When this Scout Master was twenty-five he was the sexiest man on earth.
And to be fair, he's still pretty cute for his age, which is forty-seven. He still has a definite Harrison Ford thing going on. It's a shame he's losing his hair though, he had beautiful hair. But compared to many guys his age he's still pretty desirable. Even in that shirt.
I got this photo from Facebook, naturally. We aren't Facebook friends, there would be no point in friending him, but he's one of those people who leaves his Facebook profile open to the public. The Scout Master posted this because his son had received a Boy Scout badge or something. The Scout Master (SM) is very much into doing father-son things, judging from his Facebook profile, posting photos of his son's soccer games and camping trips all the time. Adorable. Although he never posts photos of himself - this was the only one I saw.
I don't often think about the SM these days, but it's hard to over-estimate how much impact this person had on my life and my erotic imagination, when I knew him when he was my supervisor in the graphics department of the corporate headquarters of a now-defunct toy manufacturer. I still remember the moment I first laid eyes on him. I was absolutely stunned by his beauty. I think I stood there for several seconds, staring and gaping, unable to believe my eyes as we were introduced. Working with him on a daily basis I was soon completely in love with him. Which I felt guilty about since I was in a ten-years-long relationship at the time, and the SM was dating the woman he would marry and produce a Boy Scout with. And I thought he was out of my league anyway, although he did once invite me to his apartment after work, and I didn't go because I had a prior appointment.
To get an idea of how sexy this man was, he was sexier than my friend Earl, who was legendarily sexy. When I told my friend Rachel, who was a coworker of mine and Earl about the SM and said that he was sexier than Earl, she could not believe it. But it was true. No wonder I used to have blue ovaries at the end of the work week from the intense, unfulfilled desire. And he wasn't only beautiful, he had (probably still has) a funny, down-to-earth personality too. I described him to Rachel as a cross between a young Harrison Ford and Michaelangelo's David, but with the personality of John Goodman. Predictably, women used to throw themselves at him - I once witnessed a woman arriving at a party grab him and French kiss him while his fiancee was ten feet away. He once mentioned to me that a coworker at the toy manufacturer told him she wanted to see him naked. The 50-something receptionist at the company was clearly ga-ga over him. He was that kind of sexy.
The SM had more impact on me than Earl, or the guy who inspired me to write dozens of sonnets. Ten years after I last saw the SM I was still having sexy dreams about him.
And thanks to this man I became a playwright. I was a graphic artist/illustrator when I met him but in an attempt to stay in contact with him after I left the toy manufacturer (I had only been a temp there for seven months) I entered a play contest at the community theater he worked with in Haddonfield NJ. My play, the first one I wrote, was one of four semi-finalists, although it didn't win the big prize. But it received a stage reading and that was enough to get me started. Although the SM wasn't all that much into theater anyway, and by the time the play readings happened had since dropped out of the community theater.
I sometimes wonder if my life would have been better if I hadn't met the Scout Master - and if I had remained a visual artist and not become a playwright. Certainly I would never have met the dread Edward Einhorn or a certain gang of contemptible off-off Broadway actors. That would definitely have been a plus.
But mostly I wonder why the hell I didn't cancel that appointment and go over to the Scout Master's apartment when he invited me.