NYSocBoy's Beefcake and Bonding

The other day it was 24 degrees out, with a biting wind. As I walked through the gym parking lot as fast as I could, shivering in the cold, I saw a high school kid standing there, waiting for a ride, in gym trunks and a t-shirt.

Not shivering.

How could he do that?

There's something undeniably erotic about guys with their shirts off, or naked, in the snow. Maybe it's the incongruity -- I would never dream of going outside like that in the cold, not even for a second.

Certainly not lying around in it, trying to make a snow angel.

Maybe it's the toughness. This guy is impervious to the cold. He must be made of iron.

In Scandinavian countries, it's traditional to take a hot sauna, then run out into the snow. The juxtaposition of hot and cold is supposed to be good for you.

More after the break.

Some intrepid "polar bears" go swimming in frigid weather. I don't even like a cold pool in warm weather.

I don't know what this soldier is doing nude in the snow, except showing off his...um...gun.

They must be worried about shrinkage.

At least he's wearing a hat.

The fully-nude version of this post is on Tales of West Hollywood.

When I was a kid in the 1960s, we had three fast-food burger joints: Henry's, Sandy's (where cute college boys in kilts sold Edin-burgers), and A&W (where my boyfriend Bill and I became a Mama and a Papa). Then, during the 1970s, they all closed or got bought out during the invasion of national franchises: McDonald's, Hardees, Wendy's and Burger King.

The raucous, competing ads about sizes and shapes often became nearly as homoerotic as hot dog ads.

1. Burger King had the worst burgers -- horrible things -- but the most homoerotic ads. It introduced the Whopper in 1957, but stepped up the ads in the early 1970s, calling the restaurant "Home of the Whopper" and annoucing "It takes two hands to handle a Whopper."

Soon the slogans began to appear on t-shirts, on underwear, and in sleazy comments made by sex-obsessed men in sitcoms (and in 1970s sitcoms, nearly all men were sex-obsessed).

2. McDonald's had a similar "Big Mac," which also began to appear on t-shirts and underwear, while teenage spokespersons pretended not to notice.

3. Wendy's was rather colorless in the 1970s, with pictures of a redheaded girl eating the square burgers. They didn't hit homoerotic paydirt until their "Where's the beef?" campaign of the 1980s.

4. Fortunately, I wasn't living in southern California, where Carl Jr's had some extremely embarassing ads that showed underwear-clad women gazing at a burger with erotic intensity, like they intended to have sex with it, with captions: "Size does matter." By the time I got to West Hollywood in 1985, they had switched to Big Carl, a homicidal maniac who ordered us to eat his burgers, or "I will hunt you down like a dog."

5. We didn't have Jack in the Box, either, so we never saw the ads starring the tiny tot Rodney Allen Rippy (top photo, with bodybuilders Ric Drasin and Don Peters demonstrating his size). His commercials had him trying to get his hands around a Jumbo Jack, and complaining, "It's too big to eat." Let the dirty jokes begin.

One of several cute, diminuitive black kids who charmed America during the period (others were Gary Coleman and Emmanuel Lewis), Rodney Allen Rippy became a sensation, appearing everywhere, on The Tonight Show, The Odd Couple, Marcus Welby, Medical Center, The Six Million Dollar Man, and Laugh-In.

As long as he was a cute kid. Rodney retired in adolescence, got a degree from Cal State Northridge, and today is involved in writing, production, and marketing. In 2012 he ran for mayor of Compton, California, but dropped out after getting only 75 votes in the primary. He intends to run again in 2017

He's never married, but according to his Facebook page, he likes women.

See also: Have you had a Squirt today?

Plains, March 2017

I hate shopping for groceries, especially:

1. The old people who act surprised that they actually have to pay, and rummage through their purse for their checkbook.

2. And who can't figure out how to use the card swiprs.

3. The checkers who get into long, involved conversations with their friends.

4. And who let their friends cut in line.

So I have a system: I go only on Tuesday mornings around 10:00 am (no old people, and the checkers' friends haven't arrived yet), and I go only to the Food Co-Op, which is much less crowded, and doesn't take coupons. Besides, it stocks fresh fruit and vegetables you can't get anywhere else, like jicama and carambola,

But I need some things that can't wait until Tuesday -- mouthwash, bananas, protein bars, a can of cream of broccoli soup, that sort of thing -- and I'm too busy to drive all the way out to the Food Co-Op. So I take a deep breath, grit my teeth, and go to the Hy-Vee. On a Saturday afternoon.

It's packed, of course. but I'm an expert at choosing the shortest line -- only five people, no full shopping carts, no one elderly. I don't mind the wait when I see the checker.

The most beautiful guy I have ever seen -- or at least, the most beautiful guy since the highway rest stop in Iowa last summer. A glimpse of supreme beauty in a supermarket on the Plains.

In his 20s, about my height, rather slim, but with a dreamy teen idol face. Sharp, classic features, dark eyebrows, a dazzling smile.

I feel a little shaky. Even at age 50-something, supreme beauty makes me weak in the knees.

I watch him work, gazing at his face and hands, glancing down to see if he has a physique or a bulge, grinning like a teenager at a boy band concert, strategizing how to ask him out.

Get ahold of yourself! This is a supermarket. He's 30 years younger than you, probably underaged, and probably straight! Besides, he's busy. You can't cruise a guy at work.

There's only one person ahead of me, a middle-aged lady who fishes around in her big purse for her small purse, pulls out a check book, and laboriously writes a check, including the memo line, then records the amount in her ledger. Ordinarily I'd be fuming.

He sees me watching, mistakes my gaze for impatience, and says "It will just be a minute, sir."

I'm tongue-tied. He's so stunning, I can't think! This must be what the ancients felt when Zeus or Apollo appeared before them.

His nameplate says Zack: Assistant Manager.

"Um...um...no problem, Zack...I'm in no hurry. I've got nowhere to go this afternoon except the gym. It's chest and shoulders day." I unzip my leather jacket. Underneath I'm wearing a blue sweater that accents my pecs.

He looks!

He turns to my items while the bag boy is still bagging the middle-aged lady's stuff, and flashes that smile again.

"Bananas and cream of broccoli soup! I'd like to see the recipe that calls for those."

I laugh. "I'll invite you over to sample it."

He's cruising!

Get ahold of yourself! This is a supermarket checkout line, not a gay bar! Besides, do I really want to see him naked? Perfection becomes imperfect very quickly in the cold light of the bedroom

"Any coupons today?"

Even his voice is dreamy! I look down at his hands. "Um...no."

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

Lots of monsters landed in space ships during the 1950s, or crawled out of the ocean, but by far the most ridiculous was Robot Monster (1953): a guy in a gorilla suit and a diving helmet. He's killed everyone on Earth except for eight survivors. He goes after them one by one, even killing a little boy (breaking the rule that children in horror movies are invincible). He falls for a survivor girl, refuses to kill her, and gets in trouble with his boss, who destroys him, leaving three survivors. But it might be a dream. Hopefully it's a dream.

Other than the ridiculousness, the movie's main claim to fame is George Nader's chest. The actor spends most of the movie with his shirt off -- until he's killed by the Robot Monster.

The 28-year old Nader had only been in Hollywood for a few years. He arrived just in time for the beefcake revival, when gay agent Henry Willson placed dozens of guys with monosyllabic names like Rock and Guy in movies based on their hunk appeal. George costarred with several of them:

Steve Cochran in Carnival Story (1954)
Rory Calhoun in Four Guns to the Border (1954)
Tony Curtis in Six Bridges to Cross (1955)
John Saxon in The Unguarded Moment (1956)

But stardom eluded him, probably because of the gay rumors; he refused to put on a heterosexual facade, like his lifelong friend Rock Hudson.

In the early 1960s, the gay rumors forced George and his partner Mark Miller to move to Europe, where he finally found stardom -- and gay subtexts -- as secret agent Jerry Cotton in a series of German movies. Heinz Weiss played his assistant/ boyfriend, Phil Dekker.

George retired from acting in 1974, and devoted himself to writing and gay rights activism. His first novel, Chrome (1978), remains rare example of a science fiction novel with a gay male protagonist.

He died in 2002, survived by Mark Miller. They had been together for 55 years.

This is Part 2 of my list of dates, hookups, and sausage sightings from the countries I've visited, except for the United States and Europe. To count, the guy has to be from the country (no expats).

1. Australia. At a conference in Brisbane in 2002, I set out looking for aboriginal men, and ended up meeting a lot of Caucasians, including a guy with a moustache and a beer can-thick Mortadella.

2. Canada. I've been to Montreal and Toronto several times, as well as camping in Manitoba and visiting my Canadian cousins. Probably the muscular bear that Troy picked up at a video booth in Montreal: he worked as a farmer, and spoke no English.

3. Colombia. In the summer after my freshman year in college, I went to Colombia to build a church. I wasn't out to anyone yet, so I didn't hook up, but I met a "cannibal" (hustler).

4. Egypt. After my semester in Turkey in the spring of 1989, I visited Egypt for a few days, enough time to hear Arabic spoken, see the pyramids (not very impressive) and hook up with an auto mechanic from Cairo in his mid 20s with a short beard and a hairy chest. A little smaller than this photo, but what he lacked in size, he made up for in stamina.

5. India. My friend Viju took me to India during the summer after we got our M.A. degrees from Indiana University, just before my execrable year in Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas. A lot of public cruising, notably the Zoroastrian who did it six times a day.

6. Israel. After my semester in Turkey, I visited Egypt and Israel for a few days. I mostly wanted to see sites of historic interest, like the Wailing Wall, but I managed to hook up with a student at Bar-Ilan University.

7. Japan. I spent six weeks in Japan with Alan in the summer of 1986. We cruised a lot, but I'm going to have to go with Jin, the bed-hopping boyfriend (he started out on Alan's bed, and moved to mine).

8. Mexico. Tijuana several times when I was living in Los Angeles, plus spring break in Mexico City last year. I'm going to go with the time Alan and I went to Tijuana in search of sex and languages and went down to a dark, muscular guy at the Banos Vicos. He didn't speak Nahuatl, though.

10. Panama. I always wanted to see the Panama Canal, so during spring break in Mexico, I took a side trip to Panama City (it's a five hour flight). The sightseeing was so great that I didn't have time to cruise, Fortunately, the gay guys approached me, and I landed a date with a pair of boyfriends.

11. Philippines. A three-hour layover on the way to Thailand. On the way back, I spent the night. I wanted to go to Rizal Park and the National Museum, and the Club Baths, but instead I ended up on a date with a Filipino teen idol.

14. Thailand. I visited Bangkok and Pattaya in 1988. It was a paradise if you like soft, smooth Cute Young Things. I held out for a guy with muscles.

15. Turkey. During my semester of teaching English in Ankara, I saw a lot of street cruising going on, but my favorite hookup was with Halil, a bodybuilder trainee who invited me to a competition in Istanbul.

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

This is "Men at an Anvil," one of the homoerotic paintings of the Gilded Age, now on display at the Yale University Art Gallery. (the men are holding hammers, not hanging by their arms).

The artist, Edwin Austin Abbey (1852-1911) was a Philadelphia illustrator before he moved to England and became involved with the pre-Raphaelite Movement. Famous as a muralist, he received a commission in 1902 to paint murals for the Pennsylvania House and Senate Chambers and the Rotunda.

This study, completed 1904-1908, was for "The Spirit of Vulcan," a mural praising Pennsylvania industry.

Here's the version on the mural.

Abbey also did a study of naked miners or geologists for "Science Revealing the Secrets of the Earth," another mural in the Rotunda.

Here's the completed version.

.

Abbey was a friend of gay artist John Singer Sargent, who drew this portrait, and didn't marry until he was in his 40s. Those facts would ordinarily set off my gaydar, except:

There is no other beefcake in Abbey's work, not a single bicep or chest anywhere.

Why he wait until his life was nearly over to express his joy in the male form?

I don't have tv anymore, so no Nickelodeon programs, but my original review of Henry Danger back in 2014 called it a "gay subtext classic." I don't know if it's lived up to my prediction, but I have notice that the slim, ultra-fey Jace Norman, who plays the teen sidekick to befuddled superhero Captain Mann (Cooper Barnes), has grown up.

He's sixteen years old, with abs and a chest.

Compare to the skinniness of two years ago.

A sultry pose on a giant swan is sure to get some double-takes from teeenage boys (and a few girls).

In a pool with friends. He's the one who looks slightly nauseous.

Sean Ryan Fox, who plays Henry's best friend Jasper, used to be a bit portly, but at age 15 he's slimmed down and developed abs of his own. Soon he'll be a teen idol.

No doubt there's a lot of teen fan fiction shipping the two.

Apparently they're best buds in real life, too.

See also: Henry Danger

Plans, March 2017

You're probably wondering what happened on my date Monday night with the grocery boy, aka the face of supreme beauty, aka Zack, the assistant manager at the Hy-Vee.

I picked him up in the check-out line on Saturday afternoon, and invited him over for dinner. I planned to serve chicken a l'orange, arugula salad, and fried plantains.

7:10

Zack arrives. I invite him to sit down in the living room while I finish the chicken and make the salad.

7:12

The chicken can simmer for awhile.

7:20

I'm not usually into anal, but who can say no to that face?

7:50

I ask Zack to start on the salad while I finish the chicken and heat the casserole.

7:55

I don't even know his last name yet.

8:10

I'm usually good for just once a night, but....

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

I went to a Swedish Lutheran college, where we were proud of our Viking heritage. Our team was the Vikings, our radio station was WVIK. There was a quote from the Icelandic Hamaval over the circulation desk in the library. The courses in Norse Mythology was well populated.

Ancient Greek and Roman myths seemed somehow decadent: wandering around the bucolic Mediterranean half-naked, eating grapes and having erotic encounters. The last story is about Venus and Cupid. But the North was harsh, with frost giants and battle-hammers, and it ended with Ragnarok, the Apocalypse of the gods.

But Greek and Roman myths had a benefit: nudity. The gods were portrayed naked, with hard, thick chests and abs and even penises on display. You had to did deep to find a Norse god with his shirt off.

Ok, it was cold in the north, but still...

Thor was the most popular of the Norse gods among the college students, due to his appearance in comic books and fantasy illustrations. Here Boris Vallejo shows him fighting some very buffed giants.

But Freyr or Frey seems to have been the most popular among the real Vikings. He was the god of fertility and prosperity.

Some phallic images of Freyr have survived.

Some phallic images have survived, and modern Neo-pagans have produced many more.

My favorite myth is of Baldur the Beautiful, so beautiful that all the gods were in love with him. His mother went around to ask every animal, plant, and natural object to agree not to hurt him, so the gods played a game of throwing things at him, to see them bounce off harmlessly. But Mom forgot to ask mistletoe.

The evil Loki convinced the blind god Hodur, here portrayed as a muscular Classical beauty, to throw a sprig of mistletoe at Baldur, thus killing him.

For punishment, Loki was chained beneath a giant serpent that sprayed venom onto him forever.

We don't see a lot of myths about Odin, the leader of the gods, but here he, plus archaic gods Villi and Ve, are creating the world.

See also: Loki.

I can't tell you how much I dislike Scrubs (2001-2010), the "comedy" about obnoxious doctors acting like jerks. In last night's episode, they were all in a tizzy because Elliot (a female doctor) was dating a male nurse. A male nurse! How ridiculous! He must be "the girl" in the relationship, and Elliot must be the "boy"

It wasn't just one character. They all ridiculed the guy who degraded himself so much that he did a woman's job!

But at least there's substantial beefcake. Not only patients. The doctors take their shirts off every second.

1. Zach Branff as J.D., the obnoxious narrating character: "Today I learned that relationships are hard."

2. Donald Faison as his bff Turk, who acts like a five-year old and is obsessed with the ladies. He's the one who decided that going to the gym makes you a pathetic loser. I can tell. He's been in better shape.

3. Johnny Kastl as Doug, a skittish doctor who's terrified of his supervisor, and often runs away n a panic.

4. Dave Franco as Cole Aaronson, a spoiled fratboy doctor.

5. Travis Schuldt as Keith "The Dude" Dudemeister (I'm not making this up.)

More after the break.

6. Michael Hobert as Lonnie, J.D.'s intern and "bitch" in later seasons. He doesn't usually hav the stupid pornstache.

7. John C. McGinley as Dr. Cox, the abusive, obnoxious, jaw-droppingly sexist attending physician. He gets a lot of shirtless shots, although he's amazingly ugly.

8. Sean Buchholtz (he spells it another way) as Dr. Cabbage, aka Jason Cabbagio, an inept intern who gets fired and has to go to work as a coffee barista.

9. Robert Maschio as Todd, a surgeon who asks every woman he sees to have sex with him, doctors, nurses, patients, it doesn't matter. Literally every woman. And apparently most of them agree, as he has sex about 30 times a day, and after each encounter asks all of his male friends to high-five him in congratulations.

The second most annoying of the annoying characters, but he has a nice chest.

10. Chad Broskey as Rod, not actually a doctor, Todd's son in a fantasy sequence. Todd imagines a "touching" father-son moment in which Rod admits that he has stuffed a banana into his jock to make his penis look bigger.

When I was a kid, the Nazarene church taught us to:

1. Pity "heathens," the Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims who hadn't heard the Gospel.

2. Be suspicious of "liberal so-called Christians," the Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists.

3. Run in terror from Roman Catholics. They drank, went to movies, and worshipped idols. Their Pope was the anti-Christ. They were probably demon-possessed. We weren't supposed to make friends with them, set foot in one of their churches, or even walk on the sidewalk outside one of their houses, lest we be corrupted.

I left the Nazarene church around my freshman year of college, but my parents, brother, and sister are still active.

Ken is actually more devout than when we were kids. He's ok with gay people, but he doesn't go to movies or the theater, doesn't shop or work on Sunday, and doesn't go to restaurants or stores with alcohol on sale.

He married in 1981, and had four kids. Then his wife died, and he married a woman who had three kids of her own, plus an elderly mother. Ten people, four dogs, two cats, and a parrot all living together in a big, rambling house downtown.

Most of Ken's kids turned out less devoutly Nazarene than their parents.

The oldest spent time in prison for aggravated assault.

The second sang in a punk rock band.

The fourth got pregnant while still in high school.

But somehow the third, Katie, turned into a ultra-devout "Suzie Nazarene."

In high school, she was president of the NYPS and a delegate to the International Institute.

She enrolled at Olivet, the Nazarene college on the prairie, where girls generally majored in becoming a preacher's wife.

I wasn't out to her. Fundamentalists insist on a "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. When I brought Lane or Yuri over for Christmas or a summer holiday, we stayed closeted.

We weren't close. I didn't visit Rock Island much after my parents moved to Indiana in 1995, just brief Christmas visits, and after 2000, I didn't visit at all. I sent her a birthday card with a check in it every year.

In the spring of 2008, when I was living in Dayton, I got a wedding announcement in the mail. I almost threw it out. I usually boycott heterosexual weddings."

Then I saw that it was being held at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Kankakee, Illinois.

Katie was marrying a Roman Catholic boy named Steve!

I had to see this! How would my Nazarene relatives react? Would they grit their teeth and go into a Catholic church? Would they wait outside? Would they disown Katie and refuse to talk to her again?

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

Parkour is a training procedure involving freestyle gymnastics in a natural environment, typically the concrete buildings and walls of the urban jungle. It was developed by David Belle (1973-), a French teenager, based on his father's military training drills. David later brought parkour to films such as District 13 (2004) and commercials for Nike, Nisson, and Canon.

The goal of Parkour is to jump, leap, or tumble onto natural obstacles, or vault over them, landing feet-first on the other side.

It requires strength, stamina, agility, and a lot of practice.

Since it requires no equipment, it is a favorite pastime of poor urban youth around the world.

And non-urban youth. Here Austin McClure of Santa Rosa, an aspiring stuntman, practices his parkour moves (photo from Kent Porter)

There are few professional parkour players, but many sports enthusiasts, gymnasts, and stuntmen have added parkour to their repertoire. Stuntman Damien Walters has used it in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Captain America: The First Avenger, Skyfall, The World's End, and Jupiter Ascending.

In 2014, Carlos Lopez, a stuntman who worked on Hunger Games, 22 Jump Street, and Olympus Has Fallen, was killed when he tried to jump from his 4th floor window to an adjoining porch.

But there have been actually few reported deaths as a result of parkour, although sprains and fractures are common.

Manila, March 1988

In the spring of 1988, I flew to Thailand to visit Alan, who had moved there to start a gay Pentecostal church. The travel agent said I would have to have a five-hour layover in the Philippines.

I thought of the Philippines as a "good place" ever since I first saw the orange-colored archipelago in the world atlas my uncle got for me when I was four or five years old.

So I made it overnight, from 11:00 am Saturday to 6:00 am Sunday.

Enough time to go to Rizal Park, the National Museum, and the Manila Cathedral, eat Filipino food, buy some books, and, I hoped, go to the Club Baths for some cruising.

I didn't make it to the Baths.

Who would have thought that the Cathedral was a prime cruising ground?

I saw a very cute guy lighting a candle before the Pieta in the Cathedral -- late teens or twenties, nearly my height, slim, black hair, flawless brown skin. I am always attracted to religious guys, and I thought he might be a priest or seminarian, so I tried to strike up a conversation in the few words of Tagalog I had memorized on the plain.

"Kamusta! I bisitahin ang Amerika."

He smiled. "In the Philippines we all speak English."

"Sorry."

"That's ok. It's nice that you tried."

We ended up having "real Filipino food," ukoy (shrimp fritters), chicken adobo, and some kind of purple ice cream.

Marco (not his real name) was impressed that I lived in "Hollywood," and asked me if I knew Rob Lowe. Of course, I said I did.

"He's gay. I know some guys he's dated."

"I always thought so!" Marco said. "He's so pambabae, like a girl. We call them bakla, lady-boy. I'll take you to see them later -- I know a bar."

"I only like guys who are masculine," I said, coming out to him.

"Me, too." He brushed my knee under the table. "Who else is gay in America?"

I told him about my Celebrity Boyfriend. He was impressed.

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

Upstate, April 2009

The invitation came in an email:"You and a guest are invited to Matt's Black and White Balls, Memorial Day Weekend 2009. Lodging provided. Please RSVP."

Plus a MP4 of "Everything's Up To Date in Kansas City" from Oklahoma.

"Balls must be a mistake," I told my boyfriend Chad. "He must be doing an homage to the famous Black and White Ball that Truman Capote held for New York glitterati in 1966."

"Gay glitterati, all dressed in black and white!" Chad exclaimed. "Sounds festive. But who's Matt?"

"My ex-boyfriend Fred's ex-boyfriend from California. You'd like him."

When I met Matt in 1988, he was a 22-year old Cute Young Thing, a Harvard elitist, abrasive and condescending in spite of his fabulous butt and extra-large beneath-the-belt gifts. But as I got to know him better, he turned out to be secretly kind, generous, and only marginally insane.

In the bedroom, he kept up a nonstop monologue of his progress, first in English, then in French.

I'm getting there...un peu plus, mon chevalier.......je vais arriver...bien, bien...ich komme!

"Fred and Matt were together for about ten years. When they broke up, he moved to San Francisco, and then to Boston. I haven't heard from him in six or seven years."

"Well, you must have made a good impression on him. But why is he hosting his Black and White Ball in Kansas City, not Boston?"

When I asked, Matt responded only "That would be telling. But don't worry, it won't be just KC barbecue-and-tractor-pull fans. There will be a lot of guys from San Francisco: David, Corbin, Seth and Fangorn. I even invited Kevin the Vampire."

Kansas City, May 23rd, 2009

I arrived in Kansas City at 2:00 pm. Instead of Matt, I was met by a guy holding a sign: an African-American Cute Young Thing, short, very dark, buffed, wearing a formal white shirt and black pants. He introduced himself as Malcolm.

I thought he was a professional driver, but he led me to an old, beat-up car with a back seat cluttered with clothes and fast-food wrappers. Not really professional -- must be one of Matt's friends.

"How long have you and Matt known each other?"

"He just hired me for the weekend. But I'm available all day and all night. Just give me a call, and I'll be there." He grinned and grabbed my knee.

Hired for what?

"Would you like a short tour of the City before we head over to Matt's house?"

He drove me past the Crown Center, the Liberty Memorial, and Swope Park, where we kissed and fondled at a fountain overlooking the valley. Then we drove to a huge brick house on the north side of town, parked, and went inside without knocking.

Past a foyer into an enormous living room. A cute older guy, mid-40s, African-American, was standing on a ladder, putting up a poster of a naked man.

"This is Boomer," Malcolm announced, putting his arm around my waist. And leaving it there.

He smiled and held down his hand. "I'm Dallas, and no, I'm not from Texas."

Then Matt came in, naked, dripping wet. He was now 44 years old, balding, a little pudgy, but he still had a fabulous butt.

"Boomer, welcome! Sorry I can't hug -- we've been in the pool. Why don't you go up to your room, change, and join us? Malcolm will show you where it is."

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

I don't remember seeing The Name of the Game (1968-71). It was on Friday nights, opposite some of my favorite shows: Hogan's Heroes, Here Come the Brides, The Partridge Family, The Odd Couple.

In a world of 60-minute dramas and 30-minute sitcoms, it was a rare 90-minute series, the length of a tv movie. The three stars, all recognizable names in the 1960s, worked for the conglomerate Howard Publications:

1. Jeff Dillon (Anthony Franciosa), an investigative reporter for People magazine (not the real-life People, which hadn't been launched yet). His blundering style would be copied by Peter Falk for Columbo.

2. Glenn Howard (Gene Barry), the publisher, a "millionaire playboy" whose stories mostly involve big business and the rich and famous.

3. Dan Farrell (Robert Stack), an editor for Crime magazine. He specialized in darker, more serious stories.

Episodes alternated focus characters, with the other two rarely appearing, so this week 90 minutes of Gene Barry, next week 90 minutes of Robert Stack. They shared a single editorial assistant, Peggy Maxwell (Susan Saint James).

Occasional episodes centered on other characters, such as freelance reporters Sam Hardy (Darin McGavin), David Corey (Robert Wagner), and Paul Tyler (Robert Culp).

It sounds very confusing today, but maybe 40+ years ago, when the actors were familiar faces, it worked out.

The lack of character interaction stymies the possibility of buddy-bonding, male-male rescues, and other gay subtexts. I've gone through the entire series, and found only a couple of potential gay-subtext episodes:

1. "Collector's Edition" (October 11, 1968): Dillon's life was saved in Vietnam by photographer Peter Max (John Saxon), who is now in trouble and needs Dillon's help.

2. "The Brass Ring" (January 3, 1970): Farrell befriends a young boxer

But all three stars were well-known Hollywood hunks of the era, and apparently a lot of beefcake, shirtless scnes on on Greek islands and in health colonies.

It's not on DVD, but you can see some episodes streaming on youtube.

See also: Robert Stack

Speaking of Robert Clark, if you watched any children's tv during the early 2000s, you probably saw his older brother Daniel (born in 1985) in a series of buddy-bonding roles.

On Eerie, Indiana: The Other Dimension (1998), a spinoff of the homoromantic subtext classic that paired Stanley Hope (Daniel) and Mitchell Taylor (Bill Switzer) as teenage paranormal investigators in an alternate universe.

On I Was a Sixth Grade Alien (1999) as Tim Thompkins, who buddy-bonds with the purple-skinned alien boy (played by Ryan Cooley).

In Model Behavior (2000), as the little brother of a girl involved in a Prince and the Pauper-style switch.

Plus Are You Afraid of the Dark, Goosebumps, The Zack Files, and Darcy's Wild Life.

As an adult, Daniel played a jerk in Juno (2007) and buffed bad boy-turned-hero Sean Cameron on the Canadian teen soap Degrassi: The Next Generation (2001-2008). He's assumed to be homophobic after he pushes the gay kid Marco, but he insists that he's not. At least he managed to display his increasingly buffed physique, with semi-nude and underwear shots nearly as impressive as those of his brother.

Daniel also managed to do some teen buddy-bonding, in the Australian slasher flick Left for Dead (also released as Devil's Night).

He retired from acting to go to college, where he majored in Political Communication. He's currently working as a news associate for ABC, and he's involved with environmental causes.

When I was in junior high, chess was a big deal. When Bobby Fischer beat Boris Spassky to win the World Chess Championship, he became a national hero. Lest anyone think that chess was "for sissies," magazine and newspaper articles emphasized his muscular physique and "regular guy" interests.

I remember one article with a description, in loving detail, of a lunch where Bobby Fischer orders a steak, eats a piece, and grunts "Good!", like one of those cave men in the Campbell's Manhandler commercials ("how do you handle a hungry ma..aa...aan?").

This was before he started subscribing to white supremacist literature, praising Hitler, and making shocking racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic comments.

In junior high, we played chess all the time, before class, at lunch, on the bus, in the swimming pool.

It was as homoerotic as wrestling. You sit across from your opponent, stare at him, memorize his face, learn every detail of his physique, the heft of his chest, the curve of his biceps.

Where else can you get away with staring at a cute guy for 10-15 minutes?

One of my fondest memories of my boyfriend Dan is a game of chess. He was a very fast player, rushing to move his piece before I had a chance to take my hand away from mine. So sometimes our hands touched. I still remember its warmth.

Chess tournaments were as well-attended as wrestling tournaments, and with bigger trophies. In 1975 I met the Estonian wrestling brothers when George trounced me at a tournament at Washington Junior High.

The fad eventually faded away, like all fads do. I knew only a few people in high school who played, and none in college.

But for a few years, chess offered a homoerotic idyll nearly as good as wrestling.

(By the way, today's reigning chess champion, Magnus Carlsen of Norway, is equally athletic, and not racist, homophobic, or anti-Semitic.)

See also: One Night in Bangkok

Garrett, July 1972

Just up the hill from my Grandpa Prater's farmhouse in northern Indiana was the Old House: over 100 years old, now fallen to ruin. We could go up and play in the dusty yard, or hunt for frogs in the little pond, but we could not go inside. Uncle Paul said that it was full of "witch's blood" that would turn us into "ghosts," but most likely it was just unstable.

We usually stayed away from the Old House, unless there were adults up there, playing horseshoes or skinning and cleaning the animals they hunted. We didn't like the weird shadows in the upstairs windows, like dark figure moving about, or the porch swing that sometimes moved by itself.

But one day in the summer of 1972, when I was eleven years old, the farmhouse was full of people: Mom and Dad, my aunts and uncles, and some people I didn't know, an old guy Grandpa Prater's age, some husbands and wives, and a couple of surly teenagers. They were in the living room, the kitchen, in Grandma Prater's memorial room, even on the front porch.

They were all laughing loudly and talking about things that happened thirty years ago. Boring! And no kids to play with! My brother and baby sister were out with Grandma Davis, and Cousin Buster was spending Christmas with his other grandparents.

It was noisy and oppressively hot; I had to get out of there! I told Mom I was going to play outside.

But what to do? Nothing is more boring than a farm with no animals on it.

I decided to go up to the Old House and throw rocks into the pond, to see if I could scare some fish.

Even though it was a bright, sunny day, the Old House seemed more sinister than usual. I shivered with nervous excitement.

The porch swing was swinging by itself. I heard the rusty scrape.

Trying to avoid looking in the windows at whatever might be inside, I rounded to the back yard, and and almost ran into a boy.

I yelled and jumped back.

He didn't approach. He just stood there, staring.

He was a few years older than me, but not yet a teenager [models in the nude photos are over 18]. Tall and slim, with a round face, sharp features, and black curly hair. Wearing a thin brown jacket, which seemed weird on a hot day.

The full post is on Tales of West Hollywood.

Frank Zappa (1940-1993) was a counterculture musician known for studio albums such as We're Only in it for the Money and One Size Fits All, and for the single "Valley Girl," which memorialized 1980s slang phrases like "grody to the max."

His work had considerably homophobic content:

"Bobby Brown" (1979), the "cutest guy in town," has a run-in with a lesbian and turns gay.

"He's So Gay" (1984) is about a guy who's "so very, very gay" that he likes golden showers and S&M, and an evening's "not complete without some meat in his seat".

He had four children: Moon, Dweezil, Ahmet, and Diva.

Dweezil (born 1969), top photo and left, is a guitarist who tours with the group Zappa Plays Zappa. Apparently he didn't inherit his father's rough features, as attested by the many pictures of his face and physique on the internet.

As an actor, Dweezil voiced Ajax, the surly teenage son on Duckman (1994-1997). He has also appeared in Fully Loaded, Jack Frost, MAD TV, and Anarchy TV.

He doesn't seem to have inherited his father's homophobia. He was even the subject of gay rumors early in his career.

Ahmet Zappa (1974-) doesn't have as many shirtless photos, but it doesn't look like he would be particularly impressive. He sometimes tours with his brother, and he's had a lot of acting experience.

He's been the subject of gay rumors, too.

When I met Peter Barton, he was guest starring in some tv shows, doing live theater, and calling his agent every day, trying to transition to a macho 1980s leading man. But just a few years before, he had been a soft, androgynous teen idol.

Born in 1956, the former medical student started his acting career in 1979, as the teenage son on the short-lived sitcom Shirley! Only 13 episodes were filmed, but that was enough for the teen magazines to adulate Peter as the Next Big Thing. He was handsome, muscular but not a bodybuilder, and just androgynous enough to meet the gender-bending expectations of the era of Culture Club and ABBA.

Dozens of shirtless, speedo, and semi-nude shots followed, plus a starring role in Hell Night (1981) with Vincent Van Patten, in Leadfoot with Philip Mckeon, and in a movie-of-the-week, The First Time (1982). Peter also appeared in a tight swimsuit in an episode of Battle of the Network Stars. Many gay boys found in him a kindred spirit, gazing at his movies or swimsuit spreads and thinking "He's one of us."

Then his big break came: The Powers of Matthew Star, one of the many kid-friendly sci-fi series in the 1982-83 season (others included Voyagers!,The Greatest American Hero, and Knight Rider). Strangely, it aired just before the drag queen-friendly Madame's Place.

The plot was similar to Shazam!, which aired on Saturday mornings a few years before: teenager with superpowers lives with an older man. In this case, Matthew, or E'Hawke (Peter Barton) was a prince from a planet orbiting Tau Ceti, hiding out on Earth from enemies who wanted him dead. He went to Crestridge High School and lived with his guardian, Walter, or D'hai (Louis Gossett Jr.), who was working undercover as a science teacher.

I watched occasionally, but it was a little too "Saturday morning tv" to draw a big audience. Besides, Matthew had a girlfriend, there was no homoerotic buddy-bonding, and there was not enough beefcake. Most gay kids quickly changed the channel to The Dukes of Hazzardon CBS. Powers was cancelled after only 22 episodes.

Peter's teen idol fame ended shortly thereafter, as more muscular actors like Willie Aames and Scott Baio rose to the limelight.

In 1988, he got his big break, a starring role on The Young and the Restless. Other soaps followed, plus the detective series Burke's Law.

Today Peter lives in upstate New York with his daughter. He has never married.

See also: My Celebrity Dates, Hookups, and Sausage Sightings

Guys Naked in the Snow

The Homoerotic Hamburgers of the 1970s

Picking Up the Grocery Boy

George Nader: Actor and Gay Activist of the 1950s

Naked Men in Every Country in the World

Men at an Anvil: Edwin Austin Abbey's Beefcake Art

Henry Danger Grows Up

What Happened on My Date with the Grocery Boy

Nude Norse Gods

The Hottest 10 Ten Doctors of "Scrubs"

Naked Nazarene: The Catholic Bear's Bulge

Shirtless Parkour Boys

A Hookup with a Filipino Teen Idol

Matt's Black and White Ball

The Name of the Game

Daniel Clark: Brother for Life

What's Gay About Chess?

A Sausage Sighting of the Mysterious Boy at the Old House

The Sons of Frank Zappa

Peter Barton's Powers