NYSocBoy's Beefcake and Bonding

The Lizzie Borden Chronicles is an 8 episode miniseries that aired on Lifetime in 2015 and is now on Netflix. It chronicles the adventures of the famous Lizzie Borden (1860-1924), after she was acquitted of the murder of her father and stepmother.

Many books and movies have delved into the question of what happened on that hot August morning in 1892, but the Chronicles leave no doubt: Lizzie (Christina Ricci) did it. She gleefully kills her parents and anyone else considers she considers a threat.

She has some noble instincts: she is protective of animals, children, and abused women. But her go-to solution to any problem, even the most trivial, is murder.

It is a handsome production, with beautifully designed sets and street scenes full of life and color. The costumes are perfect. The customs and language of the late 19th century are expertly reproduced. You're not looking into the dead past, but into a "now."

But Lizzie's numerous murders of neutral and positive characters, including her girlfriend/ kept girl Adele and her sister's fiancee, become difficult to watch. And the production seems rushed. The most interesting story is of Lizzie's sister Emma (Clea DuVall), who transforms from a spinsterish recluse to a murderer in her own right, and becomes involved with the Trotwood crime family of Boston. But her story is told quickly, over a couple of episodes.

Since this is Boomer Beefcake and Bonding, you're probably wondering -- well, is there any beefcake and bonding?

There's a lot of lesbian interest. Lizzie seduces Adele and lives with her. Nance O'Neil, who briefly befriends Lizzie before finding out her secrets, is presented as ambisexual; in real life she was probably lesbian, and Lizzie's lover. We see lesbian intimacies occuring at a party, and a photographer shoots a scene of "sapphic" erotica.

There don't appear to be any gay men in this world. Every male character of any importance is shown kissing, having sex with, or propositioning women.

But there's ample beefcake.

1. Cole Hauser (left) as Charles Siringo, the Pinkerton agent assigned to investigate the murders. Emma kills him.

2. Dylan Taylor as Officer Trotwood, who protects the sisters and proposes to Emma. Lizzie has him killed.

3. Bradley Stryker (top photo) as Skipjack, a low-life who occasionally works for Lizzie. She kills him.

4. Rhys Coiro (left) as Chester Phipps, a seedy photographer who Lizzie kills.

5. Chris Bauer and Matthew LeNevez as Tom Horn and Bat Masterson, real-life cowboys who come looking for Siringo. Lizzie kills them.

6. Frank Chiesurin as Spencer Cavanaugh, a playwright who raises Lizzie's ire by assaulting Adele. She kills him.

7. Cody Ray Thompson and Will Rothhaar as the Trotwood boys, one of whom Lizzie kills. The other she just shoots.

The spectacular beefcake almost makes up for the splatter.

On February 9, 1970, Here's Lucystarred Alan Hale Jr. as Moose Manley (yes, that's his name), who worries that his son Wally (Wally Cox) is not manly enough -- he's "shy around girls."

I had never heard of Wally Cox before, but I knew all about the adults trying to push you into liking girls.

First Dad sets up Wally on a date with Lucy. That doesn't work, so Dad gets Wally a job as a night watchman, and has Lucy pretend to be a burglar. A real burglar shows up, Wally rises to the occasion, and Dad is satisfied. Without "discovering girls."

Born in 1924, Wally Cox had a small frame and nasal voice that made him ideal for milquetoast roles, prissy, ineffectual, and not particularly interested in girls (although they often liked him). Another example of the 1950s penchant for gay-vague characters.

He played junior high science teacher Mr. Peepers (1952-54), with Patricia Benoit as the woman trying to snare him and gay-positive Tony Randall as his ladies-man best friend.

Newspaper proofreader turned globetrotting adventurer Hiram Holliday (1956-57).

Bird-watcher P. Caspar Biddle on three episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies (1966), who draws the attention of Ellie Mae.

Officious bureaucrats and other party-dampeners in several Disney movies.

He also provided the voice of superhero parody Underdog, and was a fixture on the game show Hollywood Squares for 11 years (his last appearance was on February 26, 1973, a few days after his death).

Although small, Wally was athletic and very muscular. He often bemoaned his milquetoast typecasting, which prohibited him from taking his shirt off and displaying his physique.

Many years later I discovered that Wally grew up with the bisexual Marlon Brando, and roomed with him when he first moved to Los Angeles. He married women three times, but he and Brando continued to be close, and when they died, their ashes were combined and scattered together.

If you need more evidence that Wally Cox was gay: he was also friends with Sal Mineo, Nick Adams, and the whole 1950s Hollywood gay and gay-positive crowd.

West Hollywood, Fall 1994

It is the evening before the AIDS Walk, an event almost as big as Halloween or Gay Pride, and Lane and I are having some guys over for dinner, including Will the bondage boy, Randall the muscle bear, and Scott from MCC.

During the time between dessert and sharing or hitting the bars, we swap stories about gigantic penises, homophobic home towns, and hookups with the captain of the football team, and the question comes up, "Who's the biggest celebrity you've ever been with? Big in stardom, or big in size?"

Scott: David Hyde Pierce, star of Frasier
Lane: Peter Fonda
Me: Michael J. Fox
Will: Rob Lowe

Randall the muscle bear sits back in his chair, looks slowly around the room, and says "Cary Grant, star of North by Northwest and Indiscreet."

The famous movie star! We all wait expectantly. I haven't heard this story before.

"Dick Sargent, who played Darrin Stevens on Bewitched,"he continues.

"Um...I'd rather hear the Cary Grant story."

"...and Groucho Marx. All on the same night, in the same bed."

The rest of the story, with nude photos and explicit sexual content, is on Tales of West Hollywood.

During the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, the first thing you did after "figuring it out" was pack all of your stuff and move to a gay neighborhood, where you could be free from stares and jeers and shrieks of "God hates you!"

Once you arrived, you never left, except when absolutely necessary, for work or required Christmas visits "back home." You wouldn't accept a date with anyone who lived outside, in the Straight World. On vacation, you visited other gay neighborhoods.

Many gay kids today don't grow up dreaming of a safe haven. Being gay is no big deal at school. Their families and straight friends are perfectly accepting. Why not stay where you are?

But the gay neighborhoods are still there, waiting for those of us who grew up in homophobic small towns, who are tired of the incessant heterosexism of the Straight World, or who want to see what it was like to have a home.

I've lived in four gay neighborhoods in the U.S. and Canada, and visited about a dozen others. Here are the biggest and best:

The Bravest:
The Montrose, Houston (top photo).
Today Houston has gay rights ordinances and a gay mayor, but when I lived in Texas in 1984, there were sodomy laws and rednecks with shotguns, and police cadets were warned about the "homosexual deviants" lurking at the corner of Montrose and Westheimer. Just walking down the street was perilous. In spite of the dangers, gay people carved out a newspaper, a bookstore, political action groups, and lots of fun cowboy bars.

The Most Political:
Dupont Circle, Washington, DC.
A bit cramped, hard to find parking, but an architectural gem, and only a mile from the White House.

Who would expect a thriving Community Center a stone's throw from government homophobes? Dupont Circle is home to over 50 gay organizations, everything from the Human Rights Campaign to the LGBT Fallen Heroes Fund.

The Most Literary:
Washington Square West, Philadelphia
Philadelphia has some of the world's best gay clubs and restaurants, and it's the site of the first Gay Rights demonstration in history. But its biggest claim to fame is Giovanni's Room, the second oldest and largest gay bookstore in the world, founded back in 1972, when there were almost no gay-positive books in existence, and certainly none available in mainstream bookstores.

It closed recently, bankrupted by online giants, and re-opened as a thrift store with proceeds going to AIDS services.

The Friendliest:
Wilton Manors, Fort Lauderdale.
This was home for 4 years. There were great beaches, gyms, clubs, and restaurants, but what I remember most was the great sense of camaraderie.

Maybe it was because many residents were older, and had lived through the horrors of the pre-Stonewall police state.

Maybe it was because, once you left Wilton Manors, you ran into some of the most horrifying Bible-thumping redneck cities in the country.

But in Wilton Manors, everyone was welcome; everyone knew your name.

The Brawniest:
Hawthorne, Portland (Oregon).
I thought Texas had the biggest of everything, but when I visited Portland in 1995, I found a bookstore that covered an entire city block, a bath house with room for 3000 patrons, and a bar crowded with the biggest, most buffed men this side of Muscle Beach.

More after the break.

The Best for Cruising:
Boystown, Chicago
Halsted and Broadway, east of Clark, the first gay neighborhood I ever heard of, back in college. I haven't visited often -- an occasional conference or job interview -- but each visit has been an adventure. The Cellblock, the Sweat Lodge, the Jackhammer, Man's Country. The only dark room I've seen in the U.S. Plus private parties, biker runs, bear clubs, even a gay nudist group.

You'll be lucky if there's any time left over for the museums.

The Best for Food:
Rue Ste. Catherine, Montreal.
Montreal is one of my favorite cities in North America, with enough museums, architectural masterpieces, and cruising spots for a hundred memorable visits. But what I like most is the food. Especially Vietnamese, which is hard to find in the U.S.: The Cafe Saigon, Pho 21, La Gout de Vietnam. But also Moroccan, Greek, Mexican, Thai, Chinese, Japanese... You need to work out six hours a day just to keep up.

The Most Spiritual:
The Castro, San Francisco.
I'm not talking about Glide United Methodist Church, the first to open its doors to LGBT members. Or the Radical Faeries, the first gay pagan group. Or the many other gay religious groups based here.

I'm talking about the Castro.

Get off at the Castro Street Muni Station at dawn, when the air is chill and the sky is just beginning to turn blue. No one is around except a few early-risers having breakfast at Orphan Andy's. Walk south past the Castro Theater, past the rainbow flags, through the hush of morning,

You are in heart of the gay world, safe, and accepted, and loved. This is what heaven looks like.

The Most Historical:
The West Village, New York.
This is the best documented gay neighborhood in the world, the subject of countless histories and biographies. Gay Liberation was born here. During the 1970s and 1980s, a group of writers called the Violet Quill wrote a dozen novels set here, cementing the still-common belief that all gay people live in the West Village.

Even in Manhattan, most gay people live elsewhere. The West Village is home to an older, affluent, conservative gay crowd, the type who go to the opera and listen to Barbra Streisand. And remember their history.

The Best of the Best:
West Hollywood.
Home for 13 years. Crowded, expensive, no decent jobs, no place to park. Lots of hustlers, con artists, and wannabes. Lots of Attitude.

It's the best place in the world.

See also: Why San Francisco is Still Gay Heaven; Our Search for the Gayest Place in America.

West Hollywood, Summer 1990

I'm working at the Getty Consternation Institute, my first actual 9-5 office job, and I hate it. The same four walls, day in and day out, five days a week. My summer vacation is coming up -- a paltry two weeks (they get four in Europe).

And I want to make the best of it.

"How about the first week in Rock Island, and the second in Paris?" I ask Lane.

"How about staying in West Hollywood and going to the Rage?" Lane counters.

"How about a week in Paris, and a week in London?" I ask.

"Why should I go anywhere else? I'm already here."

"You mean you've never been out of Los Angeles?"

"I spent a year on a kibbutz in Israel. Nowhere else to go, really. There's nothing else there but howling homophobes."

But I like traveling. I've been to Europe four times, plus Australia, Colombia, India, Japan, Turkey, and Thailand. This summer I want to go somewhere!

"Ok, how about this -- I visit my relatives in the Midwest by myself, and then you join me on a trip somewhere. Anywhere you want."

Lane hesitate. "Well, now that you mention it, there's someplace I've always wanted to go."

The full post, with nude photos and sexual content, is on Tales of West Hollywood.

You can always distinguish between gay and heterosexual Boomer boys by asking: Bewitched orI Dream of Jeannie?

Jeannie (1965-70) offered the sexist fantasy of a man whose semi-nude, subservient genie called him "Master," while Bewitched (1964-72) offered. . .well, witches. Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery) has married the mortal Darren (Dick York, left, followed by Dick Sargent), who forbids her to use witchcraft -- but she apparently finds suburban housework infinitely more satisfying.

Or at least that's what she claims to the endless array of relatives who pop in to announce that they've just been to a fabulous party in the South of France or to the ostrich races with the Maharaja of Eyesore.

"I've got a secret" plotlines in the 1960s could always be read as metaphors for the gay experience -- especially when the secret involved so much fabulousness -- and the message, in spite of Darren's sputtering about not using witchcraft, was "be true to yourself. . .accept who you are" -- but there was more for gay kids in Bewitched. A lot more.

1. Samantha was nicknamed "Sam," so sometimes -- often -- strangers overheard Darren talking about being "in love with Sam" or "married to Sam," and their eyes bulged and their jaws dropped as they concluded that he was. . .you know.

2. The disdain with which the witch community approached Sam's "unnatural" love for a mortal can be seen as a metaphor for 1960s race relations -- miscegenation laws were still being enforced in some states until 1967 -- but also for a same-sex relationship.

3. There was a never-ending parade of teen idols, including Bill Mumy, Craig Hundley, and Boyce and Hart.

4. Several characters were gay-coded -- flamboyant, theatrical, and utterly uninterested in the opposite sex, including Samantha's sarcastic mother, Endora (Agnes Moorhead); her Shakespeare-quoting father Maurice (Maurice Evans), and her wise-cracking Uncle Arthur (Paul Lynde).

5. Several actors were themselves gay, including Maurice Evans, Paul Lynde, and Diana Murphy (half of the twins who played daughter Tabitha). And others were gay allies.

Dick Sargent, the second Darren, came out in 1991, and became the grand marshall of the 1992 Los Angeles Gay Pride Parade, along with his tv wife Elizabeth Montgomery. My friend Randall in West Hollywood dated him.

(See Dick Sargent, Cary Grant, and Groucho Marx in the Same Bed)

Bewitched was the inspiration for many "I've got a secret" series infused with gay symbolism, such as Out of this World and Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

There have been three major comic strips devoted to the naivete, colorful traditions, and homespun wisdom of the hillbilly:
Li'l Abner, about a backwoods Adonis allergic to hetero-romance.

Snuffy Smith, who doesn't seem particularly romantic toward his towering wife Loweezie.

And Pogo, about a possum who lives in Okefenokee Swamp, Georgia.

Created by Walt Kelly for a line of Dell comic books in 1941, Pogo premiered in The New York Star in 1948, and entered national syndication in a year later.

The titular Pogo, "a possum by trade," is laconic and soft-spoken, the foil, best friend, and sometime domestic partner of the loud, blustering Albert the Alligator. (we see a similar "forbidden" predator-prey relationship in the animated Sitting Ducks).

They are intimates, sharing a house and a bed. Moreover, their physicality, the grabbing of arms and shoulders, the hugging, the casual pressing against each other, is quite surprising for the 1950s, and suggests a homoerotic subtext even more strongly.

Pogo's other friends include the turtle Churchy LaFemme ("Ah loves yo', Churchy"); the misanthropic Porky Pine, who doesn't like anybody -- except Pogo; Howland Owl; Beauregard the Hound Dog; and the young "sprat" Rackety Coon Chile, who is studying to become an elephant when he grows up.

But Pogo makes new friends easily, with a zeal that veers into the homoerotic. In a 1951 continuity, a carrier pigeon arrives with a "secret message," and the next day the two are shown walking off together, a new male bond formed. One wonders what the "secret message" was.

The swamp animals have little use for heterosexual romance. The flirtatious French skunk Mam'zelle Hepzibah is sometimes an object of affection, but more often a "sivilizing" attempt to introduce culture into their backwoods idyll. When she presses the matter, Pogo admits that "I'm just not the marrying kind," 1950s code for "gay."

On November 10th, 1950, the entire cast watches the sunset, dismal over the conservative turn in the midterm elections (the Democrats lost 28 seats in the House and 5 in the Senate). And the political satire began.

Pogo ran for President regularly, with a campaign platform supporting various liberal causes.

Political figures were regularly satirized, beginning with witch-hunting senator Joseph McCarthy, and moving on to Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, and Spiro Agnew.

But the gay subtexts continued unabated until the strip ended with Walt Kelly's death in 1973.

Although probably not intended in this "Gay and Fey" association between Albert the Alligator and his creator.

Everyone sees Albert in Pogo's bed, and assumes that they're married.

A male flea asks Beauregard Dog to marry him.

A male male cat begins chucking bricks at Beauregard, and the other characters conclude that he is in love with him.

On and on, giving us the impression that everyone in Okefenokee Swamp is either gay, or nonchalant about gay people.

See also: Krazy Kat, the First Gay Comic Strip Character; and The Surprising Gay Origin of "Deck us all"

Plains, Spring 2015

Restaurants in the Straight World are a gamble. You never know which are gay friendly, and which are homophobic, until you get there.

Except for the Pizza Ranch.

I ate there once when I first moved to the Plains. It has an annoying cowboy theme and a gut-sloshing buffet of deep fried chicken, mashed potatoes, pizza, and frozen custard. A few paltry carrots and cucumbers on the "salad bar."

The other patrons were all obese heterosexual couples with passles of kids.

And it was openly Christian. Bible verses on the walls, Christian music for sale at the front counter, a prominently posted Mission Statement: “To glorify God by positively impacting the world."

The only highlight was the wait staff, who were there mostly to bus tables. They were all teenage and college-aged boys, rare on the Plains, and incredibly cute.

There were photos of the staff members who weren't there, engaging in wholesome activities like singing, playing a violin, playing football, fishing, and...um...just posing in a studly fashion.

Surely they're hired for their hotness, I thought. This is a male version of Hooters.

The hotness of the staff almost made up for the deplorably unhealthy food and deplorably fundamentalist ambiance. I've been persuaded to return several times by gay friends, who usually say things like "Who cares about their politics, when the eye candy is so incredible?"

Besides, it's rather fun to go undercover, knowing that if the staff and other patrons found out about me, they would either run from the restaurant in terror or pull out a Bible and start screaming about Leviticus.

One false move, and you're history. The deception is the excitement.

One day in the spring of 2015, I wondered, How far can I go without being discovered?

I didn't want to actually get outed, and be banned from the nightly hunk fest for life -- or worse, rile the fundamentalists so much -- Imagine! A sodomite in this holy pizza restaurant! -- that they would move from screaming to punching and kicking.

But how close could I get to the edge?

The full post, with nude photos and sexual situations, is on Tales of West Hollywood.

Way to feel old. I just bought the 75 Anniversary Edition of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, the flagship of the Disney comics empire.

I bought the 50th Anniversary Edition in 1991.

And I was alive when the 25th Anniversary Edition was published in 1966 (though I didn't buy it until much later).

When I was a kid, I loved the Disney Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge titles, with the ducks adventuring in exotic locales, in search of the Mines of King Solomon or the lost crown of Genghis Khan.

But I had no use for Walt Disney's Comics and Stories.

There was always a Duck cover, and the first story starred Donald Duck, but it was a slapstick comedy, not an adventure.

Then several stories involving minor Disney characters adapted from movies that came out before I was born:

1. The Little Bad Wolf, a "Casper the Friendly Ghost" who butted heads with his single father, Zeke, aka the Big Bad Wolf from The Three Little Pigs (1933). Neither father nor son expressed any interest in girls, so that was a glimmer of gay subtext, anyway. But also:

2. The patois-speaking Indian from Little Hiawatha (1937). Offensive even for a 10 year old in 1970.

3. Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio (1940). Who?

4. Scamp, the son of the two dogs who got together in Lady and the Tramp (1955). He was rascally, adventurous, a gender-stereotyped "boy," with sisters who were gender-stereotyped sissy "girls." Offensive even for a 10-year old in 1970.

Then a text story, unreadable, just so they could ship the comic books at book rates.

But the worst was the last feature, a serial by artist Paul Murray (1911-1989) that paired Mickey Mouse and Goofy. They were usually detectives trying to solve a crime with science fiction elements, though there were also outer-space and historical stories.

The problem was, I never could read a serial straight through. Buying comic books was always a gamble, based on what Schneider's stocked, what was left by the time I got there, and how much money I had. There was never an opportunity to buy the same title several months in a row, so instead I always arrived in media res, or in time for "the ghost was really your disgruntled assistant" Scooby wrap-up.

November 1968: "The River Pirates," Part 3.
March 1969: "The Secret of Shipnabber's Cove," Part 1.
September 1970: "The Sign of the Scorpion," Part 1.
February 1971: "The Mystery of the Counterfeit Masters," Part 3
September 1971: "The Viking Stone Mystery," Part 3
July 1972: "Message in a Nutshell," Part 3
April 1973: "The Case of the Talking Tooth," Part 3.

There weren't a lot of women in the stories, that I could see, so you could read Mickey and Goofy as a gay couple. But I never made the leap. Goofy was too tall, gawky, and dopey to be a fantasy romantic partner when I could get Tarzan, Johnny Quest, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., David Cassidy, Peter Brady....

Rob Lowe started his career as one of the slim, androgynous prettyboys who populated the 1980s (others included Tom Cruise, Peter Barton, Corey Haim, and John Stamos). He played a teenage father in an Afterschool Special; he was in the small-town Angst drama The Outsiders (1983), along with every other young-adult hunk in Hollywood (Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio, Tom Cruise, even Leif Garrett).

He played a teenage operator who buddy-bonds with the naive Andrew McCarthy in Class (1983).

He did the "Yank skewers the pretentions of stuffy Brits" thing in Oxford Blues (1984).

There was some buddy-bonding, some homophobic slurs, lots of shirtless, underwear, towel, and jockstrap shots.

He was widely rumored to be gay. My friend Mario claims that they dated, or at least had sex a few times, in the spring of 1981. But Rob doesn't mention any same-sex activity in either of his autobiographies.

Millions of heterosexual girls and gay boys had his poster on their bedroom walls (Corey Haim's Sam had this one in The Lost Boys).

So far, not much different from the other slim, androgynous prettyboys of the 1980s.

Then something happened that changed Rob Lowe's life and career forever. During the Democratic National Convention in 1988, Rob had sex with two women, one of them underage. A film of the act appeared, along with some footage of Rob and a friend having sex with another woman in Paris. It was blurry and grainy, but you could see more than enough. Rob Lowe at his most intimate.

The scandal rocked his career, forever marking him as dangerous, deviant, and overtly sexual. You knew things about him that you didn't about any other celebrity.

Rob capitalized on his new aura of danger in Bad Influence (1990), luring a yuppie (James Spader) onto the Dark Side, and The Dark Backward (1991), a dark comedy about a pair of garbage collectors who want to become standup comics. Eventually he moved on, starring in a TV version of the gay-themed classic Suddenly, Last Summer (1993), and playing one of the "good guy" survivors of the plague, the deaf Nick Andros, in an adaption of Stephen King's The Stand (1994).

A fixture on television in the 2000s, Rob Lowe has never played a gay character, though he played a homophobic senator on Brothers and Sisters. Politically conservative, he is not a strong gay ally.

See also: Mario's Date or Trick with Rob Lowe

Wilton Manors, Summer 2001

I have just moved from New York to Wilton Manors, Florida, to live with Yuri and his housemate, bodybuilder turned gym owner Barney. On my first weekend in town, in an attempt to fix me up with an instant boyfriend, they have invited two guys over for dinner: Kevin, a bodybuilder in his 30s, and Jordi, a slim, eyeglassed twink from Romania, who teaches at Florida International University.

After dinner, we sit in the living room with dessert (yogurt-covered strawberries), cruise, decide who is going to share who, and exchange stories about dates from hell, celebrity hookups, and gigantic penises. Kevin asks Barney, "Do you think they'd like my story of the Great Underwear Thief?"

"I think so," Barney says, "It starts out weird, but I like the ending."

Buffalo, New York, Summer 1995

Kevin was 25 years old, a recent graduate of Canisius College, working in an office and training hard for the Mr. Olympia contest in Atlanta (he didn't place).

Bodybuilder or not, when you live in apartment, you spent a morning once a week trudging a clothes hamper to the laundry room at the other end of the hall or down the stairs, putting my clothes in the washer for 30 minutes and the drier for 45 minutes, returning to your apartment to wait in between.

He didn't worry about thieves. Washers don't open during the cycle, and who'd want to break into a drier to get damp clothes? Especially when they don't know what's there? Could be the wrong size, the wrong gender, crappy? It's not worth the trouble, right?

"Well, maybe for a pair of your Speedos, I would take the trouble," Jordi says.

Kevin laughs. "That's exactly what happened."

One week he couldn't find his favorite blue briefs that cost him 50 francs in Paris. He checked under the bed, in all the drawers, even under the couch. He figured a hookup stole them.

Then he couldn't find his favorite Speedos.

Then, when he was folding laundry, he found only two pairs of underwear. There should have been seven.

Was he being targeted by an underwear thief?

Kevin decided to catch the culprit in the act. The laundry room was adjacent into the boiler room, a perfect place to hide and see who was coming and going.

He put the laundry in the drier, and then instead of returning to my apartment, hid.

Sure enough, after about 30 minutes -- long enough for the clothes to be dry, but before anyone would be coming back -- someone came in, knelt, and stared going through his stuff.

A kid! Teenage, tall, slim, long dirty-blond hair, brown eyes. Big hands and feet. Bubble butt.

"Hi!" Kevin said, jumping out from behind the boiler.

The rest of the post, with nude photos and sexual situations, is on Tales of West Hollywood.

We needed as many freckle-faced redheaded boys as possible during the 1970s: Ron Howard on Happy Days, Johnny Whitaker on Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, and Mitch Vogel on Bonanza (1970-73).

He played Jamie, a teenager adopted by the Cartrights to give Ben someone to offer fatherly advice to (and, apparently, to give Michael Landon some competition in the bulge department).

But before he blossomed into teenage biceps and bulges, Mitch was a popular child star, with roles in Adam-12, Ironside, The Young Rebels, and The Immortal.

He was best known for The Reivers (1969), set in turn of the century Mississippi, as an 11-year old who tags along with his free-spirit relative (Steve McQueen) on a trip to a brothel in Memphis, sees naked ladies, and "comes of age" (although he doesn't actually have sex with anyone).

But the teenage Mitch did a lot of buddy-bonding, too.

In Two Boys (1970), Jud (Mitch) and his boyfriend Billy (Mark Kearney) "come of age" in a small Midwestern town.

In The Boy from Dead Man's Bayou (1971), Jeannot (Mitch) and Claude (Michael Lookinland from The Brady Bunch) buddy-bond as they wrest a church bell from the jaws of a giant alligator.

His characters got girls on Little House on the Prairie (1975) and State Fair (1976), and were backwoods outsiders who didn't get anyone on Here Come the Brides and Saturday morning's The Mighty Isis(1975) and Ark II (1976).

His last credit movie role, Texas Detour (1978), is a Dukes of Hazard clone about three hippies stuck in a hayseed town. Except it's a drama.

Today Mitch lives in Southern California, where he is active in directing, music, and church groups.

But gay Boomers will always remember him for the bulge and biceps of Bonanza.

West Hollywood, Fall 1987

When I first arrived in West Hollywood in 1985, Rob Lowe was an androgynous prettyboy who took off his shirt a lot in Brat Pack classics like The Outsiders (1983), Class (1983), The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), Oxford Blues (1984), and St. Elmo's Fire (1985).

His fire faded a bit during the late 1980s, and his career almost fizzled out in 1988, after a tape surfaced of him and friend Justin Morritt having sex with two women in a hotel room the night before the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta.

Such shenanigans didn't ruin his popularity with gay fans, or the belief that he was probably gay himself. Even though he, and his Brat Pack buddies, made some of the most horrifically homophobic movies of the 1980s. Even though he married Sheryl Berkoff in 1991 and had two children (Matthew and John Owen).

We still figured he was gay. Why else would he star in the gay subtext-filled Bad Influence (1990) and The Finest Hour (1992), as the psychiatrist treating the dead gay guy's sister in Suddenly Last Summer (1993), and as the mute, angelic, asexual Nick Stavros in The Stand (1994)? Why else would he appear at so many AIDS Walks and AIDS benefits?

Why else would half the guys in West Hollywood claim to have dated him?

During my 10 years in West Hollywood, I heard about a dozen "my date with Rob Lowe" stories. The one that sounds the most believable is from Mario, the wannabe actor who picked me up at the Different Light Bookstore.

The full post, with nude photos and sexual situations, is on Tales of West Hollywood.

Have you seen the famous Rob Lowe sex tape? It depicts then-Brat Pack star Rob Lowe and a friend having sex with two women in a hotel room in Atlanta in 1988, on the night before the Democratic National Convention.

Only one of the women appears on the tape, plus Rob Lowe and his friend.

I didn't know that heterosexuals had the West Hollywood custom of "sharing."

They don't do anything specifically with each other, but one assumes that they did off-cameras.

Unfortunately, the tape doesn't show much of the second guy other than a muscular silhouette. This is a better picture.

Not a bad boyfriend candidate. I can see why Rob invited him to Atlanta.

His name is Justin Moritt. He doesn't have any credits on IMDB before 1988, so I don't know how he and Rob met. Since then he's worked as a production assistant, then a production manager, and finally a producer, of films like Ghost (1990), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), and Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995).

He was married to actress Krista Allen from 1996 to 1999.

They have a son, Jake Moritt, born in 1997, now eighteen years old and working as a production assistant.

According to his Facebook page, he likes Tim Allen, Radiohead, bodybuilder Casa Wilson, and the Marani Hair Salon in L.A.

When you search Google Images for "Justin Morrit," this picture pops up of a tall guy with a tattooed nipple and his pants falling off. Obviously not our Justin Morrit, but maybe a relation.

And some pictures from one of Rob Lowe's many on-screen homoerotic relationships, this one with Doug Savant in Masquerade (1988).

Is this what was going on in the hotel room in Atlanta that night?

See also: Mario's Date with Rob Lowe

Today you can go online and see 100,000,000 pictures and videos of naked bodybuilders and athletes flexing for selfies, and every actor with even minimal musculature takes off his shirt at the drop of a script.

When I was a kid in the 1960s, there was virtually nothing. An occasional Tarzan movie, an occasional teen idol with an open shirt in a Tiger Beat centerfold. And that was it.

Seeing a man or boy on tv with his shirt off was so rare -- vanishingly rare -- that every instance is indelibly imprinted in my brain, as unforgettable as my first airplane trip or my first date with a guy.

Greg strips down to go surfing on The Brady Bunch .
Stephen Parr shows off his washboard abs on Mystery Island.
Steve Elliot shaves while wearing only pajama bottoms on Petticoat Junction.

And, sometime in the 1960s, I'm guessing around 1968, a Public Service Announcement for the President's Council on Physical Fitness shows a teenage boy doing pushups.

Shirtless.

Hard delts, thick biceps, beautiful interplay of muscles as he rises and falls, rises and falls. His face becomes red. He is smiling.

The narrator tells us that with every pushup, he's "a little bit stronger, a little bit healthier, a little bit happier than before."

Amazing.

I can't find the original PSA, but it was an iconic moment, a moment when I recognized the beauty of the male physique, in spite of the adult insistence that only women liked to look at men.

By the way, pushups are still widely recognized as a good way to maintain core strength. The recommended number in a minute differs by age and sex. 50-60 year olds are supposed to be able to do at least 25. I can do 50, which makes me "excellent" for my age group but only "above average" for a 20-year old.

Wilton Manors, Summer 2002

Whenever he's asked for his coming out story, Yuri tells about that night in December 1997, when he was a 23 year old graduate student, new to America, who claimed to be straight until he came as my date to a Christmas party and spent the night later.

Everyone assumes that there was nothing before, just 23 years of silence and darkness. He's only told a few people about his gay life in Russia.

But in the summer of 2002, at a party during the visit of John, the Shy Boy in the Third Row, John asks "How did you get through high school and college without knowing? Even in Russia."

"And without doing anything?" Wade adds.

"Well, I didn't do anything until I was 23, just like Yuri," John says. "But I knew when I was about twelve."

"I don't know there was anything to know,"Yuri answered. "I thought I was straight, because I knew nothing else. And for sex, all I did was..." He stops and looked around the room in alarm. "Um...all I did was drochit, jerk off."

"Oh, no, you were going to say something else!" Wade exclaims. "You were with someone before you came to America!"

Yuri shoots me a pained look. He really wants to "share" John the Bodybuilder tonight, and he thinks his "real" coming out story will seal the deal. But it's embarrassing.

"Ok, you will hear it," he says, finally. "But Boomer will tell it, so I'm not embarrassed."

Volgograd, Summer 1992

Yuri grew up in Volgograd, in the south of Russia, a cosmopolitan city where you could hear people speaking Turkic languages of the steppes like Kazakh, Tatar, and Kalmyk, plus Armenian, Ukrainian, and even an archaic form of German, spoken for centuries by the Volga Nemtsy.

"Enough languages!" Yuri exclaims. "Go to the gimnaziya."

He didn't learn about the existence of gay people until high school, when teachers began including them in lectures as pitiable examples of capitalism gone awry, men brainwashed into believing that they were really women. Fortunately, there were none in the Soviet Union, teachers said.

But there were men: slim, smooth technology students from Latvia, barrel-chested weight lifters, hairy-chested bears with massive bulges. Nudity was much more common than in the U.S. Yuri "knew" that he was straight, that he would one day marry a woman, but he still looked -- in the weight room, in the park, in the sauna.

He looked.

You know how to check out a straight guy's basket. A quick downward glance. If he notices, he'll just think you're trying to avoid eye contact. Nothing more blatant.

Yuri didn't know that. He looked openly, longingly, evaluating baskets, trying to determine the size and shape of the guy's beneath-the-belt gifts.

No one took offense, or associated it with being golubyye, "blue." Yuri assumed that every guy did it.

Yuri graduated from the gimnaziya in June 1992, and was immediately drafted and sent to a military base on the Caspian Sea: the Soviet Union was breaking apart, transitioning into a democracy, and soldiers were needed to maintain order.

He didn't fit in well: he was smaller than most guys his age, bookish and intellectual. He was bullied, called names. He was stripped and thrown out of the barracks naked. His bunk was messed up just before inspection, so he'd get a demerit. His packages from home were confiscated.

But Sergeant Andreivich, a middle-aged career soldier in charge of his barracks, took an interest in him, buying him sodas, giving him books on military history, inviting him for late-night conversations in his room a little off the main dormitory.

Andreivich was in his early 40s, bald, with a hairy chest, nice pecs, a little belly, big hands -- and a big bulge. Yuri couldn't take his eyes off it!

One day Yuri came into Andreivich's room while he was dressing, and saw him naked from the waist down.

"Why look, when you can touch?" Andreivich said. He sat down on his bunk and spread his legs.

"Women are great," Andreivich told him later. "Every man would prefer to be with them, of course. But when there are none available, men can do everything a woman can. It is not blue, like in the decadent West. It is friends helping each other, the true spirit of comradeship."

They got together often before Yuri was discharged. Then he enrolled in a five-year degree program in geology at St. Petersburg State University, where he found other friends, usually older guys with wives and kids.

He even "dated," going out to dinners and American movies with a new professor named Sergei.

But he never thought of himself as gay, not until he graduated in June 1997, came to the U.S. to study for his Ph.D., and met Boomer at Long Island University.

Gay, out, and proud, as well as incredibly goodlooking, with the physique of a Greek god and a porn star-sized penis, Boomer gently took the poor naive Russian boy under his wing, offering support, encouragement, and a glimpse of his super-sized...

"Ok, ok!" Yuri exclaims. "Everyone thinks Boomer is great. Especially Boomer. This story is supposed to be about my special friend."

"Wait -- something doesn't add up!" John says. "You graduated from high school in 1992, finished five years at the University, and came to the U.S. in 1997. How did you have time for military service?"

Yuri looks down. "Actually, I was only in the military for two months. I was discharged for psikhologicheskiye deviatsiiue, having a psychological deviation."

"Oh -- did they find out about your relationship with Andreivich?" Wade asks.

"No. It was the Starshiy Leytenant, the guy in charge of my...um...platoon. He saw me looking at his crotch, and thought I was goluboy and called the psychiatrist."

"How embarrassing," he added. "To be having sex with guys right in the barracks, but then you get discharged for looking,"

The uncensored story, with nude photos and sexual situations, is on Tales of West Hollywood.

In case you're wondering who this boy is who showers wearing a towel and seems very happy to be looking at the muscular adult hunk, his name is Martin Spanjers, and he was playing the teenage Rory on the TGIF sitcom Eight Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter (2002-2005), about an overprotective Dad. It wasn't as heterosexist as it sounds

1. Dad was played by the gay-friendly John Ritter, who originated the "straight pretending to be gay" bit on Three's Company (1977-84).
2. Mom was played by the gay ally Katey Sagal, star ofMarried with Childrenand Futurama.
3. The teenage daughter takes a girl to the prom in order to make a stand for gay rights.
4. At the same prom, Rory's date turns out to be a lesbian.

5. Grandpa (James Garner), brought in after the tragic death of John Ritter, thinks the school principal is hitting on Rory.
6. James Garner originated the "attracted to a guy who's really a girl" in Victor/Victoria (1982).
7. Rory is one of the standard gay-vague sitcom kids, soft, shy, pretty, and struggling valiantly to act girl-crazy.

After Eight Simple Rules, Martin did the usual guest star bit, on 90210, Family Guy, and Good Luck Charlie. Then he got a starring role on the vampire drama True Blood, with Joe Manganiello. When his parents discover that the teenage Sam Merlotte is a shapeshifter, they abandon him -- he comes home from school to find the house deserted. A lot of gay kids could relate to parents unable to accept their true identity. He drifted for a long time, through a series of failed relationships, unable to find a home anywhere, not even among werewolves. Finally he grew up (into Sam Trammel), and opened a bar in Bon Temps, Louisiana, where he dated women but had erotic dreams about men.

Martin has also made some quirky black comedies, such as Sassy Pants (2012), in which a teen (Ashley Ricards) runs away from her oppressive mother to live with her deadbeat Dad, and bonds with her Dad's much younger boyfriend (Haley Joe Osment). Martin plays her younger brother, who is also gay.

During the 1980s, the buzzword was "family values," which meant that only people who had heterosexual nuclear families had value. We heard again and again that the only life worth living involved husbands and wives raising horny teenager and wisecracking preteens. That's why Married...with Childrenwas such a big hit, immersed in a pool of Family Ties, Family Matters, Growing Pains, The Wonder Years, and The Cosby Show.

But there was a glimmer of inclusivity in The Hogan Family (1986-91), which began as Valerie, a star vehicle for Mary Tyler Moore Show second banana Valerie Harper She played the matriarch of a nuclear family consisting of airline pilot husband Michael Hogan (Josh Taylor, left), horny teenager David (17-year old Jason Bateman, previously of It's Your Moveand Silver Spoons), and wisecracking twins who looked nothing alike Mark (15-year old Jeremy Licht) and Willie (15-year old Danny Ponce).

After a season and a half, Harper left in the midst of a salary dispute -- and proved not indispensible. Her character was killed, Aunt Sandy (Sandy Duncan) moved in, and the renamed series got top ratings for another three years.

As is common in nuclear family sitcoms, the kids soon took over. The twins usually had episodes involving cheating, bullies, staying out past curfew, friends (notably Andre Gower), and the "discovery of girls." By the last season, they were as heterosexually active as David.

Jeremy Licht had soft, androgynous features, and became the darling of the teen magazines.

Danny Ponce was frequently ignored. But many gay teens preferred him to Jeremy Licht

.Especially in later seasons, when he toned up. Here's what he looks like after Hogan.

Jason Bateman was mostly ignored, too -- there are no shirtless teen idol pix of him anywhere. But his David got most of the serious episodes (premarital sex, drunk driving, gambling), and he had ample time for buddy-bonding, particularly with the gay-coded teen-operator Rich (Tom Hodges). Rich died of AIDS in a December 1990 episode.

They didn't specify how he contracted the disease, but as this was the first sitcom AIDS episode where everyone didn't yell "Blood transfusion!" over and over, the silence was more than enough.

Most of the cast members are gay allies. Jason Bateman has played gay characters many times. Jeremy Licht and his wife Kimberly are vocal supporters of gay rights; 2012 he participated in Brice Beckham's CCOKC video (Child Celebrities Opposing Kirk Cameron).

.

San Francisco, Spring 1996

A few weeks ago, Lane and I drove back to West Hollywood for the annual Oscar party. Then, unexpectedly, he had to take care of something about the apartment building he inherited from his mother, so he stayed, and I took the bus back to San Francisco.

It's been three weeks, and he's still there: "It's more complicated than I thought. We need to completely remodel the foyer, and there's a zoning issue with the pool, and one of the tenants needs to be evicted."

Yeah, right. The boy just likes being home. Face it: he's not coming back at all.

To cheer me up, Drake the teddy bear artist and his boyfriend Zack ask me out to dinner at Almost Home, a Castro Street restaurant that specializes in "back home" cuisine: pot roast, fried chicken, chipped beef on toast.

There are dozens of Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Indian, Mexican, Greek, and Filipino restaurants in San Francisco, and I'm offered chipped beef on toast? This evening won't go well.

They invite Zack's friend Corbin: in his 20s, tall, Mediterranean, very muscular, smooth hard chest visible beneath a white silk shirt unbuttoned five buttons. Very handsome face, big black eyes, aquiline nose, a prominent chin.

Are they trying to fix us up?

He's very attractive, but there are thousands of eligible gay men within a five block radius. Why Corbin in particular?

They know about my preference for extra-large beneath-the-belt gifts. Maybe Corbin has a Kovbasa beneath the belt.

We choke down our down-home American food and start swapping stories of dates from hell, hookups with celebrities, and gigantic penises. I tell about the time Alan and I accidentally picked up the kept boy. Zack tells his coming out story. Drake tells about his date with John Stamos, star of Full House. Now it's Corbin's turn.

"I'm going to tell you about my choice: handsome or hung."

The rest of the story is too risque for Boomer Beefcake and Bonding. American household in Bakersfield, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles. During college, he and his friends often went to drag shows and male strip shows at the Casablanca Night Club on N Street, downtown.

The gay community was rather small, so when you met a new guy, chances are one of your friends had dated him.

One night Corbin was approached by a rather ugly, sleazy looking guy with ridiculous hair. His opening line was: "What would you like for breakfast tomorrow morning? Besides me, that is?"

"Sleazy!" Zack exclaims.

Corbin almost gave Attitude, but then one of his friends gestured with his palms spread wide, indicating that the guy was gigantic.

Who cares if he was sleazy?

There were no hookups in Bakersfield in 1990. Corbin made a date with Sleazy for next Wednesday night.

After awhile, Corbin was approached a second time: tall, rugged male model looks with a little beard, very muscular bodybuilder physique and a honest opening line.

"Hi, do you mind if I stand here and talk to you awhile?"

Corbin practically swooned as they made initial small talk.

He glanced at his friends. One signaled with his fingers that the guy was very small.

Who cares if he was tiny? Corbin made a date with Mr. Handsome for next Thursday night.

When he returned to the table, his friend said "Wow, what a stud you landed! How are you going to break your date with Sleazy?"

In Bakersfield in 1990, it was taboo to accept dates with more than one guy at a time. You had to evaluate the first, and get him evaluated by your friends, before you could go on to the second.

Corbin had to make a choice.

1. Sleazy but hung.
2. Handsome but tiny.

San Francisco, Spring 1996

"You stole that story from 'The Canterbury Tales,'" I protest. "Where the man has a choice of a partner who is attractive during the day and ugly at night, or ugly during the day and attractive at night."

"Never read it," Corbin says.

"I'd pick Handsome," Drake says. "He'll be the envy of all your friends, and you can work around the deficiencies beneath the belt."

"I think I'd go with Sleazy," Zack says. "No competition, everyone wondering what you see in him. It'd be fun. And you'd know what was waiting for you at home."

"Which one did you pick?" I ask.

Corbin grins. "Why, Handsome of course! He had everything I was looking for in a guy, except for that one little thing. And in the end, who cares about that?"

I look at Corbin. Is he trying to tell me something, to "out" himself as small beneath the belt?

After all that buildup, there is no way I am going to reject Corbin. After dinner and cruising at the Midnight Sun, I agree to go back to Drake's place for "sharing."

The rest of the story is too risque for Boomer Beefcake and Bonding. You can read it on Tales of West Hollywood.

This elegantly-attired, feminine person, who looks a lot like my Grandmother Davis, is Quentin Crisp (1908-1999), who spent his life saying and doing exactly what he wanted.

He didn't like doing housework, so he didn't do any: "after four years, it doesn't get any worse."

He liked to wear makeup and feminine clothing, so he did, on the streets of London in the 1930s, even though he was constantly accosted, screamed at, and beat up. Asked "Who do you think you are?", he replied, "I don't think I'm anyone but myself."

Like Jean Genet and Yukio Mishima, he grew up in an era where gay people were expected to hate themselves and each other. And he never got over it. He denigrated "homosexuals," even to gay audiences. They usually laughed, thinking that he was joking.

He wasn't.

For most of his life, Quentin Crisp lived in poverty, working mostly as an artist's model, thought he had a wide circle of affluent friends charmed by his nonconformity and acerbic wit.

Then in 1968, he published The Naked Civil Servant, arguably the first gay autobiography -- at least the first I ever read -- a trenchant, witty account of of being completely true to yourself as gay and feminine in homophobic London. (The title comes from his job, posing naked for art students, for which he was paid by the government.)

In 1975, The Naked Civil Servant was made into a movie starring John Hurt, probably the first gay biography ever broadcast on American and British tv. And suddenly the 67-year old Quentin Crisp was a celebrity. He moved to a one-room apartment in New York, where he didn't do any housework.

He wrote more books -- How to Have a Life Style, How to Go to the Movies, The New York Diaries. He appeared in movies -- Hamlet, Orlando, Homo Heights. He went out to dinner, said witty, trenchant things -- actually, whatever he wanted -- and was taken to events, including Gay Pride events.

He was uncomfortable with his new role as a gay icon. The Gay Rights Movement was ridiculous. "Homosexuality" was a disease, an affliction, and a curse. Mothers who discovered that they were carrying a gay child should get an abortion. And why hold AIDS benefits? AIDS was just "a fad."

He went to his grave believing explicitly that every heterosexual, however vile, was superior to every gay person, however noble.

That didn't stop him from accepting invitations to appear at Gay Pride events.

Lizzie Borden Chronicles: Beefcake and Splatter

Wally Cox: Was Mr. Peepers Gay?

Randall's Hookup with Dick Sargent, Cary Grant, and Groucho Marx

The 10 Best Gay Neighborhoods in America

Summer 1990: In Search of Remembrance and Penises in Poland

Bewitched, Bewildered, and Gay

Pogo: The Gay Possum of Okefenokee Swamp

A Hookup with the Waiter at a Christian Pizza Restaurant

Mickey and Goofy, the Gay Couple of "Walt Disney's Comics and Stories"

Rob Lowe

The Bodybuilder and the Teenage Underwear Thief

Mitch Vogel: The Bulge and Biceps of Bonanza

Fall 1987: Mario's Date with Rob Lowe

Justin Morrit, the Guy Who Shared Rob Lowe

A Teenager Doing Pushups on TV

Summer 2002: Kicked Out of the Russian Army for Being Gay

Martin Spanjers: 8 Simple Rules for Playing Gay

The Hogan Family

Handsome and Small or Sleazy and Gigantic? Corbin's Choice

Quentin Crisp: Homophobic Gay Pioneer