My Tawdry Youth

Me helping build my bf's house

Ok, this is very frank and doesn't hold back. If you're prone to clutching your pearls, you might consider closing this tab. Coming of age in the 70's during the sexual revolution and gay liberation was an experience that not many people had. But for me it was just the way it was. Put together with my living in conservative Orange County but close to the gay haven of Hollywood and its bizarre reality gives a view of the complexities of the time. But the fact of the matter is that Orange County was also crawling with gay boys, me being one of them. And boy oh boy did I take full advantage of that.

First not quite an inkling

 

I sucked at playing, but love to watch

When I was probably 7 or 8 I would have recurring dreams. There was one dream that a volcano would open up right under my bed which was clearly a reaction to the Parícutin volcano in Mexico that popped up out of a corn field at the time. At the time I was, I guess, starting to understand about relationships and dating most likely from TV shows and the like. This dream always involve me sitting dressed up at a restaurant and was either from the other side of the table or from standing next to the table. I guess I figured it was just how you'd film such a thing. I never saw who was on the other side of the table. It was years and years later when I remembered that dream I realized that I wasn't looking at myself, I was looking at my date. I guess my subconscious was already figuring out what was going on, but I was clueless about it. I never had any feelings for girls -- or boys for that matter -- back then. I didn't have a lot of friends and never hung out with girls which is a stereotypical gay trait. Girls sort of didn't interest me and very much intimidated me. 

One of our friends when I guess we were probably about 10 whipped out his dick to show us his boner. I'm not sure why he did that and it seemed rather weird, but it stuck with me. Nobody else did so it wasn't some sort of dare that kids do. But I still remember it pretty vividly so it obviously meant something. But of course his mom used a ping pong paddle with holes drilled into it to spank them (less air resistance) and I remember that too, so maybe it was nothing after all.

Why am I not feeling it for girls?

When I was about in 6th grade I noticed that the boys were starting to get interested in girls. They did nothing for me, but there were plenty of boys who were indifferent to them too so I didn't think too much about it. I had found a porn magazine which was definitely straight that I'd jerk off to. I never recall being especially attracted to the models, just attracted to naked bodies I guess. I did have sort of a crush on two different guys who I was in class with and one of them and I would hang out. Nothing ever happened but it was pretty clear I was a little infatuated with both of them. I had a friend from the apartment complex I lived in and he asked me to look at my fingernails. I looked at them in full Judy Jetson style (hands out) and he made fun of me for not looking at them with your fingers curled into your palm, which was supposedly the straight thing to do. Hmm.

When I got into 7th grade, however, it was the first time with gym class and locker rooms. Boom. There was definitely something going on and it was not very straight. I never really had a crush on somebody at that school that I recall but I was in the choir which was pretty gay including one guy who was definitely gay. I, of course, didn't want to be associated with him. Imagine that. But I guess he also sowed the seeds for actually being really attracted to very gay guys. Too bad I wasn't attracted to him personally or I may have gone for it because horny > shame for me.

I was friends with my neighbors' kids across the street when we lived in Huntington Beach and when we moved because my parents divorced, I'd take the bus there once in a while to see them. I sort of had a crush on one of them who was my age and honestly he was really good looking but I was confused and not confused at the same time. I absolutely let none of this show because I didn't know how to approach such things. Of course I had no idea that it isn't uncommon for randy teenagers to experiment with whatever they can find at that time but that was that.

My first time

I was living in an apartment building in Garden Grove when I was about 14. There was a bowling alley called Garden Square Bowl and I became addicted to bowling. I would keep score (they didn't have the automatic ones back then) and that would give me the money to do things.  One of those things was seeing Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Grove Theater with some friends. When we got done we were all like "what in the fucking fuck was that?" I don't recall anybody being homophobic but that's probably not very surprising because it was in the middle of Glam Rock and celebrities and especially pop singers were allowed to be over the top. But my oh my was that movie crazy for a young budding gay boy.

I had one friend from the apartment complex who was about 2 years older than me, so about 16. His parents were what we called Jesus Freaks presaging the religious right movement later in the decade. But he wasn't religious that I could tell and seemed mostly beyond it which suited me as somebody who grew up (thankfully) without any religion at all. We would hang out in his bedroom listening to pop albums all afternoon and we especially loved Elton John. He actually turned me on to quite a few bands and ironically The Tubes and their What Do You Want From Life -- it was decades later when i figured out what a baby's arm holding an apple meant. 

So like I said, I bowled a lot and it was basically my life. Being a geek I was rather obsessed with the pin setter machines. I made friends with some of the mechanics who were always there as there were breakdowns all the time. It was my first introduction to electronics too and how they could control things. My friend ended up getting a job there filling in as needed as a mechanic. I would go back there and hang out with him. One day he went to the little bathroom stall at the back of the room and he was gone for longer than he should have been. I went back there and he had his pants to the floor and was sporting a very nice boner that he was playing with. I had a lot of trepidation but this wasn't a "go away, I'm jerking off" pose, it was "come and get it." So I did. 

When we'd hang out either in the back of the bowling alley or at his place we'd go at it, randy teens that we were. I don't think that we ever kissed and I'm not sure he ever reciprocated but he did make a half assed attempt to fuck me, probably just as clueless as I was that you can't just stick things in. This went on for probably at least a year and I'd remember the taste of his cum while I was keeping score and being both "gross" and "yum" at the same time. We never really had a break it off kind of moment because I think we just drifted apart. I want to think he joined the military which very much ended the possibility. I didn't think of it in terms of a relationship or anything romantic at all, I just like sucking his dick very much and he was a friend.

Finally, a car

When I turned 16, I did what every other kid did in those days and got my license. I was living in Huntington Beach again at the time so there weren't a lot of opportunities for anything naughty -- or so I thought. The following summer I stayed up at my dad's place in West LA for the summer. I think that Star Wars had just come out and I had a major boner for Mark Hamill. My dad's girlfriend really liked me so I guess I had a "girl friend" after all. I suspect she knew that I was gay and liked to get me clothes and dress me up. I happened onto one of those alterna rags at the time and it had an actual dick pic in it. I kept that thing well hidden and well used. 

My dad let me use his Chevy Vega so I'd toodle around. One day I decided to go to the beach in Malibu. I'm not sure how I knew this -- maybe one of those rags -- but there was a nude beach next to Zuma (or maybe it was just part of it) called Pirate's Cove. I timidly made my way over but didn't get naked. There were quite a few people there but what caught my eye was this beautiful blond guy, naked as I recall with a big old schlong. I was absolutely smitten. How I manged to get the courage I'll never know, but I hit on him. Not directly, but in a way that any gay guy would know what's going on. I asked him if he'd like to smoke a joint which he agreed to and we went back to my car to smoke it. The next part is so stereotypical that he grabbed my thigh and of course he didn't need to ask if it was ok because I had a raging boner. 

We went back to his place in West Hollywood and had sex. I think he tried to fuck me too, but I was not comfortable getting fucked (as in we tried and I failed) and I was perfectly happy sucking dick anyway. It was electric for me and I'm sure that's the first time that I had kissed a guy. He was so fucking hot: smooth, tanned, big juicy lips and very, very blond. One life long obsession discovered. He was also 28 so the second lifelong obsession discovered too. Yes, I know 16 and 28... yeah. But it was me who initiated all of this and while it's definitely sketch what he was doing with me, I was totally into it and was exactly what I wanted.

We boinked a time or two more with me just showing up at his place, but eventually he wasn't into it and made excuses. I on the other hand was a perpetual boner machine for the rest of summer. He told me two interesting things. One was that he had spent time at Spahn Ranch -- you know, the one that Charles Manson and his cult lived at. He never told me what his involvement was and I had no reason to believe that he had anything to do with anything. So just a weird connection for me. The second is that he told me there was a gay under 21 dance club in Hollywood called the Odyssey which I'll get to.

Well, um, yeah I was 16 and stupid...

So that wasn't the only thing that happened after I had access to cars. You see, in Hollywood runs Santa Monica Blvd and in one part of it there were... street hustlers. So I did what any other sensible 16 year old would do and... cruised them. And picked some of them up. I never had to pay or anything but it was definitely not the brightest idea I ever had. Some of them were trouble, some of them told me I shouldn't be doing this. I did meet this one who was blond with curly hair and a perfect surfer boy body. While with most of the others we just fooled around in the car, he actually took me back to his place in La Mirada I think -- sort of a schlep from Hollywood. I'm pretty sure he was the first guy I ever fucked and boy did I like it. We fucked several other times and he seemed like a genuinely nice guy but it was purely physical. I never considered it as anything but that, not that I had anything against him unlike a lot of guys who have contempt for the hustlers they pick up. I still wonder what led him there and what happened to him, though I'm sure I know what happened in a few short years later. He was about 18 so it's quite possible he was one of the many kids who were kicked out by homophobic parents just trying to get by.

Michael (not Mikie!) goes to Hollywood

Me around this time

 

So as I said previously, the summer hookup I had told me about this gay club The Odyssey so when I turned 18 I made a mad dash for it. I don't think it was literally on my birthday but it was not very long after. I was of course terrified but if nothing else, I always had my horniness to overcome that. The first night I went there I met -- get this -- a cute wavy haired blond boy. We actually hung out a few times and the sex was good, but he lived in Downey which was not geographically desirable. I started having a lot of sex at that time and found out that Garden Grove in Orange County where I lived actually was crawling with gay bars so I didn't have to go all the way up to Hollywood all of the time.

I met this one guy in Hollywood and started hanging out with him and staying over. I was going to UC Irvine at this point, but I decided that being a full time homosexual was more important so I dropped out for the time being. He was -- you guessed it -- in his mid to late 20's. He introduced me to his friends and we'd sometimes hang out with his friend who lived in Laguna Beach. Laguna Beach for those who don't know was an art colony and had a very large gay population, along with lots of gay Hollywood types that would slum there in the summer. His friend had this beautiful boy toy that I lusted after but never went after. The one memorable thing we did is that we went to this restaurant there in Laguna Beach and there was this cute blond curly haired busboy. He came over and leered "hot buttered buns?" at me. I was so flustered that I didn't get that he wanted me to take him into the bathroom and fuck his brains out. I'm 99% certain that he became a famous porn star named Jeremy Scott. Everything fits both with looks, timing and location. 

They also pretty much forced me to go to this infamous hustler bar called The Numbers. I was petrified as I was not 21 so they told me to button down my shirt a bit to show my chest hair. I got in which was no surprise as nobody cared. It was an interesting place, to say the least. There was this dramatic stairway down with mirrored walls so that you had to make An Entrance. It was full of pretty boys and studio execs of a certain age. John Waters has written that he loved the place because it was so out there -- a parody of itself. Nothing happened because it was mainly for shock value to me that they were after. Achievement unlocked for them. I was more or less living at that guy's house in Hollywood and he was a carpenter. So he made me schlep along with him being a grunt and gopher. Mostly a grunt. My running away from college days were numbered after that. 

Another strange coincidence happened around this time. My step father and I had gone down to San Diego to go albacore fishing. There was this cute boy on board with the crew and we kind of eyed each other. Later he was at a gay bar in Garden Grove and he remembered me. It turns out that he was 16 at the time of the fishing trip and I may have been a year older. We ended up being buds and though I was attracted to him and wanted to have sex with him, he was mostly interested in being a friend but that was cool with me. It was a strange friendship as I was a geeky smart boy and he wasn't the smartest or more driven, but we liked each other and I've never been snobby about such things. In fact it makes me really angry when people are like that.

I also met another boy at a gay roller rink night. I was really attracted to him and liked his kinda really gay pretty boy style. I took him skiing up at Big Bear and we fooled around in the middle of the desert after. Somehow on another date we ended up at West Street Beach in Laguna which is the gay beach. I fucked him there and found out unlike From Here Too Eternity that a beach is not an ideal place to have butt sex. Nothing romantic came of it as I don't think he was into that way and I had lots going on anyway. We were always friendly to each other when we bumped into each though.

One last memorable tidbit around this time is that I hooked up with this -- get this again -- hot blond boy. We dated for a little bit but again, he lived in Downey so wasn't geographically desirable. He mentioned to me that he was a male model and that he had a spread in Playgirl Magazine. It was nominally for straight women, but their audience was clearly and maybe mostly oriented at gay men. He also told me that he was their first model to sport a full boner. It was a very nice one even if he tried to stick it in me -- I was never good at getting fucked. I laughed out loud at the article's backstory about the women he liked after my dick was just in his mouth. I found out through Facebook that he's still around, happily married for decades. Thank god he made it through. So many didn't.

Suffice it to say I was having lots of sex. I found out that Quaaludes aka Disco Biscuits were sort of the perfect going out drug (I never tried MDMA, though it was around). You'd take it, bounce around the club for a while, find somebody to fuck around with and by the time it was time to go it had mostly worn off. The next morning you'd check for bruises you didn't remember getting. I had stopped drinking at that point so it was sort of the perfect setup.

When Michael met Bobby

Bobby Pyron, aka Lee Ryder

During one of my many trips up to Hollywood to the Odyssey one night this guy picked me up. He was conventionally attractive though not exactly the type that I would predictably like. But he had this charisma that was undeniable and he didn't even need to be blond to get me going. We ended up back at his place in Laguna (this is a very long schlep from Hollywood).  I was completely charmed by Bobby even though That Thing tried to have its way with me. It was also my the first time really hanging out in Laguna as I stayed there a few days. He was so comfortable in his skin being gay and was sort of like a mentor to me getting me used to being gay even though he was less than a year older than me. Everybody has internalized homophobia when they start figuring things out. Even though Bobby did not look stereotypically gay he definitely had gay sass. He would go on about the tacky A-gay queens of Laguna, etc. I loved it. When we walked around town with his Levi cuffs rolled up, I was completely scandalized. But I was also realizing that I really liked guys who were really gay and not hung up on being super butch, etc. He really helped me and I've always been thankful for that.

Unbeknownst to me, Bobby was orbiting the nascent gay porn industry. Catalina Video was based out of Laguna: he was always really protective of me and didn't want me to get involved. Later I found out that he used to live in Huntington Beach and would scout the hot surfer boy types. But he did introduce me to a bunch of my high schoolmates who I had no clue were gay. One of them was this absolutely beautiful -- I know I'm being repetitious -- blond boy. God was he so my type. Like a lot of gay boys in the area, he became a creature of Hollywood and it swallowed him up. We went out several times and the sex was great, but our lives were taking us in very different directions. I really disliked the Hollywood scene and he was busy climbing it so it wasn't to be. He was I think the first person that I knew directly that had died. Bobby told me.

He also introduced me to another classmate and though I was rather attracted to him we were really just friends. And more to the point, partners in crime. We were always skulking around trying to find coke which was a big part of the Hollywood life back then. We even managed to go to Alan Carr's Malibu beach house, though he wasn't home. Probably for the best. See: tacky A-gay queens. This was right after Grease came out. I lost contact with him so I never knew what happened to him. I think he was a classic gay-for-pay kind of guy. I'm sure he was really bisexual, but I think he mostly preferred girls. So maybe he got married and had 2.5 kids. One of the problems of living in the burbs is that there were so many people you just didn't know what happened.

As for Bobby himself, we were never best pals or anything like that and it could go years between when we'd bump into each other. But we were always very friendly and genuinely happy to see each other. When Bobby told me about that classmate dying it was obvious that he had The Look. He had become a rather famous porn star -- with That Thing it was inevitable I guess. He too would die in the early 90's. There was a pronounced pattern of hit the scene at 20, dead by 30 that wiped out my generation. It's really weird seeing him in the old porn vids obliterating this bottom boy or that knowing they all probably died. But for me, he was just Bobby Pyron.

First boyfriend

So while all of these things were going on above, I also managed to meet this hot guy at some club. He was an ag teacher down in northern San Diego county staying up in Laguna Beach for the summer. I need not tell you what color his hair was or how old he was because, me. He was a late bloomer so I'm pretty sure I was the first guy who ever fucked him. It was a complete revelation for him -- he was one of those natural bottoms and boy was he good. I totally fell for him over that summer in a way I hadn't with other guys I liked. But he was fully formed and out of the closet even though it was all pretty recent for him. Of course I was the one who pursued it because nobody in their right mind would pursue an 18 year old.

When summer ended we decided to keep it up as a long distance relationship. He was a couple of hours away so I'd only go down there like once every week or two. He lived in this old adobe cottage on the school farm which I loved. It was very grounding. He scrimped and saved to be able to build his own house a mile or two away. He had a jeep -- the stereotypical gay kind -- that we'd toodle around having fun. He had a Great Dane named Beau who was the lord of his land on the farm. When he was up in Laguna the owner of the place he stayed at had this yappy mutt who would nip at Beau's heels until he finally got fed up and launched it across the room. Oi.

He finally managed to scrape the money together to build his house. And I helped. Unlike my previous foray into construction, I loved this. I was helping to build my boyfriend's house and how cool was that? I still remember hoisting a 6x10 beam for a deck with just him and me. How the fuck we did that I don't know because that fucking thing was heavy.  

Alas, I was young and stupid. I for really stupid reasons decided to break up with him after a couple of years. As it turns out it was the right move just for the wrong reasons. We had super different life trajectories with me in tech and him as a property developer so it couldn't have worked out long term, but he was my first boyfriend and I'm better for it.

An open relationship is normal, right?

So all of the above is more or less happening simultaneously. Which means that a lot of it was happening while I had a boyfriend. We never had any talk or anything like that about being open or what the boundaries might be. Part of this is that we were long distance so it didn't make much sense to be all blue balls while we weren't together. Plus this was during the sexual revolution and being gay meant not having to conform to picket fences. I mean we are guys. Guys like to play the field and can separate sex from romance. We can even separate feelings for romance. It was sort of natural that you weren't going to be monogamous. In one super cringe conversation with my dad he confided that he was jealous of me because getting with guys was so much easier. Yes, I thought, but I was still mortified.

When I was with him he was very like minded. I don't know exactly how much he took advantage of it on his side, but we were not hung up about it. We would have three ways -- one in particular was this very cute boy we picked up at Black's Beach in La Jolla which was a nude beach with a gay section. We took him back to the bf's farm and I gave the boy a tour of it... and fucked his brains out. My bf was pissed, but mainly because I got it first. We all had sex again and we made good. The very first time I went to a bathhouse was with the bf. The night we went was completely dead so not much happened other than me surreally watching Alien in the TV room. Um, ok? 

At the time I was working as a busboy/waiter at a country club in Huntington Beach while I was in school. Yes, I finally got my shit back together with school. They had this stupid tournament called the Steak and Beans tournament where the winners got steak and the losers got beans. I decided to get dressed up as a waitress to serve the losers' beans in combat boots and total scag drag. The senile old coots thought I was real though which I thought was hilarious. 

One summer this boy came out for the summer and was hired as a busboy. He was um, $haircolor that I like. He was also studly as fuck as he was a dancer and I was completely smitten. I didn't know if he was gay or not, but I decided to take him to the Odyssey to dance. He was down but at the last minute I chickened out and went to Westwood instead which was intensely boring. We decided to drive back to his place in Long Beach and hang out. We smoked a joint and laid on the floor a foot or so apart. Then our fingers touched. Electricity. Like San Onofre nuclear power plant electricity. We made mad passionate love that night and was probably the most intense sex I've ever had before because it was so unexpected. I think we hooked up a time or two more before we were at my parents home in bed having sex in my parents' bed. Then there was a knock at the door. It was the bf with a big box of avocados from the farm. Oh shit. Awkward. It's not that I was cheating, but getting caught in the act was really weird. The boy was non-plussed -- for all I know he was into me and didn't like this turn of events. But even though there was clear chemistry between us I didn't feel the need to tell him before especially since he was only out for the summer from the east coast. I knew this was just a fling. He should have too, but love and passion can be like that. He was so fucking beautiful. It's not like I have low standards.  I've always punched way above my weight.

I've always wanted to know what happened to him. He had a fairly unique name but I've been able to find out nothing about him. He, I fear, was one of the unlucky ones. It was his demographic: young, beautiful, in the arts, that got completely wiped out. Fuck. Fuck that fucking disease, god fucking dammit.

Moving out

So I started working as a software engineer after dropping out of school again -- ironically over a tech writing requirement since I now like to write and am pretty good at it I think. I was 21at the time and still living at home. I was sort of sneak dating this guy who was tall and slim but with just enough body fat to be really snuggly. When we had sex it was incredible. He was nominally partnered but I think it was mostly a convenience thing. He was from Flagstaff which I thought was pretty cool. I had a big fight with my step dad and we both I think decided it was time for me to move out.

I'm not sure how it came to be, but I ended up moving with him down in Dana Point. He really liked to cook and even though I did too, he had a lot more time on his hands. To this day, I still use his simple recipe for croutons of good bread cubed up and a little stale, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with garlic powder and paprika. So simple and so good that you'll never get shitty ass store bought ones again. He was pretty promiscuous and I was pretty busy, so he was definitely getting more on the side than me. I was mostly OK with that though I wished that he had better taste.

The apartment was small, but nice and we started getting the implements of living alone. This was obviously the first time I had lived with a boyfriend so it was definitely a new experience. The one thing I can say is that you can be madly in love with somebody but still be terrible as partners. I wasn't madly in love with him, but he was fun and especially in bed. To this day we really should have been friends with benefits because I really liked him as a friend and he was very fun both in and out of the sack. And boy did he have a personality. I loved that. I can still hear him in my head with his deep sonorous voice.

The apartment's manager was this mad queen who would get drunk and start screaming "NO WIRE HANGERS!" at the top of his lungs at 2am. He was quite a character. He also had an altercation with a springing palm in Palm Springs. Eventually I think after we moved out, we found out that he had died on a beach. I never found out whether it was foul play or not. Probably he was just drunk and drowned.

After a while, we decided to move into this house in Laguna Canyon in this place that flooded from the creek to fix it up for cheaper rent. This wasn't the greatest idea as I was always busy and neither of us knew what the fuck we were doing. I really don't know why we ended up breaking up, but it wasn't anything dramatic. I really did like him and his personality but we really weren't intended to be boyfriends in the end. That's probably the outcome of lots of people who move in together for the first time and especially when there is some sort of forcing function like I had. 

When we broke up, I ended up moving to this guy's house in Laguna Niguel. He was this pissy southern queen who really grated on me. I like really gay guys, but not this one. See: pissy. After I had had enough, I moved out unbeknownst to him and moved in with my manager and a coworker's house. Imagine my surprise and horror when my next boyfriend (see below) had rented the same room when he took me home. Awkward. It turned out that the coworker had a crush on me and I wasn't into it too. More awkward. 

When I got together with my next boyfriend we even visited him in Flagstaff where he had moved back. My then boyfriend and I even went skiing there and on the top of San Francisco peak where you can actually see the Grand Canyon. We even had snow thunder which is pretty rare while he was cooking. I really liked him and like a lot of people I have no idea what happened to him. I fear the worst because, of course, he was a total bottom and this was the early 80's. I still remember going to the Boom Boom Room -- a gay bar in Laguna Beach -- and seeing this thing on a bulletin board about something really fucked going on in West Hollywood. AIDS completely wiped out Laguna's substantial gay population. It never recovered. 

Michael, if you're still out there I miss you. If you are not, you are remembered.

Single basically for the first time

After breaking up with my previous boyfriend, I was single for basically the first time in my adult life. It was probably for about 3 years. I was working in tech at a startup in Irvine and very busy. Through this I still would have various flings but nothing very serious. I was perfectly happy with this and not in any hurry to be in a relationship again. I've always been rather passionate when having sex. A guy I met once told me that he was the author of the book Confessions of a Rock Lobster. I never knew whether my memory was apocryphal or not, but I managed to find him on Facebook and my memory was correct. As it turns out, he kept a diary of all of his hookups and he found me. Apparently I was doing "boyfriend sex". Is that really unusual? 

Since I was working, I had a project that I wrote the software for which was point of sale terminal and a PC which drove them and collected the transactions which were sent to a central office. A couple of things came out of this. They did a commercial which sent me to Hollywood to babysit my box. I learned being on a set is boring as fuck. It also sent me to Chicago for a convention for which allowed me to check out Boy's Town. I went to some dance club and cruised this really hot guy (yes, it was) and he took me home. We fucked that night and I spent the night with him. In the morning we were chatting and he was going on about this diva and that for which I had no clue. Disgusted he said "I'm taking your queer card!" I had to fuck him again to get it back.

I had several recurring fuck buddies including one that cut my hair. I didn't have a place to drag him back to and he was partnered so he couldn't always host, so I'd key into my office and we'd have sex in the computer machine room on the floor. He told me that those VAX's imprinted on him. I had many more friends with benefits at that time but though I liked them, they didn't click as boyfriend material. Others were just situationally not available even if I'd consider being boyfriends with them. I just wasn't in a hurry to find a new boyfriend and had enough sex so that it wasn't a priority. Work was my priority as I was at the beginning of my career and starting to stack up some really nice achievements. Plus I was getting a lot of sailing and skiing in, so it wasn't like I didn't have a life.

My first really long time relationship

So in 1985 my life was going to change drastically. My ex-manager got a contract with a company in San Diego to build a laser printer controller. There were nominally four of us, but one was mainly absent so the reality is that I was the only software guy and had to support dozens of engineers at their company along with all of the code I was writing. To say that I was busy was an understatement. Month after month of 100 hour weeks kind of busy. A little after we created the company I was going out with a couple of guys, one of which was my now ex. Guess what color his hair was. He was a couple of years older than me and... 28. So it was fate. I had to choose between the two and then told the other one and he cried. I always hated that for the other boy because he was so sweet and so fucking beautiful. But my ex was an IT guy so we had that as a connection. I taught him how to ski and sail so we'd go on races and up to the mountains for the weekends. I bought a condo on Lake Mission Viejo and we settled in while I was working so much. After the initial burst of work, a few years later we had more employees so I wasn't quite as frantic. It gave me time on weekends and we'd often go camping with my folks up on the east side of the Sierra. This was like a 5 hour drive so it was a little insane. But it was a lot of fun where I'd fish with my step dad and he'd hike and hang out with my mom who would sketch and paint. Often me and my mom would sheepishly call each other after a trip to see if we wanted to go the next weekend. Meal planning would promptly ensue. 

 

Painting by Ramon while in Santa Fe

One aspect of being with him was that I was out but not "out". I mean it was obvious we were boyfriends but I really never talked about it with my parents. On one of our camping trips my mother and I were drunk and I finally asked her what she thought about having gay son. She then proceeded to tell me that her brother Ramon was gay and in some fashion came out in the 40's. He had lived in Hollywood and Laguna Beach (which was an art colony and very gay) and was an amazing artist before moving to Santa Fe. I never knew him in an adult context and by the time my mother told me this he had already died. I have a million questions that I would have loved to ask him. Did he have boyfriends? Twinks or Bears? Did he get outed? What did he think about me who had it so comparatively easy? Alas, I'll never know. Gay history is pretty much erased history. We too need to never forget.

Our relationship went on for about 9 years. It was mostly good but given how busy I was it was easy to mask the things that weren't. I know that I'm not the easiest person to live with so that was taking a toll on him. I being much less busy at the end gave me time to evaluate how I actually felt. I was starting to feel sort of... nothing. A year before we broke up I was having serious problems with my business partner and wanted out. I even ran away from home and went to San Francisco telling nobody. It was really magical even at the height of the AIDS crisis before effective retrovirals. I really liked that there were more guys that were more sort of grunge alterna boys which really got me going. That was different than in LA for the most part and I liked it. There was one guy that I hooked up with who was just that type and he was adorable in his grunge way. He was the first guy I had ever fucked who told me beforehand that he was poz. It was a little weird, but as I said I've most likely have been with tons of poz guys who just didn't know.

After a year, I got bought out. I was feeling rather flush and silly so I decided to go to... The Numbers just for shits and giggles. I chose this hot Hollywood pretty boy type and he took me back to his place. As I said, I have absolutely nothing against sex workers but still it was really a weird experience but I just felt like doing it. I had decided that I wanted to move to San Francisco so in January 1994 we moved up there, a few blocks from Castro St. The stress of the previous year and moving caused my relationship to completely fall apart. I was absolutely not even thinking about a new relationship as we hadn't officially even broke up but fuck if it didn't happen anyway. I met Aric. I was beyond smitten and he was the hookup that never left. Oh and his hair wasn't blond. It was mousy. But he just turned 29. Oh well.

Conclusion

As with a lot of people who survived the AIDS crisis, I've had a fair amount of survivor's guilt. Why not me? I was fucking around like crazy. Even though it was the dumbest of dumb luck, I think that some of my behaviors back then had an influence on it. First of all, I was never really focused on anal sex early on and especially just with hookups. For one, for a long time I thought that it hurt them because it sure hurt for me. So I rarely asked. I was perfectly happy with oral and the rest. The second is as I said that I was never good at bottoming. Some people are naturally good bottoms and I was definitely not one of those. It's not to say that I never got fucked, it's just that it wasn't my thing. I wasn't against it and the thought of it was a turn on, but I guess I wasn't built for it. Topping is about 10x less risky though so there's also that. So even though I probably fucked plenty of poz guys and just didn't know it -- heck the first guy I fucked from Santa Monica Blvd could have had it -- for the most part I only fucked my boyfriends mainly because it was more convenient than with some random hookup. So life is strange. And very unfair. Some guys got it who hardly ever hooked up. I was just lucky. 

I had a crazy youth. It shows that if you put yourself out there, a sorta-good-looking(?) guy like me can have a lot of fun. There is so much more I could write, but this thing is entirely too long as it is. I can't figure out how all of this happened in that amount of time.  And all of this beginning just after Stonewall. We need more representation of all aspects of the gay experience. We need to make sure we aren't erased like my uncle was. The good the bad and the tawdry. With PrEP I hope that other gay boys can have the same chaotic and wonderful time again I had. I am genuinely happy for you. Love out xoxo, Mike