The wisecracks and contemptuous stares came as no surprise. Thompson, 34, says he ended his surfing career two years ago because of too many nagging questions, innuendos, and off-color remarks regarding his homosexuality. The surfing world Thompson saw did not jibe with images of carefree, laid-back wave riders who live by the credo, To each his own.

"Sometimes it was difficult trying to keep my concentration, wondering what everybody was thinking about me," says Thompson, who began to hear antigay comments in the water and found the word fag spray-painted on his car several times as his sexuality became known to other surfers on the Association of Surfing Professionals tour.

Relationships with other surfers became an impossibility, Thompson says, so he isolated himself. "If I spent too much time with fellow surfers, accusations would start to fly. There were a couple of times when possible relationships [with other gay surfers] ended too quickly because of fear of being caught."

As it is for many athletes in professional sports, success is measured not only by performance but also by securing sponsorships. Multimillion-dollar companies often turn to surfers when marketing their products for the sun-and-sand set.

Steven Clark, team and promotions manager for sportswear manufacturer Gotcha International, admits that an openly gay surfer would have a difficult time finding sponsors. "Professional surfing is definitely a hetero sport," Clark says. "That's just the way it is. I know I'm being hypocritical when I say this, because I grew up in Laguna Beach [a California city with a large gay population] and I have gay friends. But from a business standpoint, sponsoring a gay surfer would not make sense right now."

Gotcha spends more than half a million dollars a year on sponsorships. Clark says a gay surfer would be a media problem and agrees that there would be a tremendous amount of harassment from other surfers on the circuit.

Sponsorships are critical because earnings from surfing competitions are miniscule compared to those of other sports. Even top professional surfers may earn only about $50,000 a year from competitions. So pro surfers need major sponsorships to continue on the expensive tour. "My first years on the tour were spent buying one-way tickets from contest to contest, hoping I would make enough money to get to the next event," says Thompson, who was rated in the top five in the United States from 1983 through 1987 and who won more than ten events during his career. "The need for major sponsors to continue on the tour and the subjectiveness of the judging system mean that competitors cannot let their personal lifestyles be an issue. Rumor and innuendo about one's sexuality have destroyed promising careers."

Thompson says he knows that homosexuality is not salable to the corporate players involved in the industry. "If the corporations that control sporting events decided that homosexuals were a viable advertising market, things would change quickly," he says. "In a perfect world all sponsorships would be unbiased, and competitive surfing would be based entirely on one's ability in the water. I guess that's not a realistic scenario at this point."

Thompson, who now works as a contract developer but continues to surf almost daily, believes homophobia is rampant on the surfing circuit. Worse yet, he's not hopeful it's going to change any time soon. "Trying to make it as an out gay surfer would right now be pretty much impossible," Thompson says. "Soliciting sponsorships would be greeted with a `Don't let the door smack your ass on the way out' type of attitude. Trying to deal with your fellow competitors on the road 12 months out of the year would just be an invitation for harassment."

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What does any of this have to do with surfing you might ask? Well binky it just so happens Mr. Hunter was in the film "Ride the Wild Surf" (1964), when I first fell for his naked pecs and surf athleticism (I told you I was a freak for him).

I've read a copy of his book "Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star," a collaboration with Eddie Muller, and it's a good read, but then again I like to read especially about anything that I'm super interested in.

At a recent Gay and Lesbian film festival Hunter sat down in an answer and question session to speak mainly about his new book, his career and his private life as an actor who was gay in an era when any such disclosure could be disastrous in Hollywood.

His autobiography's title draws on the name of Confidential magazine, famous in the '50s for tantalizing readers with tell-all stories that often were fabricated but could be devastating. It was a time when bisexual and gay actors such as himself, Rock Hudson and Tony Perkins were vulnerable to innuendo, much less headlines.

Though Hunter outed himself in his book, he regards his sexual identity as secondary. Or less. Who, after all, identifies Jimmy Stewart, Katherine Hepburn, Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep as "heterosexual" actors?

"I don't think it's anybody's business," Hunter says. "I think the important thing is what kind of performer you are ... what kind of a human being you are."

So why did the film festival pick 'Ride the Wild Surf' as their main film, Hunter is at a loss, "I have n-o-o-o idea. ... I saw a brand new print they'd struck of Sidney Lumet's 'That Kind of Woman.' Another of my favorites was 'Gunman's Walk,' a very good Western. But why they picked 'Ride the Wild Surf' ... I'm only in a couple of scenes. I call that the last of the Dad-can-I-have-the-keys-to-the-surfboard roles. ... It became a cult favorite of all those surfer people. And it has a good cast -- Fabian ("a terrific guy"), Barbara Eden, Shelley Fabares, Bob Mitchum's son Jim. "

Jared Earley, who helped program the festival, says "Ride the Wild Surf" was selected as the movie to screen in conjunction with Tab Hunter's appearance first because of Sony's just completed restoration, as well as a couple of local connections.

Hunter and producing partner Allan Glaser are developing a couple of film projects. One is actress Evelyn Keyes' screenplay "Blues in the Night," set in the 1930s, and the other is a love story called "The Road Rise Up," which is about 18th-century Irish folk hero Turlough O'Carolan.