My Trick List
A Personal Names Memorial
“Callipygous redhead in K.C.” OMG, how that takes me back.
Every year or so something comes along that puts me in a musing mood about things gay. This year it’s rereading the Memoirs of Tennessee Williams, coupled with stumbling on my list, stuffed in an envelope from 30 years ago.
The Memoirs, sometimes rambling, occasionally maudlin, since Williams was deep into drugs and drink by the time he wrote them, are often lyrical as only Tennessee could be.
Do the young now even know who Tennessee Williams was? Back when I was young and gay, his life and his brazen book amazed this other Southern boy who grew up reading between the lines of encyclopedia entries on Walt Whitman and Michelangelo. Back then, he was a gothic-y, decadent icon I longed to be – until the drugs and drink finally got him, that is.
One line Williams wrote, in particular, set off the gay nostalgia bomb for me this time: “But then life is full of transient loves when you are young …” It sent me scurrying back through my memory and my mementos searching for my own transient loves of yore.
That’s how I came to find my list – long-forgotten, written in pencil on two sheets of tablet paper, smudged and yellowing with age for dramatic effect. Written when, 1985, 1990? Hard to be sure now. (Note to self: Date things like this for future reference in case you make it to memoir age. Oh, s***, I’ve already made it there.)
Though I didn’t put a title on it then, I will now: “My Trick List.”
Come on, admit it. You have one too, even if it’s only in your head. (Note to you: Write it down while you can still remember – in case you too make it to memoir age.)
There they are, a hundred and twenty three names of the men I’ve had sex with. I note that the four women who might also be on the list, are not. Probably technically accurate depending on how you define “sexual relations,” to quote a former president. But no matter how you define it, the “B” really hadn’t joined the LGBT alphabet string back then – certainly not the way I spelled it.
One hundred twenty three. Not very many, maybe, compared to sexual super gays, like Samuel Steward, perhaps better known by the pen name, Phil Andros. He meticulously noted on index cards details of thousands of his own tricks over a lifetime – including names like Rudolph Valentino and Rock Hudson (do the young now have any idea who they were?) – much to the scholarly, and maybe not so scholarly, delight of Alfred Kinsey. In defense of my own gay prowess, I shall note that mine all happened, not over a lifetime, but during a few short years of the 1970s, mostly in St. Louis or Chicago or New York, before I met the man who is now my husband. His is the last name on my list. (Really, Darling, I swear.) For better or worse, those were different, pre-AIDS awareness times, and different standards seemed to apply.
The names of 123 men. OK, tricks. But not all were one-night stands. Some were repeats over days or weeks. Some were periodic f***-buddies over years. Three or four were even what you’d have to call (what we called then) lovers. The terminology sounds archaic now, in the age of husbands.
123 names. Though not all names, exactly. More like identifiers. Because sometimes I forgot the names, or never knew them. Drugs, sex and discotheques don’t make for great name recall.
So No. 6 is “American in Paris” and No. 73 is “Largest Personality (in Chicago).” Probably pretty clear why name took second place with him.
How I wish I could remember more about No. 1, “Flyboy in Cotton Field.” There was an air force base in the town where I grew up, and I do remember how good he looked, standing at attention in uniform, and out of it.
Probably best that I don’t remember more about No. 47, “Awful,” or No. 82, “The One I Walked Out On.” I’m sure they would agree that it’s best in the long run to admit your mistakes early and take rectifying action right away.
I seem to have had my international period: “Brazilian in New Haven”; “Hot Italian”; “Key West Portuguese.” And my religious phase: “X-Mormon”; “Franciscan Brother”; “MCC Minister.”
“San Francisco, Into Bondage,” “Abuse from N.C.” and “FFA, Fist Full of …” make me a little queasy now, and “Hard As Two Rocks, St. Louis” makes me a little faint. Some are only the vaguest memories these days, like “Cincinnati Airline Pilot.” He must not have been a flight to remember.
But “First True Love” I remember vividly, even his name, though I won’t write it here. I remember his corn-silk hair, his lean chest, his blue eyes – cutting, steel-blue eyes as it turned out – and the memory brings a wistful tear to my own eye even now.
Since this is the information age, I decided to see what I could find out about some of those who are actual names on my list, rather than just identifiers. I had some luck – but no last names here to protect the privacy of the not so innocent.
I didn’t find “First True Love” but I did find “Rush, in New York” – such a sweet, hot guy – though he was the one who lit up my first cigarette for me, so I really shouldn’t be so indulgent towards him. He went back to his Mississippi home to die in 1983. Not much doubt from what. And I found “Gary Who Loved Sex.” He moved to San Francisco at exactly the wrong time for a man so into having other men so into him.
“John the Professor” is also dead. I had no idea he was that much older, or that he had a wife. But “Med Student Karl” is still with us and has been practicing medicine for 40 years in a Midwestern state.
I found a few more, but not many really. It was so long ago and there’s so much that’s not on the web from then. Many probably didn’t make it to the internet age.
When I made my list it seemed as though life was winding down – certainly youth was – and that I might not have much time left. I suspect it always feels like that to people of 30, 35, 40. I figured I’d better write things down fast before my memory faded along with memories of me. Now, 30 plus years later, life is still winding down, but I can still pretty much remember. As it’s turned out, I’m one of those lucky enough to get old, but certainly there isn’t much time left now.
For many of my 123, there’s none at all, but it’s something that I remember them, even if it’s only as “Hair Weave on Westminster” or “Banker and Urologist” (oops, two for one that time – make that 124). Maybe some of the ones who are still around, remember me too. Maybe they’ve even written me down. That would be “Insecure, buns not of steel, drank too much, but not absolutely awful” (except probably for one or two), or however they identified me on their list. At least that would be something.
(Note: First published, in slightly different form, in This Is My Story - The Gay & Lesbian Review, online, December 2019.)