That September I got contact lenses. I’d been wearing glasses since I was in fourth grade and while I could see well enough, I wanted to try this thing of NOT having glasses. My eye doctor said that most people got contact lenses in their teens or early twenties and that I was now kind of old (in my cough early 30s) to make the change. But I wanted to try it, so I got a prescription and found I could wear contacts perfectly well. (I was so delighted, in fact, the very first thing I did when I left the eye doctor’s was duck into a drugstore and buy a pair of cheap sunglasses, my first since I was a kid.)
The doctor also explained that I must, MUST take out my contacts before going to sleep, to allow my eyes to rest and breathe. Well, that would work most of the time but by now, I knew well enough that on some nights I might very well end up not at home but in some guy’s bed. I’m still impressed that I asked my eye doctor quite bluntly, What do I do if I have a one-night stand?
Like my mom during Mary Tyler Moore, he didn’t bat an eye but told me simply, when I go out, take my contact lens case filled fresh fluid. Take out my contacts when I go to bed. The next morning, put my contacts back in and go home.
Excellent.
Wearing contacts was great and I loved the sudden freedom of not having glasses. What I didn’t expect, however, was how losing my glasses might work a little magic. Maybe it was my new haircut, now-visible blue eyes, or me being tall and slim. Whatever it was, suddenly I was getting attention in bars.
Men were looking at me.
One Saturday evening I went out to Wild Oats, a gay bar on DC’s Capitol Hill. I had a beer and was quietly standing off to one side when a young bear cub with deep eyes and a handkerchief in his back pocket walked up to me and said hi, being really, really friendly. He was also unusually handsome to the point of being pretty, like Czar Nicholas II, like very few men I’d ever seen let alone talked to (Hunter was a more masculine handsome). Wait, what did a young guy so good looking that he could easily have anyone, want with me?
He said his name was Ernest and after we talked a while, Ernest invited me back to his place. It turned out he was a student and had a little dorm room with a dinky little single bed. Ernest really liked massage, so we got naked and traded back rubs. I wasn’t very good at it, but Ernest was. He also discovered my lower back was a little ticklish and he teased me with it, just to see me twitch.
Ernest also had body jewelry. He had a ring pierced in either nipple but even more interesting to me, a much larger, heavier ring pierced through his bent (another one!) penis. He called it a “Prince Albert” which I’d heard of but never saw one up close―eventually up very close, clinking repeatedly against my teeth as I sucked on his dick, me trying somehow to work my tongue along his cock around this massive (so it felt) lump of metal. (Later I wondered how I would explain any chips to my dentist.)
I forget the details of whatever else sex we had that night but I’m pretty sure it was very cuddly and cummy all over us. Thinking of how amazingly handsome he was, I boldly asked Ernest why he picked me up in Wild Oats. He rolled his eyes and said because, duh, he thought I was hot. Hmmm.
Before we settled in for the night, I put a few clothes back on and went down the hall to Ernest’s dorm bathroom to take my contacts out, their first time out for the night elsewhere, then squinted my way back to Ernest. We ended up cuddling somehow on his tiny bed and even going to sleep squeezed pretty tight together, practically on top of each other, which I liked. A lot.
Ernest and I saw each other frequently for the next several months and I began to really like and respect him a lot. He was quick-witted, good with mathematics, and creative in bed. We also shared a love of foreign foods and met often after work at various restaurants in DC before going back to his dorm to share back rubs and orgasms. I started to feel like I wanted Ernest to be around all the time, like, I dunno, maybe I fell a little in love with him.
And I was finally, definitely, feeling much less of my old it’s not who I am, coming to regard myself as gay instead of just “knowing it” somewhere deep inside―having doubts about my doubts. It also might have been Ernest’s example of being out but not thinking about it; he just was. I’m sure his naturalness, even joy, rubbed off on me.
In fact, during some discussion about gayness, Ernest said, knowing what he knows now and if he’d been presented with the option (who knows; maybe we are!), he would have chosen to be born gay. He explained he loved the association of men, masculinity, sharing strength and stiff cocks, or something like that. Of course, I’d heard all the made-up religious bullshit about how being gay was merely a choice (while excusing themselves from explaining whom they thought would choose it) and never believed any of that for a second. But when Ernest said that out loud, I thought a lot about his words. (I don’t remember exactly how I thought about it, but in the long run, yeah, I’m quite content I’m gay. And born gay I was: that’s why they call it an orientation.)
Ernest also told me about the concept of “fuck buddy”: someone you know and have sex with, no strings attached. Perhaps I should have seen that as a caution. I liked him enough to want to get to know him better and started to think about his relationship potential, but I think he saw me mainly as a fuck buddy―one of many, in fact, as I found out after a while that Ernest had other fuck buds. He generally kept other parts of his life private though I had glimpses. I might have felt a little jealous but if I did, it was manageable.
Another thing about gay culture I learned from Ernest was, there are “radical fairies,” an entire subculture of men who live in an idealized world of male but not macho sexuality, nature, and pastel fabrics. They even had a magazine, RFD, the acronym of which the editors amusingly re-defined for each issue (my favorite was “Rimming For Dingleberries”). Ernest wasn’t an especially hard-core faerie but he had a spiritual side and I think he appreciated that aspect.
Interestingly, the great Harry Hay, renowned founder of the early gay group Mattachine Society (and lover of actor Will “Grandpa Walton” Geer!), was a faerie and Ernest had met him once at some faerie resort in the South. (Years later I learned more about Harry Hay’s accomplishments in fostering gay pride—though it wasn’t called that back then—and I was sooo envious: imagine meeting the Harry Hay! I met Frank Kameny once, also pretty great.)
But Ernest wasn’t looking for a relationship, at least not then, or at least not with me. He moved away to finish his schooling and eventually landed a job in some fly-over state. He visited once, years later, after I got my own place, during a business trip to DC. As soon as he walked in, Ernest said he was exhausted and asked if he could just take a nap. Without waiting for my answer, he peeled off his clothes and burrowed his pretty, naked body deep into my bed, asleep in moments (I tiptoed out). He was just as adorable and I was smitten all over again.
We stayed in touch for a while (once being the time I faked being sick at work and drove up to spend a night (incomprehensible to dullard PDX residents, I learned a lot later) with him at his hotel in Baltimore), but eventually we lost contact.
After Ernest’s example, I tried nipple rings and eventually a Prince Albert (then walking around for three days with my bloody dick wrapped in toilet paper, a little mummy in my pants). My piercings, installed by a man in leather whose name sounded like “Logger” and who sterilized everything in his own autoclave, were fun at first and actually enhanced my sensitivity, especially if a pen in my shirt pocket bumped my nipple during staff meeting at work. But eventually I got bored by the constant vigilance required to not accidentally snag a ring and tear it out of my flesh. I lived in special terror of the Prince Albert, always hoisting it carefully out of my pants to pee.
I removed all the piercings after a year or so, and the nipple ring scars faded quickly. However, whatever mark the Prince Albert left inside my urethra ruined my formerly smooth pee stream, and for a couple of years I had to lean into urinals to go reliably.
The price one pays.