NYSocBoy's Beefcake and Bonding

On June 21st, 1985, I drove cross-country 1860 miles from my parents' house in Rock Island, Illinois to West Hollywood, my 10-year old Dodge Dart packed with bedding, dishes, clothes, and mementos. There was only room for one box of books, so I took an Italian-English dictionary, a world atlas, Death in Venice, Les fleurs du mal, Earthfasts, Alice in Wonderland, The Gayellow Pages, Pidgin to da Max, a complete Edgar Allen Poe, a guide to old movies, three Alix and Enak comics, three books from the Green Library, The Lord of the Rings trilogy -- and On the Road, by Jack Kerouac.

My heterosexist Modern American Literature professor mentioned the Beat Generation, briefly, as a literary movement that rebelled against 1950s conformity with drugs, jazz music, Eastern mysticism, and free love. He didn't mention that the "free love" was often gay. In fact, the main poem he assigned was: "Woman woman woman woman woman woman woman woman woman woman."

But when I looked more closely into the movement during the famous summer of 1981, I discovered lots of gay content:

William S. Burroughs, who wrote weird impenetrable "cut up" novel (where he tore the pages up and reassembled them at random), but the heroes were gay junkie outsiders.

Paul Bowles (right), who moved to Morocco in 1947, drawn by the Muslim nonchalance to same-sex practices. In 1960 he met a young Berber named Mohammed Mrabet (left), and translated his autobiographical novel about rent-boys, Love with a Few Hairs.

By the way, the 1959 movie The Beat Generation, with Steve Cochran, has nothing to do with the Beat Generation.

Allen Ginsberg (played by James Franco, top photo, in 2010), whose long poem Howl (1957) was about his alienation from materialist, heterosexist American society. It was tried for obscenity due to the overt references to gay sex.

Ginsberg's long-time lover Peter Orlovsky (right, with his brother), whose poetry was even more overtly homoerotic.

My friend Fangorn claimed that his first sexual experience was a three-way with Ginsberg and Orlovsky.

Leroi Jones, later Amiri Baraka, who renounced his gay identity to proclaim that gay men were devils.

And the counterculture classic that every hipster at Augustana College read, or claimed to: On the Road (1957), by bisexual Beat Generation guru Jack Kerouac (right), about his mostly unrequited love for Neal Cassidy. In the novel, Sal Paradise is in love with Dean Moriarity (played by Sam Riley and Garrett Hedlund in the 2012 movie), who keeps talking him into leaving The Girl for wild homerotic jaunts across American.

They like sex with both men and women (they disapprove of "fags," who like only men), but are suspicious of women, who lead to marriage, settling down, domesticity, and conformity, a loss of something essential and noble. Men represent freedom, adventure, nonconformity, being true to yourself. In the end Sal chooses domesticity and rejects homoromance as "selfishness."

But on the way they are obviously lovers, and that in itself was freedom enough in the dull furrowed Midwest in 1981.

See also: Fangorn's Hookup with Allen Ginsberg.

I was always mature for my age, so I attracted guys a few years older than me. So it came as quite a shock when I hit 40, and things were reversed. The guys staring at me, approaching me at parties, and asking me out were -- younger.

Yuri was 14 years younger than me.
Matt the Security Guard, 17 years younger.
Mario the Teen Model, 19 years younger.
But the biggest age gap to date: 26 years!

In 2005, when I was going to Barney's Gym in Florida, three boys from Cardinal Gibbons High School came in almost every afternoon to work out. Two were just fooling around, but the third, Stanton, short and sandy-haired, was serious about weight training and nutrition. He was developing quite a muscular physique, nearly ready for amateur competitions.

And he was obviously gay, staring at biceps and baskets.

And apparently into me, following me around, asking questions, trying to maneuver to see me naked in the shower.

I did the same things in high school!

I decided that I was going to mentor this kid, make sure he didn't have the same trouble I had: assumed heterosexual, not aware that gay people exist.

But this was 2005, in a gay neighborhood. Things had changed!

One day in late January, he approached me when I was alone in the locker room. "That guy you always work out with -- is he your boyfriend?"

WTF? "Um..um...you mean Yuri? We're just friends. I don't have a boyfriend.'

"Me, neither." He grinned. "You into younger guys?"

"Are you kidding? I've been out since before you were born. What are you, about sixteen?"

"Hey, I'm eighteen!" Stanton exclaimed, offended. "And I can prove it. Wanna see my id?"

The uncensored story, with nude pics, is on Tales of West Hollywood.

San Francisco, November 2010

I'm living in Upstate New York, but back in San Francisco for a conference, staying with my friend David. We meet some guys at the Red Jade Restaurant on Church Street: Matt my ex-boyfriend's ex-boyfriend, a South Asian Daddy named Tutor, Seth the Chemist, and his new boyfriend Fangorn.

(I'm not kidding -- he was named after the forest in The Lord of the Rings.)

They live in Santa Rosa, about an hour's drive north of San Francisco. Seth teaches at Sonoma State, and Fangorn grows onions.

They make quite a pair. Seth is slim, blond, sharp-jawed, clean-cut, and Fangorn a big, hairy, husky nature boy with long hair and a beard.

We discuss the usual gigantic penises, dates from hell, and celebrity hookups. Matt tells about his date with Bronson Pinchot, star of Perfect Strangers. David tells about hooking up with Skyler Stone, who we know from Raising Hope. I stick to Michael J. Fox.

"Do poets count?" Fangorn asks, "Or do they have to be on the boob tube?"

"Sure, poets are fine," I say. "As long as they're famous."

"How many famous poets are there, that were alive in the last fifty years?" David asks.

"William Carlos Williams?" Matt suggests.

"Allen Ginsberg. Back when I was a college kid, still named Dennis. In fact, my first gay experience was with Ginsberg and his lover, Peter Orlovsky."

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

When I was a kid at Denkmann Elementary School in Rock Island, my friend Greg, the vampire boy who gave me my first kiss, had a small oil painting on his bedroom wall: a muscular guy plunging headlong from a sky of thundering, blue-black clouds. Naked, his backside bare, looking angry, not terrified, as he veers toward the dark mass of land below.

I found it disturbing, and also fascinating. Who was this guy, why was he falling, and why was he so nonchalant about it?

Later, after Greg moved away, I surmised that the painting depicted Lucifer, the greatest of angels in Christian myth, who began a war to dethrone God, and as punishment was cast down to Hell, where he became the Devil.

John Milton's Paradise Lost presents Lucifer as a tragic figure, striving against oppression even when he can't win. Others see him as a queer figure, subverting the hetero-normativity of Adam and Eve in the Garden.

I've never found that particular painting -- it must have been an original -- but Lucifer appears in a lot of artwork. His muscles are drawn in loving detail, every curve and bulge in place.

All but the penis. He has none (except maybe Jason Lewis, who played Lucifer in the 2007 movie).

Notice the wisp of fabric hiding the Morning Star's manhood Lucifer in the Bower of Adam and Eve (1805), by Stephen Rigaud.

Or Pietro Calvi's muscular, winged statue (1883), with a rock outcropping covering his privates.

William Blake's 1808 depiction is androgynous and sexless, and so are most modern versions, like Michael Creese's Lucifer (2013, below).

Check out Willy Pogany's Faust.

Painters and sculptors who have no qualms about frontal nudity in their depictions of Biblical heroes, epic heroes, Greek gods, famous people, and the guy next door suddenly get skittish when they portray Lucifer, and obscure or erase his sexiest part.

How can we explain the absence of Lucifer's penis?

My suggestions:

1. Because Lucifer is "beautiful," a full set of male sex organs would make him too stunning to bear.

2. His fall from heaven has "unmanned him," left him without male power and potency.

3. Or it moved his penis around to his backside, where it remained ever after as his tail (as we see in this Hot Stuff the Little Devil comic book, it responds readily to the closeness of a romantic partner).

See also: Why Hot Stuff Wears a Diaper.

Will and Grace (1998-2005) was a multiple-Emmy award winning sitcom about a gay man, Will (Eric McCormack), his best friend Jack (Sean Hayes), and their heterosexual female life partners, Grace (Debra Messing) and Karen (Megan Mullaley).

I hated it. I still hate it. I can't watch an episode without seething with rage and trying to kill my tv set.

Here are the top 10 things I hate about it.

1. I know that some gay men (and straight men) have feminine mannerisms, but every gay male character on the program, except for a few famous guest stars, prances. They wear face cream and listen to show tunes and call each other "Mary." Will goes even farther. He believes that he is a girl, literally. In one episode, Will's visiting cousin states that he needs "a woman's opinon" about something, and Will immediately chirps "Sure, I'll be glad to help."

3. Every gay stereotype you ever heard is absolutely true. Grace or Karen frequently make astonishingly homophobic statements, and Will has to admit that they are correct. In one episode, a gay man has to pretend to be interested in a woman, but he doesn't know how. Grace says: "Treat her like your mother." Will protests, "That's homophobic! All gay men aren't in love with their mothers. . .um. . .ok, ok, treat her like your mother."

4. Gay men like sex with women. A lot. Will/Grace and Jack/Karen are always cuddling, smooching, pawing at each other. Will and Jack occasionally kiss other women, too.

5. But they like sex with men more. That's right, gayness is a sexual preference. You have to try both sexes, and decide which one you prefer, like deciding between strawberry and chocolate ice cream. In one episode, Will admits that he had sex with a woman in order to "be sure."

6. They like sex with men, but relationships are heterosexual. Will gets married to his cop beau in the last episode, but before that he had 3,000 episodes paired with Grace. And the last episode fast-forwards to reveal Jack and Karen living together for 20 years. Same-sex bonds come and go, but heterosexual bonds are forever.

7. There is no gay culture. Will and Jack must spend all of their time among heterosexuals, because there are no gay political groups, social groups, sports groups, churches, or community centers. Just a lot of gay bars, and in one episode a bookstore.

8. All gay men are affluent sophisticated lawyers who live in Manhattan and have gym-toned physiques and listen to show tunes and are utterly self-absorbed. Of course, the straight women are the same.

9. There are no lesbians. Will is constantly telling people that he is gay, but Grace only states that she is a woman. She doesn't have to mention that she's heterosexual, because lesbians don't exist. Except in one episode, where they were portrayed as butch, predatory, and "confused." One "changes back" into heterosexual after kissing Will.

10. Sean Hayes utterly refused to acknowledge that he was gay during the entire run of the show. I can't imagine how much internalized homophobia and self-hatred it takes to do that. Of course, if he actually believed all of the contemptible things his character was saying about gay people, I can understand why he would hate himself.

11. Leslie Jordan plays a flamboyantly feminine gay man -- even more feminine than the other characters, so much that Karen's homophobia changes from ridicule to hatred. But he insists that he is straight.

12. Grace and Karen throw around "fags" and "homos" with utter abandon, and instead of calling them out for their homophobia, Will and Jack meekly accept the abuse.

13. Sorry, I couldn't confine myself to 10. But this is the last one: Will doesn't know that gay men exist.
In one episode, Will is going on a blind date. As he sits in a restaurant waiting for his date, he strikes up a conversation with the man at the next table. He states that he, too, is waiting for a blind date.

At this point, what would you conclude?

Right.

But Will doesn't. He says: "You know how women are, they always like to make an entrance." He is gay, and yet he is absolutely certain that every man on Earth is straight.

Like Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel airs its teencoms in programming blocks interspliced with short segments: reviews of Disney movies (always thumbs up!), interviews with Disney Channel stars, exhortations to eat right or lend a "helping hand," and some fictional segments. But whereas the Nickelodeon segments are hosted by adults, the Disney Channel segments are hosted by teenagers, giving gay kids hunky peers to crush on.

Movie Surfers (1997-) has teenage hosts, one boy and one girl, reviewing children's movies, and sometimes interviewing the stars, touring the sets, and so on. The current male host is Drew Osborne (left), who is gay or gay-friendly, seeing hanging out at Gay Pride events. There is a long list of former hosts, including Drake Kemper (a Disney Channel regular), Matt Kubacki, and Andrew Eiden (of Complete Savages).

Disney 365 (2006-) sticks with the Disney Channel, going behind the scenes of its movies and tv series. Its current hosts are Mikie Beattie and Chester See (who sings a song called "Bromance": "Nothing gay about it -- not that there's anything wrong with being gay).

Previous hosts included Jared Hernandez (of One Warm Night), Sterling Suleiman (left, of the gay-themed New Normal), Noah Schnacky, and Kean Eli.

Mike's Super Short Show (2005-2007), Disney's Really Short Report (2007-2009), and Leo Little's Big Show (2009-2011) plugged Disney DVD releases. They were hosted by "really short" kids, including Mike Johnson, Jacob Hays, and Leo Howard (now #9 on my list of the 10 Unexpected Disney Channel Teen Hunks, and star of gay-subtext Kickin' It).

As the Bell Rings (2007-2009) was a very short teencom, 5 minute sketches about school adventures, mostly heterosexist stuff about who's crushing on who. The male cast included Collin Cole, Seth Ginsberg, and Tony Oller, star of the teen thriller Beneath the Darkness (2012), who tweeted "I'm NOT GAY, people! My ass of a friend decided to tweet that!" A somewhat homophobic reaction.

Plains, Friday, January 13th, 2017

It's my second date with Wagner the Music Major, who I picked up in the Student Union earlier this week. We're seeing Hairspray at the University Theater -- in the first row, of course. I always sit in the first row, when possible.

At intermission I look around the audience. No one I know, which seems strange -- I know lots of theater buffs.

Then suddenly, about 10 rows back, I see Kevin the Vampire!

"That's impossible!" I exclaim.

"What?"

"My old boyfriend from San Francisco. I haven't seen him since -- um, 2003. Nearly 14 years ago. What would he be doing here?"

I look back again. No Kevin.

When we met in San Francisco in 1996, Kevin the Vampire was in his 30s, tall and buffed, with pale skin, a hairy chest, and a Satanic goatee. We dated for almost a year, although I didn't care for his elitism, his smoking, or his exhausting bedroom calisthenics.

"Why do you call him Kevin the Vampire? Did he like biting you on the neck?"

"No, but he had weird paranormal powers. He could control people's minds.. He could get hookups by going up to a cute guy and saying ''You want to come home with me, don't you?'"

"That's a nice power to have," Wagner says.

"And he could make himself invisible. You couldn't drop by for a visit -- if he wasn't expecting you, his apartment was impossible to find. But he wouldn't just show up on the Plains."

I've been posting stories about him on my blog, most recently in December. Could that have summoned him?

No -- just my imagination!

After the musical, as we are walking out to the parking lot, Kevin is suddenly standing beside me! He doesn't walk up -- he just appears, like Jesus on the road to Emmaus.

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

Seinfeldwas not well known for its beefcake. There was a parade of spongeworthy guest stars, such as Anthony Starke in "The Jimmy" (1995), but they were rarely displayed shirtless or in swimsuits. But in "The Busboy" (June 26, 1991), fans saw "all that and more."

The most gigantic beneath-the-belt bulge in history.

George accidentally gets a busboy named Antonio fired, and goes to his apartment to apologize. Antonio is angry, taciturn -- and a Greek god. Viewers wanted to know, who is this Michelangelo's David come to life? This Apollo masquerading as a mortal? And why did the producers squeeze him into jeans so tight that his superheroic endowment was so completely and obviously visible?

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Were they trying to make him look more threatening? If so, it didn't work.

He was 29-year old David Labiosa, who had been appearing on tv and in movies for a decade. His credits included The White Shadow, Hill Street Blues, T. J. Hooker, and the movies Private Sessions, A Sinful Life, and Uncaged.

He had never had such a revealing role before. Or such a gender-transgressive role. Hispanic actors generally are cast as super-macho gang members, thugs, and streetwise detectives, but Labiosa's Antonio resists gender expectations by having a pet cat named Pequita, and by effusively hugging George at the end of the episode.

Maybe that was the point: the stereotyped super-macho Hispanic guy turns out to be sensitive and sweet, i.e., gay.

David has been acting steadily after Seinfeld, also, with recurring roles in Walker, Texas Ranger and 24. and leads in a number of films. His war hero Juan Medina in An American Story (1992) won him an Emmy nomination. He's also active in many social causes, including gang intervention.

Hopefully he won't be remembered solely for the gigantic bulge on Seinfeld.

San Francisco, October 2010

Everybody has dated or hooked up with someone famous, or at least someone who's been in front of a tv camera, but a good celebrity dating story has to have five characteristics:

1. He has to be recognizable to the audience. Someone who starred in five episodes of a long-gone sitcom doesn't count.
2. He has to be attractive.
3. He can't be out. Who cares about your date with a gay guy? We want closets, down low, dish.
4. The sexual activity should be explosive. This is an erotic story, after all.
5. The date or hookup should be verifiable.

That's why my go-to celebrity dating story is Michael J. Fox, even though it's been 30 years and nothing erotic happened. He's a recognizable star, he's attractive, he's straight, and I can prove that we had lunch. I can invent the explosions.

My friend David in San Francisco has been hooking up with at least one guy per day since 1996, but that good celebrity dating story has always eluded him. He usually goes with Brad Pitt, even though it was actually a 4-way, and the details aren't verifiable.

But today, David calls and tells me, "I found a new celebrity hookup story: Skyler Stone."

Who?

"Do you watch Raising Hope?"

"Of course." Unlike its predecessor My Name is Earl, there are no gay characters. But there are ample gay subtexts, and endless beefcake: hunky Lucas Neff and Garret Dillahunt are shirtless in nearly every episode.

"Skyler Stone played Cousin Mike in the first episode."

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

Here's a link to the story of David's hookup with Skyler Stone.

And Brad Pitt.

Which do you prefer?

Ok, he's half-Asian, and he hasn't actually made a public "coming out" statement, but he's definitely a superhero.

Supah Ninjas (2011-13) was a Nickelodeon teencom about a boy, Mike Fukanaga (Ryan Potter), who learns from the hologram of his dead grandfather that he's a supah-ninja.

He recruits his friends Owen (Carlos Knight) and Amanda (Gracie Dzienny), and they try to juggle lives of ordinary school problems with battling super-villainy. Including heterosexism.

1. Mike and Owen are scripted, according to teencom tradition, as absurdly girl-crazy. But they have a strong, overt, amazingly physical buddy bond, behaving precisely like boyfriends.

2. Mike is obviously being played as gay, regardless of the girl-craziness the script calls for.

3. The boys tacitly acknowledge the existence of gay people. When they are assisting a woman, Mike asks "Is there anyone you could call? A husband or a boyfriend?" Owen adds "Or a life partner?"

4. You're not going to find many teenage actors who are more aggressively gay-friendly than Ryan Potter (here voicing his opposition to California H8, the ban on same-sex marriage).

5. For a change, there's a lot of Asian and Black beefcake.

6. Grandpa is played by venerable gay icon George Takei.

7. Dad is played by Randall Park, a busy comedian who starred in the gay Asian-themed movie The People I've Slept With (2009). He's not actually gay, according to the article "Randall Park's Coming Out Story" in The Korean-American Experience (he came out as an actor).

8. Brandon Soo Hoo has a recurring role as Cousin Connor, who is scripted as even more obnoxiously girl-crazy than his older cousin (writers seem to think that barely-pubescent boys making graphic sexual propositions to older girls is hilarious). But he has also been involved in several gay-friendly projects, such as the buddy-bonding movie Everyday Kid (2010).

More recently Ryan has starred in Senior Project, Underdog Kids, and Lab Rats: Elite Force. He's also a martial artist.

Someone found his way to this blog by searching for "Jackson Lueders shirtless." I'm pretty sure there is no reference to Jackson Lueders on Boomer Beefcake and Bonding. I never heard of him before.

So I googled him.

Ok, here he is shirtless. A teenager at the beach. 17 years old, a little young to be of interest to anyone but a kid.

Here's another shirtless shot.

But why should Jackson Lueders get a post? Why is he famous?

Google reveals Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, a high school sports timeline, and a site that will tell you his height, weight, and eye color.

Still no idea why he's famous.

Jackson is second from the left. According to Google Images, another of these people is his friend Jordyn Jones. The farthest right is his brother Carson.

I blocked out the girl in the bikini.

Carson, age 15, seems to be more famous. He has Twitter, Instagram, Facebook (2.2 million likes), Pinterest, and his own website, where we hear that he's a singer. He has performed on The View, and his music is available on Youtube and Spotify.

Ok, but you can't get on this blog unless you are gay, or there's some gay content in your work.

Carson's songs include "Get to Know You Girl" and "Bae Back" (2015), about losing his girlfriend. Sounds hetero to me.

There are gay "accusations" by homophobes on the internet: "ur gay bro" and "Carson is GAY!!!!" I'm not sure that they qualify.

Nor does having a soda with Greg Marks, another pop singer who tweets "I need a girl who will be my best friend."

Carson's beach buddy here is pop singer Dylan Summerall, who tweets that it doesn't matter if a girl is "thick or thin," he likes them all.

Dylan Summerall is seen here with his brothers Hayden and Jimmy, who are also pop singers who write extensively about girls.

I've got nothing. No gay content, just a lot of shirtless photos of kids who are too young to be of interest to anyone but kids.

But at least that guy who found his way by searching for "Jackson Lueders shirtless" won't be disappointed.

During the 1960s, Tim Matheson voiced some of my favorite cartoon adventurers -- Jonny Quest, Sinbad Jr., Jace on Space Ghost, Young Samson -- all with strong homoerotic friendships.

I didn't actually see him on screen until Yours, Mine, and Ours (1968), about a blended family with 18 kids. He plays 18-year old Mike, a clean-cut footballer who expresses no interest in girls -- but takes his shirt off, revealing a magnificent physique.

You didn't see shirtless teenagers much in the 1960s. I was stunned. And hooked.

I saw him on tv a lot during the 1970s: not a lot of shirtless shots, but lots of intense, passionate same-sex relationships. For instance, in The Quest, which lasted for only 15 episodes in the fall of 1976, Tim and Kurt Russell play brothers who didn't grow up together, and therefore treat each other more like lovers as they travel the Old West in search of their kidnapped sister.

In The Runaway Barge (1976), Tim and Bo Hopkins, workers on a barge on the Mississippi, struggle to keep it from crashing with a load of chlorine, and end up walking into the sunset together.

Then something changed. In Animal House (1978), Otter (Tim) displayed a beautifully tanned chest in a toga.

Unfortunately, he formed no strong bonds with any of the other boys of Delta House. Instead, he spent the movie sleeping with every woman in sight, including the Dean's wife.

I continued to go to Tim's movies for a few years. He was displayed in his underwear or nude a lot, but sometimes beefcake is not enough.

He often played horny teen slackers with little time for same-sex romance. In Up the Creek (1984), about an intercollegiate rafting race, his Bob has three buddies (Stephen Furst, Dan Monahan, Sandy Helberg), but doesn't buddy-bond with any of them.

Or else New Sensitive Men (like Ryan O'Neal), slim and handsome, but so busy bedding women that they didn't have a lot of time for same-sex romance.

In A Little Sex (1982), for instance, Michael (Tim Matheson) has a long-term girlfriend plus the dreamy-eyed glances of every woman in town -- but his only male friend is his brother (Edward Herrman).

Or else Ordinary Guys and their wives and kids caught up in paranormal horror. In Impulse (1984), an earthquake in a small town gives everyone poor impulse control. Before long, they're fighting, stealing, and having indiscriminate heterosexual sex.

What changed? The shift from television to movies? From teen to adult? Or did the culture change, 1980s conservativism, mechanical bulls, "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche," making close same-sex friendships suspect?

I gave up in the mid-1980s. Since then, Tim has been in over 60 movies I've seen three.

West Hollywood, March 2000

In March 2000, I was back in West Hollywood for my friend Larry's annual Oscar party. March 25th, the night before, Lane and Randall (the bear with the pierced penis) took me out to all our old haunts: Bodhi Tree, Different Light, the French Quarter, the Gold Coast, Mugi, the Faultline.

But we never made it to the Faultline.

I was struck by a twink sitting at the bar in the Gold Coast. A little shorter than me, broad shoulders, very handsome round face with sandy hair and glasses, kind of a Harry Potter look except for the lumberjack shirt.

I sat next to him. He said "Howdy, pardner," and held out his hand to be shaken.

I made a quip about Hogwarts. He countered with a quip about Lemony Snicket's Unfortunate Events.

Our legs pressed together under the bar. "Can I buy you another beer?" I asked.

"Heck, I'll buy you a beer. I'll buy everybody a beer. Drinks are on me!"

"Well, I don't really drink."

"A virgin margarita, then. You have to let me buy you something. I can afford it. I'm Harvey, and I'm always going to be Harvey, no matter what they say!!"

Was that name supposed to mean something? All I could think of was Harvey the Giant Rabbit in the James Stuart movie. "Ok, Harvey, a Coke will be fine."

He seemed a little soused, but not unbearably so. I reached out, unbuttoned a couple of buttons of his lumberjack shirt, and slid my hand down to feel his firm, hairy chest. Few twinks have that much hair -- I was hooked!

I reached down and groped him.

The full post, with nude photos (not of Nate Richert), is on Tales of West Hollywood

The other night at the gym, a college boy cruised me.

This might not seem unusual. I've been a twink magnet for years. I picked up the waiter at a restaurant in Indianapolis just a couple of weeks ago, and last week I picked up a guy at the campus food court.

But this was different.

1. In the straight world, no one cruises at the gym, except for little kids who haven't learned the norms yet. Some of the guys are homophobic, and will respond with violent rage. You check out biceps and bulges with very brief, nonchalant glances, and never make eye contact with someone you don't know. I rarely pick up guys at straight world gyms.

2. It was at the YMCA, not the campus gym. Very few college students go there. The cardio center is occupied primarily by older men, the free weight room by serious bodybuilders and an occasional group of giggling high school boys.

This was a twink. Around 20, cute, with a long face and sharp features. Wearing a red baseball cap, so I couldn't see his hair. Too far away to see his physique.

On an exercise bicycle that faced the weight machines, staring at me while I did incline presses. Smiling.

At me, or in my general direction?

One way to find out: the preacher curl was the only other machine that faced the exercise bikes. It wasn't nearly time for biceps, and I don't use the preacher curl, but I sat and did a few sets.

I have nice biceps, but you can't tell from a distance.

But the twink kept smiling at me.

There were half a dozen buffed older men in the weight machine room. Why me?

I went back to the free weight room, did three set of butterflies and some ab crunches, and returned.

The twink had finished his cardio and was on incline press machine. I chose another incline press a few feet away. Both looked directly at a mirror.

He was wearing one of those slit-side t-shirts. Pale skin, pinprick nipples, tight but not muscular -- I could see his ribs, and some tattoo writing on his chest. He was lifting only 130 pounds (I do 270).

Smiling at me.

I looked away, flustered.

How could I concentrate on my weight training with this kid gaping at me like a lovesick puppy dog?

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

On January 5th, 1955, My Little Margie (1952-56) featured the first bodybuilder on prime time television.

Like I Love Lucy and I Married Joan in the 1950s and I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched in the 1960s, My Little Margie was about a stable, conventional man befuddled by the madcap antics of a woman. In this case the man was investment manager Vern Albright (rumored-to-be-gay actor Charles Farrell), and the woman his adult daughter Margie (Gale Storm).

This episode had Margie going to work as a fashion model, getting a crush on the oblivious photographer, and trying to make him jealous by flirting with an oblivious muscleman (Ed Fury).

It promotes the two main myths about bodybuilders in the 1950s:

1. They are self-absorbed, shallow, and narcissistic.

2. Women do not find them attractive.

Ed Fury was a bold choice for Hercules, even more gay-coded most of his bodybuilding peers. Born in 1928 as Edmund Holovchik, the former Mr. Muscle Beach was one of top models for such gay-vague studios as Bruce of LA and the Athletic Model Guild, and for fitness magazines as Physique Pictorial, Today's Man, Vim, and Adonis.

He was even filmed in a posing strap for home distribution in the days before gay porn. No full-frontal nudity, but some rear shots.

After several small roles in movies, including one of the shirtless Seabees singing "There's Nothing Like a Dame" in South Pacific(1958), he went to Italy to participate in the sword-and-sandal craze, playing Ursus, Maciste, and similar peplum heroes, often paired with fellow bodybuilders like Rod Taylor.

Then it was back to the United States for guest spots on tv series, including The Odd Couple, Colombo, The Magician, and Police Story. He continued to work as a physique model well into his 50s, but retired from both acting and modeling during the 1980s to devote himself to quieter pursuits.

Ed has never made a public statement about his sexual identity -- few men of his generation would even consider such a thing. But he inspired a generation of gay men, so it doesn't really matter.

When I was a kid in the 1970s, Chuck Acri's Creature Feature broadcast a lot of very loose adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories: The House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, Tales of Terror, The Raven, The Masque of the Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia. They were all terribly cheesy.

I loved them.

And the original short stories, which I first encountered in a Scholastic Book Club edition of Ten Great Mysteries by Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Groff Conklin, with a drawing of a naked man (by Irv Doktor) illustrating "Metzengerstein."

It's about a man killed by a ghost horse. The nudity was completely unnecessary, but certainly welcome.

Even without the nudity, the stories were amazingly homoerotic, male narrators visiting male friends to hear their tales of murder and madness, with few or no women around, except for a few husbands who hate their wives.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838). Pym and his boyfriend Augustus stow away about a whaling ship and have adventures. After Augustus dies, Pym hooks up with Richard Parker. The two have more adventures.

"The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839). Roderick Usher and his sister are killed by the evil house. His sister, not his wife!

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841). The narrator and his buddy solve a murder.

"The Pit and the Pendulum" (1842). The narrator is tortured by the pit and the pendulum, but rescued by the strong arm of a French soldier.

(Left: New ABC series with Edgar Allan Poe as a paranormal investigator.)

"The Tell-Tale Heart" (1843). The narrator (played on film by Stephen Brockway) "loves the old man," but kills him anyway.

"The Gold-Bug." (1843). The narrator, his buddy, and their servant search for buried treasure.

"The Cask of Amontillado" (1846) Montresor gets revenge on Fortunato by walling him up. But why is he so upset?

No wonder he was not mentioned in my class in American Renaissance Literature at Augustana, though he lived at the same time as Melville, Hawthorne, and Emerson.

But why was so much of Poe's poetry -- "Annabel Lane,""To Helen,""Lenore,""The Raven" -- about men mourning dead girlfriends? (Left, Jeremy Renner in The Raven).

Maybe because if the women are dead, the men don't have to worry about any of that icky hetero-romance.

Poe certainly spent a lot of time courting women through his life, but usually they were sickly or dying, like his 13-year old cousin Virginia Clemm, whom he married in 1836, when he was 27.

Maybe he found some solace in glimmers of same-sex desire.

See also: The Gay American Renaissance.

Garrett, Indiana, July 1978

When I was born in November 1960, my parents were living in a house on South Randolph Street in Garrett, a small town in northern Indiana. We lived there until I was four and a half-years old, when we moved to Wisconsin.

I have very few memories of those years, and none about anyone who lived in the house next door.

But we returned to Garrett for visits once or twice a year, and drove down Randolph Street, past our old house, many times. My parents often pointed it out, and the house next door:

"That's where your girlfriend lived!"

I didn't have a girlfriend, at age six, or ten, or fifteen, and I didn't want one. I liked boys.

But nearly every time we drove past that house on South Randolph Street: "That's where your girlfriend lived!"

It was the most annoying of the "what girl do you like?" interrogations that tormented me as a kid. I roiled at the blanket assumption that I, like every boy who had ever lived and ever would live, swooned over feminine curves and smiles, that my destiny lay in the prison of wife, kids, factory job, and small square house.

Like the two-story frame house with the ugly gray paint and the broken front door where, according to my parents, I had a girlfriend at the age of four.

We drove down Randolph Street on the way to visit my grandparents -- both of them. On our way to Auburn or Rome City to visit my aunts and uncles. On the way home. On the rare occasions that we did something in downtown Garrett. Ten times per visit. And at least once:

"There's your girlfriend's house!"

Sometimes Mom added a few details: The girl's name was Rebecca. She was three months younger than me, brown hair, blue eyes. We played in our bassinets together. My first word, other than "Mommy" and "Daddy," was "Becky."

My first word was a girl's name. I found that horribly depressing.

In July 1978, I was 17 years old, a new high school graduate. I had just figured "it" out, but no one knew except my brother.

We usually left Rock Island as soon as Dad got off work, at 4:00 pm, and drove six hours to Rome City to spend the night with Aunt Nora. The next day all of Mom's brothers and sisters gathered at Grandpa Prater's farmhouse outside Garrett and spent the day playing horseshoes or board games, watching tv, and talking, with a picnic or barbecue in the summer. But today Grandpa Prater wasn't feeling well, so we just stopped in for a brief visit; the family gathering would take place at Uncle Paul's house in town.

"There's your girlfriend's house!" Mom exclaimed as we drove down Randolph Street.

I started to worry. Was it possible that at the beginning of my life, I liked girls? Did something happen to turn me gay? And if you could turn gay, could you turn straight again?

Going out with a girl, sitting with her on a couch, touching her on the face and shoulder, squeezing her breast, kissing her, seeing her naked...gross! No muscles, no penis, nothing masculine, nothing attractive! Was that my fate?

Garrett is a small town. Uncle Paul's house was only five blocks from my girlfriend's house. In the afternoon, while everyone was getting ready for the barbecue, I put on my t-shirt and shorts, said I was going for a jog, and ran over to meet this girlfriend I had at age four.

The full story is on Tales of West Hollywood.

During the 1970s, the success of All in the Family led to a fad for sitcoms with hip, relevant, "mature" themes. Most were set in "real places," not New York or L.A., and juxtaposed the work and home lives of young adult professionals (if they were white) or poor families (if they were African-American).

All of the adults watched, but kids were leery, unless there were teenagers in the cast (Alice, One Day at a Time).

But who wanted to watch The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77), with the former star of The Dick Van Dyke Showas a Minneapolis tv writer, when the other channel had The Most Deadly Game, with gay actor George Maharis (left) as a crime-fighting criminologist?

Or The Bob Newhart Show(1972-78), about a psychologist with wacky patients, when the other channel had The Streets of San Francisco, with the hunky Michael Douglas as a detective?

Or Rhoda, Phyllis, Maud, Good Times, That's My Mama, MASH, Sanford and Son, Chico and the Man, Archie Bunker's Place....

So I didn't begin watching until 1974, when I was in ninth grade and trying to fit in with a hipster crowd, and then only occasionally, when I had nothing else to do. I found some gay content.

1. Beefcake. Not a lot, but occasional bulges or hints of hairy chests. Paul Sand had a hot older brother. Joe (David Groh), the contractor who married Rhoda, deserved special attention.

As did John Amos, who played Gordie the Weatherman on Mary Tyler Moore before scoring his own sitcom, Good Times. He also starred as the older Kunta Kinte on Roots(1977).

2. Bonding. I missed the overt homoromantic bond between Mary and Rhoda on Mary Tyler Moore (left), but what about Hawkeye and Trapper John on MASH, or odd couple Chico and Ed on Chico and the Man?

3. Gay-vague characters. Not a lot, but I wondered about Howard Borden (Bill Daily, right), the next-door neighbor who dropped in every five seconds on The Bob Newhart Show. Bill Daily also played Tony Nelson's best friend on I Dream of Jeannie, and Leif Garrett's boyfriend on an episode of Chips..

4. The first gay characters on television.

The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966) was before my time; I don't remember seeing any episodes when it first aired, although I have seen a few later. It was a hybrid workplace-nuclear family sitcom. Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke) had a job writing comedy bits for The Alan Brady Show, along with his coworkers (Morey Amsterdam, Rose Marie); meanwhile, he had a wife and son (Mary Tyler Moore, Larry Mathews) back home in New Rochelle.

Larry Mathews, born in 1955, played Richie Petrie. He was less than ten years old during the show's run, so he didn't get any teen idol attention, that I know of. Or many plotlines. The only one I remember has his parents explaining why he got the gender-transgressive middle name of "Rosebud."

I'm sure they named the character of Richie after Mary Tyler Moore's son, Ritchie (Richard Carleton Meeker, Jr.), who was born in 1956. Magazines of the era were fond of photos of Mary with her "two sons."

Here Ritchie is on the right, and Richie on the left.

Ritchie Meeker went to the University of Southern California, and took a job at CBS. In 1980 he died in a tragic accident while cleaning his gun.

Larry Mathews retired from show business after 1966, although he has appeared in Dick Van Dyke reunion shows. He graduated from UCLA in 1976 and went on to a business career. I can't find any photos of him as a young adult, but here's one from 2004.

No evidence that either was gay, but Mary Tyler Moore was a strong ally.

Plains, January 2017

The Unitarian Church hosts regular "circle suppers," where eight or so people assigned "at random" meet at someone's house for a potluck. It's not really random: I am usually assigned to a group consisting of mostly gay people.

But the other night my group consisted of four heterosexual couples and me.

Still, I was rather looking forward to it, since last time I went to a completely straight party, I met a cute college boy, the host's son, and we dated for about six months. I've had good luck meeting guys so far in 2017. Could lightning strike twice?

No. The couples were all "my age" (chronologically, anyway), which means that their kids had all "got married and moved away."

Well, maybe the food would be good.

No. Craggy, tasteless chicken enchiladas, green beans with a weird minty tang, a macaroni salad loaded with mayonnaise, and two kinds of cheesecake. Plus a lot of alcohol.

Beefcake? Half the fun of gay parties is cruising the new guys.

No. I'm fine with older men, but they should know their way around a gym. Three of the heteros were sagging, wrinkled, and speckled, "my age" but about 100 in gay years. The fourth was obese, with ham-hands and medic id bracelets and complaints of sciatica.

An enormous penis would make up for any number of physique imperfections, but of course at a straight party men don't typically get naked.

Well, maybe the conversation would be ok. At gay parties, we start with conversations about gay subtexts or actual gay characters in books, movies, and tv programs.

"Has anyone seen Sleepless yet? I hear it has a kidnapped son, instead of the usual kidnapped daughter."

They talk about quarterhorses, the use of Amazon Kindle way up in the mountains where there's no electricity, scuba diving in the Caribbean, and how you would like to die (the consensus was: instantaneously while on the way home from a nice dinner with your husband or wife).

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

On the Road: The Gay Beat Generation

Spring 2005: The High School Bodybuilder

Fangorn's First Hookup, with Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky

Why the Devil Has No Penis

13 Things I Hate About Will and Grace

The Disney Channel's Gay Programming Blocks

My Friday the 13th Date with Kevin the Vampire

David Labiosa: the Biggest Bulge on Seinfeld

Brad Pitt or Skyler Stone: Which Celebrity Dating Story Should David Use?

Ryan Potter: Asian Gay Superhero

Searching for a Gay Connection for Jackson Lueders

Tim Matheson

My Date with Nate Richert and his Kielbasa

The Smiling Boy at the Gym

Ed Fury

The Homoerotic Horror of Edgar Allan Poe

My First Word Was My Boyfriend's Name

Mary and Rhoda and Gordie the Weatherman: 1970s Hip Sitcoms

Mary Tyler Moore and the Two Richies

The Only Gay Guy at a Straight Party