Dan Gbur, where are you now?

In the summer of 1988 I developed a crush on Dan Gbur, my next door neighbor on Weatherstone Boulevard in New Berlin. Dan was three years older than me, so he had just graduated from high school. Considering it was 1988 Dan had very short, dark brown hair. He was a really nice guy; if he saw me outside he would come over and we'd shoot baskets in my driveway. I was always nervous when he came over because I didn't want to say or do anything that he might think was dumb. Nevermind that 14 year-old boys can't avoid saying or doing dumb things. Plus I worried that I'd say or do something "gay." At the time I knew deep down that I was gay, but I wasn't prepared to even consider what that meant or how I might act on that reality. Dan worked at a landscaping company that summer, so he was tan and in great shape.

I'll never forget one hot summer afternoon when I was mowing the lawn. Dan came outside and was washing his car wearing nothing but navy blue spandex shorts. I thought I was going to pass out since all the blood rushed below my belt. I was so distracted that I probably made a mess of the lawn, but who cared? Dan Gbur was wearing nothing but spandex shorts! This scene of Dan in skintight shorts, sweating in the summer heat, and getting wet with the hose gave me "private material" for a very long time. I can still see his muscular ass in those shorts, as well as the hair around and below his belly button. It's still fun to think about 19 years later. I'm sure that Dan was and is straight, so I knew that there was little or no chance of him ever trying to seduce me. And particularly so since at the time I was still very much a boy. I'm sure he viewed me as the nerdy and not-very-athletic neighbor kid. Fortunately he was a nice guy. Unfortunately, Dan and the Gbur family moved away from New Berlin in the fall of 1988, so I didn't have the pleasure of seeing him when he came home from college the following summer. But I do have fond memories of his being nice to me and his car washing.