The Bilerico Project | Daily experiments in LGBTQ

We've ran a contest this week asking Projectors to submit their craziest stories of what they've done for love. The five best stories have won a copy of I Love You Phillip Morris on DVD. Here are the winning stories:

First Place: Jimbo

Years ago I was dating a very closeted guy who was an accountant for a national consortium of Protestant churches. He lived two hours away from me. Under my tutelage, he came to enjoy playing with a dildo. One night he called me in a panic because the dildo had disappeared up his butt and he couldn't get it out. It was one of those hard plastic vibrating dildos. I drove 130 miles to help him get it out. I arrived about 1:30 am only to be informed that his elderly mother was in town for a visit and asleep in another bedroom so we had to be 'very quiet'. I tried for about 2 hours to get that dildo out of him. I had a can of Crisco, several lubes and a couple bottles of lotion. I used my fingers, pliers, spaghetti tongs, and about half the implements in his utility drawer - but it would not budge! And yes, occasionally in all my manipulating, the dildo started vibrating, though I was easily able to turn it off. Understandably, he was getting very sore, inflamed, swollen and panicky. I told him (whispering, of course) that we needed to go to the emergency room and he refused, feeling certain that he would be exposed and fired when his employer found out the the cause of his E.R. visit. Finally, I told him he could use my name, I.D., and medical insurance card (FRAUD!). He at last agreed, and we arrived at the E.R. about 4 am.. He sat side-saddle on the car seat, putting most his weight one butt cheek. Once there, the doctor tried to extract it for only a few minutes before announcing that he would need surgery to remove it. My boyfriend freaked (!), put on his clothes and fled out of the emergency room. He thanked me profusely and insisted that I go home as he had a very important business meeting to attend that morning. He decided he would wait it out and 'pray about it'. It was about 8 am when I finally got home. Well, apparently God listened because about 8 hrs later he called to tell me that he had passed the dildo during a very painful bowel movement. Weeks later I got a bill from the hospital for a $50 co-pay, which he happily re-imbursed me for. Due to the long distance, we eventually drifted apart as time went on, but not before he had secured for himself a softer dildo that had a rope pull extending from the bottom of it :) This all happened about 10 yrs ago and I've gotten a lot of mileage out of that story, telling and re-telling it at most every cocktail party or gay gathering I show up to.

The other four are after the jump.

2nd Place: Steveck

When I was young I lived in a small town in northern lower Michigan. If you hold out your left hand as though you were Diana Ross singing "Stop! In the name of love", my hometown is about an inch down from the tip of your middle finger (Unless you have prodigious hands, in which case I envy your lover). My point is that there weren't many gay people that I was aware of in the late seventies who were boyfriend material in such a small town. There were two florists, Quelle surprise, who were in their forties who were gay, but again, not exactly boyfriend material. And before anyone dare call me ageist, I did "sleep" with both of them. More than once. (I have always relied upon the kindness of older gentlemen.)

So upon an early graduation from high school, I fled Dogpatch and flew to Los Angeles. I knew San Fran was a gay mecca, but that seemed like too much peer pressure for one backwoods boy from God's Handprint. And yes, within a month I found the love of my life. About four years older, a California native, witty, great sense of style and good taste in music.

And then we were in a very serious car accident. He broke his pelvis and I smashed my skull. My parents flew in from Michigan and brought me home to recuperate. It took more than a year to recover.

We wrote each other, gooey, saccharin laden, stomach turning proclamations of undying love. Not long after, he paid for my return ticket to LA. After a week of wonderful dates and heartfelt talks, he had a process server hand me legal documents in order that he could sue my insurance company for money. Even though he admitted driving the night of the accident, he later recanted upon learning that I had no memory due to scrambled brains. It wasn't me, it was him, he said. He wanted more money.

So much for true love in the land of palm trees and wild fires.

After that second trip to LA, (needless to say that my skin burns easily in the California son) I fell in love with a raven haired beauty in Detroit. A six pack abdomen (back in the day before they became a dating prerequisite), witty, and could he could tear up the dance floor when It's Raining Men hit the speakers. I was past smitten. He played Angels Bofill's Tonight I Give In in his candlelit apartment a week later, telling me "This is our song", then we screwed like bunnies. It was love, I tell you! LOVE! Until I found out I was one of seven pretties who were also giving in tonight. It may have been raining men, but I wasn't going to wallow in a mud puddle.

The motor city is not all its revved up to be after all.

Feeling more jaded than a Shanghai Buddha, I moved to Lansing. It was one of those, "Try Dubrovnik dear, before you go home" moments. In the upper floor of the apartment I rented I discovered a lovely gay couple. Well, lovely by all accounts. Their relationship was a tad rocky. So being the good little boy with Midwestern values, I became a home wrecker and took the better of the two. Clearly not one of my finer moments. But I was in love with Dan, who was witty (which of them weren't?), who taught me the finer aspects of opera, theatre, and how to smoke weed out of a ten inch black ceramic bong that held ice water in its balls. Who could ask for more? Not me. But then he had the infamous, "I'm so happy to have met a good friend like you" speech and moved to Denver. I wasn't just crushed, I was steamrolled.

Defeated, I moved back to Dogpatch.

I got a job waiting table in the local Pizza Hut (I figured I had little self respect left in the tank to play with). On my twenty first birthday (November 13th, 1963 for all you nosy parkers) a dear friend of mine invited me out to the Holiday Inn bar to celebrate. (I told you, small town, not classy.) Unbeknownst to me she invited a new acquaintance of hers whom she suspected was gay, but wasn't sure. I flirted a little, occasionally bumping my foot with his (Oh for God's sake, YES!, I was playing footsies with him). He drove me home. I wasn't sure he was gay. My under the table two step had been largely one sided. Having been thrice burned, I wasn't exactly feeling brave. We sat in the driveway not saying much (He was scared, I was shy, he was nervous, So was I). I suddenly lost my nerve, said goodnight and ran into the house. I was upset with myself, but better upset than make a fool of myself.

Then he started showing up at the restaurant, just for coffee and to smoke a couple of cigarettes. Four or five times before New Year's Eve. Really? Who goes to Pizza Hut for the coffee and sparking repartee?

He did, apparently. I found out that he was the son of a preacher (Bonus! You know how those boys are don't ya!), and that he lived a few houses down from my family home. On New Year's Eve the ball dropped, in so many more ways that one. In my small apartment bedroom we made love, and yes I had the romantic sense to light candles and not burp or fart. I loved him. And he loved me. Sitting afterward in bed, as corny as it sounds, I sang him one of my all time Judy favorites, The Boy Next Door.

I literally went to Los Angeles, Detroit and Lansing only to find that I loved the boy next door. Sure, I could have sung Ring Them Bells, but how unromantic and anticlimactic.
It has been more than 26 years now. He's not the boy next door anymore. He's the man next to me in bed. And I still love him. And he still loves me. Warts and all.

3rd Place: Sher

In 1988 I was living in Galveston TX when I met an intriguing woman in Maryland on Compu$erve. Online chatting quickly became phone chatting. and soon I was packing up my kid and my car and drove to Ocean City to meet her. Needless to say, I've not been back to Texas, and we will celebrate 23 years together this June.

4th Place: Thomas

I started dating someone I'd been friends with, and less than six months into it, I suggested that he come with me on vacation to Antarctica. He didn't hesitate to say 'yes.' I figured, well, if he'll follow me to the ends of the earth...literally...this must be serious.

5th Place: J. Holmes

I would say the craziest thing was moving across the country from a small town in Missouri to Washington DC, where I had never even visited, into an apartment only seen from pictures--far away from friends and family, with no job--just to be with my boyfriend. It's been three years, and I don't regret any of it.