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From The Guide, February 1994

The project began in earnest in an Arco gas station restroom in Indiana. While my wife Margaret and son Eddy waited in the car, my lover Bobby Stevens and I locked ourselves in the bathroom. He sat on the toilet and I stood in front of him so he could blow me. It started out fine, until the ludicrousness of the situation struck us. We both started to laugh and I lost my erection. I tried to compose myself and focus on the business at hand but to no avail. Things were not helped when someone knocked on the door. I couldn't handle the pressure. For the first time in the 15 years I had been having sex with Bobby I was unable to come.

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My failure was all the more disconcerting because I had endured the scornful embarrassment of my son when I explained the reason I wanted to pull off the interstate and find a bathroom. Bobby and I had never had sex in Indiana. Part of the appeal for me of driving Eddy to Chicago from Boston to begin his freshman year at DePaul was that we would be spending a night in Ohio as well as Illinois, two states in which Bobby and I had not yet had sex. The prospect of adding Indiana as well to our growing list seemed an opportunity too good to miss.

The list at that time, which was September of 1991, consisted of eighteen states and five continents. I proposed to Bobby that we have sex in all fifty states and seven continents. Bobby agreed to this, and the project was explicitly and formally undertaken. For a state or continent to qualify, it was necessary for me to have an orgasm. Thus my failure to ejaculate at the Arco station meant that Bobby and I had not yet had sex in Indiana.

The attraction of undertaking such a project went beyond the pleasure my admittedly somewhat compulsive personality takes in making and completing lists of tasks. Having sex with Bobby has been one of the central continuing joys of my life. I met him when his girlfriend brought him to the church youth group I led. He was a good looking boy who seemed to relate to the world and to others in a very physical way. He was only 15 yet seemed completely at home in his body. I found these qualities very seductive. Seven years after we met, we had sex with each other for the first time. Looking back at it, I believe it was I, rather than he, who needed that time to get ready. It took me that long to get comfortable enough with the fact that I was gay to be open about it. Bobby, on the other hand, has never seemed to have any difficulty in acknowledging or expressing any of his extremely varied sexual interests.

Even now I have some difficulty in accepting my amazing good fortune in being able to have sex with Bobby. Each new time and place we have sex together is further confirmation of the fact that this is really happening. Is it any wonder that I would be drawn to a project that requires that Bobby and I travel throughout this country and the world with the express agenda of having sex with each other!

The decision to stop in Indiana was significant because it was the first place in which the sole reason for our being there was to have sex. I returned to the car somewhat dejected, not only because I had to report that the detour I had insisted upon taking had not accomplished its purpose, but also because it meant that I'd have to come back to Indiana. I thought with some envy of all my gay brothers for whom the tea room was actually conducive to hot sex, who would no doubt have found dropping a load in this setting a trivial exercise.

Margaret, as she has so often in the past, came to my rescue. The day after we dropped Eddy at his school we headed for Toronto where Bobby had Guide business. Since we had to cut through a corner of Indiana on the way she suggested that Bobby and I rent a motel room where I could do my thing in a more conducive setting. She would wait for us at a nearby restaurant. Margaret has always enjoyed stopping for coffee. Nevertheless, I believe her central motivation was to encourage me to do what would make me happy. Margaret and I have been happily married for over 28 years. I am convinced that the success of our partnership is based upon our mutual understanding that love is not served by the desire to own or possess one's partner sexually or any other way- but rather by the active effort to support and encourage one's spouse to do those things that bring them joy, happiness, and fulfillment.

I also recognize that most people think such an understanding of love is truly bizarre and believe that sexual jealousy and possessiveness are a sign of love's presence rather than its absence.

The motel room made all the difference. Indiana finally under my belt, I was able to leave the state without regret.

***

Once a course has been decided upon, I generally proceed as quickly and directly as possible to bring it to a successful conclusion. When we returned from Toronto, Bobby and I had 29 more states to go. Bobby's job, selling advertising for The Guide as well as writing travel features, meant he was on the road a good deal. Most of the places we had already been were job-related. If I wanted to spend time with Bobby, it often meant my going along with him on one or another sales trip. This was further necessitated because Bobby's girlfriend of the past five years, Claire, lives in Montreal. His desire to spend a lot of time with her has helped make Montreal one of The Guide's major markets, but it has also meant he is less available to spend non-work time traveling around the country having sex with me. Unfortunately, most of the remaining states either lacked a gay scene of sufficient magnitude to justify a travel feature or were part of some other ad rep's territory.

There were a few exceptions. We had never done a feature on Las Vegas, and though its gay life is relatively small, it is a tourist spot of such magnitude that a travel magazine like The Guide needed to cover it.

Las Vegas was appealing not only because it was in Nevada, but also because of its proximity to Arizona and Utah, three virgin states. We flew to Las Vegas where Bobby ran around for five days selling advertising and getting material together for his article. One of the evenings we drove up to St. George, Utah. On the way there we cut through a piece of Arizona where we were able to find a motel and spend a half-hour having sex.

When we got to St. George, instead of spending the night, we decided to head back to Las Vegas since Bobby had some prospective advertisers he wanted to see. We got a room, he got me off, and a couple hours later we were back on the Strip, having a midnight breakfast at the Sands. While we were there, Bobby was rushing around the lobby making phone calls. One of the security men stopped him and asked him if he were hustling.

Prior to working for The Guide, Bobby had gotten his MBA and worked as an officer in one of Boston's banks. After doing this for a few years he began to tire of the requirements of the corporate routine, not the least of which was having to wear a suit and tie. When he started working for The Guide, he dressed as he pleased.

What generally pleased him was clothing more commonly associated with hustling than banking. In fairness to the security man, the fact that he had sexually serviced me, so to speak, twice in the past few hours may have further, contributed to his emanating a particular professional aura.

****

My actual experiences with prostitution have been rather limited and somewhat disappointing. While Bobby and I were in Rio, one of the other Guide staff members invited me to go with him to a bathhouse where various young men, for about 15 dollars, were available for sex. They were identified by the large room keys they carried. I looked over the half dozen or so who were then on-duty and spotted one who I thought was particularly cute. He saw me looking at him and smiled. I indicated that I wanted to go up to a room with him. He quickly got a towel and a condom and led me to one of the cubicles. He unlocked the door using the big key from around his neck. Inside was a double mattress on a platform a few feet from the floor. We took off our towels and got onto the bed, which had a mirror on the wall alongside it. He started to rub and kiss me. I noted how detached I felt.

Here I was with a cute guy sucking on my dick and I was having trouble getting into it. Eventually, after assorted gropings and fondlings, we both came, but as an experience it lacked intensity.

One of the things I really like about sex is that it usually gets me out of my mind and into my body. The fact that it didn't happen in this case made me wonder why. My principle difficulty was that I felt very cut off from my partner. He spoke virtually no English, and I didn't speak Portuguese. So there was no possibility of my discovering anything about his background, his thoughts, his feelings, or what doing this job was like for him. Perhaps if I hadn't had an exciting sex partner in Bobby waiting for me back at the hotel, these limitations would have made little difference and my erotic appetite would have carried me along. It did underscore that, contrary to my masturbation fantasies, I'm not very good at enjoying impersonal sex.

My second exposure to prostitution occurred several years later in Thailand. I decided to accompany Bobby on the trip in part because I had read about the live sex shows they had at some of the gay clubs and I was eager to see what they were like. While Bobby was out trying to sell advertising for the feature he was writing, I went to one of the clubs that had a reputation for putting on the best show. What seemed to be about 40 or 50 dancers, each wearing a number, paraded past the customers in a long line.

This was followed by combinations of them doing erotic dances with each other with various artistic lighting effects. The numbers involved some sucking and simulated fucking. One had some brief actual fucking, but because of the dim lighting it was difficult to see very much. It might be that my expectations in terms of what I would be able to see had been spoiled by all the close-ups and camera angles of modern porn videos. At any rate, the emphasis was less to provide a show than to expose the dancers to the customers, who could select a favorite by number and take him off-premises or use a room in the facility. In addition to the fee charged by the club for effecting the introduction, one was expected to tip the dancer approximately 20 dollars after having sex with him.

The Thais have the reputation for being both beautiful and friendly towards foreigners. The sex industry is one of the major tourist attractions. Because of the relatively high earnings available to the men and women prostitutes, as well as a somewhat lower level of stigma attached to the profession than in the West, one has an almost limitless range of choices for sexual companionship.

I do not have a problem with people buying or selling sexual favors per se. After all, commercial relationships of any sort are based upon the concept of buying or selling one's services. Ideally, the more difficult or distasteful the service desired, the higher the compensation required for its performance. Putting one's sex organs at the disposal of another is in my mind not significantly different than hiring out one's hands or brain.

The problem I had with the Thai sex industry was that it so dramatically underscored the economic injustice in the world of which I was a direct beneficiary. Westerners have relatively easy access to getting money; Thais do not.

I thought that if I were a Thai, I would resent these foreigners who have no real understanding or interest in our culture, who choose to see us as friendly and sexually available while overlooking the fact that that is how we are required to appear if they are to give us money. With this as my thinking, it was hard for me to imagine any Thai who I might hire for sex ever allowing me to see the real person secreted behind the "warm" and "friendly" exterior. My inability to respond to all this friendliness was driven home when a group of dancers came up to Bobby and me at one of the clubs. After chatting for some minutes, one of them asked Bobby if I spoke English. He laughed and assured them I did, that I was just quiet.

***

At the conclusion of Bobby's business in Las Vegas, we had arranged to fly to Joplin, Missouri, for two days before visiting his parents for a night in New Mexico. Joplin, which I had not realized before consulting a map, has the virtue of being at the comer of four states Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. Bobby and I spent the less-than-48-hours after arriving in Joplin rushing from state to state, motel to motel, in pursuit of pleasure. By the time we got into the couch-bed in his folk's living room in Albuquerque, it was more our mutual commitment to getting the job done than sexual appetite that stimulated that particular orgasm. I had managed to convert one of the principle enjoyments in my life into a slightly onerous chore. I suggested to Bobby that we make a modification for future sex trips: no more than one state per day.

***

The cheapest way to get to Africa was to fly to Cairo with a stopover in Paris, where Bobby regularly had Guide business. This required the use of no more frequent flyer miles than would a trip to Paris alone. While Bobby and I had been to many places together in Europe, we had never been with each other in Paris. This was due in part to the fact that Claire lived in Paris before moving to Montreal, and many of his trips there coincided with her return visits to her family.

Paris has held a sexual connotation for me since my first trip there as a teenager in 1958, when I went to the Folies Bergères. This association was reinforced a few years later when I returned as a college student and haunted the bookstores near the American Express office, where I could buy pornographic novels published by the Olympia Press. In the early '60s pornography was not openly sold in the US. It seemed fitting that Bobby and I should at last be adding the "city of lovers" to our list.

Paris was also the home of Margaret's brother Dirck and his family. Bobby and I spent a lively evening with them discussing the merits of sexually open relationships. My nephew's fiancee and I represented the most vocal extremes in the debate. Since neither of us spoke the other's language, it meant that our remarks had to be translated to each other while everyone else contributed their views alternately in French and English.

Cairo was memorable for its squalor. Bobby and I had hired a car to take us to the pyramids. When we got there a young man invited me to sit beside him on his camel while Bobby took our picture. Without thinking, I climbed on. As soon as the camel had stood up and Bobby had taken his picture, the driver hit the animal with his stick and we went charging off together. I was terrified. The few times I've gone horseback-riding I felt like I'd be thrown off the animal and seriously injured, if not killed. Galloping on a camel was hardly more reassuring. Added to this, I was more than a little uneasy at being completely in the control of some total stinger. He, of course, had no more nefarious purpose in mind than extracting a little money from me for a camel ride. I told him in as firm a voice as I could muster that I would give him some money only if he put me down at once; otherwise, I told him, he would get nothing. He put me down, I gave him a few dollars, and he gave me a kiss.

On the taxi ride back to the city, we rode along an odoriferous canal where people were emptying chamber pots, doing their laundry, fishing, and swimming all within a few feet of each other. I wondered how any fish could survive in such polluted waters and how dirty the laundry could have been that it would actually emerge from the canal cleaner than it was before it was dropped in.

Bobby and I decided to visit one of the gay bathhouses to get some sense of that scene. Since it was not far from our hotel we chose to walk a dubious choice in Cairo since not only are the taxis quite cheap, but crossing the street is a harrowing experience. Everyone drives at great speed with reckless abandon and red traffic lights are at best regarded as mild suggestions to slow down. The bathhouse was incredibly grungy. One of the Egyptian patrons warned Bobby that it would not be a good idea to get any of the water too near his face. We left shortly afterwards and returned to our hotel to take a shower.

***

Less than a month after returning from Africa, we took a nine-day trip through eight states in the South. This schedule seemed far more workable than our two-a-day excesses the previous summer. It even allowed a night off since we stayed in Alabama both on our way to and from New Orleans, and we saw no particular need to do it there twice.

We now had only 12 states left. These we could take in during the next year with just two separate trips one through the Midwest in June, and the other in the Northwest when Bobby was scheduled to do a travel feature on Anchorage in the fall. We had already spent ten days in Australia when Bobby was covering New Zealand for The Guide, two years before. This left us very close to completing our project with one rather striking exception: Antarctica!

***

Bobby, Margaret, and I are members of a house church that meets each week in our home. As our sex project had been evolving, I kept the members well-informed of our progress. We had not really decided to include Antarctica originally as one of our destinations. The fact that there are no hotels, restaurants, or other commercial establishments on the continent means the only way for non-scientists to visit the place is by cruise ship. Even the cheapest cruises by the time you include airfare to the tip of South America, where the ships leave from run approximately 5000 dollars a person. It would cost Bobby and me around 10,000 dollars together to add this continent. Since I don't particularly like cold weather and probably have a less-than-average interest in penguins and seals, it seemed a somewhat exorbitant price to pay for a sexual experience. As rational as these considerations seemed, they were swept away when Paula, one of the church members, teased that we had to include Antarctica or the project really wouldn't be complete.

Of course, I knew she was right. Since Bobby was willing to put up his share of the money, and Margaret was encouraging me to go ahead and do it, there seemed to be no compelling reason not to book a cruise.

The end of November, a month after we would have completed the 50 states, was the soonest we could go. As the time approached, I began to get more excited about the prospect. I had enjoyed life aboard ship during the half-dozen trans-Atlantic crossings taken during my youth. At that time it was beyond even my wildest fantasies to imagine being on ship with a male lover. Now this improbable scenario was to become a reality.

The ship left from Punta Arenas, at the tip of Chile. We arrived there the night before we sailed, having flown in on free frequent-flier tickets on Ladeco airlines. This had saved us about 1500 dollars apiece in airfare. We went to the cruise office the next day to ask how soon we could board the ship. They referred us to another office across the street. When we arrived there the agent said they had been expecting us but hadn't know what plane we were arriving on. He then asked us for our passports so he could take down some necessary information. After a few minutes he returned and said he couldn't find our names on the list. We said that was strange; we had our tickets back at the hotel. "Tickets? You are passengers?" he asked, looking over our jeans and casual clothes. "Oh, I'm so sorry, I thought you were crew."

On the ship we had two single cabins with a connecting door. I would have preferred a double cabin with a double bed. Since we don't live together, I particularly enjoy the opportunity to sleep the night with Bobby. However, the double-bedded cabins would have cost thousands more.

The cruise ship along, with two-thirds of the passengers, was German. This accounted for a certain Teutonic tone, perhaps best captured in the "thought for the day" which greeted us each morning in our printed schedule. A representative sampling: "From a short pleasure comes a long repentance," "Do not ridicule the thin-bearded when you yourself have no beard," "What is to give light must endure burning," and my personal favorite given the somewhat unfortunate cultural tendency towards authoritarianism, "The wise must be respected even when the advice they give us is not suitable."

Once the ship reached Antarctica, it would anchor off various landing sites and transport the passengers to the shore via rubber motorized rafts called zodiacs. These zodiac excursions might vary in distance anywhere from a hundred yards to a mile. Some days they might run excursions to as many as two or three different sites.

Preparing for these excursions took some time: putting on all the various layers of clothing and then removing them upon one's return. Needless to say, with Bobby's and my minimal interest in Antarctica itself, we did not deem it necessary to go on every offered excursion. One morning while the "Sea Lions," the name of the English-language passengers' excursion group, were supposedly on shore, the tour director, Wanda, discovered Bobby and me loitering about the dining room where we had finished a late breakfast. "What are you doing here?" she asked us accusingly, "You should be ashore!" We explained that we hadn't felt like going on that particular outing. She registered shocked disbelief. She said she could understand why some people in their 80s might not venture out but not two men in our apparently healthy condition. She concluded by saying "You should be ashamed!"

Fortunately, from our point of view, the other 50 or so Americans and English on board, including a few lesbians and gay men, were more laid back. We particularly enjoyed the three American women who were our table companions. We spent hours every meal talking and joking and were almost always nearly the last to leave the dining room. Two of them in particular took some interest in hearing about our project and the sexual values that gave rise to it. Nevertheless, amongst most of the passengers there seemed to me surprisingly little curiosity about Bobby's and my lifestyle despite our openness and clear willingness to talk about it. Indeed, one of the things I found strange was the lack of substantive conversation among us as passengers considering our varied and diverse backgrounds. We tended instead to focus our talk on trivial events that occurred on shipboard such as two people falling off their chairs at one of the lectures when the ship lurched during some rough weather.

Bobby and I returned from Antarctica the last day of November. The project of having sex with each other in all 50 US states and seven continents was completed.

Some of our friends have asked us what we plan to do next. One jokingly suggested that we might want to take on the 351 cities and towns of Massachusetts. All I can say for the present is that we're heading out to one of our favorite settings, Palm Springs, in a few weeks. For a change of pace, we're bringing along some sex toys. Who knows what that will lead to.

Editor's Note: From The Guide, February 1994