My First Gay Crush

Advocate.com recently ran a fun and intriguing series called "Who Was Your First Gay Crush?", which prompted readers to submit the names of people who did it for them when they were much younger.

As you might expect, responses were typically celebrities in one field or another, and depended on the gender and age of those writing them.  Some lesbian women readers, for example, identified actresses Bonnie Franklin, Elizabeth Montgomery, and Christie McNichol, while some gay male readers selected actors such as James Dean, Johnny Weissmuller, and Richard Gere; Olympians Mitch Gaylord and Greg Louganis; and singers Sean Cassidy, Bobby Sherman, and Andy Gibb.

I admit, reading through the pages of comments from readers took me way back to a time when I didn't understand why I was so turned on to some well-known actors and singers myself.  But, given what I was going through at the time--at home, at school, and within myself--seeing them was exciting and magical, and always provided welcome comfort.

Some names from those mentioned that surely stick out for me are Burt Reynolds, Sam Elliott, Lee Majors, Robert Conrad, Clint Walker, Sean Connery, and Ricky Nelson.  (And, on a purely physical level, if you think about what's common among all of these handsome, masculine men, you'll probably realize why I found them so alluring.  Ten points to anyone who guesses correctly.)

But long before any of these men caught my fancy--and, keeping in mind, a first crush occurs when one is very young--the man I was probably most turned on to wasn't a well-known celebrity at all.  He was a resident from the same neighborhood where my parents, sister, and I lived in northern British Columbia at the time.  His name was Spike J..  He was married to Sylvia, and, together, they had three blonde, teenaged daughters, their first names all beginning with the letter "L."

My experience with Spike, which took place entirely in the fantasy world of my mind, figures briefly in the novel I'm working on now, which I've enhanced somewhat to fictionalize and dramatize.  But, no doubt, I've revealed something of myself and my homosexuality in the few paragraphs, which I share with you below:

When I was a boy, this fellow used to live across the back alley from us.  All these years later, I still remember his name.  Butch.  How can you not remember a name like that?  And he was a Butch, believe me.  

Sometimes, during the few hot days we’d get every summer up in northern BC, my father invited Butch over for a beer in the backyard.  There he sat in a lawn chair, Butch, that is, shirtless, his tangle of thick, curly blond chest hair catching the rays of the late afternoon sun.  To my young eyes, he defined masculinity.  He knew it; I'm sure my father knew it.  How could he not, his own bare chest pasty and nearly hairless?   

I had no idea then why watching Butch made me feel the way I did, my eyes riveted to his unmistakable manliness.  I can’t imagine Butch didn’t think something was wrong with Jim’s kid.  Probably thought I was a pervert, even at ten years old.  

As I stared at him helplessly, I wished with all my heart Butch was my father.  How I fantasized about being picked up in his muscular, hairy forearms, held securely against the warm pelt on his chest.      

Funny story.

My family left this northern town in October 1974 and moved to Kelowna some eight hundred miles south.  I had just turned fifteen.

Six years later, I worked in the kiosk of a self-serve gas station located at Harvey Avenue and Gordon Drive, one of the major intersections in town.  My hours were 5:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m., Sunday to Thursday.  I did that for a year and a half.

One evening, a woman walked into the customer area of the kiosk and handed me a credit card to pay for the gas she'd put in her car.  As I processed the payment, I looked at the name on the card and saw the name Spike J.. Obviously, that name stood out, and I wondered if it was even possible the card belonged to the very same Spike J. I'd fantasized about when I was just a kid, and if, in fact, his wife, Sylvia, was standing in front of me.

So, shaking, I finally got up the nerve to ask her if she used to live in the same northern town. She looked at me funny and answered yes.  Then I asked if she was married to Spike.  She hesitated and again answered yes.  I told her who I was.  She didn't remember me, but, when she returned to her car and pulled out, passing by the kiosk, I saw a middle-aged man sitting in the passenger seat. I didn't recognize him but he looked at me, and I looked at him.  He waved.

Despite what I wrote in the passage from my novel, I'm sure Spike J. had no idea how much of a crush I'd had on him all those years earlier, when I couldn't help but stare at him, representing as he did what I hoped I'd look like when I became a man, and symbolizing, if ideally, the kind and gentle father I never had.