PISSING IN THE OCEAN

HOME l IMAGESBYDIRK l REVIEWS l AUTOBIO l CONTACT l GOSPEL l ALL OF ME l GAY JESUS

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INDEX:

Introduction=AUTOBIO
CH01 = A Miracle!
CH02 = Mama, What Does ‘Fuck’ Mean?
CH03 = Me & JC
CH04 = My First Catholic
CH05 = The New Me
CH06 = My First Lesbian
CH07 = SF, Mobile & NYC
CH08 = In the Shadow of the Lady’s Torch
CH09 = Kurt
CH10 = Maggie & The Little Theatre
CH11 = Hal
CH12 = Winn
CH13 = Greenleaf
CH14 = Herb
CH15 = Stuff Happens
CH16 = Eureka!
CH17 = Shewbread/LSD
CH18 = All Is Well

AUTOBIO:

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PISSING IN THE OCEAN

Introduction:

Many years ago, back somewhere in the 1970's, Rolling Stone Magazine published a cover which made me laugh out loud. It was a black and white photograph, looking west into the Pacific Ocean, with a famous young, male television-star standing buck-naked on the beach, his handsome backside to the camera, obviously taking a leak into the great mother of us all. There were dark clouds and shafts of light over the ocean; it looked very profound, very meaningful, and very apropos of those times. It was gutsy for its time. A naked man on the cover of a national magazine! This was long before video-tapes or DVDs became a part of practically every household; today, a lot of those are porno disks and tapes — which would have been illegal back then — just as I was; I was still legally a criminal, back in those days, before 1976, when Jerry Brown (bless you, Governer Moonbeam!) and California decided that “the love that dare not speak its name” could now be shouted from the rooftops!

In the photograph, a wave had just broken on the beach in front of the naked man, and had started its retreat, with froth all along the edge of the water, and he was pissing into it, froth into froth! It spoke to me. It was, I decided, a perfect metaphor for my life! At the time, I felt as though I had spent my entire life, but especially the last four or five, years, pissing in the ocean! I had struggled with the Mormon Church and with Christianity itself - and "lost," according to them. I had graduated from the University of Utah with a major in Theatre Arts and had lived in Hollywood for 3 years, even worked at CBS TV script dept. for a year, trying with frustrating unsuccess to get inside all the closed doors. I had written 3 screenplays, had one almost produced, then discarded. I had written and published 7 Gay novels in just 4 years, from 1968 through 1973, fighting with my publishers and editors every step of the way, getting pittance for all my work, talent, readability, one problem after another with each publication. $900 was the most I’d ever received for any book, with no royalties for future printings of the first six.

The published books were embarrassing and infuriating with all their typos, spelling mistakes and huge emissions of text. Four of my titles had been changed to what the publishers thought would titillate “Faggots.” The editor had made notes on the manuscript pages about “Good Fag Hots!” That was Greenleaf Classics, in San Diego.

Next I'd met the infamous "Frenchy" owner and operator of Le Salon, San Francisco's major Gay porn shop, who asked me to write the first book in his new venture "Frenchy's Gay Line." I wrote I WANT IT ALL and ALL OR NOTHING for him, in addition to illustrating the covers of his first 8 books, mine included - working with a strait (look it up) editor named George. I complained when the first book was published, asking why there were so many misspellings and typos. George told me: "Oh, Queers love that, didn't you know?" So I stopped writing for FGL.

All along, for whatever publisher, my books had been getting consistantly excellent reviews in the Gay press:

"Dirk Vanden is not only a talented writer, but his vivid imagination and intersting 'sexuations' made LEATHER QUEENS and LEATHER, and his other titles most readable." I WANT IT ALL "is his best work and tells almost all there is to know about San Francisco's bike set." Charles McAllister, Book Reviews, California Scene. Jan. '70

"If you thought that Vanden's I WANT IT ALL said it all, you are mistaken. Read ALL OR NOTHING and see if you agree... I recommend this novel highly but at the same time realize that it is not for the sexual novice nor for the old-fashioned sexualist. Of its genre, it has to be the best book ever written." Victor DeStefano, Book Reviews, California Scene. Feb. '70

"THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD." Review headline for I WANT ITALL. "The best homosexual fuckbook I've ever read." Michael Perkins, SCREW Magazine. Oct. '70 "ALL OR NOTHING. " In Dirk Vanden, "you have a novelist who has decided to write about Gay life realistically and even propagandistically, the latter because the straight reader finds himself believing - as the author wishes him to - that the Gay world is somehow tenderer and more feeling than the straight world. Not a bad accplishment. An excellent Gay porn novel which raises the standards for the genre." Michael Perkins,SCREW magazine, April, '71

ALL IS WELL "is the final step in the metamorphosis of the Gay novel. It takes homosexual literature out of the grade 'B' or 'trash' category and elevates it to a new albeit long-awaited height... Should be required reading on any Gay booklist. "K.C." DAVID Magazine, Feb. '72

ALL IS WELL "is Vanden's best work to date, which makes it a very good book indeed." Richard Amory's review in VECTOR, Feb., '72:

"This has got to be the best Gay book on the scene today... Buy, read, pass on ALL IS WELL by Dirk Vanden. You can't help but feel good after reading this one." Marc Williams, Mattachine Times, Dec. '71

"'ALL IS WELL' is Dirk Vanden at his best." Headline of Harold Fairbanks' review in THE ADVOCATE. Dec. '71

Richard Amory, author of SONG OF THE LOON, etc., contacted me in response to an article of mine, published in VECTOR - the magazine outreach of SIR, THE SOCIETY FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS, in San Francisco - dealing with the many problems of Gay writers working with and for strait editors and publishers, such as Greenleaf Classics and Frenchy's Gay Line. He also had written articles and reviews for VECTOR and we got together over coffee to discuss putting together an All Gay publishing company. We spent several weeks that summer putting together such a company, tentatively called "The Rennaisance Group."

In fact, Herb and I took Richard Amory to see the premiere of SONG OF THE LOON, the "underground" movie based very loosely on his book, which was filmed without his knowledge, permission or imput. The movie was awful, an excuse to show near-naked bad actors, with most of his dialog and poetry excised. They even killed the hero's lover in the end, which definitely did not happen in the book. As the ending credits rolled, Richard stood up from his seat and yelled:"That was shit!" as he walked out of the theater. Hurrying after him, we explained to the usher or manager that that was the author of the book, yelling.

It had been a terrible translation onto the screen and Richard was "jangling" for months. (That movie is now a high-camp-cult-favorite. Richard would have hated that.)

Even though we held a symposium at SIR, attended by then-famous Gay authors like Phil Andros, Larry Townsend, Peter Tuesday Hughes, Douglas Dean and several others, in spite of that list of talent to offer, we couldn't find anyone interested in funding such a venture. The idea died with a dull thud. Olympia took the pain out of the venture by contacting all the writers in that article, asking us to write for them. Then, after one or two books from each of us, Olympia went bankrupt.

I had been planning a long and lucrative career as a "Foremost Gay Author," telling "my side" of the Gay coin, but when Olympia went belly-up, I had no place to go. I'd burned all my bridges behind me and no new Gay publisher was clammoring for my next novel. I had worked so hard to get seemingly nowhere! My books might have received high praise from the critics, but I was broke.

All along, it had seemed like I was accomplishing something at the time, and it even felt good, at the moment, doing it, but the net effect was no more long-lasting or world-changing or even life-changing, than a good piss would make in an ocean made up of mostly fish-piss anyhow!

(Have you ever wondered why the sea was salty?)

I was raised as a Mormon in a tiny Mormon town in Utah, called "Vernal” and had been planning to go on a Mission to save heathen souls when I got out of High School – until a Mormon Bishop told me that men like me went to Hell and burned in the eternal fires forever. I had told him that I had met “this guy...who, you know, likes...other men.” His first horrified words were: “Run from that man as you would run from a snake! He is an abomination in the sight of God! ”

I knew I was not a terrible person, In fact, I had been one of those too-good-to-be-true Mormons like you see in the pictures, all white shirts and teeth, but my religion considered me a sinner! An Abomination! I finally figured out that I must be in the wrong religion and went looking for the right one, but never found it. I decided there is no right religion. None of them are any truer than the others. They all contain bits and pieces of truths "like pearls scattered around in a pigpen after a feast of spoiled oysters."

The changeover process was not quick or easy; my indoctrination in Mormonism had been very thorough, my faith seemingly unshakable, but there was no doubt in my mind that I couldn't stop thinking about doing things to or with some of the other boys – especially Max, the super-hot-high-school-good-Mormon-all-sports-jock and nice-guy! I knew I could never go on a Mission; I’d end up seducing my partner and then we’d both get kicked out of the church and go to Hell together.

But once away from my rural, provincial home town, attending the University of Utah in “cosmopolitan” Salt Lake City, 1951, Gay Bars and Baths became my churches. Semen became my sacrament.

True enough, I went through "hell" for awhile, but now, at age 74, I am happily content with myself, having made my mark on the cave wall: "Dirk Vanden was here!" and having solved the mystery: What am I and Why? I have known True Love in several forms and am fairly sure that my books or art have made a positive difference in someone's life.

***

Note: The following incidents of my life have been "dramatized." I can't remember, 50 or 60 years later exactly who said exactly what and to whom, but I have stayed as true as I could to the actual exchanges. They are "essentially true." Some names have been changed to protect the guilty as well as the innocent.

***

All I can give you is me.
I’m all I’ve got.

***

PISSING IN THE OCEAN -

MY LIFE SO FAR
by Dirk Vanden (Richard Fullmer)

PART ONE: "This is all your fault, you little bastard!"

CHAPTER ONE: A Miracle

The longer I live and the more I consider it, the more certain I am that I'm a “bastard.” I don't mean the figurative kind, although I'm sure I've been called that by any number of people, but rather the literal "I-am-not-my-father's-son" genuinely misbegotten type bastard. I'm also convinced that this shameful secret explains why my "father" treated me with frigid disdain all his life and why my mother punished herself with excrutiating headaches all of hers. I also believe that it has had a great deal to do with my particular version of homosexuality.

Although I wasn’t to solve that unmentionable mystery until much later in life, my maternal Grandmother gave me the first clue. Grandma Vernon was surely the most religious person I’ve ever known. She was as close as anyone can come to being a latter-day saint. She was good and kind and loving and giving, and she spoke with a conviction that, as far as I was concerned, could only come from being absolutely right. She adored me and I returned the adulation.

I can vividly remember sitting at the big round table in Grandmother’s kitchen, which smelled like vanilla, as I drank milk or lemonade and ate cookies or freshly-baked bread with homemade butter and jam, listening raptly as she bustled around the large room, cooking something (in my memory she is always cooking something), telling one of her many stories. She knew all sorts of wonderful stories — from the Bible, from her life as a young Mormon girl, whose parents had crossed the plains in covered wagons — but my favorite of all was about me!“We had all but given up hope,” she would say, “hope that your mother would ever have children. She and your father had been married for ten long years before you came along.” She would pause for a moment, gazing at something in her memory. (Grandmother had brought forth eleven children of her own. She knew well enough that women without children were considered practically useless by the Mormon Church, and therefore, also by Mormon friends and Mormon relatives as well.) She would look at me and smile — the kind of radiant smile that only holy saints and Jesus could smile; sometimes she would squeeze my arm or pat my hand. “But then,” she would say, “a miracle occurred! God answered our prayers. You were born.”

She would hug me tightly and whisper how much she loved me, and I would press as close to her as I could get, and tell her how very much I loved her, too. Then she would say “Praise the Lord!” And I truly believed I was talking to The Lord when I said “Amen!”

I grew up mostly in my mother’s home town of Vernal, Utah, way up in the northeast corner of the state, high in the Rocky Mountains, on coast-to-coast Highway 40, about 20 miles west of the Colorado border, and about 30 miles east of my "father's" home-town, where we spent a few early years; Roosevelt was the center of the Ute Indian Reservation.

It turns out that the Ute tribe of Native Americans had much more to do with me than I had been led to believe, until Van lost his cool one day when we were arguing and snapped: "You never knew your great-grandmother was a 'Squaw,' did you?" He spit the word out like it tasted dirty. I said "Really? Which tribe?" he said "Oh, shit" and walked out of the room.

When the Mormons took the state away from the people who lived here, they converted many of those people, mainly women, and the Mormon men married them. There was a surplus of unmarried men in those days. My great-grandfather must have been such a man. In her older years, my grandmother was obviously Ute. Which makes me 1/8 NA.

Vernal was a small all-white, 99% Mormon town, nestled in the middle of a beautiful, broad, fertile green valley, near the source of the Green River, crisscrossed with small farms and ranches, all surrounding a “downtown” of about four blocks, in the center of a town of about 4 square miles, with a population of just over fifteen hundred.

At various times during my childhood, I probably heard many clues about things that had happened before my birth, but I didn’t assign them any particular secret meaning until after Mother had died at age 96, in a "Convalescent Hospital." I couldn't even think such things until they were both dead.

Going through her remaining belongings, I found references to her marriage ("What fun we did have!") and cryptic notes about the first 10 years:

"1922 - married in Temple, SLC."

“1932 - Kansas City, Missouri, Van started school. Also Bud.”

“1933 Roosevelt, Utah, Dale born May 7.”

My given name was Richard Dale Fullmer; I was called Dale (which I hated because I thought it was a "girl's name") at school and by all my relatives. When I started High School, the teachers called me by my first name, so I gladly went by Richard, or Dick. In college, I shared a class and coffee with a hunky student from Holland named Dirk Van der Elst. I liked his name better than mine - Dirk for Dick - "short knife" rather than "penis" - so I adopted it as my nom-de-plume: "Dirk Vanden," my nom-de-paintbrush:"Dirk," and later, when I lived in San Francisco with Herb Finger, my "chosen name, rather than my given name:" "Dirk Fullmer." That's still me.

I now believe that the man listed on my birth certificate as "father" was actually my uncle, Van Fullmer Jr., who did not want or couldn't make babies. He had grown up as the eldest in a family of 9, 8 of which he had helped raise from babies, one year after another, until he was sick and tired of babies, and had probably decided he did not want any "damn kids" of his own. He definitely didn't like children. He referred to me as "the damn kid" to his co-workers.

That is not to say he was a "bad" man, in any other way; he was a very good man, helpful and kind - to everyone but me. Everyone loved Vannie! Everyone but me. He paid my expenses until I had graduated college, but it wasn't because he loved me. He was not the kind of father the other kids had, or that I'd read about in books, or heard on the radio, in the stories we listened to every evening (instead of talking) and I didn't have a clue about why.

Automobiles were just becoming popular in the 1920's and Van had a talent for keeping them running. He knew that if he went to an Automotive Certification school, he could take his “Certified Auto Mechanic” certificate and get a job anywhere in the country - anywhere besides Utah. They both hated Utah. He and Afton, my mother, had saved up for several years so he could go to such a school in Kansas City, Missouri. Just before they left, Van's younger brother, “Bud” (Von) decided that he wanted to go get certified, too.

A week before the school started, the three of them drove to Kansas City in a Model-A Ford, and rented a tourist-cabin, close to the school, 2 rooms, with a single bedroom, and a foldup bed for Bud. In the spring of 1932, Van and Von started Automotive School and Afton got a job as a waitress. He was 31, she was 28, and Bud was 30.

They had been there only a few months when Mother announced she was pregnant. Having already spent most of their savings on Bud's tuition and daily needs, and without mother’s salary and tips to finance their stay, and with a baby on the way, they had to quit school and move back to the hated farm on an alkali plateau in eastern Utah called Myton Bench. I was born in the little 1-room cabin on my Grandfather’s farm, where Van had been born 32 years earlier!

At least my Grandfather remains my real Grandfather!

It does not take a mathematical genius to add 2 and 1. For 10 years, for whatever reasons, Mother had been unable to get pregnant. She knew, as did all of her relatives, that she could only prove her worth as a woman by producing children. Barren Mormon women are considered worthless. Then, wonder of wonders, it happened: the answer to prayers! Me! Within weeks of my “uncle’s” moving in with them, a miracle occurred.

My guess is, Van was probably sterile from a childhood disease, he'd had several; maybe he knew it, maybe not. I doubt that he had deliberately avoided impregnating her for 10 years. Mormon men are supposed to be prolific breeders, and are valued for adding to the number of potential tithe-payers they produce. But for whatever reason he hadn't become a father yet, surely he had reason for being suspicious when I was announced.

There was no way, short of face-to-face confrontation, that he could ever prove the baby wasn't his, and I'm sure that never happened. Von was only a year younger than Van; they looked enough alike to be twins. Their DNA’s would have been virtually identical, so I would have come out practically the same, one father or the other.

After their failed attempt at Certification, they returned to hated Utah, and Bud went on to sire 8 or 9 kids he could claim as his own. Half of them were blue-eyed tow-heads, like me. The other half were dark like their Native American (Ute) mother.

Now I understand why he hated me! No wonder Mother punished herself with debilitating migraine headaches the rest of her life. I was her sin - her bastard. They had been married in the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City, so divorce was not an option. They were chained together "For time and all eternity" by their temple vows. I’m certain that they never talked about it with each other or anyone else. No one ever talked about sex in those days. It was a terrible secret between the 3 of them, all their lives. Did she or didn't she? Was I or wasn't I?

Please understand that I am not accusing my mother of being a tramp. I'm quite certain she never was. Except for that one deviation, she was a "good Mormon woman" all of her life, even though she only went to church now and then. She respected her temple-marriage vows and wore magic-underwear, as did Van. But something happened in that cabin in Kansas City, Missouri, and she gave in to her physical needs during estrus, and "cheated," or "sinned," just once! But that's all it took! But if she hadn't, I wouldn't be here, so I can't say it was a "bad" thing she did. Whatever, that one "sin" in her life haunted and tortured her all the rest of it. It tainted their love and their lives, and mine. Every single day of my life, I was a reminder to her of that one "sin," she had committed. Every time my supposed father looked at me, he wondered if she had cheated or not, or felt a gnawing hatred for me, suspecting the truth but unable to prove it.

Having loved someone and lived with him for 18 years, I know that what my "parents" had was not love; it was love in the beginning, but it had become a religious contract they were terrified to break.

I'm convinced that Mother lived to be 96, partly because of her fear that Van would be "over there," just waiting to make Heaven Hell for her, just as he had her life on Earth.

One final thing he did let me know he was convinced that I was no son of his: When he died of a heart-attack at age 73, he left a will with a lawyer, who summoned Mother and me to his chambers to read that Van Fullmer, Jr. had left his entire estate, less one dollar, to his wife, my mother. To me he left that $1 - but only if I didn't contest the will. The lawyer gave me a dollar bill - my "father's" legacy.

Even now that I've reasoned it all out - especially now that I realize what Hell they both went through because of me - I wish I could somehow go back in time, when he was still alive, and yell at him, at both of them: "IT WASN'T MY FAULT!"

I often asked Mother: “Why does Daddy hate me?” To which she would always reply: “Daddy doesn't’ hate you, dear. That’s just his way.”

Now I think I know why that was his way.

***

Chapter 2: “Mama, What Does 'Fuck' Mean?”

It was late in the summer of the year I turned 9, 1942. I had been out in the hills west of our home, in Roosevelt, in the high desert country of north-eastern Utah: red sandstone hills, low, twisted cedars and pinion pines — swimming in the canal, with my cousins, Ronald and Ginger, two and one years older than I.

They were from a very large family, 6 other children besides them, and they knew a lot about "The Facts Of Life!" I, on the other hand, was an only child and knew nothing at all about sex. This now seems very strange, considering that I grew up on a series of farms, where we had horses and cows, dogs, cats, pigs and chickens, but I obviously ignored their sexual behaviors, or repressed them. Most likely, Mother distracted me and said “They’re just playing. Never mind.”

We had been riding our bicycles along the canal road, and had stopped by the old swimming hole, in the shade of a grove of cottonwood trees. As we were getting dressed, Ronnie told us a joke he had heard at school: It had to do with a boy asking a girl if he could "fuck" her. At first, she refused, so he offered her a piece of fruit and so she let him. This went on through four different fruits, and, finally, the punch line was: "Apples, peaches, pears and plums, I won't get off 'til the baby comes!"

They both laughed like it was the funniest thing they had ever heard.

I didn't get it.

"You are the stupidest person in the whole world! You don't know what 'fuck' means, do you?"

"...no...."

"That's how babies are made, dummy! By fucking!"

I was quite certain that they didn't know what they were talking about! As far as I knew, there was no connection between sex and babies. I believed that God made babies, and delivered them in the same way Santa Claus made and delivered Christmas presents: Miracles, plain and simple.

I protested. They insisted, then proceeded to demonstrate how it was done. Ronnie was 11 and, to my amazement, could make his little dink get hard and bigger, and with Ginger leaning back against a tree, her dress held up to where she could peer over it to watch, Ronnie put his stiff little prick up into her pussy. They moaned and gyrated briefly, acting as if they were having a wonderful time, and then disengaged and suggested that I try it. My poor little dink simply wouldn't get hard at all: it had shrunk up so tightly into my body that I couldn't possibly get it up inside hers.

It was the first time I had seen a girl's "privates," and I was shocked and frightened. It looked like she was missing something! I had seen other boys naked, but had never seen an erect pee-pee! It had never occurred to me that such a thing could happen. I was fascinated and terrified at the same time.

I was also amazed at the casual way Ron and Ginger were acting, as if this was something they did all the time! I couldn't help feeling that, in spite of my failure, I had taken part in something terribly wrong, if not downright sinful!

They were too disgusted to go on playing with me, so they finished dressing, got on their bikes and went home. I wandered along the canal road for several hours, feeling utterly miserable and useless.

It was true, what they said, I told myself: I was stupid! Things like that happened to me all the time, especially at school. All the other children seemed to know enormously more than I did about life, things they had learned from their older brothers and sisters. I grew up very much alone, even though I went to school with more than a hundred other children. I had no one to tell me the secrets they had discovered in the process of living, no one to warn me that adults lied — even parents.

There was, of course, the distinct possibility that my cousins had tricked me. It certainly wouldn't have been the first time. I was a completely gullible child and very often the other kids, and sometimes my older relatives — especially my uncles and their kids on both sides of the family — made a fool of me, using my innocence as their weapon against me.

I felt like such an idiot because I didn't know things I should know — if for no other reason than to understand when I was being teased! My father teased me for being "stupid." Maybe he was right.

Mother was out on the front porch of our house when I returned, mending one of her dresses (we were very poor, and she made or repaired most of our clothing). "Where on earth have you been?" she asked, not really angry. "I was starting to get worried."

"Mama.." I was frightened, but I needed to ask somebody, someone I could trust to tell me the truth. "What does 'fuck' mean?"

She caught her breath and stared at me, speechless for a long, terrible moment, her eyes wide with shock and outrage. Then, very slowly and carefully she put down the needle and crossed her hands in her lap. "If you ever use that word again," she said in a voice like winter, "God will strike you dead!"

After a long, intense silence, she asked in almost a whisper: "Who taught you that word?"

I hated tattling on my cousins, but I had never in my life lied to my mother, so I said "Ronnie and Ginger."

The very idea seemed to strike her dumb for another awful silence as she considered the implications of what I'd just told her."I don't want you to have anything to do with them — ever again! Do you understand me?"

I managed to mutter "Yes," but I was so frightened I could hardly speak; I had never seen my mother so angry about anything!

She sent me to my room, and said Dad would punish me when he got home from work.

I didn't believe that Dad would actually spank me. First of all, I'd heard him use the word himself — several times — when he was talking to his brothers, when he didn't know I could hear what he was saying. Some of the men he worked with at the turkey-farm east of town, said it all the time: They said "Fuck this," or "Fuck that," or "Fucking right!" Also, the very house we were living in had had "FUCK YOU" written on some of the walls before we moved in. Mother had very quickly painted those rooms, covering the words, but no one had said anything about God killing whoever had written them.

Dad had spanked me only once in my life: a little over a year before, when I had refused to go to school. We had moved three times that year, during my second grade, because Dad couldn't find a good job: from Roosevelt to Rock Springs, Wyoming, then to Sacramento, California, then finally to Baggs, Wyoming, where he worked doing odd jobs on a sheep ranch. In Baggs, I had been even more of an outsider than usual. A one-room school housed all of the twenty or so children who lived in or near the tiny town, and all the kids knew one another — half of them were related. In Baggs, we were the only Mormons, and I was teased mercilessly about being a "Moron!" I was ridiculed and ostracized until I couldn't take it any longer. One morning, I told my parents I would rather die than go back to that hateful school, where even the teacher acted like there was something wrong with me. Dad spanked me then, so hard and so long that I passed out. When I woke up, mother was crying and told me I wouldn't have to go back to that school again — we would be leaving Baggs and moving back to Utah, back to Roosevelt, Dad's home town, into my Uncle Howard's old house in Hancock Cove.

The thing I couldn't understand was why God would strike me dead, and not Dad, or Ronnie, or Uncle Bud, or Uncle Glen, or any of the others I’d heard use the word. Was I special, for some reason?

I was hoping that Dad would explain it all to me. Maybe it had something to do with the difference between men and women. I wasn't sure what that difference entailed, but I had no doubt now that it was real. For one thing, women didn't swear, or weren't supposed to. Maybe "Fuck" was a swearword that men could say, but women couldn't.

Shortly after Dad's old pickup rattled past my window, I could hear them arguing in the kitchen, but I couldn't make out the words. It was the first time I had ever heard them argue. When he came into my room, he was grinning. He sat on my bed and patted his knee.

I went to him, feeling very conspiratorial, and I bent myself over his knee, expecting a pat or two — but his hand smacked against my butt so painfully I yelped and started to cry; this seemed to encourage him, and his hand slapped even harder, and went on and on until I was screaming "Don't! Please!"

Finally, mother came into the room and told him to stop! That was enough!

They left me crying, cringing painfully on my bed, my mind a jumbled chaos of fear and confusion. I felt more alone than I had ever felt before. I felt betrayed and abandoned. And something new, a feeling I'd never had before, of being, somehow, unclean in the sight of God! Without meaning to, without even knowing what I was doing, I had sinned! That meant I was a terrible person.

That evening, no one said a word during supper. When I had finished eating, Mother sent me to my room again. Usually I was allowed to listen to the radio with them for an hour or so after supper, but the radio wasn't even turned on that night. Instead, I could hear their voices, from the kitchen, arguing again, low at first, then louder, until suddenly he yelled "A Goddamned Mama's boy, that's what! A Goddamned Sissy!" Something crashed! Then the kitchen door banged open and Mother ran out, through the living room and out the front door, sobbing as she ran.Dad yelled "Come back here!" From outside she called "I'm never coming back!"

He ran out after her, slamming the front door behind him.

I followed them, terrified, crying, stumbling in the darkness, along the rutted dirt road that led into town.I could hear her sobbing, and I followed the sound until I could see the two of them, darker silhouettes against a background of shadows, huddled in the ditch beside the road. He was kneeling, holding her as she cried, sounding utterly heartbroken.

I ran to them, my arms open to embrace them, ready to beg their forgiveness, and to plead with her not to go away.

Dad furiously shoved me away and I stumbled backward, falling in the dirt. "Get out of here!" he yelled at me. "This is all your fault anyway, you little bastard!"

The next morning, we all acted as though nothing had happened. Mother woke me at six o'clock, as usual, and we fed the pigs and chickens while Dad milked the cows, and turned them out to pasture, as always. We had breakfast together — silently — and then Dad went to work. I started to help Mother wash the dishes, as I had done for several years, but she said "No! I'll do them. You go on out and play."

I wanted her to say she was sorry for getting so upset, and I desperately wanted to tell her that I hadn't meant anything bad when I asked her that terrible question, I had merely wanted to understand. But she never mentioned the incident, nor did I, nor, as far as I know, did Dad, ever again.

Up to that point, Mom had been my best friend — I had been with or near her almost every hour of my life, except for school — I would go with her everywhere, doing the chores, weeding the garden, shopping, to Church, visiting relatives, and we would laugh and sing songs and play games; she would hug me or hold my hand and smile with a smile that let me know that she loved me very much, and everything was all right. I thought she was the most wonderful person in the world, and that had made me feel very special indeed, because she had so obviously adored me!

But after that day, we became strangers. It was as though she had turned something off. From that day onward it seemed to me that she never allowed herself to feel anything for me besides obligation: she had been responsible for bringing me into the world, so she cooked my meals and washed my clothes and cleaned my room, and she always made sure I had enough money to buy clothes and essentials, but she never again praised me or encouraged me or seemed to care whether I got an A or a C, passed or failed a test, got promoted or demoted or kicked out of a class! As long as I didn't involve her in my life, she paid me no mind. Or seemed not to, no matter how successful I was at school.

Dad had never paid me much attention anyway, but after that night, it seemed he had even more than his usual contempt for me. Although I lived with them for nine more years, that night we each moved away and apart from each other, and there we remained for the rest of our lives.

***

Chapter 3: Me and Jesus

Knowing what I know now, it is easy to see why I got swept up in a passion for Religion at age 9 - after that horrible day and sleepless night, hearing my father’s furious voice, echoing over and over in my head : ”This is all your fault, you little bastard!” I desperately needed acceptance and approval, which was definitely not coming from either of them.

It never occurred to me, at the time, to think "bastard" meant anything but a "dirty, rotten, nasty" person. It took many long years before I even started to consider that I might not be "legitimate." Instead, it was just a word he used to hurt me. Like "Sissy," and "Coward," and "The damn kid."

We moved again, shortly after that incident, and probably as a result of it. My mother surely confronted her sister about her nasty children teaching me things she didn't want me to know. The house we were living in had been rented from them. We moved from Roosevelt to Vernal, next door to my Grandparents’ house in the western end of the valley. They had a little “Guest House” for visiting relatives, across the yard from the much larger main house, which had seen 10 children grow up and move out to have big families of their own.

Except for us: I was the only "only-child."

Dad and Mom both got jobs, Dad as a lineman for the Utah Power and Light Co. and Mother as a cook in her brother's diner, downtown, called "The Rite Spot."

We stayed in the little house until Dad could build a home for us to live in. They bought 5 acres from Grandfather and within a year, they had built a very nice, livable house, a mile down the street from the Grandparents.

I wasn't encouraged to “get in their way.” Dad thought I was “too stupid” to help. "Aw, for cryin' out loud, not that one! That one! What the hell's the matter with you?" Etc.

While Grandmother Vernon was welcoming and loving, Grandfather V. was just the opposite. Grandmother had described him in her journal as “a handsome young convert from Tennessee,” but by the time I moved next door, he was an angry, bitter old man. He had once donated a stained glass window to the local Mormon Tabernacle (where I was confirmed, under the “W. P. Vernon window"), but things had gone wrong in his life and he did his best to be unpleasant to everyone, probably especially to my mother - for coming back home - with a baby. He probably treated Dad like a Loser. Neither one of them went into a Church in my lifetime, except for funerals. They both treated me as an unwanted presence.

Grandfather Vernon died of Cancer several years after we moved out of that little house. I can remember Dad getting dressed in a dusty blue suit to go to the funeral. It was the only time I’d ever seen him in a suit or in the Church House. And there was Grandpa, also in his Church suit, down in front of the alter, in an inappropriately ornate casket, surrounded with shiny white satin and beautiful flowers .

It was the only time I’d ever seen my Grandfather smile.

Both Mom and Dad worked weekdays, which left me alone much of the time. Grandmother saw the need and did what she could to fill it. She took me under her wing and taught me about God and Jesus. She had studied The Bible and knew many of the stories by heart. Everybody in the Ward knew Sister Vernon and loved her. I was loved and accepted because I was her grandchild and I did everything I could to live up to her expectations.

In the process, I fell in love with Jesus, meek and mild, loving and forgiving. In Sunday School we often sang “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam,” and I sang it like I meant it. I became a Sunbeam for Jesus. At school, the kids called me “Goody-two-shoes,” and a “pansy," but I didn't care. I was doing The Lord’s work and that was much more important than worrying about being called bad names. I was helping my Church pave the way for Jesus to return and turn the earth back into Paradise, the way it once was in The Garden of Eden. That's what Mormon lives were all about, or were supposed to be, getting Jesus to come back.

Even though the indoctrination process starts early, for toddlers in Sunday School, and then "Primary." Young Mormons are not considered real Mormons until they are baptized and confirmed at age 8, or later. At that age, they are considered old enough to decide whether or not they want to become members of the LDS Church. Kids get a lot of attention and love as they prepare themselves for Membership in The One and OnlyTrue Church On Earth! I studied the Mormon Articles of Faith and The New Testament. “The Gospel of Jesus” became part of my life.

In that closet He had told me to go into to pray, I repented many times for uttering ‘that’ word which I would not even allow myself to think, let alone say aloud. Jesus quickly became my mentor, my adopted, perfect father-figure, the one who forgave me for being stupid and a terrible sinner and welcomed me into his heart and home with all the love I could possibly want. Over and over, I listened to, and incorporated, his advice in my quest for something to believe in that didn't involve feeling guilty for reasons I didn’t understand.

I didn’t trust my parents any longer. At age 10 I discovered they had lied to me about Santa Claus, and that embarassing revelation ended my confidence in them. Once I realized they had lied to me, about so many things, it wasn’t difficult, setting them apart from me, like in a separate room of my life, and adopting my Grandmother as my substitute mother and Jesus as my substitute father. Although He was absent, physically, from my life, He had left His words in a book, especially for me! And His "spirit" definitely seemed to be with me 24 hours a day.

For the next 6 years, between 1943 and '49, I became intensely religious, spending every spare moment contemplating Mormonized-Christianity, imagining what it would be like, preparing myself and my soul for the imminent Second Coming. My mother had showed me a “Patriarchal Blessing,” she had received as a girl, which promised her that she would live to “hear His sweet voice,” when Our Savior returned. I read and reread the Bible and Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants and various Church books and magazines. I prayed often for God to forgive me whatever terrible sins I'd committed, and to be for me what He was for Grandma — a source of incredible strength in the face of adversity — a source of love and understanding, when all the world misunderstood and hated me.

I took part in all the church-boy-programs, Primary, The Boy Trail Builders: Blazers and Trekkers and Guides. I was ordained a Deacon at age 12, a Teacher at age 14, and a Priest at age 16.

Of course, I planned to go on a Mission when I was 19 or 20. I wanted to spread the True Gospel to the Heathens of the poor, disadvantaged countries, Mexico and South America. I planned to lead hundreds, perhaps thousands of questing souls, to The True Church, saving those souls for Jesus in the process! When I came home from saving souls, I would get married to a good Mormon girl and raise a family of good Mormon children (but not just one alone — I would never subject a child of mine to that affliction — but not 9 or 10 either; 2 or 3 maybe). We would all go to Church together, and sing the hymns, tell the stories, praise Jesus and rejoice together as we marched arm-in-arm into the Millennium.

I had no idea what I would do to support my anticipated family, except that it wouldn't be by farming. I trusted that God would make clear to me what He wanted me to be and do when the time came.

I had decided that when I was drafted, for service in World War II, I would tell them I was a "conscientious objector." I didn't understand the concept of "praise the Lord and pass the ammunition," lyrics of a popular song during The War. I hated that song! With absolute clarity the Bible said "Thou shalt not kill." Period! It didn't say "except for Germans or Japs," no matter how terrible they were, and Jesus had commanded: "Forgive your enemies," without excepting Italians, even though they were Catholics - "the Great Abomination!" according to Mormonism.

The only trouble with that idea was that nobody agreed with me! I was amazed how many supposedly religious people were sending their sons and grandsons to kill or be killed by "the enemy." They would become very angry with me if I tried to say what we shouldn't be killing anybody! I was being "unpatriotic" and even sinful!

It was like that with just about everything. The more religious I became, the harder I tried to be "Good," the more people avoided me, kids as well as adults. They started calling me "Goody-Two-Shoes." For some reason I couldn't fathom, someone who really practiced what they preached was regarded as simple-minded. Someone who tried to be good and honest and pure was treated as "holier than thou," and shunned, not cherished. It didn't make sense! The harder I tried, the less people liked me!

In 1947, at age 14, I became a freshman at Uintah High School, on the outskirts of Vernal. Across the street from the high school was the LDS "Seminary," a small church-like building housing a schoolroom and two teachers' offices. Once a week, all the Mormon children in the 9th grade studied The Old Testament. Sophomores studied The New Testament, and Juniors studied The Book of Mormon. In each grade, I applied myself to Seminary with much greater interest than regular schoolwork. I diligently perused all of the books of The Bible and was one of the few students who could actually discuss the various books and chapters and characters. I could recite all the names of the books. (Still can: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges....etc.)

My other major activity and interest besides Mormonism was in The Theatre - drama and comedy. As a freshman, I had discovered acting and directing and writing. I was good at all of them and they called me "talented" and gave me awards.

All of my extracurricular time was spent at Church or onstage, in one capacity or another.

I was allowed to skip Phys Ed and any of the sports that involved running because I couldn’t run more than a few steps without developing a “stitch” in my groin. It was the same feeling, I later learned, as being kicked in the balls. It was agony, but no doctor could figure out what caused it.

This gave me even more time to immerse myself in religion and theatre.

Girls didn’t like to go out with me, even though they were Mormon virgins looking for husbands. All I wanted to do was talk about God and Jesus. I rarely had a second date.

At the end of the third year of Seminary, in the spring of 1949, the "graduating" class was rewarded with a trip to Salt Lake City, where we would all be "Baptized for the Dead," a Mormon innovation and tradation, in the enormous marble font on the backs of 12 golden oxen, symbolizing the 12 tribes of Israel, in the holy inner-sanctum of the Temple! We would then eat supper and stay overnight in one of the largest hotels in town, the Hotel Newhouse! All we had to pay was a small share of the room cost — we split up 4 to a room, 2 to a bed — and for stuff like meals, souvenirs, movies, or special treats.

Grandmother had often told me the story about the boy who was being baptized for the dead in the Temple: When he came up from each of the immersions, he could see the spirit of the person he had just helped join the Church, until finally they were all standing in the air around the rim of the font, transfigured, smiling gratefully at him! And then, suspended above everything, Jesus, Himself, his arms outstretched, silently thanking the boy for the wonderful work he was doing!

I prayed night and day that something like that would happen to me. More than anything else in this world, I wanted to see Jesus, and to know for certain how much He loved me.

In the white marble dressing rooms in the Temple basement, we were given white loose coverall-like garments, which covered us from ankle to chin, and concealed any trace of sexuality — at least, when dry. In groups of twelve, we were guided into the font, which looked like a huge bathtub resting on the backs of twelve life-size gold-plated oxen. There were cold, wet steel steps going up, then marble steps leading down into the warm water, where the baptizer would take each of us in turn and prepare to dip us, saying loudly "Richard Fullmer, on behalf of...." He would pause as an invisible reader pronounced a carefully researched name from an unseen list, "John Jacob Jones," and the baptizer would repeat it, "John Jacob Jones ... I baptize thee in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen!" Dip, rise, move one space around the font. Around and around we went, getting dunked for more than a dozen dead people apiece, and as I worked my way around the tub, I prayed fervently to be allowed to see Jesus — but by the end of the session, I had seen nothing, not even any grateful ghosts!

I tried not to be disappointed. I tried not to read any "hidden meaning" into the non-answer to my prayers. But it was hard not to think that maybe God was still angry with me for that word I had said 7 years ago. Or, maybe the truth was, God just plain didn't like me, and wouldn't answer my prayers no matter how good I was or tried to be! He hadn't answered any of them yet — as far as I knew — so maybe He never would!

After supper in the hotel cafeteria, we all went to see RED RIVER, starring John Wayne and an exciting new actor, Montgomery Clift, and I felt curiously guilty for thinking he was handsome and very exciting. After the movie we all bought snacks and headed back to our hotel rooms, about 10 o'clock.

My roommates happened to be three of the most popular boys in high school, all athletes, all members of practically every club in school, and all presumably good Mormons. Arnie, Max and Dell shared another distinction, I discovered, when Arnie produced a pint of Jack Daniels Whisky from a sack of fruit and sandwiches he had brought from home, and I was the only one who had to be asked if he wanted a swig!

At first I refused, righteously indignant, and not a little amazed — these were three of the "best" boys in town! Our religion strictly forbade alcohol; without a doubt, they were breaking a sacred law! But they passed the bottle around between them, as though it were nothing more than a bottle of root beer. Impulsively, I decided to risk everything I had gained during my six years of devotion, and accepted the bottle the third time around. It became a way to get back at Jesus for not showing up when I had prayed so hard! It was like saying "I don't care! So there!"

I had never tasted whiskey, or any alcohol, not even beer, but I managed to swallow the first searing gulp before it made me nauseous. The second one went down much easier. By the time the bottle was empty, I was feeling very lightheaded and giddy.

When Dell drunkenly produced a package of Lucky Strikes, I excused myself and went into the bathroom. "Well, fuck you!" he called after me, then, "No, never mind!" They all laughed. Tobacco was forbidden, just like alcohol! I was extremely apprehensive about breaking so many laws at the same time! I was also still surprised and shocked that the three Good Mormon Boys, who had just been Baptized for the Dead in the Holy Temple, were out there drunk and smoking cigarettes, and talking about which girls' tits they had seen under those wet coveralls.

I hadn't noticed any tits; I had been preoccupied with the lumps I could see, through the warm clear water, in the crotches of the boy's coveralls. Some had looked like they might be hard!

I turned on the water in the bathtub, so I wouldn't have to hear what they were saying, then decided to take a bath. It seemed a little ludicrous, after having spent half of the day submerged to my shoulders, but the thought of a steamy, soothing bath was very inviting. and I had to get away from the smell of tobacco. I wanted very much to share that cigarette they were passing. After a little trouble undressing, I slipped into the warm water, quite drunk and relaxed. By this time, the boys in the next room were talking quietly, occasionally laughing, probably telling dirty jokes.

For a few minutes I relaxed in the warmth and buoyancy of the water, almost distracted from the events and disappointments of the day. Then someone coughed! It sounded like he was there in the room with me, but the door was closed, and there was no one behind me. The cough came again — from someplace directly in front of me! Then water splashed, as though someone had just moved in the tub — but it hadn't been me!

Then I noticed a tiny hole, slightly larger than a pencil, in the wall, carved through the plaster just above the water knobs and faucet. I knelt in the tub and leaned close to look through.

I saw a naked, handsome, well-built young man, his hair cut short, almost certainly a sailor or soldier, in a bathtub like mine, on the other side of the wall; he was facing me and I could clearly see that he was playing with his cock! As soon as I started watching, it got hard! He knew I was watching! I could tell, because he put on a show for me, arching his muscular young body above the water, stroking himself almost casually, until suddenly he groaned and shuddered and came, squirting all over himself!

I sat back on my heels, amazed, terrified — and more aroused than I had ever been! I had jacked off before, and had wet-dreams, of course, but nothing had come even close to the excitement I was feeling at that moment. It took only a few quick strokes and I shot more than I ever had before, and almost passed out from the thrill of it!

Guilt overwhelmed me immediately! I quickly soaped up and rinsed off — making sure that none of my semen remained on the tub — then hurried out to where Arnie and Dell were passed out on one of the two beds.

Max was sitting in the middle of the other bed in his shorts and t-shirt, smoking a Lucky. I secretly had a crush on Max. He was handsome and muscular, one of the school's star atheletes. I felt a frightening desire to get close to him, as close as possible, to press our bodies together and kiss. Instead, I quickly I picked up the package, lying beside him on the bed, and tapped out a cigarette. Max grinned and held out a lighter and flicked it for me. I took only one deep drag and the room started spinning and I almost toppled over. Max caught me, laughing, and then drunkenly guided and carried me back to the bathroom, where I threw up in the toilet.

He waited for me to clean up, then tucked me into bed and whispered "Sweet dreams, little buckaroo, you've had a busy day."

I had an almost overwhelming impulse to pull him close and kiss him, but I passed out instead.

I had a terrible hangover the next day!

***

CHAPTER 4: MY FIRST CATHOLIC

Around the same time as the Seminary trip to the temple, during the spring of 1949, for all of my involvement in theatre-arts, I won a scholarship to a six-week summer Theater-Workshop at Denver University. It marked the first time I had been away from home, by myself, for more than a day or two, and I had been eagerly anticipating my escape from Mom and Dad, and the association with other young people who excelled in some form of Theater-Arts. In Vernal, I was the only student contemplating a career in "show business," and that choice was considered more or less insane by most of the kids I knew. This workshop would give me the chance to meet my real peers, and talk with someone who understood the excitement and fulfillment of acting.

The male scholarship winners, twelve of us, stayed in one of the fraternity houses, just off campus. We were not all actors; there were debaters, orators, stage-managers, etc. We would all be involved in the many different aspects of Theatre.

On the evening of my first day there, I had just unpacked my suitcase, and was sitting at the foot of the small bed assigned to me, looking out the window of my little room, trying to decide what to do next, when a deep voice behind me said "Howdy there, new neighbor! My name's Ray. I'm from Kansas. Like Dorothy!"

I felt a very strange rush of sensations as I turned to look at him. It was like going down in an elevator, or going very fast over a bump in a car! Ray Evans was a potential "leading man" if ever there was one! Brown, wavy hair, in the currently-popular "duck's-ass" cut, very chiseled features, with a small dimple in his angular chin. He could have played Cary Grant's younger brother! He was wearing the national high-school uniform: Levis and T-shirt, penny-loafers and argyle socks.

For some reason, I felt almost giddy, knowing he was talking to me."Looks like we're the early birds." he said. "I'm headed down to the Rec Room. They've got machines with sandwiches, and candy and all sorts of stuff. Also got a pool table. Do you play?"

“No. I don't know how." Playing pool was considered a sin in Vernal.

"Well, then, I'll teach you. C'mon."

He seemed like a very nice, intelligent, outgoing, friendly person — and he was interested in me! He was fascinated by my stories about where I lived and went to school, and what I was planning to do with my life. I had never had anyone pay that kind of attention to me and my plans or desires. I told him all about wanting to be the first in my family to graduate college. Then I would either go to New York or Hollywood and make my living (to rave reviews, of course) as an actor.

He told me about his life in Hutchinson, and his plans to go to college, except that he was considering a career in television.

It seemed as though he kept posing for me! He would lean back against the wall with his arms crossed and his hips thrust forward so that I could plainly see a bulge in his crotch. Now and then he would rub the lump, not at all secretly, but when he knew I was looking. I tried to ignore his actions, but found them very exciting.

After several games of 8-ball, which I learned to play fairly well, we bought sandwiches and Cokes (cola drinks, like coffee and tea, were forbidden by the Mormons) and went upstairs to his room to eat. We talked long into the night, our first night in Denver. I had no doubt that Ray had something on his mind that he wasn't saying aloud, and I guessed that he, like me, would like to do something more to express this feeling that we obviously shared. But neither of us made the move.

The next day, we got together at the student union for lunch and chatted like old friends as we went through the cafeteria line. As we started to eat, he crossed himself! I was seventeen years old and only in the movies had I ever seen anyone actually make the sign of the cross! According to Mormon dogma, the Catholic Church was what the Bible called "the abomination of desolation sitting in the holy place" — the reason the rest of the world couldn't make Christianity work. Even the Jews, who had killed Jesus, were friends by comparison! Catholics were considered The Enemy!

This wonderful, charming, handsome, new person in my life was my mortal enemy, according to my religion! I felt like something invisible was ripping me apart, like a tornado crashing around inside me!

I avoided Ray for the next few days, and on Sunday went to the nearest Mormon chapel for Sunday School. In class, taught by the Bishop of that ward, I introduced myself as a brother from Utah, at DU on a scholarship, and said that I had met someone in the workshop who seemed like a nice person, but that I suspected he was one of those "you know, men who 'like' other men. What should I do?"

The Bishop rocked back on his heels and squared his shoulders and clenched his fist and shook it at me as he said "Run from that man as you would run from a snake! He is an abomination in the sight of God!"

Afterward most of the class avoided me, as though I frightened them, but one girl patted my arm and said "It must be the most terrible thing in the world, to be one of those people. You should pray for his poor tortured soul!"

Of course, the question had not been just about Ray, it also had been about me! And I went back to the Frat house that Sunday, knowing that, if I ever gave in to those forbidden impulses, my church would consider me an abomination! That would make Ray — if he really was "one of those people" — a double abomination: a Catholic Queer!

When I finally got up the courage to approach Ray again, he had found a new friend. They were both polite, but distant, as though they had decided I wasn't worth bothering with. I felt terrible! I had turned to my religion for help and comfort about something that was happening to me, and my religion had only gathered its skirts and screamed "Sinner!" It hadn't helped me understand why I was haunted by ideas and images of what might have happened, had I not refused to recognize his overtures, that first night. In my imagination, I kissed Ray Evans night after night, but we hardly spoke for the rest of the six weeks.

I gave all my time and energy to my role as Papa in I REMEMBER MAMA, and a tiny role in RICHARD III, which was presented in an outdoor theater for two weeks of balmy summer nights, as the "graduation" for the workshop. Then I got on a bus and went back to Vernal, knowing that something monumental had happened to me, but terrified of understanding just what that something had been!

As soon as I got home, I called Gwen, my girlfriend, for the last year, whom I tentatively planned to marry, when the time came, and suggested we get together soon, for a movie or something. Mostly I wanted to talk to her and, maybe, ask some "innocent" questions. She suggested that we go to see a new actor, Marlon Brando, in a movie called The Men, which was playing at one of Vernal's two movie theaters. We made a date for the next night.

I remember almost nothing about the movie, except that it was about a wounded soldier in a hospital. Marlon Brando looked almost exactly like Ray Evans! All I could see, all night, was Ray! All I could think of was Ray! After the movie, I deliberately picked a fight with Gwen and took her home, suggesting that we split up. I was angry and excited, and I jacked off as I drove home, imagining what it would be like to be with Ray, to touch him...kiss him..! But as soon as I came, I felt as though my world was about to come tumbling down on me!

I went back to see the movie again, the next night, and as I walked into the semi-darkened theater, before the movie started, I noticed that Leon Elkins was sitting in his usual seat, the second one in on the last row in the center. It looked like he was waiting for someone to join him, and I had heard that was exactly what he was waiting for; whoever sat there next to him would be "accidentally" touched, then, if that person didn't get up and move, fondled, and then be asked for a ride home. Whoever took Leon home from the movies got a blow job! Leon was Vernal's resident Queer, and most of the boys in high school seemed to know about his services.

Instead of sitting next to him, I sat in the seat across the aisle, and throughout the movie, kept turning to see if he might be looking at me. He did, several times, but gave no sign that he wanted me to join him. After the movie, he got up and went out and started walking along Main Street, toward his home, east of town.

I ran to my car, my heart pounding insanely in my ears, and followed him almost a block before he turned to look back, then I pulled up beside him. He didn't say a word, but just looked at me. "Would you like a ride?" I asked.

He studied me for a moment, then shrugged. "Sure. Why not?" I had never seen Leon outside the movie theater, and was amazed that, up close, in the light of the streetlight, he looked just like anyone else — a 20 or 25 year old man! (Being queer had kept him out of the Army; he was one of the few young men his age left in town.) His voice wasn't lispy — as it was made out to be, when the boys told each other about their adventures with Leon. He had a nice voice, and a pleasant smile. But he didn't touch me. We drove out into the boondocks, listening to romantic music on the radio. My heart almost stopped when I glanced over and saw his pants open, his cock arching up out of his fly. He met my glance and seemed to dare me to touch it. He even turned in the seat to make it easier for me to get to. "Suck on it," he whispered. "You know you want to!"

I was shocked that he would even suggest it. "No!" I wanted to tell him he was the queer one, not me, but I couldn't get the words out. That was what I had wanted him to do to me, and once he mentioned it, I couldn't stop imagining what it would feel like. How would it feel to take that satiny headed thing in my mouth! He reached over and took my hand and guided it to his cock, which jumped when I touched it! It was the first time I had ever touched another man's penis, and it felt like a kind of hot electricity was flowing between us!

"Jack it off," he said, as he unzipped my pants and fumbled to get my cock out of my shorts — but I came before he could get it out!

It took several more minutes for him to come. Finally he pushed my hand away and finished himself, catching the stuff in his handkerchief. He gave a long, satisfied sigh, stuffed himself back into his pants, and said "Now you can take me home."

Driving home with my shorts soaked with semen, guilt and remorse settled over me like a thunder storm!

I spent several days, afterward, thoroughly depressed and confused. I knew I couldn't discuss it with either of my parents. They were certain to over-react — or, even worse, not react at all! I had no close friends I could talk to, or even distant friends who wouldn't instantly despise me if they found out what I had done! It was driving me crazy and I had to do something! I finally decided to go to my Bishop, supposedly the most spiritual, understanding man in the Ward, and once again risk a humiliating rejection, to ask him why God would allow such a terrible thing to happen to someone as faithful as I had been.

I rode my bike to his house, about two miles away from ours. His wife said he was out in the barnyard, fixing something in the stable. She said to go on out and talk to him there.

I could hear his voice, low, but sharp and angry, before I could make out the words. I could also hear a cow, bellowing and gasping. I approached the stable from the feeding-side, and looked through the long window to see Bishop Mackenzie, pitchfork in his hand, stalking after a cow that was running away from him, around and around the corral, bawling and limping, with bright red trails of blood running down her flanks from where the pitchfork had obviously pierced her skin. He didn't see me looking through the manger.

"I'm gonna kill you!" the Bishop snorted furiously. "You Goddamned fucking sonofabitch!"

I backed slowly away from the window, my heart pounding insanely, his words echoing over and over in my head, then ran to my bicycle, and peddled as fast as I could, back home.

It was mid-afternoon and my parents were both at work in town. I marched out into the field where we had recently cut and bunched the hay. It was dry and hot and the air seemed to be humming. I planted my feet wide and looked up toward Heaven, and yelled "Fuck!" as loud as I could.

Nothing happened. I had hoped for lightening, but absolutely nothing happened.

I clenched my fists and shook them at Heaven, took a deep breath, and yelled "Fuck God!"

In the silence that followed, my whole world wavered and then dissolved into ruins, but in that hayfield there in Vernal, everything else went on exactly as usual, as though nothing at all had happened.

***

PART 2: TO THEMSELVES UNKNOWN

CHAPTER 5: The New Me

My last year of high school was very schizophrenic. Almost everyone treated me like the person I had been, before that catastrophic summer, and I pretended that nothing unusual had happened, but secretly, I had changed drastically! I had stopped going to church and was trying to stop judging myself and the world by Mormon standards. I stopped believing that I, somehow, owned the world just because I was a Mormon!

I had decided that I no longer wanted to associate with bigots and hypocrites who lied and cheated and swore like sailors, then went to church and pretended to be pious and holy! I had discovered that there were good people in this world who were not Mormons, who were often not even religious, and that, just because a man is supposed to be saintly, that is not necessarily, or even probably, what he really is!

More and more doubts and questions had come into my mind, over the years, and I finally decided, at age eighteen, that religion was all a bunch of lies, designed to control people with their fear of the unknown, and to keep them paying tithing! I hated to admit it, but my father had been right to infer it was "bullshit" because that's exactly what it was!

God was simply the adult version of Santa Claus!

Even so, I felt guilty and vaguely apprehensive, as though delayed lightening might yet strike. It wasn't that easy to get God and Jesus out of my life! There was an emptiness where comfort had been, questions for which there were no pat answers. There was a gnawing awareness that I had been duped, and I felt like the same kind of fool I had been as a child, tricked and cheated by those I had trusted most.

Even worse was the future! Suddenly, my expected exaltation with the resurrected Saints in Paradise was replaced with an enormous emptyness.

I decided that nothing in life was certain! And no one could be trusted! I was forging ahead into the unknown, all by myself!

And my parents didn't even notice.

Now, secretly, I looked at people in a brand new way - I was fascinated by penises - cocks - and felt terribly ashamed for it! Now I looked at boys' and men's crotches the way other boys looked at girls' breasts. I was amazed at the number of barely-concealed erections displayed by teenage boys! They got hardons at the strangest times! And whenever I saw the telltale protrusions, I felt a delicious but disturbing tingling in my own groin!

I pretended that I, too, went bonkers over big tits, but I had no comprehension of what that fascination was about. I secretly admired the flat, firm pectorals and muscular arms and legs of the basketball players and other athletes - like Max - and, of course, felt like a "Godless Sinner" because of it!

All of my life I had felt like something was "wrong" with me, but had never understood exactly what that was. Now I knew: I was Queer! I was something that everyone hated and feared. I was something that most people thought was evil and "abominable." I was also a criminal, illegal in most of the civilized world! I had heard men say they would kill a Queer who made a pass at them. Or they'd kill him, even if he didn't make a pass, just because he was Queer. Everyone seemed to agree that it was perfectly okay to kill or beat up Queers, because they deserved it, just for being Queer! I had heard frightening stories about marines or sailors beating up on some pervert who had somehow got into the service by mistake.

Now, I was that Pervert, a Deviate, a Sodomite, an Abomination in the sight of God, wretchedly and unforgivably Sinful - according to most religions around the world. Even though I vowed and consciously tried to do everything I could to become something else, everywhere I turned were bulging crotches!

I tried masturbating to pictures in National Geographic of naked native girls with huge breasts, but nothing would happen until I ignored the magazine and closed my eyes and thought about Ray — or Leon, or Max!

Or that guy in the bath tub! That vision endures in my head to this very day!

One amazing and likewise-memorable incident happened during my senior year, when I was directing and producing The Uintah Thespian Society's Radio Show, dramatizing Children's Stories, which I would adapt for radio, on our local station, KJAM, whose offices and studios were in the basement of the Hotel Vernal.

The parking lot was behind the hotel, and my car's windshield pointed directly at a first-floor hotel room window, with the blind and drapes open.

I was giving a ride home to two teenage girls who had been voices in the radio-play we had just finished. We had just got into my parents' car, all three of us in the front seat, and slammed the doors, when a man's hand and a hairy naked arm reached out from the left side of the window in front of us, using the drape to hide him as he reached for the cord to pull the blind down.

The window was wide and the hand couldn't reach the cord, so it reached up to a corner of the bottom of the blind, and pulled it down. You could see the man's shadow, move across behind the blind as he held it down. After a moment, he released it - apparently thinking it was locked in place - and started to stand up, but the blind zipped up and went flapping around the top of the window, and there he was "in Vista Vision!" good-looking, well-built, stark naked, with a large hardon that curved upward.

He wildly scrambled to grab the flapping blind, or the dancing cord, which he finally did, then pulled the blind down and apparently knelt down behind it until he was sure it would say pulled! It did this time.

I have often wondered if it really was an accident that exposed a horny naked man, or if maybe it was something he did on purpose, as an exhibitionist, and could claim "it was all an accident" if anyone complained.

I started the car and backed out of the parking space. None of us said one word about what we had all seen, as I drove away from the hotel parking lot, heading the car away from an incredibly vivid image - one that also has lasted all my life until now.

In a kind of "memory snapshot," his arms and legs are spread wide, jumping and flailing frantically as he tries to catch the flipping pull-cord, his balls and cock bouncing with each move. He looked like a spider, a naked human spider, a well-built and very well-endowed spider, scrambling for his web.

In the movies, instead of watching the faces, I found myself watching the crotches! Erroll Flynn and Tyrone Power often displayed exciting bulges in those tights! All the other boys went crazy over Jane Russell's big tits in The Outlaw, but I got thrills and chills and a hardon over her unknown costar, Jack Butel, as Billy, The Kid, who showed practically everything encased in skin-tight denim!

I hated myself for even noticing, let alone gawking at the bulges and protrusions in all the men's trousers and swimsuits, but I could not stop looking! (John Wayne and Roy Rogers never showed anything.)

As a "fuck you" gesture to Mormonism, at age 16, I started smoking and drinking: Fatima or Wings cigarettes (15 cents a pack) and Coors (3.2 alcoholic content) beer. And, of course, if anyone at an unofficial high-school party offered it, any of the "hard stuff," "Yes I do, thank you very much!" I was still too young to buy cigarettes legally, so I stole them from the drug store, or got them from a machine in the bus station - Luckies, Camels and Kools - or later, had someone else buy them for me.

That was the year Alaric Alexander came to UHS to teach Drama and Civics. He explained that his name was Teutonic, a family name after his great-great-great grandfather, or something. "Rick" smoked Pall Malls — secretly, of course; he would have been fired very quickly had the all-Mormon school board discovered that he smoked cigarettes, or drank beer, or secretly read George Bernard Shaw to his two favorite students, at his house, while all three of them smoked Pall Malls and drank Coors — or Hills Brother's coffee, or Lipton tea, or Doctor Pepper, or "real" eggnog for Christmas and champagne for New Years'!

I will never know for sure, but I think Rick was the first bisexual I'd met, although, probably, he was never consciously aware of it. He had come from a Good Mormon home, but had "strayed from the path." He was very interested in me, and in several of the other boys in the plays and drama class, and always managed to be in the dressing rooms back-stage, when the boys were changing costumes — but nothing ever happened that I knew about. He was equally fascinated by one particular girl, a senior, Marcia Warren, new also to UHS that year; her father was a doctor who had opened a new practice in Vernal that summer.

Marcia had grown up in Salt Lake City, and was extremely cosmopolitan, compared to the bumpkins of Vernal. She too smoked — Pall Malls, of course! Eventually, I heard, they got married.

My last year of High School, we became a threesome, "The Three Mousecatchers!" We read plays together, saw movies together, drove all the way to Sale Lake City to see plays at the University of Utah, or touring companies at the Rialto Theater, downtown. We also presented three very sophisticated plays that year: My Sister Eileen, Years Ago, and You Can't Take It With You. I student-directed the first, played "Papa" in the second, and a Russian ballet teacher in the third. That year reconfirmed my decision that I wanted to be An Actor! A Professional. Acting was fun! It was pretending to be someone else other than myself. It was a kind of temporary escape, or even "therapy." I was very good at it. I loved doing it.

I won a drama scholarship that year, to Brigham Young University, for a "reading" (a ten-minute monologue) of Hamlet, act I. It was a major triumph for me, but I had no desire to go to the Mormon school, or to anything even vaguely connected with the church. I decided I would prefer to go the University of Utah, and Rick and Marcia encouraged me.

Mom and Dad were not at all impressed with the scholarship. They had promised to send me to college if I wanted to go. They would pay my bills, scholarship or not, until I could get a job and support myself. They didn't seem to care about honors or scholarships. I don't recall either of them asking me why I had chosen the state university over the religious one.

Less than a week after I graduated high school, in June, I hitchhiked to Salt Lake City to register for Summer School at "The U." I wanted to get as far away from Vernal as I could, as quickly as possible.

I was picked up by a traveling salesman, in his forties or fifties, much too old to arouse any interest in me. We stopped for coffee at a truck-stop, about half way to SLC, where the grouchy old man behind the counter annoyed me about something.

When we were on our way again, the salesman said "You don't like old men very much, do you?"

It was quite true, I hated old men: they were grumpy and mean and judgmental, but I said "I don't know... Why?"

"Did you know that homosexuals don't like old men?"

"I'm not a homosexual!" I snapped.

"Oh, really?" He paused meaningfully, looking sideways over his shoulder at me. "Well, I am."

Neither of us said another word for the rest of the trip. I sat hunched against the door, ready to open it and leap out if he tried to touch me. He let me off near a bus stop at the eastern edge of the city. As I got out of the car he called "See you in the park — sweetie!" He blew me a kiss as he drove away.

I was seething, and terrified. Apparently there was something about me that made people think I was Queer, but I didn't know what it was! I had often heard "It takes one to know one," but what unconscious signal had I given the salesman?

I didn't really believe that my dislike of old men had anything to do with it!

I didn't think I looked queer — I wasn't pretty, or even handsome, although I wasn't ugly either. I thought of myself as "very average." While I didn't look like a "Jock," or a "Stud," I wasn't effeminate. Having grown up on a farm, I had a naturally lean and fairly muscular body, and I had very deliberately maintained a "masculine" attitude and carefully avoided doing anything that would label me unmanly. Rick had directed me in the finer points of looking and acting "butch" in the plays. ("Don't put your hands on your hips! Never raise your pinkie! Keep your voice deep, and slur your words just a little; do not articulate!")

I found a place to live that afternoon, an upstairs room in a boarding house, only a few blocks from the university. Since it was summer, most of the students were away for vacation. There was only one other boarder in the house, a "Graduate Assistant" in Physics. Dick Rogers was very tall — maybe 7' — very friendly and helpful, with a deep resonant voice, and a very large bulge in the tight tan pants he always wore. Within a week he had invited me into his bed, and I masturbated the biggest cock I had ever seen — and the next day moved out of the boarding house in a huff, telling the landlady that her other boarder and I "didn't get along!"

She seemed to understand what I wasn't saying, but refused to refund any of my rent.

My next living quarters were in the barracks at Fort Douglas, at the far-east end of the university's campus, right up against the mountain. It was still summer, and the soldiers and cadets who usually lived there were off on some kind of maneuvers involving Korea. I had two tiny rooms, one with a bed, the other with a desk, and shared common bathrooms and showers with three or four other summer students, whom I rarely saw. I very deliberately avoided any situation that would put us together in the showers or at the urinals.

It was there that I started writing my first novel, TO THEMSELVES UNKNOWN. about a young college student discovering that he had homosexual desires, briefly exploring the "tortured 'Gay' lifestyle," but then finding the right woman, who would take him to bed and make a man of him! (I think by that time TEA and SYMPATHY had opened on Broadway, so I probably borrowed the improbable ending from that propaganda piece for the impossible ending for my story.) That ending got tossed before I finished college.

The window behind my desk looked out over almost the entire city, all the way out to the mountains by the lake, and I spent many nights sitting at my Royal portable typewriter, looking out over an ocean of sparkling lights, trying to tell my story - trying to figure out just what my story really was!

At the end of summer and the beginning of the new school-year, the regular occupant of my rooms returned, so I had to move. I found a basement "Pullman apartment" — two rooms connected by an arch, one with a tiny kitchen-dinette, with a hot plate for a stove, and the other with a couch that opened into a bed, plus a small bathroom with just a toilet, a tiny wash basin and shower that smelled of mildew and Clorox. From across the hall came the scent of cheap perfume!

Lyle Granville, about 30, and almost ugly, worked as a clerk at Woolworths, downtown. He would come home from work, to the rooms opposite mine, and get "dressed up to go out," dousing himself with Evening in Paris. At first, I thought it was his sister I kept meeting in the hallway between us. Then it dawned on me that he went out — to dinner, or the movies, or wherever "she" went at night — dressed as a woman! (It didn't really do much good — he simply looked like an ugly woman!) I avoided him, but he didn't seem to care, or even notice.

One afternoon I went home at a time that I usually spent studying at the Student Union. As I fixed a sandwich in my kitchen, I heard strange noises coming from the rooms across the hall. There was a crash and a thud, and then something that sounded like a lost soul, crying for help.

Lyle's door was locked. I knocked and called "Is anything wrong in there?" At first there was silence, then a faraway voice moaned: "Outside! Please!"

I ran up the stairs and around to Lyle's side of the house, and there, sticking out of the ground-level half-window, was a pair of denim-encased muscular legs, and a picture-perfect butt, with a belt loop snagged on a nail in the middle of the window-frame. His weight and the head of the nail kept him in that position, unable to move backward or forward. I grabbed him under the legs and lifted him to unhook the loop, then guided the legs through the window, which swung closed behind him.

I went back to my rooms, leaving my door open, wondering if I should call the police, or the landlady?

In a few minutes, a very sheepish-looking young man, about my age and kind of cute, came from Lyle's apartment and paused in my doorway. "Hi!" he said."Hello, again."He grinned sheepishly. "I guess you're wondering what I was doing."

"I guess you could say that," I said."Well....actually....uh....I was going to wait....for Lyle."

"He doesn't get home for several hours.""I know. I mean...well...usually...I go to sleep...I just got off work...and he wakes me up...when he gets home...you know what I mean?"

I was fairly sure I had figured it out. "I'm not really sure that I do," I said. "What do you mean?" I was beginning to enjoy this little cat and mouse game. Usually I was the mouse, but this time I was the cat! "Come on in and tell me about it."

His expression changed from a defiant glower to a wide grin. He stepped inside quickly and closed the door behind him.

"Would you like a beer?" I asked, taking one for myself from the small refrigerator, built into the kitchen cupboard.

"Sure! I'd love a beer! Helps relax me, you know?" He remained by the door, his hand still on the knob.

"Right! Oh, I know all right!" I gave him the beer. "So sit down and relax." I pointed toward the very-worn overstuffed chair, then sat on the couch. He took a long swallow of beer, then sat beside me on the couch, spreading his legs until his knee touched mine. At the same time he leaned back and groaned, and I could see the outline of his hard cock under the denim. My own cock was responding! Here was a masculine-seeming young man, very obviously inviting me to have sex with him. And I wanted to, desperately, but at the same time I was terrified of what I wanted to do for him!

He took my hand and placed it on his erection, then he leaned back, his arms across the back of my couch, and waited. I wanted to be angry with him. I wanted to stop doing what I was doing, and tell him to go away, but it felt so good! It gave me a strange sense of power: he wanted something that I could give him. I could give him pleasure and release. So I unbuttoned his jeans and pulled out his cock and jacked it off. He caught the semen in his hand and bounded into the bathroom, slamming the door. I heard the water running for a long time and began to wonder if maybe he'd slashed his wrists or something. Then he came out and walked straight to the door, without looking at me."Please don't tell Lyle about this."

"I won't," I promised. And I didn't. But I moved out at the end of the month. I discovered that Lyle had several other young boyfriends, and I would not allow myself to be caught in another situation like the last. It was humiliating how I so easily gave in and did what they wanted, without getting a thing done to me in return! I had to take myself out of harm's way.

I didn't succeed, of course. I ended up in an apartment building, right next door to Alex and John!

Alex had a beard and almost white, wild Albert Einstein hair; he was a graduate student, working on his doctorate in music. His thesis was on Bach's Art of the Fugue. John was very tall and thin and almost handsome; he was a waiter in Salt Lake's poshest restaurant, on the top of the Hotel Utah.They invited me to Christmas dinner, and we ended up, drunk on wine and eggnog, on the plush white rug in front of their twinkling Christmas tree, listening to Bach, sucking each other's cocks while performing very athletic twistings and turnings to the music!

It was my first "threesome." It was also the first time I had actually put one of those things in my mouth, and I was amazed when I didn't throw up! I discovered I could take it all the way down my throat and still breathe. There was something incredibly intimate and thrilling about it, and, in fact, it excited me more than anything ever had, especially when someone else was doing the same thing to me at the same time! As they were! To Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring!

But as soon as I came, the guilt and remorse returned, and I quickly excused myself got dressed and hurried next door to my own bed, where I cried myself to sleep because I had defiled Christmas!

At the end of spring quarter, I decided to take the summer off. My parents had sold their home in Vernal, and were packing to move to Citrus Heights, California, a farming and citrus-growing community about 20 miles east of Sacramento, where another of my father's brothers and his family had a little farm. I decided to help them move. Afterward, I planned to spend the summer exploring San Francisco and the seacoast, coming back to Utah in time for the fall quarter.

We had worked it out that I would meet Mom and Dad on a Saturday morning, in Salt Lake, where I would take over driving the rental truck, and they would follow in the Buick and trailer. That left me Friday night with nothing to do.I decided to go to a movie, but after wandering around downtown, trying to decide what to see, I passed by a place I had heard about: The Beehive Lounge, across from the Hotel Utah. Supposedly, it was a "semi-Gay" bar, where the college crowd hung out. I was still under age, but I looked older — I had definitely "aged" my first year in college; for one thing, my hair was beginning to recede.

After an hour or so, walking around and around the block, I decided to take a chance and go inside. I had fake ID if I needed it (I'd changed the date on my draft card) but nobody ever asked. It was so dark it was hard to tell how old or young anybody was. I sat at the bar, and when my eyes finally adjusted to the darkness, I noticed, in the mirror behind the bar, a pair of eyes looking directly into mine!

I turned away, then looked back, and he was still staring straight at me, or, my reflection in the mirror.

I turned to look toward him, sitting on a stool down the bar, and he turned toward me, grinned and nodded. I nodded back.

He bought two bottles of beer, then came over to me. "Let's sit over here." He led me to a dark booth. We sat across from each other and his leg tentatively pressed against mine. "Hi! I'm Dave," he said. "I've seen you at school. I work in the Union cafeteria. I guess you haven't noticed me."

I studied his face; it was unlikely that I had noticed him before; I would have remembered. His deep-brown eyes were incredible. They seemed to be sparkling! His grin was contagious. He laughed as though he was truly having a good time, and I laughed with him! I was captivated! He was wooing me! And he was certainly succeeding in getting me excited!

Finally we left the bar and got into his car, which he drove out west of the city and parked.

The springtime air was crisp and brilliantly clear — you could see the twinkling lights of towns many miles away.The radio was playing, and Rosemary Clooney was singing "Come on a my house, a my-e house, I'm a gonna to give you ca-an-dy..."

He moved across the seat, but instead of grabbing my crotch, he took my face in his hands and kissed me! I had never been kissed like that by anyone, let alone another man, and the most incredibly sweet sensations started cascading through my body! I wrapped my arms around him and kissed him passionately, feeling I had waited all my life for this! He responded with equal excitement!

"I'm gonna give you a peach and a plum and a pomegranate too, ah!"

With the doors open, we jockeyed into a sixty-nine position, where we took each other all the way down, and came into each other at the same time, and then lay there tenderly holding each other for what seemed like hours as Doris Day sang "Once I had a secret love...."

***

Chapter 6: My First Lesbian

All the way to Citrus Heights, driving the rental truck, all I could think of was Dave Smith. I was in love! There was no doubt about it. He was gentle and sweet, but not soft or effeminate, and was very good at sex! The best I'd ever had! He was bright, and pleasant, and most important, he had liked me enough to give me his name and phone number! I assumed that meant that he wanted to see me again! I convinced myself that he might even be feeling about me the same way I was about him!

I had never felt anything quite like the sensations and emotions we had seemed to be sharing last night, and I couldn't imagine his not feeling the same things!

As soon as we had unloaded the truck and trailer into the old farmhouse Dad had rented, I caught the train in nearby Roseville, and went back over the mountain and the desert to Salt Lake City, where I called the number Dave had given me. His mother answered and went to get him."Hi, this is Dave. Who's this?"

Just the sound of his voice made my heart jump and skip a beat. "Hi," I said, "It's Dick."

"Who?"

"Dick Fullmer."

"I'm sorry. Do I know you?"

"Last Friday!" I said desperately.

"Oh! Oh, right...yes...right. I remember." he paused uncomfortably. "I thought you were in California."

"Well, I was, but I decided to come back."

"Why? I mean, you were right there, almost to The City! I mean, why come back here?"

It was not the response I had wanted. Clearly he was not overjoyed to have me back! It even sounded like he might be wishing I had not come back at all.

"Well...I, uh, decided...to, uh...try to... you know, find a job," I stammered, trying to invent an excuse. "Remember, right at first, we talked about working this summer? You said you were a supervisor at Lagoon, and maybe could get me a job, remember? Well...I decided I needed the money more than I needed to see the ocean."

"Oh...." he said flatly. "Well...okay. I'm going to be out there hiring all week. Why don't you come on out. I'll try to make sure you get something, okay, but I can't guarantee what. Okay?"

"Sure. Thanks a lot."

"Okay. Well, listen, they're waiting supper for me, so I gotta go. Nice talking to you...Rick. See you."

I sat in the large empty waiting room of the train station and wondered if I ought to just heave myself under the next locomotive to come through! What an idiot! I had thrown away a vacation in San Francisco for nothing! I didn't want a summer job at Lagoon! I wanted a lover!

Something inside me seemed to harden. A door closed. I had made a fool of myself once again. Love, like Santa Claus and God, didn't exist! If you believed in any one of them, you opened yourself to pain. Obviously Dave hadn't felt any of the emotions I had experienced. He had no desire to do it again! He didn’t even remember my name! He’d called me “Rick.”

I finally decided that somehow I had made it through the deaths of Santa Claus and God, and somehow I would make it through this similar crisis. And, maybe, some day, somehow, there was a chance that Dave would change his mind if we worked together every day.

I bought a paper and found a small apartment for rent, close to the railroad station, where I would have to catch the "Bamburger Car" (an electric trolley that ran between Salt Lake and Ogden, passing Lagoon on the way) to work. The apartment was in the basement of a typical sturdy Mormon brick house like those lining the streets of most Utah cities and towns.

Lagoon was an amusement park, halfway between Ogden and Salt Lake City, which boasted an enormous swimming pool. Signs along the highways and all around the park proclaimed "Swim in water fit to drink!" They hired mostly college kids, for very low wages and small percentages of the "take." There were carnival rides and games, a dance pavilion and a fun-house were a woman's recorded voice laughed raucously, constantly, endlessly, over and over and over, from ten in the morning until ten o'clock at night. (There is a recording in my head of that loop of boistrous female laughter! I can hear it now! Alfred Hitchcock used it in one of his movies.)

My game-booth was right next to the fun-house, and right across the midway from the dance pavillion. I had charge of the "Greyhound Races"— eight metal "dogs" which "raced" up a track according to which player could bounce his ball through the hole fastest. Winners received tickets called "points" which they could eventually trade for ashtrays or kewpie dolls, or, for the really big spenders, a giant stuffed Panda or Teddy Bear, at the Prize Center.

Dave was my boss that summer — he was Supervisor of Games. — and he treated me like all of the other employees, as though we had never shared those incredible hours which had been for me some of the most exciting of my life! "I'm not really Gay," he told me. "I was just out for a little fun that night." Actually, he was engaged to a beautiful girl named Donna. He was perfectly friendly, and helpful, and encouraging, but he was like that for all his charges. Everybody liked working for Dave. I wanted to hate him, but I couldn't — he was too nice a guy! So I hated myself instead.

I felt more rejected than I ever had before! Apparently I had been born with some kind of flaw which made me unpalatable to most people. Everyone from my father to Dave Smith considered me less than important. I seriously considered suicide.

I also started hanging around the Beehive Lounge, hoping that lightening might strike twice. It didn't, but one night, after the bars had closed at two o’clock, I was drunk and horny, walking alone on an empty street, headed back to my basement room near the train station, after several frustrating hours at the bar. I noticed a car driving slowly past, turning at the corner ahead, then, in a few minutes, driving past again. There were five passengers in the car, and they all looked like teenage Mormon boys! They drove around the block three or four times, then finally pulled over to the curb and one of them leaned out the window and told me "We're looking for a Queer to suck our cocks."

With hardly a hesitation, I told them they had found what they were looking for, and they took me to the City Cemetery, where I sucked off each one of them, as they took turns lying on one of the graves. I fully expected to be at least beat up, if not killed, but something I did or said — or didn't do or say — changed their minds, and they even took me back to where they had picked me up! I wished, then, that they had killed me because I felt like the most contemptible whore on earth and wanted to die!

A few nights later, after everything in the park had closed except the dance pavilion, I was sitting at the train-stop, waiting for the next trolley into Salt Lake. It was after midnight, and most of the park's workers had gone home. Suddenly a huge dark shadow stepped out of the darkness and sat beside me."Why are you looking so fucking depressed?" It was Chris!

"Chris" Christensen worked "the Whip," an adult version of the Tilt-a-Whirl. It had huge levers and gearshifts that usually required a man to manipulate, but Chris was bigger than any of the men at Lagoon. She was about 6'6" and exercised with barbells. In the pool, she wore men's trunks and a woman’s brassiere.

I was terrified of her and tried to be polite but distant."Oh ... hi, Chris! It's okay. You wouldn't understand."

"Oh? Wouldn't I?" she asked. "You're Gay, aren't you? You know I am, don't you? What makes you think I wouldn't understand?"

"You're Gay?”

"What'd you think I was?"

"I didn't think anything!" I declared defensively.

"Yeah, right. Some people think I'm a hermaphrodite, but I'm not! I'm just a Lesbian! You know about Lesbians, don't you? What am I, your first Dyke?" She laughed and squeezed me so tightly it hurt! "Hell, you're still wet behind the ears! You need to learn a lot more stuff about the world before you kill yourself."

"I wasn't really going to."

"No, but you've been thinking about it. I've been watching you."

"You have?" I was almost flattered. "Why?"

"You reminded me of me, a few years ago, when I first figured it all out. I used to sit right there where you are and look at the trolley car coming, figuring I could jump right in front of it, and they wouldn't be able stop in time to keep from running right over me. What a messy way to go! And you might just get mangled and not die, y'know? Have your arms or your legs cut off, or something else, and then where would you be?"

I couldn't help laughing. "Nowhere I want to be!"

"You bet your ass! C'mon, I'll give you a ride home."

"But you ride a motorcycle!"

"It rides two. C'mon. You'll love it!" She practically dragged me into the parking lot. I was terrified the entire way into town! It was a "Harley Davidson, top of the line," with shiny black fenders and lots of chrome, but still, it had only two wheels, and I knew that a little tilt too far on either side could send it spinning! I sat scrunched on the hard little seat behind her, over the rear wheel, with the wind screaming past my ears, holding on for dear life! It was a thrilling experience, but not one I was eager to have again!

I could hardly move when we finally stopped — not in front of my apartment, but in front of a bar on State Street, one I'd heard about but had never had enough courage to go inside. The Crystal Lounge was where the hard-core homosexuals hung out — Salt Lake City's "dykes and faggots."

"You been here before?" Chris asked.

"No!"

"Well, prepare for baptism by immersion! In we go!" She pulled the door open for me and ushered me into a new world.

The Crystal Lounge was physically similar to most of the other "lounges" downtown: a long narrow room with a high ceiling, booths along one side, a bar with stools on the other; behind the bar was a huge mirror with displays of stacked glasses, punch boards, and miscellaneous bar stuff. Lots of neon signs for different beers reflected in the mirror and glasses. It wasn't strictly a Gay bar — there was no such thing in Utah in the '50s — other regulars included several whores and a group of deaf-mutes, all of us outcasts who put up with each other for a safe haven, but it was the closest Salt Lake City could come to "the real thing."

That night there were three or four men sitting along the bar, and about a dozen others in small groups in the booths. The music was so loud, it was difficult to talk over it. The sound was punctuated from time to time with even louder squeals of laughter from one or another of the booths. It was a sound that I learned to associate with Gay bars everywhere in the country.

We sat in a booth near the front door and ordered beers. As I watched the often-extravagant action in the room, I told Chris, "I feel like this is the point of no return!"

"Oh, no," she laughed. "You passed that point a long time ago. You've been what you are all of your life. This is just...well... like turning on the lights to see where that is. Y'know? Wherever you are, you're still you, right? It's like click! 'Well, sonofabitch, I'm here!' And, let me tell you, Richard, it isn't nearly as bad as they say!"

Everyone seemed to know Chris, who seemed to know all the habitues of the Crystal, and I met most of them, over the summer. Almost all of the regulars were male, but there were several Lesbians who took an active part in Salt Lake City's Gay-life, such as it was. There were occasional parties, where most of the active Gays (20 or 30) were invited — drag parties more often then not, where the women would dress like men with penciled sideburns and moustaches, and the men would dress like whores and travesties of women. According to Chris, there was always a drag-party somewhere for Valentine's Day and Halloween and New Year's Eve.

Chris spent the rest of the summer shepherding me (she got annoyed if I suggested she was "mothering" me) into my new lifestyle. She helped me understand that it was not a bad thing to be Gay, it was just different. "True, it's illegal," she would say, "but that's because the rest of society are stupid idiots! In Utah, they're twice as bad because they're stupid Mormon idiots!" She hated Mormons with a passion I had not yet encountered, but would see again and again over the years as I met other Gays who had left — or been kicked out of — the church. She tried to help me stop hating myself by introducing me to others who didn't hate themselves. She obviously had no problem with what she was, and several of the others seemed quite content with being what they were. I resolved to try very hard to accept being who and what I was — except I hadn't quite decided what that really was, or might be.

I knew I was not a "nellie queen," even though almost everyone seemed to automatically assume that I would be — with proper care and training, if necessary. Acting like that just embarrassed me. I knew there was no doubt that I was sexually attracted to men, but I was repelled by the outrageous effeminacy that so many of the "Gay boys" seemed to consider their true nature. I had never felt like a woman trapped in a man's body, and I didn't want to have sex with someone who did. I had no desire to wear dresses. What I really wanted was another man. Someone like myself. Someone queer like me!

In the novel I was writing, instead of meeting the woman who would seduce and save him, the hero instead met a Lesbian who introduced him to the man of his dreams, and, after a brief boy-loses-boy twist in the plot, the two of them bought a little farm in Arizona where they raised championship horses and lived happily ever after!

It was not the last time I was to change the ending of To Themselves Unknown."

At some point in my early college years, I took Abnormal Psychology. One of the texts was Donald Webster Cory’s The Homosexual in America. It was the most enlightening, insightful, up-to-date books I’d read about the subject and I mailed a copy to my mother, and asked her to read it and then give it to Dad after she had finished reading it. I told her in the letter with it that I was “Gay” and that this book would explain what that meant.

Several months later, when they were in Salt Lake, visiting Grandmother, I got Mom aside and asked what Dad had said after reading the book.“Oh, he didn’t read it. He said it was too much like school.”

“Did you talk about me being Gay?”

“Oh, a little. Not much.”

“Well, what did he say?”

“Well, he said... ‘What fun is that?’”

“That’s all?”

“Yes, dear, that’s all.”

And that is all my (presumed) father ever said about my lifestyle. "What fun is that?"

Many things he did or said let me know that he didn’t approve, either of me, or my way of life or the people I brought home to meet the folks, but nothing was ever said aloud. It was like when I told him I wanted to be an actor: All he said was “Ok. If that’s what you want.”

He wasn’t being broad-minded, or accepting, or fatherly, he just really didn’t give a damn.

In fact, now I think he secretly hoped I would make a mess of my life - as I seemed to be doing - and it amused him to watch me destroy myself. He probably taunted Mother with his assessment of me and my boyfriends. I was his weapon against her! And I didn't know it or even have a clue.

***

CHAPTER 7: SAN FRANCISCO,MOBILE and NEW YORK CITY!

Late in the summer of 1952, I sent a letter to my draft board, telling them that I was an active homosexual, and soon received a new draft card in the mail, featuring my new status: 4F. I promptly altered the card so it looked like I was old enough to drink beer. After Lagoon closed, Chris moved to Los Angeles to live with a "fem" she had met while visiting a friend there. I decided I was sick of Salt Lake City and Mormons and drag queens and dykes, so I took the bus to Roseville, where my parents met me and took me to see their new home, a neat little 2-bedroom frame house on 3 acres of farm land in Citrus Heights. They had built it themselves over the summer.

Mother's headaches had been getting worse. I tried to talk her into getting help, tried to convince her that seeing a psychiatrist did not mean you were "crazy" it simply meant you had a psychological problem which made you tense, which made your head ache! Finally she tentatively agreed and I asked her medical doctor for a referral, made the appointment, drove her to the office, where I asked to speak to the doctor first, before he interviewed her. I told him the history of her headaches, and then added that I was a homosexual, thinking that was something she probably wouldn't tell him, but that he ought to know.

He leaned back in his chair, appraising me, grinning smugly: "Well, that's what's causing the problem," he said, with absolute certainty. "If you'd just straighten up and fly right, your mother's headaches would go away!" He snapped his fingers. "Like that!"

She spent a few minutes in his office, then came out shaking her head. She smiled at me briefly. "No." she said, with definite finality. "No."

I was in something like a state of shock, and furious with the man — his attitude didn't reflect the "newer" ideas in the "modern psychology" field, which I had been studying in college, which held that homosexuality was a natural state, but that society's treatment of homosexuals often made them neurotic or psychotic. I believed that mother's headaches were, indeed, in part, a reaction to my being Gay, but had much