Basketball players - college age - used to frequent the old Art Cinema, the last male porn movie theater in Boston, and also occasionally the Club Baths, around the corner from there. I was once sitting on the edge of the padded area in the orgy room at the Club Baths, recovering from some other encounter, when a very handsome group of 6 or 8 very tall basketball-player types clad only in towels or jockstraps came into view. They stood in a small circle in the lighted area of the orgy room, chatting and scratching their pouches from time to time. One of them was terminally cute, and he and I were keeping an eye on each other. I was waiting for him to separate from the group, but he stayed in the circle, yet he winked at me. Finally, I couldn't stand it any more, and so I simply got off the padded area onto the floor, entered the circle, didn't say a word to the guys above me, who continued to chat as I began with my guy and then made my way around the circle. I got a kick out of how they pretended not to notice what was going on below their waists. Funny, for basketball players, they were all powerful shooters, not one dribbler in the bunch. Man, those were the days. I seem to recall finding one of them a few hours later hanging out on his belly, ass up, and mounting him, but some of those days are a blur. You went to the baths to have sex with lots of guys, and you did. This was the early 1970s, when things were still fairly hidden, and once the bathhouse door closed behind you, you were in a confidential world where you could adopt an identity for the evening, play out your fantasies, and you didn't expect to find your cameraphone image an hour later on Facebook, showing you with two cocks in your mouth at once. There was something powerful and mysterious about that lost world that we'll never see again, for all that we've gained (and the many guys we've lost).

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One more story from the Art Cinema. I was sitting watching a movie, just idly rubbing myself. It wasn't a friendly place, unlike the old South Station Cinema, where you could make friends - as a young student, I used to have a weekly appointment for a blog job from a guy in his 30s who wore a black P-coat and looked like a sailor. He gave great head. But back to the Art Cinema, a decade later... the family that ran it was pretty homophobic and seemed to hate the fact that they made their living by providing a place where guys could meet, jerk off, blow each other, and fuck. Every once in a while, they'd turn the lights on in the theater, and people would gasp as they recognized colleagues or acquaintances or business associates to whom they weren't out. So anyway, one time, I was watching as a group of very tall basketball player guys, all sweaty in t-shirts and gym shorts - they had probably just been playing b-ball on the Common - came strolling in. I loved their slim bodies and their gangly look, and one very tall guy who seemed to have light blond hair stood at the end of my row and did eyes with me. It was dark, and I couldn't see him that well, but he was certainly as tall as the other guys and built like them. He sat down next to me, edged his hand over to my knee, worked his way up to my crotch, and soon we were jerking each other off. He shot buckets, and just as I was about to come, the lights came on... and to my surprise, he didn't have blond hair, he had white hair and was probably about 75. It taught me something that stayed with me and changed my cruising habits. I realized that I had just jerked him off and was about to come with lots of excitement until I saw the color of his hair, but really, what difference did it make if he was older or younger? He was built, he was hot to trot, he was hard, and he had great hand technique. We never got beyond that, but it taught me not to exclude guys a lot older than me automatically. Now, looking back years later, I wish attitudes were similar, but they aren't. When everything took place in the dark, you were in a never-never land of fantasy, though it was also a cage created by prejudice and ignorance. Nowadays, the price we pay for greater freedom and openness is that we've lost the sense of community among fuckers and cocksuckers. I have nothing against the young and beautiful fucking the young and beautiful, but the sex drive doesn't go away as you age. It changes, it develops, but it doesn't vanish, though many opportunities do.

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