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When Joe Peterson heard about our plight a couple of days later he came over with Ma Peterson to express their sorrow and sympathies. But Peterson admitted that he, too, was on the verge of closing down his own farm. It was the first I’d heard of it. On his way out that evening he gave me a look that I will never forget. It was one of genuine love, of pity, of remorse, of affection for me. But he couldn’t say anything and neither could I. Deep down I knew I was going to miss him. He was a warm, tender man, and in a very special way I knew that he cared for me. But all that was soon to be over.

Fortunately, Dad had a few good friends in Ottawa. As luck, fate, and providence would have it—I don’t know which was more applicable—one of them came through with help. I don’t recall the guy’s name but Dad told us that he worked for the Stateville Penitentiary near the town of Joliet, about halfway between Ottawa and Chicago. He had managed to find Dad a job as a guard with the prison service. Dad was overjoyed, but when he came home and told Momma about it she simply accepted it without showing too much enthusiasm.

The worst part about the whole business was having to say goodbye to our beloved animals and livestock. It was sad enough finding good homes for the cats and dogs but I was heartbroken the day I watched my beloved pony Babe being shipped off in a horse trailer to her new owner. She and I had grown up together and had spent many happy years trudging down the dirt road to school, come rain, hail, sunshine, or snow. I felt my heart being torn to pieces as I heard her hoofs echoing on the metal floor of the trailer as she clip-clopped into it, and then there was that dreadful thud as the door was closed. We were sad to see the chickens and the hogs go, too. Each one of them had a name and a distinctly individual personality. Especially upsetting was seeing the cows and the horses go. Momma sobbed as they were taken away. Don and I, the ones who knew them best, were horribly cut up about it. I hugged my favorite cow before she was coaxed up the ramp onto the trailer that took her and five of the others to the farm of our friends the Jones’s, ten or twelve miles away.

But that was that. Our days on that glorious piece of Midwestern farmland were over. And the day Dad, Mom, Don, Phyllis, and I drove off for the last time I knew I had left a piece of me behind.

H
ollywood was probably about the most different place from my Illinois hometown that I could have ever chosen to move to. And I ended up spending my days right in the very heart of it. Because car culture was so dynamic and essential to the city, a gas station was the best place I could possibly be to arrange tricks for people from all tiers of society. And my gas station became the focal point for everyone looking for a trick. It became the crossroads of the city’s sexual underbelly.

The station was ideally located, convenient to most of the major movie production centers in town: Warner Bros., Universal Studios, Republic Pictures, and Walt Disney Studios in Burbank. It was just a couple of miles away from Paramount Pictures, RKO Radio Pictures, Samuel Goldwyn Studio, Columbia Pictures, General Service Studios, and the Charlie Chaplin Studios in Hollywood. Slightly farther away, between Santa Monica Boulevard and West Pico Boulevard, lay the sprawling studio complex of Twentieth Century Fox. A few miles beyond that in an area known as Culver City was the vast Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer complex, Hal Roach Studios, and another huge RKO studio lot that was once home to Selznick International Pictures, makers of
Gone with the Wind.
With the war over and the American economy booming, film production was at an all-time high. The town was buzzing. And, like a glowing oasis offering something very special in this frenzied firmament was the little gas station where I worked on Hollywood Boulevard.

I still don’t quite understand how it all happened so rapidly, but it did. Whenever anyone was on the prowl for sex, my gas station was the place to head.

“Need a trick for tonight?” someone would say. “Well, go see Scotty Bowers at Richfield Gas on Hollywood Boulevard. He’ll set you up.”

These folks included creative types, executives, and technicians. The majority of the men who sought male partners were in the makeup, wardrobe, or hairdressing departments, but there were also production designers, art directors, set decorators, dialogue directors, casting people, and writers. Some were gay, some straight, and some bisexual. Most of the technicians who worked with heavy equipment in the lighting, camera, grips, sound, construction, and transportation departments were straight and in search of the perfect young lady. Well, I could help them out, too. I began to cater to all tastes, all sorts, all interests.

The queens were the most demanding. A straight guy would merely ask for a blonde or a brunette or a girl with a cute figure or big tits or one who was good at some specific sexual technique like giving a fantastic blow job, but gay guys were a lot choosier. They not only wanted someone tall or blonde or very good-looking, he also had to be suntanned or hairy or smooth or muscular. He had to have a big cock, be circumcised or uncircumcised, have big feet, long toes, hairy toes, blue eyes, long hair, or whatever. The list could go on and on. And you know what? I was able to provide them with precisely what they wanted. Soon enough such a varied and eclectic group of people were flocking to the gas station to get their name into my little black book of contacts, or “tricks,” that I was able to get anyone the person of their dreams. My little book listed only names and numbers. I wanted things to remain discreet. Everything that people liked, including the type of person they wanted to do it with, was committed to memory. I kept all those details in my mind, safely hidden from view.

Most of the folks who made themselves available for tricking were very average, ordinary people. The majority of them were unmarried. Few, if any, of them were starstruck. If I arranged a trick for a guy or a girl with a major movie star or celebrity they invariably couldn’t care less. They were in it only for a quick trick and a bit of cash. Money was tight in those days. Young people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five would do anything to earn some extra cash.

Eventually, lesbians also began dropping in. I could get them exactly what they wanted, too. Word quickly spread within the lesbian community and I managed to make them all happy. As an aside, I must admit that I was disturbed about the way square, bigoted, and homophobic members of society nastily referred to a lesbian as a dyke. Many people simply tossed the derogatory word around with the express purpose of humiliating, criticizing, and demeaning certain women. At first I disliked the term but I eventually had to get used to it, especially when I heard it being used so often in conversation among members of the gay and lesbian community itself. “Dyke” seemed to be as commonly used as “queen.”

When it came to my own sexual liaisons, I was always more than happy to pocket the tip that anyone offered me for a night of sex. But I never charged for my matchmaking services when hooking up other people. I would set up the trick and then the two of them went off together and money changed hands between them. It was only fair. My operation—if you want to call it that—was not a prostitution ring. I was simply providing a service to those who wanted it and, as recorded history has shown, throughout the ages there has always been a need for good, old-fashioned, high-quality sex. As I’ve said before, I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. I never thought so and I still don’t.

Everyone I chose to introduce to my gas station customers was someone I knew from my circle of contacts. They were people I trusted, and it was a circle that widened all the time. I never took in total unknowns from the street. I was wary of anybody who simply walked in and offered himself or herself as someone “for hire.” Those in my black book were all young, honest people who, in the vast majority of cases, really needed the money that a little fun in the sack could provide. There were thousands of young guys and women who found themselves at loose ends after the war. Some were looking for jobs while others were trying to get started in new careers. Many were earning pittances as waiters, waitresses, barmaids, and the like. As far as I was concerned I was doing them all a favor.

I was very fond of tricking people myself, and could always make good use of the twenty bucks that was handed over to me afterward. I jumped at the opportunity to go off with either a man or a woman who was attractive and who wanted to make whoopee with me, just as long as it didn’t interfere with my normal working hours.

I was blessed with a very healthy sexual appetite. I wanted sex every day. I was proud of my dick and I was happy to share it. Not once did I ever have trouble getting an erection and I always came. Always. I was proud of the size of my load, too, even after I had already come two or three times earlier on the same day or evening. I was blessed with a great sexual constitution. Why hide it?

During my years at the gas station I would invariably spend the night with someone, either male or female, often not even going home to Betty and my daughter Donna. I was beginning to live a very gypsylike lifestyle. I would be out all night sleeping in a different bed, then go home, do my laundry, change my clothes, make sure my two girls had everything they needed, throw a sandwich together, and then head back to the gas station for my evening shift.

A
FTER THREE OR FOUR
months working at the gas station I began to establish contact with many of my old Hollywood friends from my boot camp days, as well as those I had met during a month-long series of flings while on shore leave in 1944. Among them were Cary Grant and Randolph Scott. I saw Marion Davies—William Randolph Hearst’s girlfriend—again. And I looked up many others with whom I had earlier been sexually involved. These included two wonderfully talented guys by the names of Sydney Guilaroff and Edwin B. Willis. Both men are unknown today but back then they were legends in their profession. Syd was the chief hairstylist at MGM from 1934 until the late 1970s. His hair styles graced stars like Greta Garbo, Greer Garson, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Hedy Lamarr, Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, Lena Horne, Grace Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Kathryn Grayson, Ann-Margret, Marilyn Monroe, Claudette Colbert, Lucille Ball, and Judy Garland. He was the one who gave Judy her lovely braids in
The Wizard of Oz
. He had the distinction of making legal history in the United States by becoming the first unmarried man allowed to adopt a child when he became the legal father to a one-year-old boy he named Jon, after one of his favorite actresses, Joan Crawford. Later he adopted a second son, Eugene, named after his late father. The behind-the-scenes stories he would tell made it seem like nobody is as close to an actor as his or her hair stylist and makeup artist. Sydney could keep me engrossed for hours with his stories.

Ed Willis was another MGM man, one of the top set decorators in Hollywood. During a career that spanned thirty-five years and over six hundred films he picked up no less than eight Academy Awards, including for
Somebody Up There Likes Me, Julius Caesar, The Bad and the Beautiful, An American in Paris, Little Women, The Yearling,
and
Gaslight.
Ed was very fond of me, primarily, I think, because I had been a Marine. He had been a Marine, too, in World War I. Although openly gay to gay men, he never publicly admitted it, and he always looked and behaved as though he were straight. He once told me that he had found it very difficult being in the Marines and had cultivated a very masculine image to avoid harassment.

Another guy in town who had an absolute passion for Marines was the composer and lyricist Cole Porter, the man responsible for writing the hit musicals
Anything Goes, Silk Stockings, Can-Can,
and
Kiss Me Kate,
as well as some of America’s best loved songs such as “Night And Day,” “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “In the Still of the Night,” “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” “Just One of Those Things,” “Easy To Love,” “What Is This Thing Called Love?,” and “De-Lovely.” Cole was married to divorcée Linda Thomas from 1919 until her death in 1954 but it was a marriage of convenience, or what in those days was sometimes referred to as a “professional marriage.” Cole was openly gay and undeniably promiscuous. He never made any attempt to hide it. I don’t remember exactly when he called me out of the blue at the gas station one evening. He said he’d heard that I knew a lot of Marines and asked me if I could come over to his place with two or three of them at around midnight on the following Saturday night. He didn’t beat around the bush. He knew I had been a Marine myself and he wanted me to bring a few buddies around. Short and sweet. I knew exactly what he wanted and I was only too happy to oblige. I did have other plans for the upcoming Saturday evening but I cancelled everything. I mean, after all, this was the legendary Cole Porter, for crying out loud.

Porter was renting a home with a large secluded pool just off Sunset Boulevard in Brentwood. It was owned by my old friend Bill Haines, whom I’d first met during my boot camp days back in 1942. When I arrived at Porter’s place on that Saturday night with three ex-Marines a party was already in progress. There wasn’t a woman in sight. Porter was probably in his late forties or early fifties at the time. Most of his guests were younger men, one more strikingly handsome than the next. Linda, Porter’s wife, was not there (I later learned that the couple lived apart most of the time). The lower portion of Porter’s right leg had been amputated because of a horse riding accident on the East Coast. He was in constant pain and found it difficult to get around, relying mainly on crutches.

I soon learned that Cole’s passion was oral sex. He could easily suck off twenty guys, one after the other. And he always swallowed. There are many people, both male and female, who really enjoy the taste of semen. Porter was one of them. On one later occasion I took about nine of my best-looking young guys over to his place and he sucked off every single one of them in no time. Boom, boom, boom and it was all over.