Anal Probe: A Penetrating Peek into the Gay Life

By Art Greenwald

In Anal Probe writer Art Greenwald shares his "best of," a collected works of non-fiction stories and columns viewed through a gay man's lens.

Part autobiographical, the Central Pennsylvania native and South Floridian chronicles the people, places and situations he's observed and experienced first-hand.

Greenwald offers up a mixed bag of high drama, humor, personality profiles and closet adventures from the 1950's to the present, including his own painstaking journey for self-acceptance from small-town USA to his college days at Penn State University to life in gay Fort Lauderdale.

The author reveals in searing detail his dance with death in a stripper bar, an AIDS survivor overcoming the odds, a meth addict's struggle to stay clean, a Hurricane that united, the high price of friendship, a riches to rags account of redemption, an immigration indignity and more.

His quirky, tongue-in-cheek tales lighten the load, from his first prostate exam to aging gay gracefully to lampooning the dating game to gay gym rats, a lesbian guide to rejection and his rose-colored realization of Florida as the first gay state.

Greenwald's provocative and profound opinion pieces tackle taboo topics with candor and without self-censure, poking fun at politics, the lifestyle and its ancient stereotypes while exposing hypocrisy. A controversial take on killer Andrew Cunanan, drag queens, a letter to the late Jerry Falwell, his laughableattempt to give up sex and an Andy Rooney "what makes gay" parody both
entertains and enlightens.

The author also profiles a young gay singer, a comic genius, a Franciscan Priest who uplifts the lives of individuals with HIV/AIDS, unforgettable Charlie Squires, figure skater Rudy Galindo, a champion for abused and neglected children, a security guard, transgender activist, bar owner and volunteer making a difference.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 6, 2009
• ISBN: 9781449009694

Art Greenwald

A writer and journalist for four decades plus, Art Greenwald launched his career covering sports at 16 for the Pittsburgh Press and for his hometown newspaper, the Altoona Mirror. As a Penn State University student he earned national awards for his feature and humor articles. Greenwald profiled such prominent figures as Howard Cosell, Roger Kahn, David Frost, Marcel Marceau, Betty Friedan, Ellen Burstyn, Jerry Rubin, Bruce Springsteen, Mike Reid, Edward Villella and Ralph Nader among others. He also worked as a newsman, sports director and hosted his own AM Top 40 radio show at 18. After graduating, armed with a B.A. in journalism, he wrote on the Baltimore Orioles of the late 1970's and subsequently became editor, columnist and feature writer for a Pennsylvania weekly. His "Works of Art" column garnered national acclaim, a frank and insightful take on significant issues, personalities and newsmakers, local, regional and national. Greenwald has since written eclectically for a number of niche magazines and newspapers while both a news and feature editor for Florida publications. His humor, profiles, op-ed, Q&A's, features and hard-hitting news accounts have appeared in over 40 publications nationwide. The author also holds a Masters of Science Degree with honors in Counseling Psychology from Nova Southeastern University and has served as an addictions, mental health and family and couples counselor in Florida from the 1990's and on into the "2000s." Southern Fried Pride is his second book. Art Greenwald can be reached at [e-mail].

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© 2009 Art Greenwald. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 8/5/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4490-0969-4 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-0968-7 (sc)

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

The Rocky Road To

Self-Acceptance

Out of the Shadows

A Boy in the Band

Horror On Andrews Square

Robbery: The Aftermath

The Cost of Friendship

In the Dark with Frances

Surviving AIDS

Chrystal Meth Persuasion

From Riches to Rags to Redemption

Stompin’ on Love

Scared Straight

Anal Probe

Snaring Your Prince:

A Slow Dance Through Hell

The Great State of Gay

Basketball Dykaries

Aging Gay Grrracefully

The Pecking Order of Grats

Gay Jocks: Last Picked No More

Lesbian Guide to Getting Dumped

Creating Cunanan

Kind of a Drag

Farewell Falwell.

We Hardly Knew Ye

Sexual Healing

Holocaust. Whatever!

Did Ya Ever Wonder?

It’s The Hair, Stupid!

A Yen For Jager

Hypocrisy Be Thy Name

Bush-Wacked Again

and Post-Mortem Musings

Works of Art

Unforgettable

Charlie Squires

Father Bill. A Saint for All Seasons

Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!

The Life of Brian

Gay Dylan

Spoofing Gay Life in Song

Back of the LGBT Bus

Bar Owner Builds Bridges

An Unsung Hero

The New Alfh-A Male

His Nephew’s Keeper

DEDICATION

Dedicated in love and gratitude to the memory of my parents

Carol and Seymour Sy Greenwald

For your gift of life, lessons, and unconditional love

Robert Neilson

For your eternal friendship

Dan Greenwald

For being there when it mattered most

AND

To all the victims of hate crimes

My importance to the world is relatively small. On the other hand, my importance to myself is tremendous. I am all I have to work with, to play with, to suffer and to enjoy. It is not the eyes of others that I am wary of, but of my own. I do not intend to let myself down more than I can possibly help, and I find that the fewer illusions I have about myself or the world around me, the better company I am for myself.

—Noel Coward

Part One

Tales from the Closet

To be nobody but yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day to make you someone else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.

—e.e. cummings

The Rocky Road To

Self-Acceptance 

For some, it happens in their teens. For others, later (if at all). Far too many suffer in silence or lead dual and deceptive lives. There’s no manual, or ironclad rules, for revealing one’s sexuality. Some choose an e-mail blast, some share with a select few, while others, only if asked. Geography, family, friends, lifestyle, and job decide the how, why, and where.

While normal adolescent boys were Dreaming of Jeannie, I lusted over a scantily clad Davy Jones frolicking with TV’s madcap Monkees. At public basketball games, my gaze shifted toward the players and the contour of their biceps as the crowds roared consensually at cheerleaders wiggling in skimpy skirts.

No clue where such stirrings stemmed from, only that I kept them latched and double-bolted inside. Raised in a sports-crazed, socially conservative hotbed, I swiftly discovered the language of homosexuality. Forget the sanitized gay. Queer, sissy, and homo headed the regional rips until fag pierced the lexicon.

If anyone suspected, you risked being ridiculed, brutalized, and/or ostracized. No one short of the clinically crazy dared announce their inner cravings. You survived by fitting in, dodging the stereotype d’ jour, the swivel-hipped, lisping girlie boy mercilessly mocked in phys ed and picked last in schoolyard scrimmages. Creative outlets such as school theatre, the newspaper, chorus, and the band served as homo hideaways, sports the safest of all sanctuaries.

In truth, trusting anyone with the secret invited trouble, as I learned the hard way after confiding in a female friend. She responded to my caffeinated slip of the tongue with the compassion of a social worker.

No sooner had I departed than the National Inquirer wannabe speed-dialed my roommate and dropped the Q-bomb. He packed up and moved before I returned home. Haven’t seen nor spoken to him since 1979. Interestingly, all he left behind was his prized stack of Elton John albums.

Like others, I wrestled with the denial and angst surrounding same-sex impulses, wondering whether this youthful phase would pass—the gym class arousals, the clandestine crushes, the first-love fixations, the guilty rush after roughhousing with boyhood buddies, the overnight under-the-sheets sacrilege with a peer at New York City’s Piccadilly Hotel on a Hebrew school Confirmation trip.

After high school, I attended Penn State University (PSU), where males dated females, sexual ambiguity be damned. So I conformed, content to fantasize over two Adonis dorm mates—one, the All-American boy next door; the other, a gifted NFL kicker-to-be. A super guy, though he’d have booted my butt through the Beaver Stadium uprights and into the next county had he busted me inspecting his granite-carved legs, virtual steel cables glistening in the showers.

With some 40,000 students and a crammed closet, one lone gay bar existed on College Avenue. None but the bold entered through the front. Oddly, heterosexuals occupied the back of the club as both gay and straight shared the same male restroom, real fly-on-the-wall stuff. Those inclined to act out cruised in notorious campus locales, The Wall, or passed off randy notes in bathroom stalls.

Though seventies tolerance flowed forth from the sixties sexual revolution and anti-gay attitudes somewhat softened, support of open gayness outside the bigger city enclaves did not exist. PSU hosted an organized gay group, a membership so harassed, it considered moving its weekly meetings off-campus.

And while students rallied to effect political and social change, the collective Vietnam backlash and the push for equal rights hardly stretched to sexual freedom. By adopting an active pro-gay position, you risked disclosure or, at the least, suspicion, so you stayed underground and focused on studies, football Saturdays, and the extracurricular.

Not a problem. I savored those college years, cultivated friendships, fed an intellectual curiosity, and learned volumes about human nature. And yet, what I gleaned most about lion-like courage came not from student activism, a venerated and upright football tradition, or a humanities course, but from a fellow student who lived openly gay in a nearby dormitory.

You couldn’t take your eyes off him; his face is still etched in my mind. High cheekbones set under sparkling-green eyes, flowing bleach-blond hair, and a slender waistline anchored a taut gymnast’s body. Androgynous, silky-skinned, and GQ gorgeous, Robby fleshed out the closeted and bi-curious with the mastery of Mr. Miyagi snagging flies in The Karate Kid. He’d survey the field in the HUB student lounge, and if you returned eye contact, he’d pounce seamlessly, a toned-down display of a blitzing Nittany Lion linebacker. Before you could say Peachy Paterno, you’d wind up horizontal in his dorm room.

Robby had game, what’s commonly known as fine-tuned gaydar. I suspected he’d pleasured the entire defensive line after an atypically languid performance by the Nits one Saturday afternoon. Not likely, though the moniker Happy Valley seemed all the more palpable with a ravenous Robby roaming the quad.

To his credit, a roll with Robby was anything but a sloppy and hasty encounter. When he sensed you were relaxed and ready, he’d arrange his shoebox-sized room with pink, fluorescent lights, burn incense, and play bedroom music—Barry White and erotic jazz—as he masterfully massaged you with exotic almond oil. Sensuous and slow, he proceeded precisely on your cue, tender and deliberate, building trust. No rookie, this Robby. He aimed to please and he did.

And still, I entertained no delusions. To him, I was easy road kill, one more catch-of-the-day, coldly tossed aside for fresher fish, to belabor the metaphor. There were others to conquer. So many men, so few semesters—an agenda I would duplicate, yet later deplore. With age and wisdom, however, I now see that he symbolized a kind of nobility about the human spirit that stretched far beyond his seductive savoir faire.

Robby modeled strength and individualism in a sea of straight conformity; he stared convention in the face without blinking. Gay and proud before it became a fashionable bumper sticker, he never cared to conceal it, leaving himself a moving target. Robby withstood the ridicule, the unkind graffiti scrawled on his door, the splattered eggs, the hit-and-run cruelty, the affronts aimed at an outsider for simply being himself.

And through it all, he stayed stout, head held high, no swish but a swagger, no macho pretenses, and the rest could ef off. No public flaunt, but he’d never fake it to fit in, either. Looking back, I cringe at my cowardice, scurrying the halls like a burglar to avoid being spotted entering and leaving his room. Thirty years later, even though he had introduced me to crabs and a side order of ball-busting —huge, crawly caricatures penciled on the Adams House bathroom walls—I think about Robby and his backbone and the courage it took to hold up under the strain.

Irony of ironies, after graduating in 1976 crab-free, I settled in crab town—Baltimore, Maryland and took work at the National Foundation March of Dimes with nary a clue that a gay subculture existed. You think you’re all alone with this awful affliction for which there is no cure. One Saturday night, primed for adventure, I bussed downtown from the suburbs and approached a street cleaner in front of the Lord Baltimore Hotel.

Excuse me, sir. I’m new here. Any good hot spots?

He obliged with a warning, steering me clear of the cobblestone road leading to Eager Street, where all the freaks and weirdos hang out. After asking directions so I could, of course, avoid that area, I located the road to ruin and wandered upon a disco called the Hippopotamus. Skittish, I loitered in a nearby phone booth, faking an hour-long telephone chat before finally taking that leap into the unknown.

Upon paying the cover, I envisioned a dingy dive full of foul-smelling codgers in long coats with rotting teeth in ambush mode. No way. I met gads of people, all shapes, sizes, and nationalities, young, old, butch, preppy, nerdy, athletic, girlie, even two legendary sports figures—an appealing stew, a culture shock. Reassured, I no longer felt so alone and out of place.

A novice to the gay club scene and still unsure of my sexuality, I kept a foothold in both worlds, mingling with the Eager Street misfits on weekends. The boss loaned me his car to score chicks, and I frequented straight bars, dated females, dutifully slept with a few, and attended MLB and NFL games with co-workers. I worked at deepening my high-pitched voice and feigned a taste for beer and boxing. (I may have blown my cover after ordering a whiskey sour in a redneck bar, based upon the hostile stares sent my way.) Baseball was a cinch to embrace, especially those high-flying seventies Orioles, a treat of a franchise, its successes I would later document on the sports pages. I fell head over heels with a stuck-on-himself Christopher Atkins double, moved him into my Charles Village basement apartment, and sent him packing the next week for flipping out on PCP.

During a return visit to Altoona, Pennsylvania, the town of my youth and home to the famous Horseshoe Curve, a litany of local sports legends, the butt of George Burns’s yarns and Hedda Hopper’s grave, Mom nearly suffered a stroke after spotting a hardcore porn magazine in my suitcase, which I dismissed, blaming it on my queer roommate who hid it there.

A nice try, but a mother knows. In a sit-down with Dad she said, I think Art’s gay, no girlfriend, and a roommate still? (Past twenty and a same-sex roommate in the seventies was code for queer.) His reaction: Your point is? Perhaps a father knows best. (Pun intended.)

With the evidence mounting, I wasn’t ready to sing, even stooped so low as to invent phantom girlfriends with names ending in berg and stein I culled from the phone directory. The fibs multiplied. A year later, after moving to Fort Lauderdale, Mom phoned, offering up a lifeline out of the blue: We know and it’s fine, she said. Mom was reaching out, validating me and my moronic reply? What the hell are you talking about? Sorry, gotta run.… Love ya. Click.

On the next visit, Mom and I sat watching the show Family, when an episode with a young gay man coming out to friends and family ensued, revolutionary TV for the times. Peripheral vision noticed her checking me for evidentiary body language, tell-tale drool droppings over a Leif Garrett sighting. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide now. Awful at poker-face, I tried bailing for a bathroom break as Mom broke my momentum.

Sit down. Let’s talk, she said calmly, lowering the volume, gripping my clammy hand, and placing her other hand on my shoulder as I braced for the unavoidable. I fidgeted with my gum as if a guilty defendant awaiting a verdict, my eyes averting hers, primed for the lecture.

Listen up. You are our son and we love you. Makes no difference to us who you love.

Blew me away. Not what I expected. I had tossed her nothing but curve balls throughout the years and in crunch time, Mom hit a grand slam with those two epic sentences. Notice she didn’t reduce this thing to sex? The uninitiated still link homosexuality with orgasm, nothing more.

Might he be Jewish? she pleaded, loosening the tension, hermetically sealed with a maternal hug. If Mom was deflated by the dying dream of my delivering her grandkids, she didn’t let it show.

I never got it till much later, this priceless gift of unconditional love, never to be taken for granted, for it’s not the norm out there.

Fact is, I came out without fanfare in Fort Lauderdale, early eighties. Sadly, the deadly virus soon hit hard and exacted a toll. A demonization created by a rightward-bound country, fueled by the belief that AIDS was gift-wrapped gay, sent many scampering like ants into hiding. The long and hard-fought gay rights struggle stalled. Ronald Reagan,