Sex with the Saints in the Sheets

I spent twelve years of my life, off and on, traveling with the Christian musical group The Continental Singers. (That's an entirely different story which I'll share with you after a nice bottle, or six, of Pinot Gris or Merlot....and is well deserving of a full-length novel.) Each tour was 1-3 months long and consisted of 20-40 members. We traveled all of the 50 states and most countries around the world doing concerts for Jesus every single night. The tours were run quite strictly. We were expected to adhere to numerous rules and regulations including no guy-girl relationships (like that was going to happen with me). But it also included no relations of a homosexual nature. So, let's see here, you're going to ask 20 testosterone-laden guys from different churches around the world to be on the same tour, all of them having been told "no no" when they've ever wanted to fool around or even masturbate, all of them with strong actor/musician/artistic inclinations, and then ask them to spend the night in bed with one another for three months in a row and not expect anything to happen? How do you spell denial? And it did. And I did. The rules were that you would be sent home immediately if anything happened. Horror! I can't immediately recall all of the times there was foolin' around going on but it happened to me more than once. Many more times than once. There was my friend G who was the cutest little tenor on the tour. Artsy and flamboyant. We went nearly the whole tour being friends and giggling like little school girls together. Do you think anybody knew? It was about two weeks before the end of the tour when, in some old couple's home in Cottage Grove, Oregon, I discovered that he had a curved wee-wee. I was in the basement bedroom somewhere in the Quad Cities area of Iowa with K on another tour. He was a beautiful African-American guy who went on to be in Miss Saigon on Broadway. He dressed beautifully and smelled so good. The black guy and the white guy went crazy on each other in that basement bordello that night. And the next....and the next. Another time, I was with T somewhere in the Midwest when we starting getting all handsy in the middle of the night. I think we just masturbated. For some reason, I remember the shame and guilt after that particular Midwest madness. In a Quality Inn in New Jersey on a steamy hot July night, I remember being in one bed with some dude while two other guys slept in the other (queen?) bed. We started doing the nasty....god, it was so hot in that room....and we were so scared that the other two guys would wake up or see us. Maybe they did. Another lustful time, I was in Haarlem, The Netherlands, with my assistant director M when all erotic-sexual-hell broke loose late one night in the upper floor where we slept....with the unassuming Dutch hosts sleeping soundly on another floor down beneath us. He had been joking with me for weeks about getting a foot massage from me. And I couldn't keep my eyes off of those little skimpy European-style briefs that we US boys would never wear. So, that night he went to take a shower and I went to bed. He came up later, climbed into bed, and we started joking about the foot rub thing. So, I started, and he started. I had just finished with one of his huge, beautiful British feet and was just starting on the other when he grabbed me in a moment of Christian-bad-boy-gone-even-naughtier, wrestled me down, and got what we both had been wanting all of these weeks. M and me went on and on...sneaking into each other's rooms during the night in an old farmhouse in the quiet countryside of Denmark.....in his parent's home (actually in their private shower!) in Birmingham, England. Another time was in the hull of a Polish ferry crossing the Baltic Sea at night from Ystad, Sweden, to what was then East Germany. The tiniest and most cramped little room you've ever seen.....and that damned Irishman "J" took advantage of me. (I almost sound like a poor little victim, don't I??). Shall I go on? Suffice it to say, that we did everything we were not supposed to. Over and over. Again and again. Some of these guys went on to get married (like me!). Some I have seen since then, some not. Some were too ashamed to face me or anyone else after that. Others went right on like nothing had ever happened. Sometimes the tears of guilt and shame poured onto the alter during a come-to-Jesus meeting later in the tour. And some are probably even very happily sleeping with boys to this very day. Just like me.