I knew about Judy Garland was that her daughter, Liza Minelli, had starred in a movie that was filmed at my undergraduate alma mater. The film’s story involved a very straight college romance. And I only liked Broadway musicals if there was no singing. Elton John not only was not yet out as gay, he wasn’t even known outside of his own family in England, and they knew him as Reginald Dwight. Trying to find gay cultural references in a part of the country known best for Elvis and the Grand Ol’ Opry was rather difficult.

The code could also be rather Freudian, with humorous but barely subtle references to “fruit,” to “sucking” on something, something innocent like a popsicle, of course, but the accompanying body language added a bit of salaciousness to the phrase. Sometimes more than a bit.
We continued to mutually choreograph this little dance of identity over our first three or four visits together, all of them on James’ front porch. Whether the cat, who was always there, picked up on what we were doing is uncertain, but apparently we were entertaining enough to sustain a feline’s interest. That was probably because, whenever one of us seemed to be getting too close to self-disclosure, we would change the subject to something about the cat. Good cat. Pretty cat. Nice kitty. Anything about the cat, anything to avoid saying, “Hey, I’m gay and you are too and I think you’re really cute!”

Of course that’s not all either of us probably wanted to say. That sentence might end, “I think you’re really cute and I’d like to …” But that would present another problem even if one of us said it. When two guys are trying to determine if the other is gay – if their own gaydar is working – there are other questions involved. If the other guy is gay, is he out of the closet? Does anyone else know he’s gay? Is he, um, experienced? What kind of experience has he had? What does he like to “do?” Am I even his type?

Such questions really never go away even when the sexual orientation of both parties is known. If you haven’t tricked with someone before, you have no idea what this other person likes to do in bed. Or even before getting to the bed. And even before the conversation gets underway, you don’t have any way of knowing if your interest in him is reciprocated. The cutest looking preppy boy in khakis and polo shirt may be looking for a strapping, hairy older guy in leather. And vice-versa.

So here’s the dilemma: I think I’m gay. I’m pretty sure he’s gay. I’m pretty sure he knows I’m gay.

But I can’t read his mind.

In the two or three weeks since Sandra had introduced me to James (and his cat), I had spent several evenings on James’ porch. Some of these meetings were random, some were planned. And some that may have seemed random to James were really planned. I would drive near James’ house, never getting closer than a block or two away. Then, if I spotted him on the porch I would take the car back home and walk over to his place. I would act as if I were heading to Sandra and Rick’s and seem surprised that he was at home on his porch. And to think I hadn’t yet heard the term, “drama queen!”

Wow, I sound like a stalker. Actually I think I put on a pretty good act. After all, I had done my share of theater over the years. At least I think I was convincing to James. And I never resorted to such tired lines as, “Oh, hi! I was just out for a walk and saw you on the porch.” Or, “Gee, I didn’t think you’d be home! Mind if I stop and chat a while?“ I was a much better drama queen than that.

For whatever reason, James never invited anyone into the house. We were always on the porch. That was fine for informal chats on warm East Tennessee summer evenings. But it was a bit too, um, public for anything more than chat and iced tea.

Finally I determined that if James weren’t going to invite me into his house, I would invite him into mine. I had a small two-room apartment in an old house about four blocks from James. It was actually two rented rooms, one of which happened to have a kitchen.

It seemed a perfect idea. I had a color TV. I had a stereo system. I had a cat.

We’d maybe watch some TV. We’d listen to some music. He’d play with my cat.

But then what?

As it turned out, we never did watch TV, we never did listen to the stereo. But James and my cat did get along famously.

So did James and I. After a fashion.

It turned out that James was as inexperienced as I in what to do next. He had “messed around” with a few other guys, but he wasn’t “out” in the gay scene of Knoxville, such scene as there was. His gay sexual experience was little more than that of any number of adolescent straight boys who “messed around” with their buddies.

So did we have sex? Well, yes and no. We were both horny and naïve. Our bodies (hormones) reacted but our minds didn’t know what to next. So we spent a lot of time hugging, groping, fondling, and even giggling as we ended up on the hard, cold floor of my apartment in our underwear. While maybe we didn’t “have” sex, the mechanics of which neither of us was clear about, we both got, um, sexual release. Then we got dressed and it was time for James to go.
It wasn’t until I looked at my desk calendar the next morning I realized that I’d had my first gay experience – my coming out event – on July 4th. Independence Day. Somehow that made me smile.

I had finally come out, at least to myself and one other guy.

Thanks to James.

And James’ cat.

Time to go back in time

So far, for you following this blog, I've been posting the collected and completed stories chronologically.
I don't write them that way. At the moment I'm working on two that will go in different places in the three-part timeline of the 1970s. One is from 1971, the other several years later.

But my very next post will be a story completed a few years back that takes place in 1969. In the collection I'm assembling it appears as a Preface. It's my coming-out story.

Enjoy. And please comment.

Story 16: Living Apart - Together (1974)

Living Apart – Together (1974)

Shortly after Steve and I broke up, we did the next obvious thing.

We moved in together.

Twice.

Well, we didn’t move in together right away. But we spent enough time together that only those really close to us knew that we had broken up. And even they weren’t terribly sure.

When Steve and I first met, he was sharing a two-bedroom house with a straight guy. A straight guy with a fiancé. A fiancé who didn’t live there but spent each night there. Straight Boy had the front bedroom. Steve had the back bedroom. The back bedroom also happened to be the only one with an adjoining bathroom.

That meant that Straight Boy and Straight Boy’s fiancé had to go through Steve’s bedroom to get to the one and only bathroom in the place.

This wasn’t so much a problem during the first few weeks Steve and I were together because he usually drove out to Kingston to my mobile home (yes, I now owned a mobile home) to spend the night, driving back to Knoxville in the morning for work. Sometimes I’d be in Knoxville and would bring him out for the night and drive him back in the morning.

On weekends, however, I worked in Knoxville, noon to six on Saturday and the same on Sunday. During the week I was program director at a small-town AM Top 40 station. On weekends I played six hours of classic country gospel music and on Sunday NASCAR races on a Knoxville FM station. Sound crazy? Well, on some Saturdays I worked the 6 a.m. to noon shift in Rockwood playing Top 40, then drove to Knoxville and did six hours of country gospel. Then I changed clothes at the station and went out and played club kid. That was my schedule the day I first dated Steve. I had done two air shifts at two different radio stations with two different formats in two different towns and then gone out on a date. The next morning – the first morning Steve and I woke up in bed together – I had to leave and go play six hours of country gospel music.

Over the next few months, things changed. Straight Boy and his fiancé finally moved out and married, leaving Steve with a whole four-room house to himself. I decided to return to Knoxville, find work and finish my long-dormant master’s degree.

And Steve and I decided to break up.

Actually we decided it would be nice “if maybe we saw other people.”

Actually Steve thought of it first, but not much before I came to the same conclusion.
But it wasn’t like the usual “let’s see other people but still be friends” type break up. Somehow, we knew, we still loved each other. We still wanted to be together. But, contrary to the cliché, we really did want to date other people.

No, we didn’t really want to date other people.

We just wanted to trick with other people.

A lot.

Steve brought up the idea one morning at his place. Over breakfast. By the time breakfast was over, we had broken up. By that evening I was moving in to Steve’s old bedroom. The one you had to walk through to get to the bathroom. Steve had set himself up in Straight Boy’s room. Of course this now meant that if I had a trick, Steve would have to walk in on us. And, if Steve had a trick, the trick would have to walk in on us or, more likely, just me. Alone.

Since I had landed work in Knoxville and had gotten back to full-time graduate study, moving in with Steve allowed me to put the mobile home up for sale and avoid the daily commute from Roane County.

Steve was still finishing his degree in commercial art and was a night manager at Arby’s. I was working toward a master’s in communication and working nights as creative director, copywriter and production director for an “easy listening” FM station. We saw each other, if at all, late at night. Unless of course we were out at the clubs. Or in bed with a trick.

The arrangement worked well for several months. We made it all the way through Christmas, in fact. Steve’s gift to me was a new space heater for my bedroom. We had been trying to heat all four rooms with just two space heaters and that just wasn’t working. “I hope you have the warmest Christmas ever,” read Steve’s card attached to the space heater.

Then Steve moved out. Someone he worked with had lost a roommate for his two-bedroom townhouse and begged Steve to move in. I was OK with the idea since the rent for the house wasn’t that bad for me to manage myself. It also meant no more “interruptions” from someone wanting to use the bathroom.

But a few weeks after Steve’s departure I came home to find a sign on the front door of the house.

It had been condemned “for human habitation.”

What?

Apparently the local authorities were inspecting properties in our area and were not terribly happy with something – perhaps the wiring or the plumbing. I’ll never know because I didn’t bother to ask.

I called Steve only to find out that his roommate – the one who had begged him to move into the townhouse – had moved out to be with his newest “relationship.”

So, once again, it happened.

Steve and I were living together.

At least now the bathroom was located between our two bedrooms.

Story 15: Steve: When a Trick Becomes a Treat (1974)

Steve: When a Trick became a Treat (1974)

It probably wouldn’t surprise you to learn that there’s not a lot to do in Rockwood, Tennessee on a Wednesday night.

It was late winter of 1974. I’d moved to Rockwood in the fall of 1972 to join a daytime AM radio station as a disk jockey and ended up as program director doing the morning shift. Rockwood was just over forty miles west of Knoxville via I-40, but a world away for a gay boy.

As I was on the air by 6 a.m. Monday through Saturday, Saturday night was about the only time I made it to the bright lights of the big city and the darkened rooms of its gay clubs. I was pretty much out to everyone at the station, the result of a visit by Joey a year ago when he got stranded at my place for four nights because of an ice storm. Before they come out, most gay guys assume they are the only one in the world. I pretty much knew I was the only gay guy in Rockwood.
Going to a bar in Knoxville on a weeknight was difficult. I had to be up at 4:30 the next morning for work and there wasn’t much “action” on those nights.

But one fateful night I couldn’t help myself. The aluminum walls of my mobile home were closing in, so I fired up my trusty Gremlin and headed for K-town.

For no special reason, I headed for Entrè Nous, a small club in Art Deco style just west of Gay Street. (Yes, Knoxville’s main street was named Gay Street.) Although it was a fairly chilly night, there seemed to be more guys standing outside in the parking lot than inside. I knew most of them, all except one.

He caught my attention for a number of reasons. He was dressed in jeans, a sweater and a waist length winter-weight jacket. He had black – very black – straight hair that fell over his forehead. And he was short. Not as short as me, for few people are, but short enough I could almost look directly into his eyes when talking to him. And talk to him I did. And he talked to me. His name was Steve.

Steve was a UT undergrad, major in communication design, UT’s fancy name for commercial art. He was assistant manager at an Arby’s and he shared a house with a straight roommate and, often, the straight roommate’s fiancé.

We talked for some time and then we made a date. Yes, a date. It seemed that I wasn’t the only one who had to be to work by 6 a.m. Fast food managers did too.

We agreed to meet at his house around 6:30 on Saturday. Besides my Rockwood radio work, I did afternoon shifts Saturday and Sunday on a Knoxville country station. Steve had Sundays off and I didn’t have to be to the station until noon. We’d go eat, maybe go see a movie, go to a club or two and then, well, we knew what was next.

He gave me his address and phone number and we said our goodbyes.

We had made a date, but I’m sure we both knew it wasn’t a real date; it was a prearranged trick. That was all I expected or thought I wanted and he later admitted that was all he had in mind. Little did we know.

Over the next days, I thought about Saturday night, but it didn’t obsess me. It was exciting to know who I’d be sleeping with that night, but I never got starry eyed or imagined I’d found a lover. Steve would be another trick. The only difference was I had gotten his phone number before instead of after the trick..

When Saturday morning arrived, I selected a change of clothes for the evening I thought would be appropriate and headed out for Knoxville and six hours of playing country “classics” (oldies) on WIVK-FM. After signing off at six, I went to the downstairs lounge and restroom to change, freshen up and call Steve. He told me he’d just gotten home and was going to take a bath. If he didn’t answer the door when I got there, I was to come in and wait in the living room and he’d be out shortly. I wondered that he said he was going to take a bath and not a shower, but I’d discover later that his house, where I would later live, had only a bathtub.

I arrived about 6:30 and, sure enough, there was no answer, so I let myself in. Steve heard me come in and called from the bathroom that he’d be out in a minute or so.

I felt a little unsure of what would transpire when he did come out. After all, this was a date and not the usual trick. We wouldn’t have just arrived at his place (or my place) after meeting and talking (and likely groping) at the bar, ready for, um, action. ONo, our plan was to go get something to eat, maybe see a movie, and then hit the club scene.

Steve seemed just as unsure, for when he did come into the living room, we just greeted one another, made obligatory comments on each other’s outfits and then sat down on the couch as if to engage in some small talk about how each other’s day had gone.

But that’s not what happened.

Within seconds we were in a tight embrace, kissing and hugging like long-lost lovers reunited. It was a couple of minutes – time seemed irrelevant – before we came up for air and then it started again within seconds. Gone were thoughts of dinner, a movie, and the club. Neither one of us wanted to let go, even to leave the couch.

Oh, I’d had somewhat similar encounters with tricks, but we were usually on our feet, one leading the other awkwardly in the direction of the bedroom. But neither Steve nor I was leading anywhere.

My mind was flashing alarm signals. This wasn’t the passionate foreplay of a trick. This was something else. Something dangerous. Something that, dare I even think it, began with the letter, “l.”

No, I knew, you don’t fall in love with a trick. You don’t even say the word in a casual way, the way you might say, “I love that song,” or “I love pizza.” Maybe the word would come after a series of encounters, and then only hesitantly. Love was dangerous. Love could hurt.
Yet I was in love. As a song from years later would put it, truly, madly, deeply.

What in hell was going on here?

Finally we were ready to leave the couch. How long we were there I don’t know, but it was now dark outside and I had arrived about an hour before sunset.

Clearly Steve was thinking the same things I was and we both agreed it was time to at least get something to eat. So we sat back on the couch, a bit apart from each other, and decided on a place to go.

Then it started all over again.

I guess we both realized it was too early for bed, but dinner, a movie or a night at the club seemed irrelevant now. The night was to be ours and ours alone.

So what did we do next, finally freeing ourselves from the passionate hold of the couch? We went shopping, of course.

Well, actually, we headed out for the “Strip,” the several block section of Cumberland Avenue that runs through the University, block after block of eateries, record shops, service stations and anything else to attract a college crowd. Steve lived about six blocks north of the Strip, just off 17th, and, no, I don’t remember a thing we talked about while walking there. Nights like that are like that, I guess, with certain moments recorded indelibly and others lost forever because, perhaps, they didn’t matter. They didn’t matter because all that was important was we were together. Neither of us had said the “L” word yet and not just because gay boys are afraid to say it. We both knew it was going to be said, but we had all the time in the world to say it.

I don’t even recall where we ate, but I’m sure we did. It was probably at the Krystal, as there was no McDonald’s yet on the strip. It was just one more thing not worth remembering.

Now had we been straight, and had Steve been a girl, we’d likely have gone to a nice restaurant (there were a few nearby) for a quiet dinner at a dimly lit table.

But since we were gay, and we were both guys, we did what a gay couple would do. We went shopping for clothes. Our styles were a bit different, but not conflicting it turned out. Steve looked at things he liked and I looked over and tried on things I liked and we each offered opinions on the other selections. Straight women do this. Gay women do this. Straight guys don’t do this. Gay guys do. (Think about this the next time you see two guys shopping for clothes and asking each other’s opinions.)

It turned out neither of us had enough money on us for big-ticket items, so we settled on something we both liked and agreed upon.

Underwear.

Yes, the first intimate gift I bought for Steve was a pair of briefs with a checked pattern that reminded me of a tablecloth. He bought me a pair that was pale blue. Only gay guys in love would do that.

I’m sure we both saw where this was leading. If we’d bought each other jackets, we could have put them on there and worn them home, showing them off wherever we went. But, practically, putting on the underwear would have to wait until we returned to Steve’s place. And, that, of course, would mean getting undressed. Together. I know this was what I was thinking and I’m sure Steve was too.

As I recall, we didn’t head straight home, but wandered through a few more of the shops on the Strip, likely England’s record store and probably the Vol Market, a local deli, to buy a Coke. We knew what the evening still held, but somehow we were in no hurry to get to that point.

Shopping, browsing, snacking, walking, all that seemed to matter was that we were together. We talked on the way back, I’m sure, but I don’t remember what we said. I guess we probably were just getting to know more about each other.

One of the reasons Steve had suggested we get together this particular night was that his housemate (and the housemate’s fiancé) would be away the whole night. Or so we thought. At least they weren’t there when we returned.

It was at this point I was glad we’d bought the underwear. Without it, neither of us would have known what to do next. Why? Well, because we’d never been in quite this situation before.
You see, when two guys meet in a bar and head to one of their places, the process is simple. A bit of small talk, maybe a quick tour of the digs, an offer of a drink, a little “mood” music on the stereo, and then it begins. First, the kissing, the embracing, the groping, then the slow undressing, all accompanied by a gradual movement toward the bedroom and the bed.

Both of us had dated girls in high school. We’d meet them, take them to dinner, maybe a movie, maybe go for a walk and then take them back home. And there, because we were gay guys, the evening ended.

A trick, on the other hand, began at this point. There was no dinner or movie or long walk beforehand, only some glances and dances at a bar, a bar we’d both arrived at alone, hoping we wouldn’t leave alone.

Steve and I had spent the entire evening together and only now were we in his bedroom. Now what?

We did what we knew. When you get home from shopping, you try on what bought. You show it off to each other. We had bought each other underwear.