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The World's Weirdest Place to Pick Up a Twink

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Upstate, June 2011

There's a moderately invasive medical procedure recommended for everyone over 50, to make sure everything in your colon is copacetic.  I turned 50 last November, so I'm up.

I'm in the small, cramped waiting room of the endoscopy clinic.

It's packed -- everybody wants to get the procdure done as early in the morning as possible, and you're not allowed to drive afterwards, so most patients have drivers with them.

You can instantly tell the difference: the patients tend to be elderly, dazed from hunger, and apprehensive, while the drivers tend to be young, bored, and knee-deep in their laptops and ipads.



As I'm sitting there, too tired to read the book I brought, an elderly woman and her driver come in.  She goes to the reception desk to fill out paperwork, and the driver glances around the room.

College age, very fair skin, dark blond hair, blue eyes, a little swishy.  Wearing a pink hoodie.  Carrying a laptop.

Our eyes meet.

He stares for a moment, open-mouthed, as if he has come face-to-face with the Man of His Dreams.  He smiles, looks away, and then smiles again.

I'm a little annoyed.  The boy is extraordinarily cute, but like most gay men over 40, I get cruised by teenagers and twinks all the time.  He can take a number.  And who cruises in a doctor's office waiting room?  Your target is nervous, not feeling well, and probably contagious.

Especially this waiting room, cramped, crowded with elderly people waiting for an invasive medical procedure?  When your target is loopy from 30 hours without solid food, tired from no sleep the night before, apprehensive, cranky, and miserable?

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


Will Estes: Teen Idol

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Born in 1978, Will Nipper became one of the biggest child stars of the 1990s (no, Nipper wasn't a stage name), with a starring role on The New Lassie, a retread of the 1950s dog-and-boy classic (1989-92), plus guest shots on Highway to Heaven, Murphy's Law, Baywatch, Step by Step, Full House, and Boy Meets World.

Also a few movies, such as Dutch (1991) and How to Make an American Quilt (1995). And several appearances as "himself," on The Nickelodeon Kid's Choice Awards, Soaptalk, Jeopardy, and ;Circus of the Stars (he was a trapeze artist).    








 As a teenager, he changed his name to Will Estes, buffed up adequately for teen idol status, and starred in several more tv series, including Kirk (1995-96), as the son of future homophobia spokesman Kirk Cameron; ;Meego (1997), as a boy who gets alien Bronson Pinchot as a nanny; and American Dreams (2002-05), as the son of a family in the turbulent 1960s.

Guest roles, some leading to lengthy story arcs, continued, on The Secret World of Alex Mac (1997-98) and Seventh Heaven (1999-2000).









No gay roles, but some buddy-bonding, especially in Blue Ridge Falls (1999), with two country boys (Will and fellow 1990s teen star Jay R. Ferguson) helping a friend who has killed his abusive father.   He is reputedly gay but closeted, which may explain the absence of gay roles or any public statements in support of gay rights.   At least he hasn't said anything opposing gay rights.    

My Top 10 Turn-Offs

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You already know the characteristics that I find attractive:

1. Religious.  Minister, priest, rabbi, imam, Buddhist monk, seminary student, Mormon missionary...
2. Short.  Definitely under 5'8".  Under 5'5" is good.  Under 5'0", great (I went out with a Little Person on the Worst Date in West Hollywood History).
3. Dark.  Black, Asian, Hispanic, Mediterranean.
4. Mass.  Bodybuilder, man-mountain, husky, chubby.
5. Gifted beneath the belt.

Every guy I have ever dated has had at least two, usually three of the characteristics.  Once I found someone with all five, in South Africa.

But some characteristics are immediate turn-offs.  You may be a wonderful person who reads to the elderly and organizes AIDS fundraisers. You may be a world traveler fluent in ten languages.  You may be a short, dark, muscular, gifted-beneath-the-belt Mormon missionary. You're still going to get the "just friends" speech.

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

Jonathan Taylor Thomas

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Born in September 1981, Jonathan Taylor Thomas (JTT) became a star at age 11 through Home Improvement (1991-1998), playing Randy, the middle son of macho tool-show host Tim Allen. He was passive and somewhat feminine, gay-coded yet indefatigably girl-crazy from the start, and careful to rebel against any hint that he might be gay.

In “Groin Pull” (October 1992), Randy is cast as Peter Pan in the school play.  First he is horrified because he must “prance” rather than fly: as his father states, “Men don’t prance.  We walk, we run, we skip if no one’s looking. . .but we never prance!”  Then he discovers that Peter Pan is generally played by a woman, and almost drops out of the play, before Dad confinces him that he can re-create the role as heterosexual, “a man’s man. . .a man with hair on his chest.”  And it works: Randy comes home after the performance and exclaims triumphantly, “I saw Jennifer looking at me!"



The pubescent Jonathan Taylor Thomas soon began to dominate the teen magazines.  There are literally thousands of pin-ups and centerfolds, far overwhelming those featuring the more muscular Zachery Ty Bryan, who played his older brother, or Taran Noah Smith, who played his younger brother, or their various hunky friends (such as Josh Blake of Alf).

. His character became a teen dream operator, intensely attractive to girls -- never to boys -- and intensely heterosexually active and aware.

But Randy was not content to be just another of the girl-crazy hunks who populated 1990s tv.  He often supported liberal causes, in opposition to his conservative father, and his episodes often drew the series into serious themes, such as Randy questioning his religion or facing a possible cancer diagnosis. When JTT left the series in 1998, it was explained that Randy had been accepted into a year-long environmental study program in Costa Rica.



In his other projects, JTT more than made up for the "every girl's fantasy" plotlines of his conservative tv series.  He enjoyed a buddy-bonding romance with Brad Renfro in Tom and Huck (1995), and with Devon Sawa in Wild America (1997).  He played a bisexual hustler in Speedway Junky (1999), opposite Jesse Bradford, and a gay teenager in Common Ground (2000).











2 gay/bi roles in two years!  The gay rumors came fast and furious, but JTT, like his character on Home Improvement, always denied them: he said he didn't mind, but they made his elderly grandmother upset.

He moved into voice work, guest starred on Smallville, and went to college, graduating from Columbia University in 2010 with a degree in history.

 In 2011, tv personality Lo Bosworth re-ignited the rumors by stating that he was gay on the Chelsea Lately program.


Justin Berfield's Very Special Episode

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I hate it when you watch a tv program for countless episodes under the impression that a character is gay, only to find out that he was straight all along -- or, more likely, the producers noticed the gay subtext and retconned the character to "correct" him.

On Malcolm in the Middle(2000-2006), about a dysfunctional family, dimwitted hunk Reese (Justin Berfield) never expressed any interest in girls for five seasons, even though nearly every male teenager in mass media, including his brother Malcolm (Frankie Muniz), is scripted as indefatigably girl-crazy. 

 He was also over-emotional and interested in cooking, two gender-transgressive traits that could easily mark him as gay.  

To make matters worse, the scripts kept dropping unmistakable hints.  
Reese says “Sorry, I’m gay” to dissuade an amorous girl.

He “courts” an attractive male classmate.










He sells "his services” to neighborhood men and then blackmails them in an amazingly blatant parody of male prostitution (he even lounges at poolside in a swimsuit like a kept boy). 








Fans began to speculate that a special “coming out” episode was planned. Then, in the Season 5 finale in May 2004, Reese is distraught over a breakup with a never-before mentioned girlfriend. “You are mistaken!” the producers seemed to squeal. “Reese was straight all along!  There are no gay teenagers!”

Justin Berfield is the subject of gay rumors in real life, too, but he adamantly refuses to make any public statements.

See also: The Top 10 Hunks of Malcolm in the Middle


Shawn's First Time, with his Best Friend and his Uncle

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London, June 2015

Yuri has broken up with Michael, and is no longer living in Soho, the West Hollywood of London.  Instead, he's in Vauxhall, the South of Market of London, a funky neighborhood of leather bars, tattoo parlors, and dive restaurants.  Fun.

Tonight he invites a bear couple in their 50s and two single guys in their 20s over for dinner, conversation, entertainment, and, hopefully sharing.  The conversation begins with tales of gigantic penises and celebrity hookups (Prince Harry appears  in both categories).

Then, oddly, Yuri suggests coming out stories.

I tell about going to see the movie Grease in the summer of 1978: "We stop the fight right now, we got to be who we are."

One of the bears tells about finding a stash of straight porn magazines, around 1975, and zeroing in on the men.

The other bear tells about listening to David Cassidy sing "I Think I Love You" on The Partridge Family in 1971.

We're about to move on to other topics, when Shawn, age 28, says "I can top that.  I had no idea until I was gay until just after my seventeenth birthday, when I had a three-way with my best mate and my uncle."

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

Robert Goulet: 1950s Gay Icon

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You may not recognize the name Robert Goulet, but he was an icon to the gay generation who survived the pre-Stonewall Dark Ages (1950-1969).

During those years, he was a fixture on Broadway, starring in such gay favorites as Dream Girl (1959), Meet Me in St. Louis (1960), and Camelot (1962), befriending such gay favorites as Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, and Cher.

As a singer, he charted frequently during the 1960s, with the easy-listening pop tunes that the older generation liked as a remedy to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones: "My Love, Forgive ME" (1964), "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever" (1965), "Once I Had a Heart" (1966).

He starred in eight movies, often with gay subtexts:



1. Gay Pur-ee (1962).  Animated cat Mewsette (Judy Garland) leaves her quiet country life for the wicked city of Paris, and her male friends Jaune-Tom (Robert Goulet) Robespierre (Red Buttons) try to rescue her.  There's also a sophisticated male cat shipped to America as a "mail order bride."

2. Honeymoon Hotel (1964) had an interesting gay connection: he and Robert Morse (the one in the dress) check into the "honeymoon hotel" along with all of the other couples.  Heterosexual hijinks follow, but there are a sizeable number of double-takes at the "honeymoon couple," as well as the rule "you've got to have a girl in your room" to eliminate any rumors.

Here's a semi-nude photo of the boyfriend.

3. I'd Rather Be Rich (1964).  Young heiress Sandra Dee has to decide between her fiance (Andy Williams) and the man she's hired to impersonate him (Robert Goulet).

Goulet appeared on tv nearly 100 times, in specials devoted to his music, in his own series, Blue Light (1966-67), about an American journalist going undercover to spy on the Nazis during World War II, and in many guest roles: a hunky science teacher on The Patty Duke Show, a con artist faith healer on The Big Valley. a murderous doctor on The Name of the Game.





The 1950s was the era of the face, not the physique, but Goulet was not shy about displaying his tight, hard muscles for the camera.

Of course, Goulet continued to perform for thirty years after Stonewall, but he aimed his work at that same body of fans who had loved him in the 1950s, appealing to Boomers only in an occasional spoof, or when a melodious voice was needed: he provided the voice for Wheezy the Penguin in Toy Story 2 (1999), and for sensitive third grader Mikey on the Disney Channel's Recess (1998-2001).

In 2005, two years before his death, Goulet took over the role of Georges, owner of the nightclub and Albin's partner in the Broadway revivial of  La Cage aux Folles.  It was like a final shout-out to the gay fans who had followed him for half a century.

Yuri Steals My Boyfriend at a Hurricane Party

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Readers have been asking me about the custom of "sharing" one's boyfriends with friends, especially roommates, which was common in Florida and West Hollywood.  Didn't it provoke hurt feelings, if the boyfriend was more into you?  Wasn't there a danger of breaking up the relationship?

Not very often.  There were unspoken protocols in place.

1. You never "shared" your roommate's casual dates, only committed, trusting partners.

2. You never met with the boyfriend without the roommate present.  Ever.

3. If it was obvious that the boyfriend liked you a little "too much," then you never asked or offered to share again.

4. After a breakup, you could only date the ex-boyfriend with explicit consent of the roommate.


It was mostly foolproof. I can only recall once, in 20 years in West Hollywood, New York, and Florida, when it backfired.

The rest of the story, with nude photos, is on Tales of West Hollywood.


A New Sensitive Tarzan

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Miles O'Keeffe graduated from the University of the South with a degree in psychology, and worked for a year as a prison counselor, before heading for Hollywood, hoping to make it big as an actor.

He did.  The biggest.

Tarzan, the Ape Man (1981), the first Tarzan movie in over a decade, was an attempt to revitalize the Tarzan myth for the 1980s generation.  It starred the breasts of Bo Derek, a heterosexual sex symbol from 10 (1979).

 The plot was about Jane (Bo Derek) and her breasts traveling to Africa on a scientific expedition, where they meet, civilize, and have sex with the Ape Man (Miles O'Keeffe).  Though superbly muscular, Miles' Tarzan was not a man-mountain; he was a romance novel hero, a New Sensitive Man, desirable more for his tenderness than his muscles.

I don't remember him speaking, not even a "Me Tarzan" grunt.

There was no gay subtext.

Bo won the Golden Raspberry for the Worst Actress of the year, but Tarzan was a box office success, making more money than, Excalibur, The Great Muppet Caper, or An American Werewolf in London.










Miles disliked his Tarzan character, and spent the next decade trying to live him down.  I haven't seen any of his later movies, but apparently he played sword-and-sorcery heroes Ator (1982, 1984, 1987), and the Lone Runner (1986), the Medieval hero Sir Gawain (1984), and some man-mountains rescuing buddies from Southeast Asian warlords (1987, 1988, 1990).

No gay characters, but between 1999 and 2001, he appeared six times on So Graham Norton, a late-night talk show hosted by the gay British comedian.


Asim Butt: Gay Pakistani Artist

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Asim Butt (1978-2010) was a Pakistani artist who studied in Karachi and San Francisco.  He was interested in graffiti and interactionist pieces,.

















Art that protested unfair social conditions, police brutality, and homophobic state policy, set up in public places where it would be soon removed by the authorities.










Gay in real life, he often portrayed naturalistic men in intimate poses, the intimacy substituting for beefcake's emphasis on muscle.


















He was a member of the Stuckist Art Movement, which is anti-anti-art, dedicated to returning to representation rather than abstraction.

Kalevipoeg: Gay Epic Hero of Estonia

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When I was visiting Estonia in the summer of 1998, I couldn't go anywhere without hearing about Kalevipoeg.  There were a dozen public statues of him, a naked, muscular god carrying small people.

There was a Kalevipoeg Sculpture Park in Tallinn.

There was a Kalevipoeg Museum near Kaapa, which became a full Theme Park in 2007.

There was a chain of Kalev Chocolate Shops.

Teenagers were filming adaptions of his adventures for  school projects.







Kalevipoeg Imprisoned, Enn Poldroos
Museums were crowded with sculptures, murals, and paintings, often emphasizing the god's superheroic endowment.



















Kalevipoeg at the Gates of Hell, Kristjan Raud
Or muscular backside.

Bookstores were teeming with books that praise Kalevipoeg as "James Bond and Chuck Norris put together."

So who is this guy?

He's the son of the god Kalev in The Kalevipoeg,  the Estonian national epic, culled from ancient myths by Friedrich Kreutzwald and published in 1853.

The youngest of  Kalev's children, but the biggest, strongest, and most resourceful, Kalevipoeg has many adventures.  He:
1. Swims to Finland to rescue his mother from an evil wizard
2. Gets a cursed sword from the Finish god Ilmarin.
3. Wins the throne of Estonia in a stone-throwing contest.






Kalevipoeg, Amandus Adamson
From then on, his companion is Alevipoeg, with whom he:
4. Fights a water demon and a sorcerer.
5. Travels to Porgu (Hell) twice.
6. Seeks out the edge of the world.
7. Fights an apocalyptic battle with the demon Sarvik and his army.

When Alevipoeg is killed, Kalevipoeg is so grief-stricken that he gives up his kingdom and becomes a hermit.  When he dies, he goes to Heaven, but is deemed so valuable that he is tied to the gates of Porgu to keep the world safe.

Kreutzwald was inspired by the Finnish Kalevala, also compiled from ancient myths, and set to verse by Elias Lönnrot in 1849.

But there's a big difference: the Kalevala is all about the quest after the Eternal Feminine, the gods Ilmarin, Väinämöinen, and Lemminkäinen searching for wives.





Kalevipoeg, Drisil Woan


But except for one short maiden-seduction early on (which, admittedly, gets a lot of attention), Kalevipoeg is oblivious to women.  When he rescues three maidens from Porgu, he busily tries to find them husbands, never attempting to seduce them himself.

He is all about masculine buddy-bonding, first with his brothers, and then with Alevipoeg.


A gay epic hero?









Kalevipoeg Mural, Tallinn
In addition to the many literary and artistic adaptations of The Kalevipoeg, there's been a ballet featuring the Kalevipoeg Suite, by Eugen Kapp, and a stage play, a "Cool Epic" starring Tanel Saar, that has toured Europe and the U.S.

See also: Kristjan Raud: Mesmerized by Male Beauty and Yuri and I Cruise in Estonia.

Bobbseys, Boxcars, and Beefcake

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I was never much of a fan of the mystery genre, but many gay kids liked the gentle, pre-Hardy Boys exploits of The Famous Five or their American counterparts, the Bobbsey Twins and the Boxcar Children.

Laura Lee Hope’s Bobbsey Twins series lasted through 72 installments from 1904 to 1979.  Originally the two sets of twin siblings aged normally, but when the series was revised and extensively rewritten during the 1960s, Bert and Nan remained twelve (but behaved as adolescents), and Freddie and Flossie remained six (they all seemed to behave somewhat older than their "real" ages, or maybe that is just a reflection of the extra freedom kids had in earlier generations).  In the 1960s they also began to have more dramatic adventures in realistic locales, though the titles were still aimed at a youngish market: The Secret of Candy Castle, The Doodlebug Mystery, The Flying Clown.






Gay boys found most resonance in Bert, who was in his last days of childhood, still happy to play with his sister and younger siblings but obviously longing for emotional connections outside the group.  In fact, an ongoing theme of the books is the conflict between the comfort and safety of family and the need to “leave the nest” and find one’s own way in the world.  But girls play no part in any of the stories; instead, in nearly every book, in the midst of piecing out clues and solving mysteries, Bert goes off on his own with a boy.

The Boxcar Children were another group of siblings, Henry (14), Jessie (13), Violet (10), and Benny (6), orphans who moved into an abandoned boxcar in the 1924 novel by Gertrude Chandle Warner.  Then, in the late 1940s, Warner realized that the four would make ideal child-sleuths.  She had them adopted by their wealthy grandfather, Mr. Alden, who traveled around the country to keep track of his various business investments, thus providing lots of exotic locales for sleuthing.  Eighteen new installments appeared between 1949 and 1976, sending the kids to haunted houses, bedeveled ranches, mountain cabins, and seaside resorts.   The children age through the adventures, and by #19, Benny Uncovers a Mystery, Henry is in college.





Like Bert, Henry is trying to establish his independence while still remaining part of the family, but, unlike adolescent boys in children's media today, he is never portrayed as girl-crazy.  Instead, when his life outside the family appears in the novels, he is usually seen in the company of a boy (the girl on this cover is his sister).

Fred Dryer's Nude Modeling Career

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Hunter (1984-1991) aired during the Reagan-Bush years of conservative retrenchment, on Saturday nights, aimed at an audience of oldsters sitting at home complaining about how much better things when they were kids.  It took the new "tough on crime" stance -- forget about social programs, go out and break some heads -- with tough, trigger-happy Sgt. Hunter (Fred Dryer) and his female partner/eventual romantic interest McCall (Stephanie Kramer).

I never saw it; in West Hollywood we went out on Saturday nights (after The Golden Girls, of course).





Born in 1946, Fred Dryer spent 13 years as a pro-football player (for the Giants and the Rams), only hitting Hollywood after retiring in 1980.  He had "muscle stud" guest roles on Laverne and Shirley, Lou Grant, Hart to Hart, and Cheers, and a few man-mountain roles in movies: The Star Maker, The Kid from Nowhere, Something So Right, before being cast as uber-macho Sgt. Hunter.

Since Hunter ended in 1991, he's done several reprisal movies, and a sequel tv series (2003), plus some tough-cop movies.

There was a serial-killer-targeting-gays episode of Hunter, but otherwise no specific gay content in Dryer's works.  He's a hard-core Republican who supports the homophobic Tea Party movement.

So why does he have gay rumors?

Maybe it's just the incongruity of the uber macho having a "feminine" gay side.

Or the fact that he didn't marry until he was trying to make a go of Hollywood, and his marriage lasted for only five years.


Or this nude beefcake photo.

I don't know where it came from, but it looks like some of the physique photos gay magazines began to publish when the restrictions on nudity eased in the late 1960s.










Excpet in the late 1960s, Fred Dryer had hair.  Quite a lot of it.  This was the hippie generation, after all.

The uncensored photo is on Tales of West Hollywood


Lane's Date with Batman, Robin, and the Joker

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West Hollywood, Spring 1991

Everybody in West Hollywood had a good celebrity dating story.

Older guys claimed that they had dated Marlon Brandon, Cary Grant, or Rock Hudson.

Younger guys claimed hookups with Scott Baio, Johnny Depp, or Keanu Reeves.

Everybody claimed sausage sightings of Rob Lowe, Tom Selleck, and Sylvester Stallone.

Since nearly every actor was closeted in those days, and vehemently denied any "accusations," it was hard to tell which story was real, which an exaggeration of a casual meeting, and which just wishful thinking.

But Lane didn't have any good stories.  Oh, he had dated some actors: a minor cast member of M*A*S*H, the star of a Saturday morning tv show, a guy who played a Klingon on Star Trek.  But nobody really famous.

For someone who grew up a stone's throw from Paramount Studios, it was downright embarrassing.

"You can have my Celebrity Boyfriend," I told him one day.  "We broke up a while ago, but I'm sure I can arrange some sharing."

"The guy who starred in one tv show that nobody watched?  I'd rather stick to my M*A*S*H story."

"How about Michael J. Fox?"

"I don't want a getting-coffee story.  If I'm going to do this, I want at least a sausage sighting out of it!"

Then I had an inspiration:  "How about Cesar Romero?"

Lane frowned.  "The guy who played the Joker in the old Batman show?"

"You mean Sophia's boyfriend on The Golden Girls," I corrected him.  "And also the Cisco Kid.  And a Latin lover in about a hundred movies.  He was a big heartthrob, back in the day."

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

Fall 1982: Prince Charles is Gay, And Other Things I Learned in College

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In the fall of 1982,  I moved to Indiana University to work on my M.A. in English.  One night -- Saturday, September 25th, to be exact -- I bolstered my courage enough to walk the mile or so into downtown Bloomington and go into adult bookstore.  The clerk, an obese man in a dirty t-shirt, was watching Love Boat on a small black-and-white tv set.  I asked "Do you have anything gay?" and without looking up he jerked his thumb toward a rack near the bathroom.  It contained straight softcore porn like Playboy and Penthouse, but also the gay news magazines The Advocate, Christopher Street, and In Touch -- plus, on a bottom shelf, the directory, The Gayellow Pages.








I bought them all, along with a Playboy for cover, and rushed back to my dorm room, and read them all that night.  One of the articles listed 10 reasons why Prince Charles was...you know. (They didn't say "gay" for fear of a lawsuit): he was musical and artistic, enjoyed the theater, and often wore the color pink.   He was a hunk, with a tight, muscular physique.  And more importantly, he was never seen with women, but often seen with attractive men, some of whom worked as his "butlers" or "valets," where they had intimate access to his bedchamber.



But: Prince Charles' fairytale wedding to Lady Diana Spencer last year, in July 1981, was a major event, televised worldwide.  Their romance was the subject of two tv movies, both coincidentally airing a few days ago: Charles and Diana: A Royal Love Story on September 17th, and The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana on September 20th.   He had a son, Prince William, born July 1982.  (Prince Harry, bottom photo) would be born in 1984). How could he be gay?

 But he was well over 30 when he married, the article stated, and he picked Diana seemingly at random.  His mother, Queen Elizabeth, no doubt pressured him into it.  It was a screen.

At the time, I thought that gay people were physically, emotionally, and spiritually unable to engage in heterosexual relations, even as a screen, so I was astonished.


Thirty years later, Prince Charles is still the subject of gay rumors.  They may or may not be true.  But he was essential to my first realization that the gay world was more vast and complex than anything I had ever imagined.

See also: My First Visit to an Adult Bookstore

Time Warp: My Hookup Turns into a West Hollywood Trick

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In the 1960s and 1970s, when gay men were overcoming years of oppression, they often tricked -- like today's hooking up, but quicker and far more dangerous: you invited the guy home with no preliminary questions, no exchange of phone numbers, no introducing him to your friends, no precautions of any sort.

 It was risky -- you could get robbed or assaulted -- but gay men of that era believed that they were a band of brothers, so no one you invited home could possibly have ill intent.

Tricking fell out of favor during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, replaced by dating and sharing your friend's boyfriends, and then, in the 2000s, by hooking up, with lots of screening questions and precautionary measures.  No one tricks anymore.

Except last Sunday night, I did.




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

How to Survive the Top 10 Problems of Summer

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It's June 1st, the first day of summer.

My least favorite season of the year, hot, boring, and depressing.  But I've managed to find solutions to the top 10 problems.

1. There's nothing to do during the daytime.

At least when I was a kid, there were summer enrichment classes, summer camps, Vacation Bible School, and the weekly visit of the bookmobile, but as an adult, it's sitting around the house for three months waiting for fall classes to begin.

Solution: Pursue a new hobby, like BDSM or hooking on Grinder.







2. There's nothing to do in the evening.

TV is all reruns, and the theater, opera, and ballet seasons are over.

Solution: Host a M4M party.  Advertise on Craigslist, and invite 20 gay and bi-curious guys over.  Nudity optional; prizes for the biggest and smallest endowments.

3. There is no night.

The sun doesn't go down until 9:00 pm.  You're wandering around in a creepy, eerie twilight until 10:00.

Solution: spend 6 pm -10 pm in a bathhouse, where it's always dark.

4. You gain weight.

I always pace while teaching my classes, so I cover easily 5 miles a day.  Without all that walking around, I gain weight.

Solution: Spend more time at the gym, particularly if it's a gay gym where you can do more than work out.


5. You're forced to "enjoy the outdoors."

Come on, the outdoors are what you go through to get places.  What's the fun in spending time there?  Yet your friends get upset when you "waste" a day indoors, and drag you off for swimming, boating, canoeing, or just wandering about.

Solution: when you are forced to "enjoy the outdoors," insist that everyone take their shirts off.  Concentrate on the muscles, and it will soon be over.

6. You're even forced to eat outside.

I've never understood the fun of eating on hard wooden benches, with the wind blowing napkins and paper plates around, and leaves and twigs and bugs falling all over the food.

Solution: Again, shirts off.


7. It's ungodly hot outside.

In the winter you can bundle up, but there's nothing you can do about getting drenched with sweat after walking half a block,

Solution: I had this problem all the time in Los Angeles and Florida.  Hot weather means clothes off, so there lots of opportunities for guy-watching.

8. It's ungodly cold inside.

After getting drenched with sweat, you walk into a building in a tank top and shorts, and face an Artic wind -- air conditioners are blasting away, and it's 60 degrees!

Solution:  Carry a warm sweater with you, and every time you walk into a building, put it on and pretend that it's December.  This will help alleviate your summer depression, too.

9. There are no good holidays.

Fall has Halloween and Thanksgiving, winter has Christmas and Valentine's Day, spring has Easter and St. Patrick's Day.  What does summer have?  In the U.S., Independence Day, the 4th of July, a holiday of jingoistic patriotism, noisy fireworks, and eating outside.

Solution: there are Gay Pride Festivals in hundreds of cities, mostly in June, some in July and August.  Go to as many as you can.

10. There's no escape.

If you don't like cold winters, for some crazy reason, you can fly south to balmy Los Angeles, Fort Lauderdale, or Phoenix.  But there's no place in North America that's cold during the summertime -- even Fairbanks, Alaska can hit 80 degrees.  You'd have to summer in Australia.

Solution: Only 88 more days until fall.

See also: Playing Outside; 34 Reasons to Like Summer

A Glimpse of Supreme Beauty at a Highway Rest Stop in Iowa

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Interstate highways have rest stops every 30-50 miles, so you don't have to get off the highway to do your bathroom business.

The older ones consist of just toilets and maybe some vending machines, but the modern ones have pathways through picnic grounds, flower gardens, and even wooded areas, so you can walk or jog.  I've covered 7 miles in a day just by stopping at a rest stop every hour and circling the path once or twice.

Rest stops are perfect places for sausage sightings.  Men typically need to urinate every 2-3 hours, so on a 6-hour road trip, they'll be at the urinal at at least twice.

 Rest stops are also perfect places for boy watching:  glimpsing handsome faces, muscular physiques, and spectacular bulges as dozens of guys walk past every minute,

But what happens when you encounter supreme beauty, and there's no time to make a connection before he's gone forever?



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

H2O: Just Add Beefcake

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H2O: Just Add Water (2007-2010) was a popular Australian "my secret" drama now airing in the United States.

It was about three girls, Rikki, Emma, and Cleo, who become mermaids whenever they touch water (so no more washing up).  They also can control water to combat antagonists and, eventually, save the world (no, not from global warming).

Heteronormative boy-girl plotlines run rampant, but at least there is substantial beefcake.

 1. Lewis (Angus McLaren, left), the trio's ally, whipping boy, and all around factotum.  He dates Cleo.




2. In Series 3, Emma and Lewis vanish, replaced by a new girl, Bella, and a new ally, whipping boy, and all around factotum, Will Benjamin (Luke Mitchell).  He dates Bella.

















3. Zane (Burgess Abernethy, second from the right), the local arrogant rich kid, who suspects the girls' secret. He dates Rikki.














4. Byron (Christopher Poree), a windsurfer who dates Emma.




















5. Ash (Craig Horner), a riding coach who dates Emma after Byron.


















6. Ryan (Andrew Lees), a geologist with rather a spectacular physique who sometimes helps the girls, but doesn't date any of them.  Not because he's gay, though --  at age 22 and 23, he's too old for them.













7. Nate (Jamie Timoney), who starts a band with Bella, and flirts with the girls but gets rejected.  Not hot enough.

With all the beefcake floating around Australia, I can see their point.  I wouldn't turn him down, but he might get relegated to a Sunday or Monday night date.  I'd save the weekends for the heavy hitters.











Borden's Elsie: Alpha Bull Dad and Gay Son

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Sometimes when we were visiting my Grandma Davis in Indiana, my brother and I got permission to go up into the attic and browse through her piles of old magazines. Good Housekeeping, Saturday Evening Post, Grit...nothing really exciting, but we liked to marvel at the craziness of the past.

One day we stumbled upon a series of illustrated stories from the 1940s starring Elsie the Cow, the mascot for Borden's Milk.

Wait -- was this cow selling the milk that came from her body?  Disgusting!  And who would name it "Hemo," after blood?


The stories were about a battle of the sexes between housewife Elsie and her alpha-male bull spouse, Elmer, with an incredibly sexist passive-aggressive vibe and the hint of violence:

"But Elmer, all the answers in the book can't be wrong!"
"I'm not trying to turn the child against you, darling!"
"Why do men lose their temper more easily than men?"
"It's possible to kill a wife with kindness, dear."



Was this an idealization of the 1940s nuclear family, or a critique?

Borden created a whole back story for the cow couple, including a teenage daughter, Beulah, a mischievous son, Beauregard, and infant twins.  Stories of their domestic life appeared through the 1940s, and for the kids, there was a 1950s comic book series.  And so many advertising tie-ins that there's a whole book devoted to them.

Elmer the Bull, future mascot for Elmer's Glue, was blustering but, oddly, sexy.  He was naked though his family wore clothes.  He had thick bull-muscles.  And, most provocatively, his sex organs were coyly obstructed. I had seen bulls on the farm -- I knew what was being hidden.





Beauregard was a general mischief maker, but he also had some gender-transgressive qualities that lent him some gay symbolism.  Here he seems to be trying on green lipstick and hair dye.










In the 1950s comic books, he's a teenager, and also rather muscular.

By now I imagine he looks something like this.

(Image borrowed from Roberto Linares on YGallery).

See also: Grit


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