NYSocBoy's Beefcake and Bonding

In 1970, sexual acts other than heterosexual intercourse were illegal in every state of the U.S. except Illinois. Sometimes specific sex acts, sometimes just "sodomy" or "the crime against nature." Most applied to heterosexuals as well as gay people.

Some were misdemeanors, but most were felonies, serious crimes according to criminal law, resulting in lengthy prison sentences. In some states, it was the same penalty for having sex with your date and killing him.

During the 1970s many sodomy laws were repealed. Some states added new laws that applied only to gay people, such as "homosexual conduct" in Texas.

During the 1980s and 1990s, more sodomy laws were invalidated through court cases.

But it was still illegal to engage in same sex acts in 16 states in 2003, when the Supreme Court case of Lawrence v. Texas invalidated all sodomy laws in the U.S.

That was only 12 years ago, so many gay people over age 30 have committed multiple felonies in the U.S.

Here are the states where I engaged in acts that could be prosecuted as felonies:

1. Kentucky.

When I was in graduate school at Indiana University in 1983, Viju and I drove down to Kentucky for a concert in Louisville, and spent the night.
Sodomy, buggery, or bestiality. 2-5 years. Invalidated in 1992

2. Texas

I lived in Texas for about nine months while teaching at Hell-fer-Sartain State University (1984-85).

Homosexual conduct. 2 to 15 years. It was reduced to a misdemeanor in 1993, and invalidated in 2003.

3. Nevada

When I was living in West Hollywood, we drove into Las Vegas to go to the casinos about three times.

The crime against nature. 1 year to life. Repealed in 1993.

4. Tennessee.

I spent a semester studying Biblical Hebrew at Vanderbilt University (1990).

The notorious crime against nature. 5 to 15 years. Invalidated in 1996.

5. Georgia

I don't remember why we went to Atlanta, but I remember being confused by a dozen streets named Peachtree.

Any act involving the sex organs of one person and the mouth or anus of another. 1-20 years. Repealed in 1995.

6. District of Columbia.

One of my favorite cities in North America. Flew out twice in the early 1990s.

Placing his or her sex organs in the mouth or anus of another. 10 years. Repealed in 1995.

7. Virginia

I visited friends in Norfolk for a week in 1996. Probably went to DC, too.

The crime against nature. 2-5 years. Invalidated in 2003.

8. North Carolina.

They took me down to a resort on the coast of North Carolina.

The crime against nature with mankind or beast. 3-5 years. Invalidated in 2003.

9. Montana.

We drove cross-country in 1995 to visit Rock Island, and passed through a number of felony states on the way back, including South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. Fortunately, we only spent the night in Montana.

Deviant sexual relations. 10 years to life. Invalidated in 1997.

10. South Carolina.

On the way from New York to Florida in 2001, I spent the night in South Carolina.

Buggery. 5 years. Invalidated in 2003.

During the early 1970s, when fear of the Soviet Union was rampant, a tv commercial appeared depicting a boy with rusty chains wrapped around his head, being brainwashed by Soviet propaganda. A voiceover solemnly intoned "They took his country. Now they're taking his mind. Millions of children are growing up behind the Iron Curtain in Albania ... Bulgaria ... Czechoslovakia ... Hungary ... Poland ... Romania ... Yugoslavia."

I thought the boy was cute. Maybe I could rescue him from his brainwashing!

In the school library, I found books on most of the countries "behind the Iron Curtain," with lots of pictures of boys and men. They weren't sitting in dark rooms with chains around their heads. They were dancing in traditional costumes, swimming in public pools, going to school, or just posing in groups.

But that made the brainwashing more insidious, I reasoned. It was even more important to go to those countries and rescue them:

Albania

Bulgaria

Czechoslovakia

Hungary

Poland

Romania

Yugoslavia

I recently found the commercial on youtube. It was directed by Jack Goodford, who also directed Mr. Magoo Cartoons for the UPA Studio.

Radio Free Europe was an anti-communist group broadcasting news and information from its base in Munich. It still broadcasts to 21 countries in 28 languages.

R.E.M. has a song called "Radio Free Europe." I don't understand the lyrics:

Keep me out of country in the word
Deal the porch is leading us absurd
Push that push that push that to the hull
That this isn't nothing at all

I've been to 48 of the 50 U.S. states, and met men in most of them. Here are my favorite naked men in each state (guys I've seen naked, not including locker rooms, bathhouses, bear parties, and boyfriends). They have to actually be living in the state, not tourists.

Midwest

1. Illinois. Tough call, since I grew up in Rock Island and went to college there. But I'm going to go with Dylan, the 28-year old retro twink met in 2015. He acted like it was still 1985.

2. Indiana. Another tough call: visits to relatives twice a year, graduate school at Indiana University, visiting my parents in Indianapolis. I'm going to go with Tyler, the "son" of my first boyfriend Fred, who I met in 2012. He was actually the son of Fred's housemate, but I still got a weird family vibe.

3. Iowa. Davenport, Iowa was right across the river from Rock Island. Plus I've been to Des Moines several times. But my favorite hookup was with a 48-hour long date with Sammy, the son of my old speech teacher Mr. Blowfish, a Swedish-Vietnamese art history professor who took me on a 36 hour date in Cornell, Iowa.

5. Minnesota. At a conference in St. Peter, Minnesota, I picked up a Vietnamese undergrad at an art gallery, but ended up on a date with his gym rat cousin.

6. Nebraska. In 1980 my boyfriend Fred and I moved to Omaha for a terrible month. He brought home Mike, a teenager from his youth group at church. Years later I tried to find Mike again. He had died, but I found out from his nephew that he kept a picture from that night all his life.

8. Wisconsin. We lived in Racine, Wisconsin from Kindergarten through second grade, but of course I was too young for sausage sightings. I didn't meet anyone in Wisconsin until January 2014, when I went to Milwaukee for a post-Christmas vacation, and picked up Superman.

Northeast

9. Connecticut. When I was living on Long Island, my first year in grad school, I went out on a date with a guy who lived in Greenwich, Connecticut, three hours away by train. I spent the night, and the next day he gave me the wrong directions, so I had to spend 2 hours standing on a train platform.

10. Maine. In 2010, my boyfriend Troy and I went to the gay resort town of Ogunquit, Maine. I don't care much for resorts, but we did manage to pick up a guy on the beach.

11. New Hampshire. Drove through, but didn't stop.

12. Rhode Island. In 2000, Yuri and I visited my friend Zack, who was studying at the Rhode Island School of Design.

13. Vermont. On the way back from Maine in 2010, Troy and I stayed overnight in Burlington, Vermont, and hooked up with an undergrad French major at Middlebury College.

Middle Atlantic States

14. Delaware. I've only been here once, when Jermaine, the Biggest Guy on My Sausage List, took me to Bowers Beach for his uncle's 50th birthday party.

15. Maryland. November 2016: Three guys in my bed in Baltimore, each more hung than the next.

16. New Jersey. When I lived in New York, one night I broke every rule of gay cruising and ended up in the house of a cute Hispanic guy, with his parents in the next room, somewhere in New Jersey.

Southeast

20. Florida. I lived in Wilton Manors for 4 years, but my most memorable hookup was probably when David and I drove down to Key West, and picked up the hitchhiker.

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

Everyone misunderstands the Tiny Toons. They weren't kid versions of classic Warner Brothers characters -- Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and so on. They weren't the offspring of the classic Warner Brothers characters. And they weren't tiny -- they were adolescents, aged 13-15. They lived with their parents while attending Acme Looniversity, where the classic characters taught them the art of being toons.

After years of decline -- no new cartoons, old ones chopped to bits to eliminate the violence -- Warner Brothers was trying to modernize for a new generation of fans. So the Tiny Toons began appearing in after-school time slots, first in syndication (1990-1992), and then on the Fox network (1992-1995).

They drew on the personalities of the classic characters, but their adventures were strictly modern, involving video games, cell phones, and lots of sly references to 1990s pop culture, from Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous to Roseanne Barr.

There were no domestic partnerships, as in the Hanna Barbara cartoons of a generation before. Instead, the characters displayed the heterosexism of the major teen sitcoms of the era (Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Boy Meets World, California Dreams), with lots of dating and romance. But there were plenty of subtexts.

Plucky, an egotistical duck, and Hamton, a shy, sensible pig, are partnered for a number of adventures, including parodies of Batman and Star Trek, and sometimes are shown living together. They break up, seek out other "best friends," realize how much they care for each other, and reconcile.

The human character Elmyra usually lacks heterosexual interest -- she is busy hugging and squeezing "cute little animals" to death. But in one episode, she falls in love with a new girl named Rhonda Queen, and goes to absurd lengths to try to win her affection.

The character of Gogo Dodo also lacks heterosexual interest, and brings a vacuum cleaner to the school dance.

The gay kids in the audience had a lot to identify with. A lot more than Animaniacs, which replaced Tiny Toon Adventures in 1993. Even more than in the contemporary Looney Tunes Show.

See also: Animaniacs

When I was growing up in the Nazarene Church, I hated the hymns even more than the screaming, Bible-pounding sermons: we sang three during every service, nine per week, all chosen from the same 40 or 50 in the Nazarene hymnal.

They were all slow, creaking antiques with archaic language, deadly dull, repetitive lyrics, and simplistic marching-band melodies.

I will sing the wondrous story of the Christ who died for me.
How He left His home in glory, for the cross of Calvary.

Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms.
Leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.

What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

And those are the liveliest. I felt like stripping off my Sunday suit and tie, just to mix things up a bit.

So it was a relief to go to NYPS (Nazarene Young People's Society) every Sunday before the evening service, where we got to sing "contemporary gospel," mostly songs by Bill Gaither:

If there ever were dreams that were lofty and noble, they were my dreams at the start.
And hope for life's best were the hopes that I harbored down deep in my heart.

The marketplace is empty, no more traffic in the street.
All the builders' tools are silent, no more time to harvest wheat.

Interesting images, a vocabulary larger than 10 words, and melodies that didn't put you to sleep. Not exactly Led Zeppelin, but a thousand times better than "Leaning, leaning, leaning."

Born in 1936 in northern Indiana, Bill Gaither worked as an English teacher before nearly single-handedly introducing contemporary musical styles into the staid tradition of Christian music.

At first he was met with resistance: parents refused to allow their children to attend his concerts, and pastors denounced his songs as Satanic. But by the 1970s, the new hip Jesus People-Campus Crusade crowd of evangelicals latched onto him, sometimes even the more progressive Nazarenes.

He performed in the Bill Gaither Trio, with his brother Danny and his sister Mary Anne and friend Gary McSpadden (the one with the whitest teeth).

Eventually their children, grandchildren, and various hot guys with bulges and very, very white teeth got into the act.

Ok, so what's the gay connection?

1. Did you see the way these guys hung all over each other?

2. Speaking of hung, live performances were always...um...interesting.

3. Bill Gaither singing "He touched me."

4. Mark Lowry, former member of the Gaither Vocal Band, is reputedly gay.

5. Marsha Stevens, the gay Christian songwriter who wrote the classic "For Those Tears I Died" (second left, with her lover Caroline Pino), appeared on Gaither Homecoming in 2002. Gaither said "I appreciate your ministry," apparently referring to her ministry to gay Christians.

6. Son Benjy Gaither wrote and performs three songs in Bridegroom (2013), about the legal and emotional hurdles faced by a gay man after his partner dies.

See also: The Sanderson Boys Get Naked.

Forestville, Arkansas, May 1985

In 1984, just after getting my M.A. from Indiana University, I took a job in Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas.

I hated every minute of it, except for my Italian class and the few occasions when a well-hung redneck shared my bed.

On May 8th, 1985, I packed my stuff into my car -- actually, I threw most of it out in order to travel light -- dropped off the apartment key to my horrible illiterate landlord, and drove to the horrible campus of Longhorn State University, where I gave my last final exam to my last horrible class, graded it, and turned in the grade forms to the horrible department office. Then, at 3:05 pm, I walked out into the parking lot, got into my car, and drove.

The quickest route home took you through godforsaken Texas for five hours, and I wanted out as soon as possible. So I drove east for two hours, not stopping for food, gas, or bathroom breaks until I saw that "Welcome to Louisiana" sign, breathed deeply, and vowed never to set foot in Texas again

.

And I haven't.

I planned to drive the whole 20 hours home straight through, but I'd been up since before dawn grading papers and cleaning my apartment, so at around 12:30 am, I couldn't drive anymore. I stopped at a rest stop on Interstate 40, near Forrestville, Arkansas.

After an hour or so, I had to go to the bathroom. so I went into the little bathroom building, chose a stall, and and sat down. It had a glory hole looking directly into the next stall!

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

If you're interested in African or African-American men, you should take a look at the traditional art of sub-Saharan Africa. There are hundreds of cultural groups with a variety of artistic styles, but they have one thing in common:

An appreciation of the penis.

The male bodies are usually stylized, with little of the anatomical precision of European nudes, but the penis is always big, blatant, the focal point of the piece.

The Fon, the traditional leader of the grasslands of Cameroun, is apparently chosen based on his monumental phallus.

The Magbetu people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are known for their elongated heads, traditional cannibalism, and penises.

A terracotta figure, with an unusual penis -- gigantic, but not aroused -- from the Nok culture that flourished in Nigeria between 1500 BC and 500 AD.

More after the break.

This is a bateba, an "ordinary figure," not a king or god, from the Lobi of Burkina Faso in central Africa. Regular sized, a nice change of pace from all of the super-gigantic ones.

In Ouidah, Benin, the sacred capital of the Vodon religion (known in North America as voodoo), there are statues of many gods in a sacred forest. This one is aroused, and horned.

Penises appear in art forms besides statues. This is a charm or fetish", to be worn around your neck, from the Luba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Chisaluke is a ceremonial mask, representing an ancestor, worn by the Chokwe of Angola. In this case, it comes with a codpiece.

The best collections of African art are at the British Museum, National Museum of African Art (Washington DC), the Art Institute of Chicago, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the British Museum, and the Musee du Quai Branley (Paris)

Men even transformed their bodies into living canvasses, using paint, clay, or scarification to highlight their best features.

I can't show real nude men here, so those pictures are on Tales of West Hollywood.

This is the Part 2 of my list of men I dated, hooked up with, or saw naked in each of th 50 states. They have to be guys who lived there, not tourists.

West

27. Alaska. Flew up to Anchorage for a job interview. No time for hookups, but I did get a sausage sighting in the men's room at the Club Paris.

30. Nevada. If you think trying to pick up the bartender is tough, try the croupier at a blackjack table at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.

31. Oregon. During the Great Redneck Roundup of 1995, Lane and I stopped into a bathhouse in Portland.

32. Washington. Sausage sighting of a pilot in the men's room at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

Southwest

33. Arizona. In Flagstaff during the Great Redneck Roundup of 1995, Lane and I hooked up with a Hispanic waiter.

34. New Mexico. Summer 2004: visiting my friend Larry in Santa Fe, cruising in the Navajo Nation, and picking up Jason, the Tucumcari Twink.

35. Oklahoma. On the way back to Los Angeles from my semester in Nashville, I stopped for the night at a hotel, and went to a gay bar.

36. Texas. A year (actually just 9 horrible months) in Hell-fer-Sartain, the worst place in the world, but the most memorable was the New Age/Astrology devotee. I drove all the way down to Galveston to spend the night with him, and in the morning accidentally dropped a ceramic bowl full of plums. That seemed symbolic, somehow.

South

45. Alabama. During my semester in Nashville, Larry and I drove to Huntsville, Alabama to see the U.S. Space Center. I met an older African-American man who argued about all the good George Wallace did for the country. We brought him home anyway.

46. Arkansas. While driving back from Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, I stopped at a rest stop with a glory hole, and watched a guy in the next stall.

50. Missouri. 36 hours of cruising at Lambert International Airport, but I'm going to go with the guy I met at a diner on the way back from Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas.

51. Tennessee. When I was a kid, we visited Smoky Mountains National Park, on the border of Tennessee and Kentucky, and I got a nice sausage sighting of a teenage Indian god.

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

Big pecs and biceps are the stars of the male physique, but abs are a close third. They're much harder to develop, not about size but about definition, so they're the signature of the well-developed man.

There are actually four sets of muscles on the trunk:
The rectus abdominus in the front, which give you the "xylophone" effect
The serratus on the upper sides, which connect the abdomen and the pecs.
The transverse abdominus
The obliques on the lower sides, the biggest of the abdominal muscles.

Everybody tries crunches and sit-ups for their abs, but they are almost impossible to do effectively. I suggest the plank (reverse push-up) and side twists.

And cardio: since abs are a matter of definition rather than bulk, you need to get your body fat down.

The definition is most noticeable when the abs are hairless.

But hairy abs have a charm of their own.

A thin line of hair going down the abdominal ridge is called a "glory trail," since it draws the eye to the crotch. Charlie McDermott made the glory trail famous by displaying his in nearly every episode of The Middle.

More after the break.

When you're young, your metabolism is revved up, so getting defined abs is relatively easy. If you want to see some nicely defined abs, date a twink.

Or a teenager.

As you age, it becomes harder and harder to maintain the low body fat necessary for defined abs. Over fifty, unless you're blessed by the right genes, it's nearly impossible.

But there's nothing wrong with a little layer of fat.

Or a big layer. Studies have demonstrated that belly fat is not necessarily a health risk, and a guy with a bit of bulk looks hot.

The uncensored photos are on Tales of West Hollywood.

Paris, July 7, 1991

My partner Lane and I arrived in Paris yesterday, on the first of the Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam jaunts that would become an annual tradition. He'd never been to Paris before, and I had only been once, so we wanted to cram as much sightseeing as possible into our five days: the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, Notre Dame, Shakespeare and Company Bookstore, the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower...

And, of course, we wanted to "share" as many men as possible.

Alan the Pentecostal Porn Star, who moved to Paris two years offered some suggestions from his long list of tricks and dates: mostly twinks and Cute Young Things but all sizes and shapes, races and languages.

"Claude is from Belgium -- a face like an angel...Michel is studying political philosophy at the Sorbonne -- kind of a nerd, but hung!..."

"What about Hanno R___?" Lane read from the list. The note said "Sailor, 25. From Lappland."

"Right. He lives in Le Havre now, but he grew up in Lappland, in northern Sweden."

The Lapps, or Saami! I had dreamed about those mysterious reindeer-herding nomads ever since I read Sonia and Tim Gidal's Follow the Reindeer in third grade. They were the original inhabitants of Scandinavia, before the Germanic tribes moved in. Today there are 130,000, most still nomadic, wandering the far north of Finland, Scandinavia, Norway, and Russia. They speak a Uralic language, related to Finnish and Hungarian.

English: penis
Saami: cihppa
Finnish: siitin
Hungarian: himvesszo

By the way, the standard Saami unit of measurement, the equivalent of the English foot, is "penis-length."

They found their penises a more convenient measurement than their feet.

That settled it. We were hooking up with the Lapp!

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

My brother, who is heterosexual, was a big fan of The Village People (also Barbara Streisand, Liza with a Z, and Olivia Newton-John). During the winter after Grease, when their "Y.M.C.A." hit #1 on the pop charts, he kept asking me "Why don't you like them? They're gay, aren't they? Like ABBA?"

That's the problem. They weren't about being gay, they were about innuendo.

During the 1970s, the old stereotype of the gay man as a mincing, lisping queen received some competition from the stereotype of the Castro Clone: slim, hairy, with a Tom Selleck moustache, a lumberjack shirt, and tight jeans. The Castro Clone had three passions: disco, drugs, and sex, and he partook of vast quantities of all of them. So they were pure ids rather than prissy superegos. It caught on, and even today, students tell me that "Gay men can't control their sex drive" about as often as "Gay men think they're women."

Record producer Jacques Morelli capitalized on the new stereotype by designing the Village People, a mismatched group of Tom of Finland cartoons solicited from the streets of Greenwich Village: The Soldier, The Cop, The Construction Worker, The Cowboy, The Leatherman, and The Indian (wait -- Tom of Finland never drew any Indians).

Only The Indian (Felipe Rose) was gay in real life, and even he gave interviews with teen magazines talking about the kind of girls he liked.

They were all straight pretending to be gay, or rather hinting that they might be gay (except the Indian, who was gay pretending to be straight hinting that he might be gay).

The lyrics to their songs seemed perfectly innocent and uplifting.

"In the Navy": Can't you see we need a hand, come and join your fellow man.
"Y.M.C.A.": They have everything for young men to enjoy, you can hang out with all the boys

But the fun for listeners was in realizing that the lyrics could be read as dirty, feeling marvelously knowledgeable about the nasty, decadent world of the Castro Clone.

I didn't find it fun.

I still went to see the fictionalized account of the rise of the Village People, Can't Stop the Music (1980), because it starred Steve Guttenberg (who starred in The Chicken Chronicles) as record producer Jack Morel, who wears incredibly tight pants as he roller-discos through life.

And athlete Bruce Jenner (now Caitlin Jenner) as Ron White, his business partner and apparently his boyfriend.

There are ample shirtless and underwear, plus full frontal male but no female nudity, and no heterosexual sex scenes. But there's a heterosexual love story, all of the Village People are presented as heterosexual, and no gay people appear.

Or rather, everyone is gay. The fun is in seeing how open they could get without actually having to admit that they are aware that gay people exist.

See also: Culture Club.

During the six years of Junior High and High School, I was in gym class every day -- that's about a thousand days. And I still have no idea what it was for.

It was technically called "physical education, but it wasn't about how your body works, or how to stay in good physical condition. It was about team sports.

But we never received any instruction in team sports: the various positions, how to keep score, strategies and game plans. We were just trotted onto the field and told to divide into teams and play football (fall), basketball (winter) or baseball (spring).

The jocks who were already playing those sports liked the extra practice. No one else did. I have yet to meet a single non-jock who enjoyed gym class. Some found it mind-numbingly dull; but most found it excruciating, a painful trauma that soured them on physical activity forever.

My friends and I soon discovered that getting through gym class alive required strategizing, cooperation, and a lot of luck. Maybe that's what the class was meant to teach us.

1. How to avoid being called a "girl."

Jocks hate anything feminine; the worst possible insult is to "be a girl" or "be like a girl."

Pointing out that many girls are excellent athletes won't work. So just turn it back on them.

Suggest that their movements are similar to those a girl might make. They'll be so busy scrutinizing each other that they'll have no time for you.

2. How to avoid being called a "fairy."

The second worst possible insult is to "be a fairy," which in junior high meant any boy with feminine traits. So be a fairy! Wiggle those hips, sashay out onto that field, and throw the ball with that downward limp-wrist motion. After all that, pointing out that "You throw like a fairy" loses all of its power.

3. How to avoid a woeful ignorance of sports.

Claim expertise in a sport you'll play far in the future. So, during football season, claim "Sure, I play football like a fairy, but wait until basketball season!" Then, during basketball season, "Sure, I play basketball like a girl, but wait until baseball season!"

4. How to avoid being obliterated by a flying projectile

Stand far enough away so that no ball will be aimed at you, except through chance. And if a ball does start careening toward you, run fast in the other direction.

This doesn't work with baseball, when you're supposed to actually hit the ball with your bat.

5. How to avoied being forced to play on a team.

This happened when the coach had two jocks decide who they wanted to play on their team -- your goal is not to be chosen. So your best bet is to pretend you can't tell one team from another. If someone carrying a ball runs toward you, run fast in the other direction. If someone hands you a ball, immediately hand it to the nearest person regardless of whether he's a shirt or a skin.

6. How to avoid being bellowed at by the coach.

Coaches like to pretend that you're a military recruits in boot camp, so they yell, bellow, humiliate, and force you to "Drop and give me twenty!" But they are supposed to be teachers -- they have degrees in education. They learned how to write lesson plans, lead classes, and give exams. So remind the coach of his roots. Ask, "Can you help me learn this move?" and "What books do you recommend on the game?"

But be careful -- he may snap "Don't get smart! You know all about this sport, just like every other boy on Earth."

7. How to avoid the soul-destroying boredom that is sports.

Just look around. The beefcake will give you enough erotic fantasies to easily fill the hour.

Of course, participants in the big three sports don't dress this way on the playing field, but just wait a little while, and it will be time for the showers. The opportunity to watch hot jocks stripping down in the locker room almost makes gym class worthwhile.

See also: What is Gym Class For?

He's big, awkward, clumsy, and gawky, with weird tattoos and piercings.

He's still asleep at noon.

He is constantly texting, tweeting, and posting on social media, but he refuses to hold a face-to-face conversation. When you ask "How was your day?", you get a blank stare.

He leaves his clothes scattered all over the floor, dumps wet towels all over the bathroom, and God forbid he ever washes a dish.

He is physically incapable of showing up for anything on time.

He is constantly criticizing your wardrobe, musical tastes, pop culture references, and knowledge of technology.

He has pizza and ice cream for breakfast, and never gains an ounce.

He wants sex thirty time a day.

Well, maybe not that last thing.

Jim Borgman and Jerry Scott's comic strip Zits depicts 15-year old Jeremy Duncan from the parents' point of view, depicting adolescence in all of its geeky, gawky, messy, self-obsessed glory.

But if you're dating teenagers or twinks, it will ring absolutely.

I can see Jeremy every time I try to wake up a 21-year old before noon, or try to get him to look up from the smartphone now and then, or order a salad while he gets the triple-bacon cheeseburger.

Jeremy has a coterie of friends, including best bud Hector, bohemian Pierce, and girlfriend Sarah, but most of the jokes involve generation-gap squabbles with Mom and Dad.

There are also jokes about being middle-aged, balding, and clueless, to give the teenagers something to laugh at.

There are only two differences between the 21-year old still snoring in my bed at 11:30 am and Jeremy Duncan:

1. Jeremy is not attractive. Actually, there's no beefcake in the strip at all. Sometimes the cartoonist pays attention to feminine breast and curves, but the men are all stylized and nondescript, meant to be funny-looking rather than hot.

2. Jeremy is heterosexual. Way, way, way heterosexual, in that annoying "girl-crazy" fashion. Heterosexism is the rule in Zits: "All boys, without exception, long for girls."

And that annoying casual homophobia: the touch of another man, even your dear friend, is repugnant, as this 2014 strip tells us in emphatic terms.

A gay character named Billy appeared in a few strips in 2006, identifying himself as gay, but expressing an interest in "hot girls." He vanished, due to Jim Borgman's squeamishness over "seeing the 6:00 news in a comic strip." Later, Borgman backtracked, saying that he was "proud" of the continuity.

Billy appeared again, just once, in 2012. Jeremy advises, "Give it time, dude. They're from a different generation, so it takes them time to catch up."

Sarah asks "Are Billy's parents upset that he's gay?" No, Jeremy says, "We're talking about phone apps."

Even Stevens, Hannah Montana, and The Suite Life of Zack and Codyare not unique. American tv programs aimed at a juvenile audience are strictly forbidden from mentioning gay people or ever suggesting that heterosexual desire, practice, and identity are not universal human experience. So the Disney Channel has become very good at hints.

For example, take Wizards of Waverly Place (2007-2012), an "I've Got a Secret" sitcom about a family of wizards living in contemporary Manhattan. Jerry (David DeLuise, far right) and Theresa (Maria Canales Barrera) and their kids:

16-year old Justin (David Henrie, second from left), 14-year old Alex (Selena Gomez), and 12-year old Max (Jake T. Austin, far left). (The others are supporting characters.)

All of the characters have opposite-sex dates and relationships. Not one is Wearing a Sign. Therefore they are all heterosexual, and gay people do not exist. Are you listening, network censors? Ok, then:

1. Alex is gay. She and Justin are constantly fighting over girls that they both want. She's constantly telling Justin, "I like this girl. You can't have her." During the third season, she falls in love with a butch lesbian stereotype named Stevie (Hayley Kiyoko), but drops her upon discovering that she is a leftist revolutionary. Her main squeeze is Harper (Jennifer Stone); the two eventually move into an apartment together. No one even tries to pretend that they are platonic friends.

2. Justin is a heterosexual ally. In one episode, Alex spreads a rumor that he is engaged to a boy, Hugh Normous (Josh Sussman). Justin is angry, not because of the accusation, but because now he won't be able to attract the girl he likes. Besides, he could do a lot better than Hugh Normous.

3. Hugh Normous is gay. Alex is hit on by lots of guys at school, so she befriends Hugh, knowing that he won't have any romantic interest. In the last season, she invites Hugh to a party at her apartment, where he hooks up with a guy.

4. Uncle Kelso (Jeff Garland) is gay. He is masquerading as pop star Shakira. Alex asks if it bothers him that millions of teenage boys have his picture on their bedroom walls. He shrugs.

5. Max is probably gay.

His crush on Alex's boyfriend, Mason (Gregg Sulkin, left, with costar Dan Benson), is so intense that when they break up, Max falls into a deep depression, and when Mason re-appears to request a reconciliation, Max thinks that Mason wants a reconciliation with him.

At age sixteen, Max turns into a girl, and hates it because now he has to hang out with other girls; he likes to hang out with guys.

6. Just about everyone else in the cast could be gay or bisexual. In “Saving WizTech” (2008), the evil Ronald Longcape (Chad Duell) flirts with Alex in order to steal her powers. He admits that he wasn’t actually interested in Alex, any of the Russo wizards would do, but she seemed more gullible. Therefore he would have been perfectly willing to flirt with Justin or Max.

And that's not even counting the constant gender-shifting and transvestism.

As stated earlier, every character expresses heterosexual interest, and not one is Wearing a Sign. Therefore they are all heterosexual. Therefore gay people do not exist. Is that clearly understood?

The story of my date with one of the stars is on Tales of West Hollywood.

Plains, February 2017

I don't stand behind a podium during my lectures; I walk up and down the aisles. In a giant lecture hall, I walk more than 2 miles in an hour-long class.

Glancing down to ask students questions or see if they're paying attention, I see lots of bulges and tents, some crotch grabs, and occasional hands shoved into pockets to squeeze their junk.

What do you expect when you cram 50 testosterone-filled young men into stadium seats?

The guys wearing shorts, especially athletic shorts, are most prone to tenting. Something about the silk texture and the friction.

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

The homophobic rants of Growing Pains star Kirk Cameron may lead you to believe that the TGIF sitcom (1985-92) was exceptionally homophobic. But it wasn't.

It aired next to programs I liked -- Who's the Bossor Head of the Class -- so I watched a few episodes here and there. Standard TGIF premise: affluent suburban family, psychiatrist Dad, newspaper columnist Mom, and their three kids: teen operator Mike (Kirk Cameron), feminist Carol, and practical jokester Ben. In the last seasons they added two more kids to up the cuteness quotient: Chrissy and Luke (a young Leonardo DiCaprio).

Like all TGIF sitcoms, Growing Pains was set in a gay-free world. In one episode, Dad reacts in horror at the thought that Mike might be...you know, but no one ever said The Word.

But there was a strong homoromantic subtext between Mike and his best friend with the unfortunate name Boner (presumably the writers were unaware of the contemporary dirty meaning, and intended us to think of the old meaning, "mistake"). Boner was played by Andrew Koenig (son of Walter Koenig of Star Trek), who was reputedly gay in real life.

Kirk Cameron's conservative religious beliefs forbade many beefcake shots, so most of the teen idol attention fell on the stream of hunky guest stars, including K. C. Martel, Matthew Perry, and Brad Pitt, and in later seasons, on Jeremy Miller (Ben).

When Jeremy was 14, he began receiving letters from a violently obsessed fan, describing lurid fantasies of rape and murder, even giving the dates he intended to carry out his threats. Jeremy was not informed of the letters, and was astonished to discover that the heightened security on the set was for his protection.

The ensuing publicity gave Growing Pains a undeserved sordid reputation.

Today Kirk Cameron acts in fundamentalist Christian movies and makes anti-gay rants. Jeremy Miller became a professional chef, but still acts on occasion. No word on whether he is a gay ally or not, but he has kept silent while fellow Growing Pain stars Allan Thicke and Tracey Gold have issued condemnations of Kirk's homophobia.

See also: Alan Thicke.

When I was studying for my M.A. in English at Indiana University (1982-84), my professors and most of my classmates agreed that Literature consisted of:

1. Ulysses, by James Joyce
2. The Waste Land, by T.S. Elliot
3. The Tin Drum, by Gunter Grass
4. The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner
5. A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole

And maybe a little Shakespeare. Everything else was footnotes or hack work.

I hated all of the pretentious rot, but I loved to hate The Waste Land the most. The only way my gay Indian English-major friend Viju and I could get through it at all was to imagine a gay theme.

It begins with a quote in Latin in which the Cumaean Sybill speaks Greek. I knew smalle Latin and lesse Greek (see, I can be pretentious, too), but we assumed that anyone speaking Greek is talking about gay people.

Tom (T.S.'s real name) is watching the sunlight over the Starnbergersee (in Munich), saying "We're not Russian" (in German), and calling someone the Hyacinth Girl. Hyacinth was the gay lover of the Greek god Apollo, so we assumed the Hyacinth Girl is a boy.

Then, wandering around London, Tom sees a guy he knows and asks if the dead bodies he's buried have risen yet. Tom calls him "mon semblable,—mon frère!" My double -- my brother! Charles Baudelaire, who was probably bisexual, wrote it in the gay-themed Fleurs du Mal.

After a chess game and an elitist dig at pop culture, Tom meets with Lil. Her husband Albert keeps wanting sex, but she won't put out because she keeps getting pregnant. Meanwhile someone keeps saying "Hurry up, it's time" (presumably time to die). Aha! A critique of the futility of heterosexual marriage!

Tom wanders around London, saying bad words in Elizabethan English. Mr. Eugenides, who has a pocket full of currants (or maybe he's just happy to see Tom) invites him to a weekend at the Metropole. Presumably that's a gay hotel, so he wants a homoerotic liaison.

Illustration to Eliot's "Animula" (1927)

Suddenly Tom turns into a man with breasts -- so he thinks that taking the passive role in sex is feminine? He watches as a working-class man sexually assaults his girlfriend. She says "Well, I'm glad that's over" and puts on a record. A critique of heterosexual sex!

Then he takes a barge down the Thames and says "Highbury bore me." It bores me, too.

A dead guy, Phlebas the Phoenician, floats by. Tom thinks "he was once handsome and tall." We were all for depictions of masculine beauty, even in a poem about how we're all going to die.

Then Tom goes to a dry desert where everybody is dead, and wonders if the person walking next to him is a man or a woman. Androgynous, huh? Or maybe a drag queen?

The young Tom Eliot

Tom and a friend reminisce about "the awful daring of a moment’s surrender, which an age of prudence can never retract." Sounds like you guys had a hot fling in your youth: "by this, and this only, we have existed."

So sex is the meaning of life?

Or is it surrendering to passion: "your heart would have responded gaily, when invited, beating obedient to controlling hands."

Then everything goes crazy. People say things in Italian, Latin, French, and Sanskrit. Come on, Tom, you were born in St. Louis, and everybody knows it.

Somebody quotes an obscure Elizabethan playwright and a 19th century French Romantic poet. Tom responds "oh, swallow, swallow."

At this point, Viju and I couldn't stop giggling.

This interpretation might not be orthodox, but it did get us through a late-night study session.

And it was a lot of fun to walk up to random guys and say "Oh, swallow, swallow!"

By the way, some contemporary biographers think that Tom was gay, but deeply closeted.

St. Louis, May 9th, 1985

7:00 am

After 210 execrable days of teaching bonehead English to redneckes in Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, I finally managed to escape. I've been driving all night, except for a couple of hours sleeping at a rest stop, so I'm quite a zombie.

And I'm angry and frustrated, after watching someone masturbate through a glory hole, but not being allowed to get any of the action.

Time for breakfast.

I get off Interstate 55 in a neighborhood south of downtown St. Louis and stop for breakfast in the Mississippi Mud House, the only gay-friendly restaurant in St. Louis, according to my Gayellow Pages.

It's not entirely gay: there are heterosexual couples, some businessmen in suits, and a scattering of college students. Actually, I don't see anyone who sets off my gaydar.

Except for a cute guy about my age sitting by himself at one of the little tables: tall and slim, with thick sandy hair, dark eyebrows, and pink lips. Wearing blue jeans and a pink polo shirt.

Maybe I struck out last night, but this time it's a sure thing.

I try to make eye contact, but he won't look up.

Who cares? My discretion has vanished. When my order arrives, I pick up my plate and coffee cup and plop down in the seat across from him.

"Hi! I've had a rough night. Can I join you?"

He smiles. "Sure."

His name is Dwight. He's 17 years old, finishing his junior year in high school, with a job lined up as a life guard during the summer. He comes to the gay coffee shop almost every morning before on the way to school, hoping to meet someone, but he never does.

"You haven't been with a guy before?" I ask.

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

During the mid-1950s, there was a craze for "coonskin caps" among the first generation of Baby Boomer boys: a faux-fur cap, round and furry, with a long tail, striped like a raccoon.

The next generation of Boomers found them ridiculous, but remember, this was the era of the crewcut. With your hair trimmed so tightly that there's not much left, the coonskin cap serves as a nice substitute in cold weather.

And it gives you a nice phallic symbol to play with (imagine putting over your crotch instead of on your head).

Girls had big hair in the 1950s, so crewcuts were a means of gender polarization. They were so popular that they had their own advertising icons, such as Johnny Crewcut in Boys' Life. Here he advises kids to "practice undressing fast before bed each night." The optimal time is under 20 seconds.

I've gotten guys out of their clothes faster than that.

The coonskin cap craze was generated by Davy Crockett, five episodes of the Disneyland TV series in 1954-55, based on the real Jacksonian-era politician and folk hero, who died at the Alamo in 1835.

Davy was played by 30-year old Fess Parker, who had a master's degree in theater history from USC, but found himself playing coonskin-cap frontiersmen for the rest of his life. Here's a rare shirtless photo.

I've never seen the miniseries, but they give Davy a sidekick, played by Buddy Ebsen (later Jed Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies), so there may have been some buddy-bonding gay subtexts.

He also hung out with such folk heroes as Jim Bowie (Kenneth Tobey) and Mike Fink (Jeff York), so there may have been some beefcake,

Davy Crockett has appeared in over 50 other movies and tv series, played by a surprising number of recognizable stars: Fred Gwynne, John Wayne, Johnny Cash, Billy Bob Thornton, Brian Keith, and John Goodman (on Saturday Night Live).

Jake Wynne (seen here at the New Orleans Shakespeare Festival) played Crockett in A Man of Reputation (2012), swapping tall tales with Mike Fink in a bar.

But none of them have ever come near the fame of Fess Parker, his coonskin cap, and "The Ballad of Davy Crockett"

Born on a mountain top in Tennessee,
Greatest state in the Land of the Free.
Raised in the woods so he knew every tree,
Killed him a b'ar when he was only three.

In tropical regions where nudity is the rule, men still find ways to draw attention to their best feature. Among the Highland tribes of New Guinea, koteka or penis sheaths are commonly worn.

Most cover only the penis, leaving the testicles bare.

The length does not necessarily signify the social status of the wearer, or the size of the penis inside.

Some stick straight up, tied in place to emulate an erection.

The most commonly used gourd is the calabash (lagenaria siceraria). They are hollowed out, worked to the appropriate shape, and then dried.

Smaller sheaths are used for everyday purposes. For ceremonies, they can be as long as you want them to be.

Penis sheaths are used throughout Melanesia, and also in tropical regions of Africa and South America. Here Siko Nathuan, head of Vanuatu Island, poses with 18-year old British student Marc Raynor, who became the stand-in for Prince Philip during his birthday celebration. They're wearing straw penis sheathes.

The photos all show bare testicles, so I can't show them here. You can see them on Tales of West Hollywood.

10 States Where Being Gay was a Felony

Behind the Iron Curtain: A Radio Free Europe Commercial from the 1970s

50 States, 50 Naked Men, Part 1

Tiny Toon Adventures

The Gaithers: The Gay Connection in Christian Gospel Music

The Glory Hole at the Rest Stop in Arkansas

The Phallic Art of sub-Saharan Africa

50 States, 50 Naked Men, Part 2

Abs: A Man's Third Best Feature

In Search of the Lapp Penis

Can't Stop the Music

How to Survive Gym Class

Zits: A Comic Strip for Anyone Dating Twinks

The Wizards of Waverly Place

Classroom Beefcake and Bulges

Growing Pains

Spring 1983: T.S. Eliot. Oh, Swallow, Swallow!

A Sausage Fondle on My Way Home from Hell-fer-Sartain

Davy Crockett and the Coonskin Cap Craze

The Penis Sheaths of New Guinea