NYSocBoy's Beefcake and Bonding

Someone was asking which of my autobiographical stories were fiction, and which were fact.

All of the characters are real, but I change some names and biographical details to make them harder to identify. For instance, Aaron was Catholic, not Jewish, and Tyrone never went anywhere near a gym.

And sometime their stories actually happened to someone else.

All of the events are real, but I change some of the details to turn them into coherent stories, and I take some liberties with the timeline.

Here are 10 of my childhood experiences that are more fiction than fact:

1. When I was four or five, I heard the Boy with the Guitar singing from the other side of the yard, and thought he was singing to me, but I didn't actually climb through the window.

2. My first kiss, from a Boy Vampire, actually happened two years later, and we weren't watching Dark Shadows at the time.

3. Bill actually wasn't there when I saw Two Boys Kissing at Longview Park. I thought I saw Dan kissing someone else.

4. The Estonian Wrestling Brothers were actually chess players and violinists with no interest in wrestling.

5. My Last Wrestling Match was actually a judo tournament, the guy who commented on the "Foxy Fairy Princess" was actually one of my brother's friends, and there were no comic books.

6. The Girl Who Wanted to Marry Donny Osmond is actually a composite of two girls. One, in high school, I used to visit to talk about Donny Osmond. The other, in college, actually wanted to marry Donny Osmond.

7. The Night at Music Camp, my "first time," was actually a year later, and not with Todd.

8. Trying to Win Todd by Dating His Girlfriend also happened a year later.

9. I spent my freshman year at Olivet, the Nazarene Bible College on the prairie, so all of my stories for that year actually happened later, at Augustana, except for Is Mary's Brother Gay.

10. The Professor with the Handcuff Parties actually happened in New York.

12. In Bloomington, Thad was homophobic, but never became a male stripper.

13. I dated Jimmy, the Bodybuilder on Crutches, several years later.

14. The story of catching Viju in bed with Cousin Joe is a composite of two experiences, catching Viju in bed with a random guy, and catching Cousin Joe in bed with a girl.

Trailer Park Boys is a Canadian pop culture sensation. It started as a movie (1999), then spun off into an immensely popular sitcom (2001-2014), three more movies (2006, 2009, 2014), and a live stage show. The characters have appeared as themselves in other series and on stage. There is a vast array of tie-in products, including music cds, clothing, and books.

It's a mockumentary set in run-down trailer park in Nova Scotia, starring petty crooks, drunks, and various eccentrics.

1. The "moral center," if there is one, is Julian (John Paul Tremblay), an ex-con who wants to "go straight," by which he means selling so much marijuana or stolen merchandise that he can retire. He always has a drink in his hand.

2. Ricky (Robb Wells, right), a dimwit with an Elvis Presley hairstyle, lives in Julian's car. He is known for his ridiculously wild schemes and odd moral sense. He disapproves of his daughter stealing: "That's my job."

3. Bubbles (Mike Smith), who has a hoarse, wheezing voice, lives in a shed, and collects stray cats.

4.-5. Jim Lahey (John Dunsworth), a disgraced former cop who now works as the trailer park manager, and is constantly trying to evict Julian and Ricky. When he's not immersed in a role-playing game with his boyfriend, Randy (Patrick Roach), a former hustler who never wears a shirt, even though he has rather a portly physique.

6.-7. J-Roc (Jonathan Torrens), a wannabe rapper who thinks that he's black and ends every sentence with "you know what I'm sayin'?" In later seasons, he and his partner T (Tyrone Parsons) raise two children together.

Jonathan Torrens starred in the gay-themed Beefcake in 1998.

8.-9. Cory (Cory Bowles), a muscular young hood, and his partner Trevor (Michael Jackson), sometimes work for Ricky. They display an interest in girls, but they are also portrayed as a gay-subtext couple, and they occasionally engage in same-sex acts as part of one of Ricky's wild schemes.

As you can see, there is quite a lot of gay content in the series, including characters who are gay and bisexual without fanfare. Although Bubbles' favorite expletive is a gay slur, he displays no other homophobic bias.

And there's significant beefcake. Shirtless and underwear scenes are common, and several of the actors have impressive physiques.

See also: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia; and Corner Gas.

The blog "Mikey Likes It" is maintained by a gay college student who wasn't even born when the enduring catch phrase was created.

It was the fall of 1972, and Quaker Oats was trying to expand out from oatmeal to the cold cereal market with a cereal called "Life."

And a commercial that showed two young boys taring dubiously at a bowl of Life Cereal, "supposed to be good for us." They foist it off onto their brother, Mikey. "He'll eat it -- he eats everything." Sure enough, Mikey enjoys the cereal, and we hear in a voiceover. "He likes it! Hey, Mikey!"

After a few months, heads at the advertising agency realized that it was not high praise to have the cereal eaten by a boy who eats everything, so they changed the line to: "He won't eat it -- he hates everything." Except Life Cereal, of course.

The ads continued for years, giving Baby Boomer kids with dirty minds a never ending source of dirty jokes. Mikey will eat anything. And so on.

As the years passed, an urban legend developed that Mikey had died from a combination of Pop Rocks (a carbonated candy) and soda. That was untrue, of course. Actor John Gilchrist returned in the early 1990s as a hunky college student to demonstrate that, once again, "Mikey likes it."

Today Gilchrist is in charge of media sales for the MSG Networks, married with children, so probably heterosexual. No word on the other boys in the commercial, his older brothers Tommy and Mike.

See also: Breakfast of Champions.

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) was from Galesburg, 60 miles south of Rock Island, so my teachers loved him.

I didn't.

Although he does look nice naked.

It seems that every English, language arts, writing, and history teacher from third grade through college foisted Sandburg upon us.

Chicago Poems! Cornhuskers! Smoke and Steel! Slabs of the Sunburned West! The People, Yes!

He was a two-bit Walt Whitman wannabe, with none of Whitman's homoeroticism.

When Sandburg mentions a man, it's only to pair him with a woman.

A Polish boy is out with his best girl; they marry next month; to-night they are throwing you kisses.

But mostly he's desperate to tell you how much he likes women. Over and over and over and over.

Each morning as I move through this river of young- woman life I feel a wonder about where it is all going, so many with a peach bloom of young years on them and laughter of red lips and memories in their eyes of dances the night before and plays and walks.

This wouldn't be so bad, except that he expects his intended audience to agree. All beauty is feminine beauty, the Eternal Feminine is everybody's goal in life.

In high school we had to read Always the Young Strangers, maybe because it mentioned Rock Island and Augustana College. But it's not, as you might suspect, about cruising for late-night pickups.

It's about Sandburg growing up in Galesburg,with no interest in male friendship, just devotion to family, the thrill of the feminine, and heterosexual sex.

He liked to imagine heterosexual sex. Even when it was between his mother and father:

They were a couple and their coupling was both earthy and sacramental to them. There were at times smiles exchanged between them that at the moment I didn't understand but later read as having the secret meanings of lovers who had pleasured each other last night.

Do heterosexuals usually spend a lot of time imagining their parents having sex?

But the very worst was Rootabaga Stories, American fairy tales with an Edward Lear twist that were foisted on us in 3rd grade.

The titles didn't make sense:
"The Story of Blixie Bimber and the Power of the Gold Buckskin Whincher"
"How the Hat Ashes Shovel Helped Snoo Foo"
"Only the Fire-Born Understand Blue."

And once you got past the title, you got endless hetero-romance between men and women, boys and girls, and gender-polarized inanimate objects.

Except for one weird story about two skyscrapers who decide to have a child together. Their genders aren't specified, but since they're phallic symbols, I'm going to assume both male. Sandburg doesn't explain how their child comes about. Maybe they adopt.

The only gay potential anywhere in Sandburg's work is in his 4-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln. In The War Years (1926), he writes that Lincoln's relationship with Joshua Speed had "a streak of lavender, and spots soft as May violets."

And maybe in the poem "Planked Whitefish," in which a "demon driver" named Horace Wild tells Sandburg about an experience in World War I in Ypres (site of a major battle): a Canadian soldier nailed to a wall with bayonets, his sex organs cut off and shoved into his mouth. The sight made him a pacifist.

Not exactly a gay-positive image.

See also: Gather the Faces of Men

When I was a kid, I wasn't close to most of my cousins. They were mostly teenagers or grownups, like my Cousin Joe (who I saw naked when I was 7). Or little kids, like my Cousin Tracy (born when I was 12).

Cousin George was just my age, but he lived in South Carolina, so I only saw him twice.

Next closest was Cousin Tony, who everyone called Buster, about a year older than me. He lived in a trailer on my Grandpa Howard's farm in Garrett, Indiana.

His Dad was a grizzly-voiced Southerner named J. Wood, who played cowboy songs on his guitar and found dire threats everywhere:

1. Be careful eating fish, 'cause if you accidentally swallow a bone, you'll die.
2. Don't touch that castoff couch, 'cause the stuffing is poison, and you'll die.
3. Don't go near the peat bog, 'cause there are toads and poisonous snakes, and you'll die.

His Mom, my Aunt Mavis, had a huge repertoire of stories about ghosts, poltergeists, mysterious disappearances, and UFOs, probably the beginning of my interest in the paranormal that culminated with my date with actor Richard Dreyfuss in 1987.

And she made the world's best pancakes.

For the first 5 years of my life, Buster and I were raised together. There are photos of us as toddlers, playing with blocks, spinning a world globe, hugging in Sunday suits with little bow ties.

Then my parents and I moved to Wisconsin, and then Illinois, and returned only for brief visits in December and July.

But for the next 8 years, during those visits, I always wanted to stay overnight in the trailer in the dark woods, where Buster and I could read Casper comic books, play with G.I. Joes, listen to cowboy songs, and fall asleep side by side in his narrow bed while Aunt Mavis told us ghost stories. Some of my first glimpses of homoerotic desire.

But one summer we visited my Kentucky Kinfolk instead of Indiana, and that Christmas we stayed home for some reason, so I didn't see Buster for 1 1/2 years, until the summer after eighth grade.

His comic books and G.I. Joes were gone, sold at a yard sale. Cowboy songs and ghost stories were for "dorks." He liked hunting, fishing, working on cars, and talking about girls.

I gamely agreed to go fishing with him, but my eyes glazed over in the discussions of cars and girls. And his eyes glazed over when I talked about escaping to Saudi Arabia with my boyfriend Dan.

When we visited that Christmas, Buster was off with his grandparents, and I didn't see him again until the summer after ninth grade. We sat in the living room with glasses of soda, and I talked about our new house and the prospect of high school, and he talked about getting his driver's license and the cute girls who hung out at the Blue Moon Drive In.

"I have a date later," he said. "To go miniature golfing. She could get a girl for you, and we could double."

I had a boyfriend! I didn't want to date girls! "Um...thanks, but I don't think we have time."

"Go ahead!" My Mom exclaimed. "It will do you good to meet some girls."

So I went miniature golfing with Cousin Buster and two girls.

During high school, my visits to Indiana became sporadic. I was old enough to stay home alone, and often I had other things to do, like the church conference in Switzerland, or a part-time job at the Carousel Snack Bar.

When we visited in 1978, the summer after high school, we spent an hour or so at the trailer in the dark woods. Buster was still asleep, but he came out in his pajama bottoms, bleary-eyed, to say "Hi."

"I hear you're going to college," he said.

"Yeah. Augustana, right in Rock Island."

"Four more years of school! I couldn't stand it! I hated school, except gym and auto shop."

"I hated auto shop! I have no idea what goes on under a car hood."

We stared at each other awkwardly. "Um...so, do you have a girlfriend yet?"

The question made me angry. It reminded me of the "What girl do you like" chants of the adults. "No. I've never had a girlfriend," I said with cool precision, "And I don't want one."

He stared. "Yeah, I like playing the field, too. A new honey every night -- nothing wrong with that."

I never saw Buster again.

I heard about him from my parents: working at the auto garage, moving into his own place, buying a house, collecting vintage cars, going hunting and fishing, getting girlfriends -- "a new honey every night" -- but never marrying.

He died a couple of years ago.

I didn't go to his funeral. It was too late -- he was a stranger.

One night when I was 10 or 11 years old, I woke up to the sound of the tv in the other room. I looked at the clock by my bedside -- 11:30! What could my parents be watching? There was nothing on tv that late but an emptiness of test patterns and static snow.

I walked out into the living room. On the tv set, I saw a guy sitting behind a little desk, talking to a row of people in chairs.

"What are you doing up? Did you have a bad dream?" Mom asked.

"I heard noise. What are you watching?"

"The Tonight Show."

The people were just sitting around.

"But what is it? What's it about?" TV shows were always about something: detectives, witches, spies, seven stranded castaways.

"It's not about anything. It's a talk show."

"You mean....people just sit around talking? That's dumb!"

"That's why it's on late at night," Dad said. "It's not for kids. Now get back to bed."

A few years later, when I was a teenager, I could stay up until midnight if I wanted to, but I was always in bed or had other things to do.

A few years after that, when I lived in West Hollywood, I could stay up until 1:00 am if I wanted, but I was always in bed or had other things to do.

So to this day I have seen only one episode of The Tonight Show. Johnny Carson was supposed to be interviewing a literature scholar who believed that Shakespeare didn't write the plays attributed to him, so I waited through an hour and twenty minutes of boring interviews to hear his five-minute spiel.

To be fair, it wasn't all boring interviews. There were musical guests, and sometimes Johnny performed in comedic sketches like "Carnak the Magnificent."

Gay content was minimal. Johnny Carson (1925-2005) had a trim physique and a bulge (always hidden behind that desk). But he displayed a rather snarky twist on the rampant homophobia of the 1960s and 1970s.

His ongoing "sissy jokes" against singer Wayne Newton ended only when Newton burst into his office and asked "Which of your children have I killed..to deserve such treatment"? (Equating being gay to killing a child? Really?).

But in real life Carson had gay friends, including gay icon Truman Capote.

In those days gay people often put up with snark.

Have you heard the buzz for Hidden Valley: The Awakening? It's being advertised as the greatest horror movie of this generation. But it sounds utterly putrid. A cliche plot, stereotyped characters, stilted dialogue, and bad grammar.

A dark mystery lies hidden in a small rural community as a chilling story unfolds about young love, life, and the extreme measures a small town is willing to undergo trying to win a high school championship.
The first rule of writing: cut back on the adjectives.
The second rule: cut back on the repetition.
You don't "undergo" measures.
And saying your movie is about "life" is like saying it's about "people"!

It's got a facebook page with random pictures of teen hunks, dead cheerleaders, and werewolves, and an official site full of gushing hyperbole (and bad grammar).

And a tie-in novel, incredibly, monumentally hackneyed. High schoolers come up with better dialogue in their Remedial English classes.

"Well Sheriff...I know this is something you are not going to want to hear, I mean with your boy in the hospital and the town in a damn uproar an-"
He was immediately cut off by Tom.
Need a comma, and that's not being cut off "immediately."

"Yeah, yeah, I got everybody screaming in my ear and wanting to know what the hell is going on with this thing," he said as his face turned beat red.
The cliche is "beet red."

He buries his face into his hands momentarily, then clasps them together in a sarcastically peaceful manner.
Changed tense there, and what is a "sarcastically peaceful manner"?

"And really, Doc, with all due respect, it really has been long enough...so, what the hell do ya got?"
Wait, I thought that the Sheriff didn't want to hear it, but now he wants to?
"Well, Tom, I am pretty sure it was an animal. I can't be sure without more testing, but there was most certainly saliva present on both of the boys.
Saliva was present? That's how you tell that an animal bit them? How about big gaping bite wounds?

But I love the line: There was most certainly saliva present on both of the boys. I'm going to try to work that into conversations as often as possible.

Somehow it managed to land perennial gay-vague villain Malcolm McDowell, star of A Clockwork Orangeand Caligula, as "Dr. Marcus." He must be related to the producer. Or the producer's GED teacher.

Other kids spent the summer waiting anxiously for the ice cream truck. I spent the summer waiting anxiously for the bookmobile.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, there were hundreds of bookmobiles, vans carrying an assortment of books for those underprivileged readers who couldn't get to the public library. Such as kids.

You could check out up to 3 books at a time, and keep them for two weeks. If you read 10 during the summer, you got a prize.

I don't remember any of the prizes, but I remember the books. Some of my top childhood favorites came from the bookmobile, like My Village Books of Sonia and Tim Gidal, The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, Tom Sawyer, and the boys' adventure books of Robert Louis Stevenson.

The bookmobile pulled into the parking lot of Denkmann Elementary School every Tuesday morning at about 10:00 am. Other neighborhood bookworms had to wait on the blacktop. I could hear it coming from inside the house, and then run over.

But soon I discovered a reason to wait with the others: the bookmobile was a good place for cruising.

I met a lot of cute guys while cruising at the bookmobile. Like Greg, the Boy Vampire who gave me my first kiss. Joel, the curly-haired soccer player who came with me to A Little Bit O'Heaven.

And Robbie, a dark-haired boy wearing a red muscle shirt.

I was only about 10 years old, but I already knew the rules of gay cruising:

1. Select a venue with mostly guys. Check. The early birds were usually boys; girls came later.

2. Cruise early. Check. The bookmobile came in the morning.

3. Cruise with a buddy. No, I went by myself.

4. Do not drink while cruising. Check. I hadn't had any soda or candy all day, in case a cute boy invited me to Dewey's Candy Store.

5. Gather information. Check. Robbie was waiting to check out a book on caves, because he was going to Mammoth Caves in Kentucky with his parents later that summer. He was a Cute Young Thing, a year younger than me. He liked Star Trek, and his favorite subject was math.

6. Don't discuss sizes or acts. Nope. I definitely asked about his size: "You have really big muscles. How strong are you?"

7. Word the invitation carefully. If you invite him to do something specific in the future, it's a romance. Something vague in the future, it's a friendship. Something vague right now, it's a hookup.

After we checked out our books, I asked, "Wanna play?"

Hookup.

8. Invite him to your place. Check.

9. Take your own cars. Well, we were walking.

10. Make sure someone knows where you are. Check. My Mom was upstairs.

11. Clean your house in advance. Mom always had the house clean.

12. Hide your valuables. I was a kid. I didn't have any valuables.

13. Bring condoms. Um...I was a kid. We sat on my bed to look at our books, then we played space explorers in the back yard. I did get to feel his biceps.

14. Don't kick him out afterwards. Check. Robbie stayed for lunch. Mom made us hot dogs and potato chips.

15. Don't pretend you want a relationship. Check. I didn't give him my phone number.

I saw him at the bookmobile a few times after that. We talked politely, but I didn't ask him over again.

Not a friendship. Not a relationship. Just play.

See also: The Boy Vampire; and 15 Rules of Gay Cruising.

Kieron Richardson was starring as the teenage bad boy Steven Hays on the long-running British soap Hollyoaks. His character was involved in domestic violence, drugs, and various scandalous behaviors, so the producers thought, "Let's really up the ante and get super-scandalous, and have him 'question his sexuality'!"

So they made Steven wonder if he might be gay. While he was wondering, he got involved in a violent same-sex relationship, and later got a new boyfriend and married him. Apparently while still wondering.

During all of this, Kieron announced that he was gay in real life.

He's been out for several years now, and claims that he never experienced any homophobic bias, slurs, statements, or discrimination. He reasons, "We're in the 21st century and actually homophobia's more or less been stamped out."

Um...Kieron, have you being paying attention to your own storyline? The phrase "question your sexuality" is in itself homophobic, asserting that being heterosexual is the default, a universal category, and you turn gay when you become "confused."

That's a Hollywood myth. I have never once met any gay person who was ever "confused." They knew exactly who they were attracted to. It was the heterosexuals who were confused, constantly chiming "What girl do you like?" to gay boys and "What boy do you like?" to gay girls.

Apparently Kieron has never been to a gay event where the bigots are screaming and waving signs. Or heard politicians make their "gay marriage leads to incest" spiel? Or lost a job, or never got the interview, because someone in the office thinks he has no right to exist. Or read the comments at the end of every internet article on a gay topic.

In July 2014, a footballer named Kieran Richardson signed on to the Aston Villa team, thus making headlines in Britain. Fans confused the two, and thought the footballer was gay.

Suddenly Kieron started receiving homophobic tweets. He was shocked.

I wasn't.

In West Hollywood many people believed that there was no such thing as a straight man. Exclusive same-sex desire was a universal of human experience. Men who called themselves straight were just too weak or cowardly to resist the heterosexist chant of "what girl do you like? what girl do you like? what girl do you like?"

Today we know that some men are, in fact, heterosexual, with no conscious same-sex attraction.

But others, a much larger proportion of the male population, are heterosexual with occasional glimmers of same-sex attraction, strong enough for them to want a man in their bed, but only occasionally amid their endless pursuits of the feminine.

And still others are heterosexual, but willing to "settle" for a man if no woman is available.

The last two categories are open for cruising, and in small towns with a limited gay population, tremendously increase your chances of success. But you have to be careful. Cruising a straight man requires a whole new set of skills, and a whole new set of rules:

1. Cruise online. Straight men rarely go to gay venues, lest they be seen, and in public places they are always with women or with straight male friends who don't "know."

2. Find out how straight he is. How occasional is his interest in men? If he meets guys once a month or less, ok. If he's always seeking out guys, then he's a traitor, enjoying all of the privileges that come with heterosexual identity, hoping to enjoy sexual freedom while letting "real" gay people do all the work of fighting homophobic injustice. He's a pathetic loser. Move on.

3. Find out how homophobic he is. Many straight guys with occasional same-sex interests overcompensate by denigrating gay people, especially those who are open. "I don't shout it from the housetops!" he yells. "Marching in parades, broadcasting your sexual preferences!" Move on.

4. Skip the first-timers. "I've never done this before. I've thought about it, but I've never had the nerve..." Yeah, right. He's been saying that for the last five years, enjoying the thought of a same-sex liaison, but always losing his nerve. And if he does actually show up, there's no way the reality can live up to his fantasy.

5. Arrange for a daytime meeting, at your place. Chances are these will be required anyway, since he's busy with women at night, and there are people at his place who "can't find out."

6. But not for "right now." Anybody willing to come over "right now," without finding out a little bit about where he's going and who he's meeting, is bound to be a dud.

7. A face photo is a must. Not necessarily to determine his degree of hotness -- it's probably 20 years old, and photoshopped. To determine his degree of openness. No face photo: very skittish, probably a no-show.

8. Get contact information. A last name, a working cell phone number, an email address. And use it to make sure it's not fake. It might come in handy later.

9. Give him the geographic layout of your place. He believes that passersby will see him and infer somehow that he is having a same-sex hookup. That's ridiculous, of course, but a pedestrian on the street outside your house, or a neighbor in the hallway of your building, could make him bail. So warn him in advance if it's apartment, if there are other houses close by, if its a well-traveled pedestrian area, and so on.

10. He gets only two chances to show up. You wait half an hour for him to show up. Later that day you get an email: "Sorry, the wife asked where I was going" or "Sorry, I saw somebody who looked like somebody I work with." Set up another meeting -- we all have scheduling problems. But if he doesn't show up the second time, move on.

11. Have a friend present. Hopefully you've screened out the straight guys with malicious intent, and the ones who are so skittish that they might freak out over their "sordid act" and attack. But just in case, have a friend present.

You can also protect yourself by telling your friend about the meeting, and sending him the straight guy's complete contact information.

12. ID all Cute Young Things. 14, 15, and 16 year olds lie about their age and background all the time, and saying "He told me he was 18!" is not an excuse. If there's any doubt, ask for an ID.

13. Don't be afraid to tell him "stop talking about women." Straight guys love to talk about women, especially during a same-sex hookup. It reassures them that they're "really" straight. They'll tell you all about their wives and girlfriends, discuss the attractiveness of various actresses, ask about your heterosexual dalliances, bemoan the refusal of most women to engage in their favorite sexual activities.

Don't say "Women! Gross!" Say something like "This is a men-only zone. For the next hour, we celebrate the masculine!"

14. Don't be afraid to give him a Gay 101 lecture. A surprising number of straight guys have had no connection whatever to gay history and culture. They don't know that there are gay organizations. They don't know about Stonewall. They are unaware of contemporary battles over workplace discrimination, religious harassment, and marriage equality. Enlighten him, either during the online chat, or during the meeting.

15. If you see him in public afterwards, let him lead. Straight guys are often worried that talking to a gay person in public, in any capacity, identifies them as gay. Or they might not want their wives and straight male friends asking "So, where did you meet him?" If he says hello first, stop to chat. If he pretends not to know him, give him your best Attitude.

See also: 15 Rules of Gay Cruising

The 1997 episode of Seinfeld where the gang goes to India for a wedding always gives me a weird nostalgic vibe. In 1984, just after my second year at Indiana University, I traveled to India for a wedding.

Mine.

During my first 1 1/2 years in Bloomington, I invited my gay Indian friend Viju home for two Christmases, one Spring Break, and to my sister's graduation, where he hooked up with my Cousin Joe. So he decided to return the favor: at Christmastime in 1983, he told me that my present would be a trip to India to visit his family next summer.

A free trip to India! I was never so excited about Colombia, Germany, France, or Switzerland! I spent all spring semester studying guidebooks, practicing conversational Hindi, going to Bollywood films at the Indian Students' Association, and reading a dozen books: The Wonder that Was India, Plain Tales from the Raj, India: A Wounded Civilization, Tales from Ancient India.

Jahanpanah City Forest

Of course, there was no way to see the whole country in two weeks. We only took one trip out of Delhi, to Agra (for the tourist-trap Taj Mahal) and Varanasi (to see the Ganges). But we did see the Red Fort, the India Gate, the Qutub Minar Mosque, lots of temples, lots of department stores, a few naked ascetics, and because I was a bodybuilding enthusiast, a competition sponsored by Talwalkars Gym.

There were no gay bars, bathhouses, community centers, or gay organizations in India, Viju said: being gay was illegal (India didn't decriminalize "sodomy" until 2009, and then recriminalized it in 2013).

So, like I noticed in Turkey five years later, men met by cruising in parks or metro stations, or through friends. But the cruising was very, very active in Nehru Park, Vasant Vihar Park, and Jahanpanah City Forest

Viju was not "out" to his family, except to his sister Aruna (a chemistry major at Nehru University). And he wasn't planning to come out. No one in India would, he said.

Khalkaj Mandir

As long as you met family obligations by marrying, having children, and passing on the family name, no one cared about your secret "sexual tastes" -- or wanted to know about them. So Viju told everyone all about a fictional "girlfriend" back in the States, a lovely girl, not Indian but from a high class family, with blonde hair and a yacht.

"You can't keep that up forever," I pointed out. "Eventually they'll expect a wedding announcement."

"Oh, eventually she will dump me, and I'll be devastated, and move on. Then I'll find someone new, and the cycle will start all over again."

I had a fictional "girlfriend" story prepared, too, but no one ever asked about her.

Soon I found out why.

Viju kept inviting Aruna along on our expeditions to museums and restaurants, and to the bodybuilding competition, and one day when we went to a movie -- I think it was Asha Jyoti, starring Rajesh Khanna -- he suddenly vanished, forcing us to sit through the whole thing and then find our way home alone.

Finally I got the picture: "Are you trying to fix me up with Aruna?"

"Ok, you caught me!" he said, grinning. "She's cool -- she won't mind if you have boyfriends on the side."

"Yes, but..."

"And it will solve your job problem." I had sent out hundreds of resumes to book publishers, newspapers, magazines, and tv stations, with no luck. "Once you are married, you can stay in India, and my brother Gadin can set you up in a job teaching English."

"Yes, but..."

"And the best part -- you'll be my brother-in-law, a member of the family!"

I grabbed him by the shoulders. "Yes, but I'd have to sleep with a woman!"

He blinked. "Only until she gets pregnant. Why, what do you have against women?"

"Nothing, as long as I don't have to sleep with them!"

Too bad Viju didn't try to fix me up with Gadin, an English teacher at a private academy. He was quite a hunk -- with a "girlfriend" that no one had ever met.

See also: The Top 10 Public Penises of Hinduism

During my freshman year at Augustana College, I declared a major in English and Modern Languages and registered for advanced Spanish and French. So when I had the opportunity to spend a quarter abroad during my sophomore year, you'd expect me to pick Spain or France, right?

No -- Germany.

It wasn't my fault. I was taking first-year German, too, and the professor kept rhapsodizing over his trips to Germany: Munich, the Black Forest, the Rhine, Neuschwanstein Castle, Wittenberg, where Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses on the cathedral door.

So in the very busy summer of 1979, right after I got back from meeting the gay cannibal in Colombia, I started packing for Germany. Six Augie students flew from Chicago to Frankfurt on August 19th, and then took the train south to the university town of Regensburg.

St. Peter's Cathedral, Regensburg

We all took Intensive German and The Protestant Reformation, and for my elective I chose German Myths and Legends. Classes met in the morning, so we had the afternoons free for sightseeing, and there were weekend trips to Augsburg, Munich, and Salzburg.

As in Colombia, I didn't know how to meet gay people. I didn't realize that Regensburg had several gay bars, or that Munich, an hour away by train, had a gay neighborhood full of bars, restaurants, bath houses, and community organizations. But I found a gay guy anyhow.

Regensburg was predominantly Catholic, so I overcome my early religious training about Catholics being evil! evil! evil! and toured all the churches. I toyed with the idea of converting, and started going to Mass at St. Peter's Cathedral, where I heard the famous boys' choir, the Domspatzen.

There were about 80 of them, mostly little kids, but in the back row I saw some teenagers and young adults. One caught my eye -- the tallest of the group, broad-shouldered, probably muscular, with a shock of unruly brown hair. I thought he looked back, but I was probably imagining it.

The next day I went to the Musikgymnasium, the boarding school attached to the choir, said I was an American University student, and asked for a tour. They summoned a boy my own age to show me around -- 18 year old Wolfgang (not his real name) -- the same one who caught my eye yesterday! (Ok, it was actually the one standing next to him, but wouldn't that make a great story?)

Domspatzen Swimmers

Wolfgang (top photo) showed me the classrooms where the younger kids were studying English, Latin, history, and science, the music rooms, the sports complex -- and the swimming pool. I asked if there were any good places to lift weights in Regensburg -- the gym at the university was tiny --and he suggested the Reebok club.

We started going out regularly, mostly to museums and Catholic churches, sometimes to dinner, and eventually we ended up dating -- though we both had roommates, so we never spent the night together.

The Musikgymnasium

Wolfgang was in his last year in the Domspatzen -- next year he would be in the University, but he didn't want to study music. He hated the Musikgymnasium, and especially the conductor, Father Ratzinger (brother of the future Pope).

"He treats us like animals. Always shouting. He threw me across the room once. Paddling on the bare buttocks. He caught me and another boy together once, and forced us to stand outside naked in the snow."

He didn't mention any sexual abuse, but there have been recent allegations against a teacher (not Father Ratzinger) by many former members of the Domspatzen, according to this article in Der Spiegel.

When I returned to America in November, I didn't want to become a Catholic anymore. I started going to liberal Protestant churches, like First United Methodist, where I met my boyfriend Fred the Ministerial Student.

I've lost touch with Wolfgang. I hope he's out and proud now.

On the treadmill at the gym, I've been seeing commercials about Gotham (2014-), the upcoming Fox series about a young cop named James Gordon (Ben McKenzie).

He encounters a young boy named Bruce Wayne (child star David Mazouz of Touch), living with his butler, Alfred (Sean Pertwee, left) after his parents were murdered. Man and boy form an unwilling alliance.

Of course, Bruce will grow up to become Batman, and James into Commissioner Gordon.

As a prototypical Batman and Robin, they run afoul of many of the future villains of Gotham City, such as the Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor) and the Riddler (Cory Michael Smith) in their pre-costume days.

Don't expect retro camp; this is the grim, noirish Dark Knight Batman.

Or gay characters, although the villains will probably be standard feminine/sophisticated/gay-vague.

But you might expect some gay subtexts. The Batman franchise has been deliberately minimizing gay content by getting rid of the teen sidekick, or making him a preteen. But Ben McKenzie played a gay cop in Southland, so maybe he'll add some glimmers of homoerotic interest to his relationship with coworkers.

And the young Bruce Wayne might have an occasional male friend.

See also: Batman and the Boy Wonder.

In South Africa in 2000, I met the Hottest Man in the World, and investigated the mystery of the Bushman penis. I'm not sure I want to visit anywhere else in the subcontinent. Rampant poverty, a soaring AIDS epidemic, corruption, political unrest, and some of the most horrific homophobia on the planet, including rap artists whose bestselling music videos contain nonstop chants of "kill the gays." I might stick with my regular Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam circuit.

Then again, the beefcake is spectacular.

There's not a lot of public art in sub-Saharan Africa, except for statues of this or that military leader in khakis, but if you're willing to dig, you can find some interesting muscular, nude male forms.

Here are the top 10 public penises of West Africa:

1. The Reunification Monument in Yaounde, Cameroon, shows a nude giant holding a torch aloft and clutching five babies to his chest.

2. West Africa was, of course, the site of the Atlantic Slave Trade, and there are several monuments of slaves breaking their chains, like this one in Conakry, Guinea.

3. And another in Dakar, Senegal, with a muscular, nude male slave being grabbed by a female slave.

4. African public art often puts men and women together, as in the African Renaissance monument in Dakar. It's 160 feet tall, if you include the baby bouncing on the man's bicep.

5. And this Dakar monument.

More after the break.

6. There's a nude bust of President John F. Kennedy in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

7. And in Nigeria, this statue of Shango, one of the Yoruba gods who is venerated in the Afro-Caribbean religions of Voudou and Santeria.

8. Not the most erotic of public beefcake images, but this guy pointng the way to the center of town in Bamako, Mali is so weird that I had to pass him on.

9. This Superman is in Kinshasha, Zaire.

10. And in Bangui, Central African Republic, we find a glistening, muscular image of a Patriot with his spear raised, pointing the way to freedom.

See also: The Hottest Guy in the World; and 10 More Public Penises of Africa.

When I moved to West Hollywood in 1985, I began to attend the All Saints Metropolitan Community Church, a gay-specific church. It wasn't very big. The MCC tends to thrive in communities where mainstream churches are homophobic, but in West Hollywood you had many other gay-friendly congregations.

So every Sunday only 30 or so people gathered in a sort of chapel on the second floor of a building on the corner of Santa Monica and Fairfax, down the street from the French Quarter Restaurant, for a service that borrowed heavily from Roman Catholic liturgy, with robes and incense and chants of "Peace be with you," but old-fashioned Methodist hymns and a conservative evangelical-style sermon.

(Most members of MCC were raised in homophobic denominations, usually either Protestant fundamentalist or Roman Catholic, so the church tried to accommodate both.)

Many newcomers believed that the Bible disapproved of gay people, or that AIDS was God's punishment for being gay. The pastor had to minister to them, so every sermon was about how God is not homophobic, the Bible is gay-friendly, you can be gay and Christian.

For those who attended every Sunday, it got a little redundant.

There was a pastor and two student clergy, quite a lot for such a small congregation, but the positions were highly prestigious -- ministering in the heart of the Gay World! -- and therefore sought-after:

I have a thing for clergy. The pastor was in a long-term monogamous relationship, and one of the student clergy was a bit too old for me (a Baptist minister, married with children, before he came out).

That left Alan, a tall, husky former Pentecostal who had trained to become a missionary.

He had a boyfriend, too, but by mid-October, they had broken up, and I saw my chance to move in. I wrangled an invitation to his house for dinner on the Saturday after Halloween.

Alan and his two roommates lived in the bottom half of a brown stucco duplex, about 10 blocks from the church, near Plummer Park where all of the male hustlers hung out, and the Formosa Cafe, where Hollywood celebrities used to hang out.

He turned out to be a former English major who almost went to grad school in Medieval poetry, so we had lot to talk about. Still, the date didn't go well.

1. He served canned ravioli, with no salad or vegetables in sight. This is what you serve to impress a date?

2. Instead of The Golden Girls, the West Hollywood staple, he wanted to watch The Love Boat. Geez, my grandmother watched that!

3. An hour of mind-numbing boredom later, I said, "Are you ready to go out?" Nearly all dates in West Hollywood included an hour or so at the bars, mainly because being in a gay-friendly public place was so new and novel for most of us.

"Ok. We can go to the baths."

A bath house! On a date? Unheard of! And, for that matter, weren't clergy supposed to be into monogamous relationships, not hookups?

4. "Never mind, we'll just stay here," I said.

"Sure. Wanna f***?"

I stared, speechless. Maybe I did, but no one had ever used such coarse language to ask!

"Go in the bedroom and take off your clothes. I'm going to take a shower first."

I just sat there, speechless, infuriated. The student clergy was treating me like a hustler! I heard the shower run, then go off. Alan came out in a towel.

"I thought you would be naked in my bed by now."

"You didn't pick me up at Plummer Park" I yelled. "This is supposed to be a date, not a sales contract! And you call yourself student clergy!"

"Hold it-- I didn't mean to offend you," Alan said, perplexed. "I was just trying to speed things up. I'm nervous -- I like you a lot. Um...do you still want to go in the bedroom?"

"No, I want to go to the bars, and find someone who acts like a gentleman. Like about a thousand other guys in West Hollywood!"

I stood and moved toward the door.

"Come on, I said I was sorry..." He rushed toward me. His towel fell off.

Whoa, what do you call that thing? I stared. He smiled. "Did I mention that I used to do porn movies?"

I forgave him. Turns out that being gifted beneath the belt got Alan out of a lot of faux pas.

We dated for about six weeks, until I went home for Christmas, and a Norwegian con artist moved in.

Next: A Norwegian Con Artist Steals My Boyfriend.

During the famous summer of 1981, when I went to an Italian Film Festival, moved into my own apartment, and learned about gay German literature, The Canterbury Tales, and the Beat Generation, I saw a dozen movies with gay subtexts, including Clash of the Titans, American Werewolf in London, Hell Night, and The Chosen.

Raiders of the Lost Ark was not among them. It hit #1 at the box office that year by playing into Reagan-era conservative anxieties about gay people and gender roles (and race and imperialism).

You know the plot:

1. Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford), whip-wielding archaeologist, is trying to steal a valuable artifact from a lost temple in Peru. He seems to be buddy-bonding with his guide, Satipo (Alfred Molina), and even grabs his crotch to pull him out of a dangerous situation. But then Satipo betrays him and leaves him to die.

It's not just Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indy is betrayed by Walter Donovan in the sequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and by Mac in Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. Men are duplitious, underhanded; male friendships not to be trusted.

As a consequence, Indy has allies but no buddies. He has an 11-year old ward, Short Round (Jonathan Ke Quan), in Temple, and in Crystal, he mentors young greaser Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf), who turns out to be his son.

One of his allies, the Egyptian Sallah (Jonathan Rhys-Davies) could be read as gay-vague, as he dislikes receiving a gratitude-kiss from The Girl, and spends a lot of time hugging, kissing, and fondling men. But the gay reading is minimized by making him a heterosexual father with about a dozen kids.

2. After bringing the artifact back home, Indy teaches a class in archaeology to a classroom full of female students mooning over him. Apparently he's incredibly dreamy, swoon-worthy to the max -- but only to girls. Heterosexism in full force.

3. Indy gets a new assignment: to track down the Ark of the Covenant that the ancient Hebrews used to destroy the Egyptian army. (Wait -- didn't the Egyptians destroy them?). So it's off to the Middle East, or in Temple, to India; or in The Last Crusade, Italy; or in Crystal Skull, Peru. Unlike most archaeologists, Indy doesn't specialize in one geographic region, and he's fluent in every language ever spoken, even the Mayan language spoken 3,000 years ago in Peru! Not heterosexist, just stupid.

4. En route to the Middle East, Indy stops in Tibet (yeah, that's on the way) to look up Marian, a girl that he broke up with, ostensibly to get an amulet that shows the location of the Ark, but actually to get back together with her. The most hackneyed trick in the book for getting The Girl into the plot. Indy also hooks up with The Girl in Temple (a nightclub performer who accidentally tags along) and in Last Crusade (a Nazi who falls for him and changes alliances); in Crystal Skull, Marian returns so they can reconcile. Fade out kiss. Yawn.

5. After a few more betrayals by male friends, Indy and Marian run up against the creepy, foppish Nazi Arnold Toht (Ronald Lacey), who always carries a specially-designed hanger in a black case to keep his coat from getting wrinkled. Gay vague villains abound in the series. Perhaps the most egregious is the swaying, jewelry-encrusted young boy, Maharaja Salim Singh (Raj Singh), who tortures Indy with a voodoo doll in Temple (yes, a Hindu with a Sikh name uses an Afro-Caribbean device).

Or maybe the butch lesbian stereotype, Nazi. .. um, I mean Commie. . .Irina Spalko (Kate Blanchette) in Crystal Skull.

6. Turns out the the Ark of the Covenant contains spirits, who kill the evil Nazis but spare Indy and his friends. Same thing happens in each of the sequels; the spiritual world, the laws of the universe side with Truth, Right, Masculinity, and Heterosexism. The gay-vague, the gender-transgressive, the Nazi/Commie must perish.

Harrison Ford is not exactly a gay ally, although he seems ok on gay marriage. Still, I'll stick with the Die Hardseries.

Tired of African muscle yet?

I didn't think so.

This time we'll work our way through the countries of East and South Africa.

1. In Ethiopia most of the population speaks Amharic, an Afro-Asiatic language related to Arabic and Hebrew. Poverty and puritanical religion have minimized public art, but I like the Ethiopian-Cuban Friendship Memorial. It shows two stylized men, one comforting the other, with his head on the other's shoulders.

2. War-torn Somalia isn't even a country anymore, but it still managed the Dhagax Tuur monument, a young man on a very high tower running toward the future.

3. Uganda, site of dictators, genocide, and "kill the gays" laws, has a lot of statues of smiling despots, but only one with beefcake: the Commonwealth Monument in Kampala.

4. A stylized, muscular rider, calling his people to war, from Malawi.

5. I knew a guy from Zambia. You never saw such a snob. But the Freedom Statue in Lusaka, a 50-foot tall guy breaking his chains, is one of the more impressive on the subcontinent.

More after the break.

6. The Republic of South Africa is the most gay-friendly of any country in the subcontinent, and one of the most gay-friendly in the world, with same-sex marriage, job and housing protection, adoption rights -- gay men can even donate blood, which is illegal in the United States.

And there is a surprising amount of beefcake art, such as this muscular rider on the Rhodes Memorial overlooking Cape Town.

7. The naked men holding hands are Castor and Pollux, brothers from Greek mythology, atop a building in Pretoria.

8. The Diggers Memorial in the Ernest Oppenheimer Gardens, Kimberley, commemorates miners with a display of six muscular men holding up a fountain.

9.I visited Durban in 2000, and met the Hottest Guy in the World. But I didn't see the 10-foot tall, realistic statue of Shaka, renowned king of the Zulu nation, outside the airport. It was erected in 2010.

But there are several other images of Shaka in South Africa.

10. A loose-slate construction of a reclining man, naked, with penis, outside the Apple Mac Headquarters in Johannesburg.

It's called "Homage to Hermes," by sculptor Angus Taylor.

He has others installed near Cape Town, and in Belgium and Canada.

11. Jan Smuts was a famous South African statesman. There are several statues of him in the country, including this nude, stylized version outside the art museum in Kimberley.

Americans might have a special interest in the Smuts Memorial because, through a linguistic accident, in American English "smut" means "pornography."

See also: Top 10 Public Penises of Africa; and The Hottest Guy in the World.

Drake and Josh (2004-2007) was a Nickelodeon teencom about two high school stepbrothers.

The scheming underachiever, Drake (Drake Bell).

And the shy intellectual, Josh (Josh Peck). He only started getting buff in the last season.

Like The Wizards of Waverly Place and The Suite of Life of Zack and Cody, the program was not shy about subtexts. While both dated girls, Drake and Josh shared a physicality, an emotional connection, and an exclusivity that would elsewhere mark them definitively as romantic partners.

And there was an even more overt gay couple.

Network censorship forbade the nerds Craig and Eric (Alec Medlock, Scott Halberstadt) from being explicitly identified as a gay couple -- not on a program aimed at a teenage audience -- but they were as open as they could be without actually Wearing a Sign.

They danced together at a wedding.
They went on a double date with a heterosexual couple.
They bemoaned the loss of their pictures taken at Niagara Falls (a stereotypic honeymoon destination).
They broke up, realized how much they care for each other, and reconciled (while Drake sang “Beautiful Dreamer").
In the series finale, the tv-movie Merry Christmas, Drake and Josh (2008), they were shown holding hands.

In a 2007 episode, Drake comes very close to saying the word "gay." In a feeble, half-hearted attempt to Be Discreet, Eric tells Drake, “Girls are nothing but trouble. That’s why we don’t have girlfriends.”

Drake stares at him for a long moment, a curious self-satisfied grin on his face. He is obviously dying to Say the Word. The studio audience goes crazy with excitement. Will they finally hear it spoken aloud?

It looks for all the world like the actor is trying to decide whether he should stick to the script or say something like "You don't have girlfriends because you're gay," and risk a reshoot.

But, in the end, he sticks to the script: “There are a lot of reasons why you two don’t have girlfriends,” leaving the viewer the option of pretending not to know what those reasons are.

Juvenile tv programs are often loaded down with hints and innuendos -- Even Stevens, Hannah Montana, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, and The Wizards of Waverly Place come to mind.

But we're still waiting for a program aimed at teenagers or children to break the silence.

When I was a kid in the 1960s, my favorite comics were the Harveys (Casper, Richie Rich), followed by Gold Key jungle heroes (Tarzan, Korak, Brothers of the Spear), and then Archie, and maybe some Marvel and DC if I could get them. Disney's Donald Duck was not as low on the list as Bugs Bunny, but it was down near the bottom.

The problem was that Donald led a double life. I liked the stories where he was an adventurer, brave, resourceful and intelligent, setting out with his rich Uncle Scrooge to explore lost Atlantis, the Yucatan, Tibet, Antarctica, or the Seven Cities of Cibola, in plotlines as macho as Treasure Island, as passionate as Time Tunnel. It was a man-only world, with no damsels in distress to be rescued and no girls waiting back home at the story’s end.

In fact, no one expressed any heterosexual interest at all, though the nephews sometimes swooned over male crooners and teen idols. (During the 1990s, Don Rosa retconned the characters to give Uncle Scrooge a long-ago romance with dance-hall girl Glittering Goldie).

But in other stories, Donald transmutated like a zombie into a single father living in the town of Duckburg, where he was saddled with a series of dismal jobs: janitor, gas station attendant, door-to-door salesman, delivery boy. And he had a girlfriend, Daisy Duck, who was constantly natting her disapproval of every single one of his interests, hobbies, goals, and dreams (precisely like Poil's disapproval of Spooky's passion for scaring).

The two could not be more different. Donald exuded toughness and aggression, Daisy was dainty to the point of idiocy. Donald bellowed at baseball games, Daisy drank tea at the Tuesday Afternoon Ladies’ League. Donald puttered around in junkyards, Daisy puttered about in her petunia bed.

It was disgusting! Donald had not only abandoned his life of swashbuckling adventure, he could not even enjoy the simple pleasures of boxing matches and working on cars. Instead, he sat bored on a frilly white chair at the Bon Ton, while Daisy tried on hats. Why would he do it? If they shared no common interests whatsoever, why would he even want to hang out with her?

In "The Double Date," Daisy and Donald go on a double date with Clara Cluck and Rockhead Rooster. Donald and Rockhead exhibit an instant, eye-bulging attraction to each other, and become so engrossed in discussions of cars and sports that they ignore the girls. They even dance together at a party. Daisy and Clara agree that "They shouldn't see each other again."

One rainy afternoon in the summer of 1971, when we were sitting on the floor in Bill's family room, reading comic books, I brought up my concerns. "I don't get it. Donald Duck has a lot more fun on his adventures with Uncle Scrooge, and he doesn't anything that Daisy likes. Why does he hang out with her? What's the big deal?”

Bill's older brother Mike happened to be passing through on his way out, wearing a raincoat and tossing his keychain in the air. He pulled the comic from my hands and leafed through it, murmuring “Hmm…very eenterest-ing,” like the Nazi spy on Laugh-In. Then he returned it with a grin. “Een mine professional opinion, Uncle Scrooge ees a boy, und Daisy Duck ees a girl.”

“So what?” I asked.

Mike laughed, and reached down to tousle my hair. “So what!” he exclaimed in his normal voice. “Just wait ‘til you discover girls. Then you won’t ask ‘so what’? You’ll say ‘gimme her number!’” And he was gone. I heard him repeat “so what!”, chortling to himself, as he clomped through the kitchen and out the back door.

Suddenly chilled, I scooted over to sit next to Bill, our backs against the couch. He smiled, and we sat together, quietly.

Abandon the Seven Cities of Cibola to drink tea from fragile cups and discuss poetry! The idea was absurd!

During the decade that began on September 24th, 1977 and ended on February 27th, 1987, I graduated from high school and college, got my M.A. in English, spent a year teaching at Hell-fer-Sartain State University, and moved to West Hollywood. I spent my Saturday nights going on dates, going out with friends, cruising in the bars, at movies, dinners, concerts, potlucks, or as a last resort at the gym.

Only when I was sick, studying for finals, or back in Rock Island for the holidays did I find myself staying home on Saturday nights.

And when I was home, I watched Gimme a Break, Love Sidney, We Got It Made, Magnum PI, anything but those nauseating anthology series, Love Boat and Fantasy Island.

But my parents watched. All of the older people watched.

Love Boat (1977-87) was set on a cruise ship, where the randy Captain (Gavin MacLeod), ship's doctor (Bernie Kopell), purser (Fred Grandy), bartender (Ted Lange), and activities director (Lauren Tewes) made a hobby of facilitating three heterosexual romances per episode (two serious, one funny).

A sports writer and a tennis pro, a minister and an exotic dancer, a chauffeur and his employer, a rock star and a deaf girl, a celebrity and a tabloid reporter, an advice columnist who can't find love, a magician who can't find love. It goes on like that. For 248 episodes.

Gay people were unknown, except for an episode where two buddies are mistaken for a gay couple. By the end of the episode, they both find love (with women). Problem solved.

But I understand that there were there were lots of guest stars in Speedos lounging around the Cabana Deck, like perennial 1970s fave Bert Convy (top photo).

Fantasy Island (1977-84) was more of the same. The mysterious Mr. Roarke (Ricardo Montalban, known as Khan on Star Trek) and his assistant Tattoo (Herve Villechaize) ran a tropical resort where, for an additional fee of $20,000 (waived for charity cases), he would arrange to fulfill your "fantasy." Two or three per episode, alternating between serious and funny.

In the early years, the fantasies involved nothing more than props and actors, as guests wanted to be Latin lovers or cowboys or movie stars. Later, Mr. Roarke was able to travel in time, conjure up ghosts and genies, and make a deal with the goddess Aphrodite to fulfill the guests' fantasies. The Devil even dropped by from time to time.

Here, too, most fantasies ended with hetero-romance.

No gay people existed, but again, there were guest stars with their shirts off, like Bert Convy again.

I always wanted to ask the old people: why? Why do you need yet another dose of heterosexism? You've already married and reproduced, your life is nearly over (actually, in 1977, my Dad was younger than I am now). What's the "love, love, love!" brainwashing for?

An article in TV Guide explained: "Love Boat for people who live in Iowa and can't get dressed up and go out on Saturday night."

The dig at Iowa roiled me -- hey, we had four-star restaurants, opera, theater, and the symphony!

But I understood -- these Saturday night "love, love, love!" marathons were to keep them assuaged near the end of their lives: yes, yes, it was all worthwhile, hetero-romance was a worthwhile, noble goal, the only thing worth doing.

See also: Love, American Style and Ricardo Montalban.

14 Childhood Experiences That Are More Fiction Than Fact

Trailer Park Boys: Gay Characters in the Hood

Mikey Likes It

Carl Sandburg's Two Gay References

Cousin Buster: Growing Up a Stranger

Here's Johnny: The Gay Snark of the Tonight Show

Beefcake and Grammatical Atrocities in Hidden Valley

Summer Cruising at the Bookmobile

Kieron Richardson: Questioning His Sexuality

15 Simple Rules for Cruising Straight Guys

Summer 1984: A Bodybuilding Contest in India

College Beefcake: The German Choirboy

Gotham, 2014: Can We Expect Gay Subtexts?

Top 10 Public Penises of Africa

Fall 1985: Dating a Pentecostal Porn Star

Indiana Jones: White Heterosexual Male Adventure

10 More Public Penises of Africa

Drake and Josh and Craig and Eric

Summer 1971: Donald Duck's Double Life

Love Boat/Fantasy Island: Love Won't Hurt Anymore