Daylin Butler was in one of my English classes at East LA JC. We also had the same philosophy course at the same time, though we were not in the same class. Mike mentioned that he might be the brother of one of our classmates at South Gate High, Darryl Butler, which he was.
I became friends with him. And, yes, I was very attracted to him. Too much so, actually. Because he wasn't even possibly gay like Jim Mulaney. This would be one of my stupid personal mistakes, one that gay men make over the years. ("Terminally straight" was the phrase Harvey Fierstein used in TORCH SONG TRILOGY.) Which is to say that my "gaydar" was not very good for years.
What was even more pathetic was that Daylin and my sister dated briefly, hence the trip we all took in the fall of 1969 to San Francisco. As with Dave Moore and his sister and Ann and I, we four stayed at Aunt Jean and Uncle Lloyd's house in San Leandro during our stay.
Daylin was later able to get a scholarship to USC and he eventually would earn a PHd in History, but that was long after we kept in touch. I would transfer to Cal State Dominguez Hills because I could never earn a scholarship nor afford to attend USC, even then.
I did, however, begin to work out in their garage in South Gate with his set of free weights. Daylin had moved back home to renew his college career after bombing out just after high school and then getting drafted, by the Marines. He was actually in the first group who did get drafted by the Marine Corps when, prior to that, only the army drafted troops for Vietnam. And he spent his tour of duty in Vietnam, though he was not in combat. Like Jim, Daylin was older than I by three years. He was also cute and muscular, having built himself up by using free weights.
I did become a big sports fan based upon hanging out with Daylin. I eventually would buy a pair of tickets to all the Rams home games in the LA Coliseum when the former UCLA coach Tommy Prothro took over for two seasons before giving way to Chuck Knox, who really made waves with the team in the 1970's. My fall Sunday afternoons were spent in my seat in the western end of the Coliseum (I only had one season ticket.) My first tickets were $5.50 a piece. My season tickets the next year were $6.00 a piece. Eventually, when the team would leave the Coliseum for Anaheim, the price rose to $10.00 per tickets and so I allowed my season ticket to expire. I did get tickets to three Super Bowls, being a season ticket holder for LA.
But that was all before the Super Bowl became this insane and horrendously expensive extravaganza that it has now become. Well beyond the means of ordinary people like myself with regular incomes.
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