From Chapter One of Federal Fag

By Fred Hunter

I don't usually rent porno movies. The only reason I fell from grace that particular evening was that Peter had gone to his high school reunion without me. Most people would be relieved at not being required to attend such a function, but with me it was different: Peter didn't want me to go because he didn't want to introduce his old classmates to his husband. He did go so far as to allow me to accompany him to Los Angeles, with the promise that we'd spend the weekend after vacationing in the sun and sand.

But his refusal to take me to the actual event still rankled and caused what was, for us, a rare argument. I was in the untenable position, since I felt snubbed by not being taken to an event that I didn't really want to attend -- but there was a principle at work here. I thought it was ludicrous for Peter to leave me behind given that all of his high-school buddies had known at the time that he was gay. Peter was out of the closet before he'd even realized he was supposed to be in one. He explained that although most everyone had been cool about his sexuality when he was in high school, liberal children have a habit of growing up into adults who are middle-class in the worst way, and he had no intention of subjecting me (or himself) to the "hoots and sniggers" of people who weren't worth my time. Besides, he added, I'd just be bored. Of course, the only possible response for me to make to that was "Then why the hell do you want to go?" He'd replied with a shrug, "They were my friends." All this boiled down to the fact that it was simply easier on him to go to the reunion without me.

So there I was on Saturday evening, alone in our room at the Hotel Windemere by the Sea in Santa Monica, with Peter off to see his classmates and my mother two thousand miles away in our town house in Chicago.

I'd selected a video with the auspicious title Big Tools of the Trade. I popped it into the VCR that came with the room in our fairly classy digs. The usual disclaimer about all actors being eighteen or older popped on the screen and I smiled at the use of the term "actor." While the opening credits ran, I slipped out of my clothes and dropped onto the bed, nestling in the rose-colored sheets. Satin can be very comforting when you're feeling sorry for yourself.

Suffice it to say that, to put it delicately as possible, the first "encounter" took care of my needs, and I went to wash up, neglecting to stop the VCR. When I came back into the room, one of hotel's semi-plush white towels wrapped around my waist, I was about to stop and rewind the tape when I glanced at the TV. Three young men were going through a series of acrobatics in an apparent attempt to prove they could somehow find physical satisfaction while defying gravity. Something about the scene seemed really strange to me, besides what they were doing. There was something vaguely familiar about one of the men. I sat on the edge of the bed and peered closely at the set. The camera switched from a long shot of the three of them to a close-up of the man in the middle as he performed the sexual equivalent of burning the candle at both ends. And then it struck me: it was Patrick Gleason. I'd gone to college with him.

I told myself I was shocked, and that I wasn't turned on -- despite the physical evidence to the contrary. I'd always believed that people who fucked for the camera only existed on celluloid, and it was unnerving to have it proven otherwise. It was the same feeling I had when I was in high school and ran into Mr. Fredrickson, my freshman English teacher, in a grocery store. I had pretty vocally expressed surprise at seeing him there, to the point that he gave me a rather withering look and exclaimed, "Teachers eat, too, you know."

In fact, I was so stunned to find Patrick Gleason indecorously sandwiched between two nubile youths, I though that maybe my eyes were deceiving me -- a possibility, since, at those angles, it was kind of hard to be sure. I fast-forwarded to the end of the tape, where sometimes they have a "cast list" with pictures. Slowly, to the beat of some innocuous pseudo-jazz, a list of players went by, each displayed in turn in full-frontal-nude shots with the "names" across the bottom of the screen. Of course, their names were purely fictitious, to protect the guilty: there was "Rock Hardin," "Ted Manly," and a couple of other young surfer types with equally adolescent pseudonyms. Then the man I was looking for flashed onto the screen: "Butch Handy." He had long blond hair, light blue eyes, and a thin layer of chest hair that started at his nipples and ran down to a point at his navel like a fur triangle. He had picked a particularly ironic moniker: he was anything but butch. In fact, he was pretty in an angular sort of way. If there had been any doubt in my mind that this was my old college buddy Patrick Gleason, it was dispelled by the sight of the tiny shamrock tattooed on his right pelvic bone. I remembered it.

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