NYSocBoy's Beefcake and Bonding

I'm not a big fan of Christmas. I dread seeing the first Christmas ads of the year, in August or September. The decorations going up in stores in October. And the day after Thanksgiving, when the onslaught begins in earnest, a full month of gaudy decorations and tinny music and exhortations to be merry.

It's the most heterosexist time of the year.

Here are 15 reasons to just skip it and spend December hiding out in yurt in Mongolia.

1. The Animated Specials: Unrelenting in their zeal in pairing up Santa Claus, Rudolph, and Frosty the Snowman with their female counterparts, while Burl Ives sings "Somebody waits for you -- kiss her once for me."

2. The TV Movies. Christmas Magic, A Christmas Kiss, A Bride for Christmas, Undercover Christmas. A lonely woman finds love with an unexpected man in a "Holiday Miracle." Over and over and over again.

3. The Nutcracker Ballet. Ok, so there are ample bulges and biceps to be seen, but it's a hetero-romance composed by a gay man.

4. The Commercials. 15,000 tv commercials show young heterosexual couples in expensive bathrobes giving each other elegant gifts and then kissing. 15,000 more show kids ecstatically upwrapping the gift du jour, while their heterosexual parents hug each other fondly. No same-sex couples, not even pairs of friends.

5. The Songs. Men and women endlessly meeting each other under the mistletoe. Kids getting gender-polarized presents. And "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," the most depressing song ever written, part of the repertoire of Judy Garland, who believed -- with many gay people of her era -- that to be gay was to be constantly sad.

Did you know that the song was originally much more depressing? I'm not sure how that's possible, but the maven of depressing songs refused to sing it until it was cheered up from "throw yourself in front of a bus" to a mere "sob uncontrollably."

6. "Don we now our gay apparel." A reminder that the word "gay" previously meant something like "happy, giddy." Except today it's regularly censored, lest anyone's holiday celebrations be ruined by the recognition that gay people exist.

7. The Visit. You are required to wait at a crowded airport, sit in a packed airplane made even more cramped by bulky coats and packages, and go "home" to visit your birth family in the Straight World. But your heterosexual brother and sister are excused. The message is clear: they have their own home, but you don't. No matter how long they have lived in a place, no matter what social and emotional connections they have made, gay people have no "home."

8. The Dinner. Christmas Dinner back "home" involves endless discussions of heterosexual husbands and wives, boyfriend and girlfriends, but you are cautioned not to tell Aunt June about your boyfriend, lest her holiday be ruined.

9. The Breakup. There are an extraordinary number of breakups just after Christmas. People who don't like their boyfriends or girlfriends always think things like "I can't ruin their Christmas by dumping them. But the day after..."

My problem has always been going "home" for 10 days and leaving the boyfriend back in West Hollywood or New York or Florida. The vultures start circling immediately, bulging and flexing and cruising, and when I get back, I'm welcomed by "I didn't plan on it -- it just happened."

10. The Parties. They never end. Various offices, departments, schools, organizations, miscellaneous groups of friends. 10 or more before the season is over -- if you're lucky.

Roomsful of people who don't know you're gay, forcing you to come out endlessly and get surprised reactions, or else endure heterosexist small talk and flirting from every heterosexual Cougar in sight.

And endless supplies of cookies, candy, cakes, bars, and whatever other high-fat, high-sugar horrors that can be decorated in gaudy colors.

11. The Fashions. After all the parties, no wonder people dress in bulky sweaters and coats. Primary colors, gaudy designs, knit fabrics. It's the worst time of the year for showing off your muscles, or getting a glimpse of a Cute Young Thing's biceps and bulge.

12. Santa Claus. Fat, elderly, married, and wearing red. The antithesis of a gay icon.

13. The Salvation Army, which teaches that gay people should be stoned to death, is out in numbers ringing those little bells, and people are tossing money in gladly, emphasizing how thin the veneer of tolerance is -- at any moment, "I don't have any problem with you people" could change to screaming.

14. "A Perfect Holiday Gift." TV commercials and ads call it "the holidays," but they mean Christmas only, showing only Christmas traditions and ending summarily on December 26th, even though there is still New Year's Eve, Kwanzaa, and sometimes Ramadan and Hanukah left.

Gay people hear quite enough of this "universal" means "only us" claptrap:

She's every man's fantasy.
Every woman wants him; every man wants to be him.
There's not a man alive who wouldn't want to get with her.
Every boy "discovers" girls during adolescence.

15. "Cheer up, it's Christmas." You are required to feel ecstatic all the time. Even the most upbeat person can't be up all day, every day, but if you experience even a moment of melancholy, there are 3000 people waiting to tell you that there's something wrong with you, you're a Scrooge or a Grinch.

Gay people hear quite enough of this "You must feel a certain way" claptrap:

You're not really gay. You just haven't met the right person yet.
How do you know you're gay if you haven't tried it with a woman?
Ok, so you're gay, but don't tell me you would kick her out of bed!

But at least there are Pantomimes in England, and the Santa Speedo Run in Boston.

See also: Are the Pantos Gay; and My 12 Christmas Boyfriends

After my 15 Reasons to Skip Christmas post, you may think that I've had nothing but dreary, depressing, heterosexist holidays.

Actually, only about 30% of the Holiday Seasons I recall have been traumatic or otherwise unredeemably awful: getting sick, getting dumped, being bored to death, hearing that "Merry Little Christmas" song a thousand times, my dad yelling at us, the year my sister gave me office supplies. 50% have had a few redeeming moments, and 20% have been rather pleasant.

My top 12 have all involved boyfriends.

1. Tarzan: When I was seven years old, we drove six hours east to Indiana to spend Christmas with my Grandma Dennis. My brother and I got one present each; very stingy for Christmas in the 1960s! Then, on January 1st, we drove home, and Santa Claus had come! And he broke the bank!

I got a Tarzan Bopper, an inflatable full-sized punching bag that you could punch -- or pretend he was your boyfriend and hug.

We drove away from a house with nothing under the tree. Surely Dad didn't sneak out, drive six hours back to Rock Island, and put out the presents. How did they get there?

2. Dan. In junior high, Dad gave in and let me buy a naked man for Christmas. Actually a statue. And, that year, my brother gave me a pile of new comic books. Dan came over in the afternoon to help me read them. Best Christmas ever!

3. Verne. On the Christmas Eve my first year in high school, the Nazarene youth group went caroling all night, ending with a big breakfast at the church. It was my first time staying out all night, and a lot of fun to be dashing through the snow with high school hunk Verne, who I would start dating next year. The only problem was, my brother and sister were angry at having to wait until I got home at 8:00 to start opening presents -- usually we started around 4:30.

4. Brian. In twelfth grade, Brian, who I used to babysit, showed up at my brother's Christmas party. I kissed him under the mistletoe, then gave him a ride across the bridge to Iowa, hugged him, and asked him to call me. Back home, I told my brother that, kiss or no kiss, I wasn't a "swish," then went upstairs and listened to the BeeGees on my clock radio. At the time it was rather traumatic, but since it's become one of my most iconic memories.

5. Fred. My first date with my first real boyfriend, Fred the Ministerial Student, was on December 21st of my sophomore year in college. You'd think that would be too late for Christmas presents or to "meet the family," but no, he invited me to his parents' farm in Aledo, about 30 miles south of Rock Island, on December 26th.

6. Viju. When I was in grad school in Bloomington, my friend Viju came home with me. I had never actually had a "coming out" conversation with my parents, so I was nervous about how they would handle a rather flamboyant gay guy in the house. But when we brought our suitcases upstairs to the room that I used to share with my brother, I saw that they had pushed the two twin beds together. They not only "knew," they were fine with us sleeping together!

We weren't actually dating, but so what?

7. Dick. During my deplorable year in Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, I went back to Rock Island for the holidays, and ran into my old bully. Back in grade school, he made my life miserable with poundings and punches and a constant stream of slurs: "Wuss! Sissy! Fairy! Girl!" Who would have thought that he was struggling with same-sex desire of his own? Or that, all grown up, he would apologize by inviting me back to his house. Or that he was so...um...gifted.

8. Lee. One year I had a job that didn't give me much time off for Christmas, so I couldn't make the trek cross-country. Lee and I stayed home in West Hollywood. We went to a Hanukah party and had latkes and Hanukah gelt. We went to a bear party, with 50 naked hairy guys eating Christmas cookies and then wandering downstairs to the maze. We went to Midnight Mass at a gay-positive Catholic church, and then stopped for breakfast at the French Quarter. And I didn't hear the "Merry Little Christmas" song once. Best Christmas ever!

9.-10. Yuri and Jaan. My first year in New York, I brought Yuri to the departmental Christmas party. He was still claiming to be straight, but I expected him to at least dance with me. He refused, so I said "Look, I bought your ticket, so you either get up on that dance floor now, or get into my bed later."

He picked the bed.

Suddenly I had two boyfriends, Yuri and Jaan the Estonian Mountain Climber. I couldn't fly home and leave them to find other guys, or each other, so I stayed in New York. We went ice-skating at the Rockefeller Center. Best Christmas ever!

11. Mickey. When I was living in Florida, I returned to Rock Island for Christmas, and my brother said that my old Sunday School teacher, Brother Dino, had two sons who were working as strippers. I went to the show, and got a kiss from Mickey.

Ok, he wasn't really a boyfriend, but my list, my rules.

12. Jeremy. Born and raised in small-town Upstate New York, Jeremy has an extended-extended-extended family. He usually goes to Christmas dinner at the home of his grandmother's cousin and her family, but one year Lisa, his grandmother's cousin's son's ex-wife, invited us all to her house. There must have been eighty people there, and Jeremy was out to every one of them; no awkward "so who is this?" questions.

She sent us home with presents plus care packages full of leftovers for later.

The only problem: some kid kept playing the "Merry Little Christmas" song over and over and over.

See also: 15 Reasons to Skip Christmas.

Even though 30 years have passed, Peter Billingsley is still know as the kid from A Christmas Story (1983). You know -- the bespectacled 9-year old whose only Christmas wish is "a Red Ryder BB gun with a compass and this thing that tells time." Hardly anyone saw it in theaters in 1983, but it has become a TV tradition -- TBS usually mounts a 24-hour marathon -- so you've probably seen A Christmas Story as often as the much gayer White Christmasor It's a Wonderful Life.

I don't like it. There's a creepy lamp shaped like a lady's leg (that turns Ralphie on), a nasty bully, a borderline-abusive Dad, a gun as a major plot point, and no cute guys or discernible homoerotic subplots (although some of the cast has gay connections).

And Peter Billingsley has made up for it since.

In The Dirt Bike Kid (1985), a modern retelling of "Jack and the Beanstalk," the 14-year old Jack (Peter) is sent to buy groceries, but gets a magic dirtbike instead. He uses it to clean up the corrupt town, save a struggling hot dog stand, and become a town hero. He expresses no heterosexual interest; his main emotional bond is with Mike (Patrick Collins), the owner of the hot dog stand, though it falls short of homoromance.

In Russkies (1987), it's the heart of the Cold War, Danny (Joaquin Phoenix) and his friends Adam (Peter) and Jason (Stefan DeSalle) find a a Russian sailor, Mischa (Whip Hubley), washed up on the shore. Adam is obviously entranced by the beefy, bulge-laden Mischa, especially after he takes off his shirt at the doctor's office.

But it is Danny who acts as his friend and protector. He hatches a scheme to smuggle Mischa to Cuba, whence he could get back home. When the baddies shoot Danny down over the water, Mischa rushes to the rescue. Later, Danny rescues Mischa. Though the movie ends with Mischa going home, the experience changes Danny forever; it is his Summer of '42.

An anti-gay slur (this was the 1980s, after all), but no girls thought of or spoken of.

In Beverly Hills Brats (1989), Scooter (18-year old Peter) is ignored by his rich father (Martin Sheen) and bullied by his siblings, so he fakes his own kidnapping, hiring the bumbling thugs Clive (Burt Young) and Elmo (George Kirby). The thugs are hostile at first, but soon come to feel sympathy for the lonely Scooter. Again, an anti-gay slur, but no expressed interest in girls. Instead, Scooter tries to reach out to the thugs for emotional support.

By this point, Peter was starting to muscle up; in fact, he later played a high school athlete abusing steroids on an Afterschool Special.

Peter's characters didn't start ogling girls until Arcade (1993). By that time, his acting roles were becoming scarcer as he moved into production. He hasn't been involved in many gay-friendly projects, but he received a special thanks in the credits of the gay-angst Mysterious Skin (2004). For what, I don't know.

I have always been attracted to clergy. There's something about a devotion to the spiritual world that makes your presence in the physical world especially erotic. Maybe the paradoxical juxtaposition of muscles and Bibles, penises and prayer.

When I was a kid, I watched the preacher up on his podium three times a week, pacing and pounding his Bible and screaming until his brown business suit was soaked with sweat and you could glimpse his tight, hairy chest underneath.

At Nazarene summer camp, I saw my Sunday school teacher, Brother Dino, naked in the shower, and got a nice view of of the Gospel-singing Sanderson Brothers peeing in the woods.

My first real boyfriend was a student preacher.

My goal is to date, hook up with, or at least see a religious leader in each of the major religious groups.

1. Roman Catholic. I dated a Traditional Catholic monk, and once I was invited on a Catholic retreat, where I got to bunk with a young, attractive priest. Nothing happened, but in the night I watched carefully and noticed that he was having an erotic dream.

2. Eastern Orthodox. No Romanian Orthodox monks, such as pose for those erotic-religious calendars, but I dated a former Greek Orthodox priest with a pushy mom.

3. Evangelical Christian. Lots of ex-evangelicals. Alan, the first guy I dated seriously in West Hollywood, was a Pentecostal minister.

4. Mormon. Who wouldn't want to invite those pairs of missionaries into your house to discuss the Angel Moroni, the Golden Plates, and sacred underwear? I dated a Mormon guy, but never a missionary.

5. Hindu. Does a a follower of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi count?

6. Buddhist. There are no professional clergy in Buddhism, but a hot orange-robed monk would be a good substitute.

7. Pagan. No professional clergy, but I've dated Wiccans.

8. Sikh. A Sikh guy used to work out at Barney's gym in Florida, and I managed to see the surprisingly muscular physique under his white robe.

9. Jewish. I had a Jewish partner for 10 years, and hooked up with several other Jewish guys, but no rabbis. Not even any rabbinic students.

10. Muslim. The holy grail of clergy-cruising. Not only is Islam notoriously homophobic, but there aren't many Muslims in the U.S., and even fewer imams (you can have a congregation without one). I've never even come close, not even during my semester in Turkey.

See also: Brother Dino in the Shower; The Sanderson Boys Get Naked; and The Top 10 Public Penises of Islam

January 18, 1979, a Thursday night. I was 18 years old, upstairs in the room I shared with my brother.

At 7:00, he turned on the tv. I expected Mork and Mindy, but he turned the channel to Legends of the Superheroes, explaining that it was a sort of live--action version of The Challenge of the Superfriends on Saturday morning.

I hadn't watched Saturday morning tv for a few years, and I was never much interested in superhero cartoons like The Superfriends, but I let Ken watch, glancing over occasionally from my German textbook to see if there was any beefcake.

There was.

The premise: the Justice League of America from DC Comics -- Batman, Robin, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Captain Marvel, the Huntress, and the Black Canary (have you ever heard of the last two?) -- gather to celebrate the birthday of retired superhero Scarlet Cyclone. Suddenly the Legion of Doom announce that they have planted a bomb in the headquarters, and offer them some clues on finding it. The rest of the hour-long special involves the superheroes deciphering the clues.

Batman and Robin were played by Adam West and Burt Ward, reprising their roles from a decade before. The other actors were unknown, at least to me

Garrett Craig bulged nicely in his Captain Marvel uniform.

But Bill Nuckols was the most memorable, a massive bodybuilder, half-naked in his Hawkman costume.

Apparently there was a sequel the next week, a spoof of Celebrity Roasts, but I didn't see it.

There was no internet yet, no way to find out anything else about the beefcake stars, so I shuffled them into the back of my memory, and eventually forgot about them.

But recently, I found an interview with them about Legends of the Superheroes.

Garrett Craig, who was a stand-up comedian before Legends of the Superheroes, did a little acting, but not much: Third Party Guest in The Blue Knight, a swimmer in Heaven Can Wait, and Richie in Starsky and Hutch. He's currently a substitute teacher at an elementary school.

Bill Nuckols returned to bodybuilding, placing #6 in the AAU Mr. America competition. His only tv and film credits are Moose on Sunset Cove, and Wally in Supertrain.

But you can buy Legends of the Superheroes on DVD and marvel at this long-forgotten beefcake fest from 35 years ago.

A Christmas Story (1983) is not just about Ralphie (Peter Billingsley) lusting after a rifle and a lady-leg lamp. There are other plots and gag bits, other actors who are forever known as for their parts in this long-ago movie, no matter what else they've done. Many have a gay connection.

1. Zack Ward (the bully Farkus) has become an accomplished actor and beefcake hunk, with many credits on tv and in movies, including Just for Fun (1993), "a story of homophobia and gay-bashing," according to the IMDB.

Look for him as Dave, brother of the titular Titus (2000-2002) and slacker college student Murray in The Pink House (2003).

2. Yano Anaya (his crony, Grover) is, according to Linkedin, a personal trainer at the Atlanta School of Massage.

3. R.D. Robb (Schwartz, Ralphie's buddy) continued his acting career into adulthood (including a role in The Brady Bunch Movie as a nerd who kisses Marcia). He is also involved in directing. Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire agreed to star in his Don's Plum (2001), which includes a gay teenager, only on the condition that it not be shown in the U.S.

4. Ian Petrilla (Randy, Ralphie's kid brother) continued acting as a teen and later studied the art of puppeteering. He has worked with the Henson Company, and currently owns an animation company in L.A.

5. Scott Schwartz (Flick, who got his tongue stuck to a flag pole) later starred as The Toy, and then used his Flick notoriety to land roles in some heterosexual porn films (mostly in non-sexual roles). Now he still does some non-porn acting, and runs a baseball card and nostalgia shop in California. He's heterosexual.

Blake: Manhattan Elite

I met Blake in the fall of 1998, when I was in grad school in New York. At first he seemed like an ideal boyfriend, with four of the five characteristics I find attractive: religious (devout Episcopalian), dark-skinned, muscular, and mega-gifted below the belt (two years later, I would meet a guy with all five, by definition the Hottest Guy in the World).

But there were problems:
1. He was pretentious, one of those intellectual-artsy guys who doesn't own a television set, has season tickets to the opera, and won't eat at any restaurant without a Zagat rating.

2. He was closeted, bringing a female "beard" to work-related events. Who in 1990s Manhattan was closeted?

3. He always had a glass of wine in his hand. I can't stand drinking.

4. He slept to opera music.

Time to dump Blake, right?

Except I was entranced by his roommate, Joe.

The Roommate: Regular Guy

Short, muscular (a Chelsea gym rat), Mediterranean, and a "regular guy": I could hear him listening to Friends in his bedroom while Blake inflicted opera on me. And he cooked: every time I stayed over, I woke up to the smell of bacon frying (Mom always told me to marry a guy who can cook.)

But how to get Joe? I couldn't date him behind Blake's back, and if I dumped Blake, or did something heinous to get dumped, I would be labeled "bad news," undateable.

I had to get Blake to dump me without any character flaws or wrongdoings of my own.

Strategy #1: Kink

I had never yet met a black guy who was into S&M, getting tied up, spanked, whipped, and so on. It sounded like a great way to get a "sorry, we're not compatible" speech.

Blake is into bondage

One night after dinner, I told Blake, "I'm really into S&M. Do you think we could do a scene?"

He stared for a moment. "Oh, wow, I didn't think you were up for that!" He took me into the bedroom and opened a dresser drawer containing a large collection of whips, chains, handcuffs, and miscellaneous bondage toys.

"You're a top, right? Could you flog me to Der Fledermaus?"

Strategy #2: The Menage.

On an episode of Seinfeld, Jerry likes his girlfriend's roommate, so he comes up with a scheme to make "the switch." He'll suggest a "menage a trois," thus insulting the girlfriend into dumping him, but intriguing the roommate enough to date him afterwards.

Back in West Hollywood in the 1980s, "sharing" one's boyfriend with friends and roommates was commonplace, even expected, but New York in the 1990s was much more conservative. It might just work.

One night I said "Joe is kind of hot. Do you think we could invite him to join us?"

Blake didn't even hesitate. "Sure, no problem." He yelled into the back bedroom, "Hey, Joe, wanna join us?"

That just made it worse. Joe was warm and affectionate and passionate. I had to find some way to make the Switch!

The Queen Victoria

Strategy #3: Yuri.

Since coming out last year, the Russian meteorology major had been a firestorm of dating activity (including competing with me over Jaan the Estonian Mountain Climber).

My friend Alan in West Hollywood could get any Asian guy he wanted, but Yuri could get anybody, period. Whatever you liked, he had it. Bodybuilder physique. Pretty, somewhat feminine Cute Young Thing face. Good dancer. Sexy Russian accent.

So I invited Yuri into the City for a Saturday of sightseeing, followed by dinner with Blake at the Queen Vic in the East Village.

I saw Blake's hungry look as they shook hands for a little too long; how he wrapped his arm around Yuri's shoulders to help him read the menu; how he suggested "off the beaten path" outings, like Roosevelt Island and the Cloisters, with the implication that I might not be coming along.

He didn't cruise Yuri, not exactly. But he was obviously thinking about a Switch.

After dinner and a stop at the Eagle, we took Yuri to Penn Station to catch the train back to Stony Brook. Blake offered to send him a book on the Episcopal Church, but he'd need his address. Yuri helpfully provided his phone number, too. And a goodbye hug.

Later I asked, "Do you think he took the bait?"

"Don't worry," Yuri said. "It was easy. He's going to call me by Tuesday."

He was mistaken. Blake didn't call for a week. Not until after he gave me the "this isn't working out"speech.

Yuri and Blake went out once.

A few days later, I asked Joe to have coffee and "talk about my feelings."

We dated for almost a year.

When I finally managed to drop out of the Nazarene church, during my freshman year of college, my parents told me, "You don't have to be a Nazarene, but you can't be a heathen! Find another church to go to!"

So I started going to my boyfriend Fred's United Methodist church. They thought that was ok. A little too liberal, but ok.

After Fred and I broke up, I tried Catholic, Lutheran, and Russian Orthodox churches. My parents were ok with that, too, as long as I didn't tell their Nazarene friends.

During my first year in grad school in Bloomington, Indiana, I joined the Baptist Student Fellowship.

My parents were horrified!

Nazarenes thought that Baptists were the ultimate evil. At least the Catholics and Lutherans were open about worshipping idols and tearing apart the Bible, but the Baptists pretended to be Christians.

They believed the "once saved, always saved" heresy -- once you were saved, you could do whatever you wanted, from going to movies to dancing to saying bad words, and God wouldn't care. Disgusting!

When I was a kid, the older boys at church whispered that since Baptists had no morals, they would "put out" for anybody. So if you wanted a "sure thing" on a date, ask a Baptist girl.

I didn't join the Baptist Student Fellowship to upset my parents; I wanted to see if Baptist boys were also "easy," willing to "put out" for anybody. Especially me.

They weren't. At least at first glance, they seemed nearly as strict as the Nazarenes, exhorting each other to "stay pure" and "resist their urges." Like the Nazarenes, they taught that God hated premarital sex, same-sex activity, masturbation, any sexual act that wasn't intended to make a baby.

Our main project was putting on a musical about a guy who makes obnoxious come-ons to every girl in sight, until one of them invites him to church, where he gets saved and vows to "stay pure" until his wedding night. I only remember one song:

The Devil is alive and well on the Planet Earth.
The Devil is alive and well, and he can make you feel like hell....

Feel like hell was code for Having erotic desires or giving in to them. But church elders disapproved, so we changed the line to "send your soul to hell."

Beginning around Christmastime, we performed for youth groups at various Baptist churches in the area. Not only in Bloomington, but in Columbus, Martinsville, and Indianapolis, cities up to an hour's drive away.

Then one Sunday in the spring, we were booked by a church in Plymouth, Indiana, about three hours away -- too far to get home after the evening youth group. So we car-pooled on Sunday afternoon, and after our performance, church members gave us dinner and put us up for the night.

The four boys in the cast stayed with an elderly couple whose sons had grown up and moved away.

I got one of the twin beds, and Chuck, a rather buffed business major, the other one. A slim, blond chemistry major named Jens slept on a sleeping bag between us and beneath a large window, and the fourth guy, whose name I don't recall, received a cot on the other side of the room.

Just like a sleepover when I was a kid, except I was 22 years old, knowledgeable about cruising, and anxious to convince the Baptist boys to try some same-sex activity.

After we stripped down to our underwear, prayed, and started talking about "girls! girls! girls!," it occurred to me that I had no idea how to go about it.

Grab the guy next to me?

Pull out a gay porn magazine?

Say "Hey fellows, does anyone feel like hell??

Completely frustrated, I put a pillow over my head and tried to drown out the other guys' conversations about "girls! girls! girls!"

Eventually the conversation gave way to mild snoring. I peeked out from under my pillow. If I turned my head slightly, I got a perfect view of Jens. He had kicked off the covers and lay on his back, wearing only cotton briefs, his slim pale body bathed in moonlight.

I could see him bulging and...and..well, nothing else.

I continued my vigil, half watching and half drowsing, until, about half an hour after the conversation ceased, Jens began to tent. Then slowly he began to give in to temptation.

He worked slowly, deliberately, listening for any sound: any shift or creak from the beds around him, and he dove under the covers again.

After about a half hour, he finished with an exhaled breath and grabbed a wad of kleenix that he had evidently prepared in advance.

One down, two to go. I turned my attention to Chuck, also lying on his back in the moonlight. I had a clear view of his shoulders and chest, but anything below was lost in shadows. But I persevered, and sure enough, a few minutes after Jens began breathing evenly, I saw a slow, rhythmic movement that must have been Chuck giving in to his sinful urges.

The third guy was too far away to make out in the darkness, but no doubt he waited for the others to finish up, then started on business of his own.

I imagined it happening every night, in bedrooms and college dorm rooms all over the world. Thousands of Baptist boys and men waiting for the midnight silence, then beginning an act that they believed God hated, that they couldn't admit even to their closest friends, that made them feel guilty and unclean. Perhaps begging for forgiveness and promising themselves that they would never do it again. But, being overpowered by their desire, night after night.

It was a little sad.

But it definitely helped create my fetish for religious guys.

See also Trying to Escape Church and Cruising Religious Guys.

I'm a big fan of the paranormal, especially mysterious disappearances, people who suddenly and inexplicably vanish.

You and a friend are hiking in the woods. He's a few paces ahead. You see him go around a bend, but when you arrive, a second later, he's not there.

Your father walks out the front door of your house to go to the mailbox, a journey of 10 yards. He is never seen again.

A man boards an airplane. He is served by the flight attendant in flight. When the plane lands, he is gone.

But the greatest of the "they never came back" stories happened on November 25th, 1809. Benjamin Bathurst, a 25-year old British diplomat, was on the way to Vienna for a meeting with Emperor Francis II. He and his assistant, Krause, stopped for dinner at an inn in Perleberg, Germany. When it was time to continue the journey, he walked around the horses to climb into his carriage. Except he never made it to the carriage.

He was never seen again.

It was a journey of 10 feet. He was out of Krause's sight for only a few seconds.

A few days later, his coat was discovered on a farm a mile north of Perleberg. And his pants, in the woods near the town of Quitzow.

The gay connection:
1. Bathurst and his servant sharing a room.
2. Wherever he went, he was naked when he arrived.

The story didn't get much press in 1809, but when it was rediscovered by Charles Fort in the 1920s, paranormal enthusiasts went wild. It was repeated in every compendium of the unexplained.

Maybe he was abducted by aliens, or zapped into a parallel world. Maybe he became a time traveler. Or a vampire.

Many science fiction writers, including Poul Anderson, H. Piper Beam, Robert Heinlein, and Robert Bloch, have covered his story.

Recently debunkers have been pushing a more mundane explanation: that Bathurst was dragged back into the inn and murdered, with robbery or political assassination as the motive (it was a rough part of town, in the middle of the night).

An adaptation of H. Piper Beam's story He Walked Around the Horses will appear in February 2015, written and directed by Claude Miles, who will also play Benjamin Bathurst. Miles has also appeared in such films as Trouser Snake (aka Penis Monster), The Last Temptation of Fluffy, Cow Tippers from Outer Space, Flying Saucers over Fetishland, and Tarzan's Teenage Daughter, so I'm going to guess that this will not be a serious production.

See also: Richard Halliburton

The Land Down Under is surprisingly scarce in its male nudity in public art. Maybe you're expected to make do with nude beaches, runs, and art exhibits, plus the nude selfies of sports hunks like David Williams.

There are a few treasures for the beefcake aficionado scattered about.

1. Moving from east to west, we'll start with Brisbane, the capital of Queensland and one of the most populous cities in Australia. On Queen Street, you can see two rather elongated nude people giving each other the cold shoulder after an argument in Dialogue (2004), by Cezary Stulgis,

2. About an hour northwest of Brisbane, in Kilcoy, Queensland, there's a monument to Yowie, the Big Foot of Australia. There have been hundreds of sightings of the legendary creature, who apparently doesn't have a penis.

3. About three hours south of Brisbane by car, Cape Byron, New South Wales, is the easternmost point in Australia, commemorated by a 13-foot tall galvanized steel statue of a naked man holding a bell and a sun disk. This one definitely has a penis.

4. Sydney, the capital of New South Wales and the biggest city in Australia, is another 9 hours down the coast (this is a big country). It's got enough sights for a month-long visit: the Opera House, the Royal Botanical Gardens, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the most vibrant gay cultural scene in the Southern Hemisphere. This art deco statue looks out from the Victoria Building.

5. Canberra, Australia's capital, is three hours south of Sydney by car. It became the capital as a compromise: it's between Sydney and Melbourne, the two main contenders. There's not a lot of public penises around, but you can see some statues of semi-nude athletes outside the Canberra Sports Institute.

More after the break.

6. In Melbourne, Victoria, a seven hour drive south of Canberra, the beefcake starts to pick up a bit. These stylized naked figures stand guard outside Eureka Tower.

7. Also check out the Trial of Socrates on the wall at Melbourne University.

8. And, in the suburb of Geelong, the Spirit of ANZAC, a monument to the Australian and New Zealand soldiers who fought in World War I. This one is shirtless.

9. Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory, is about 1300 miles north of Melbourne, or a three-hour plane flight. But how else will you see the Anmatjere Man? He's actually in Aileron, about 100 miles north of Alice Springs, a 55 foot tall aboriginal, a little on the gaunt side, but fully equipped (covered by a loincloth in front, but not in back).

He's got a gigantic wife and child nearby.

10. Next stop: Perth in Western Australia, another three-hour plane flight, away. You're looking for Pas de Deux, male and female dancers, the male muscular but not nude, at Belmont City College in the suburb of Belmontt.

11. And this statue of Yagan on Heirisson Island. Yagan was an aboriginal warrior who led a resistance movement against the British invaders. When he was killed in 1833, his head was removed and placed in a British museum as an "anthropological curiosity" until 1964 (it was finally returned to Australia in 1993).

The fully nude Yagan on Heirisson Island is the subject of controversy, with townsfolk petitioning to have his sex organs covered up.

12. Four hours south of Perth by car, the town of Albany, features a statue of Mokare (1800-1831), who helped the British explore the area. Sort of the opposite of Yagan. Apparently he was rewarded by getting his sex organs covered by a loin cloth.

See also: 5 Places to See Naked Men in Australia

We've been watching The Walking Dead, a postapocalyptic zombie tv series. It's aggressively heterosexist, eliminating or "straightening out" characters who were gay in the original comic book series, forcing you to depend on subtexts.

It also eliminates every romance between characters who are over 40, and almost every interracial romance. What is this, Lost?

But it does offer a lot of beefcake. Like this stunning sight, a muscleman fighting as a form of evening entertainment in colony of survivors.

He's Martinez, one of the allies of the mysterious Governor, who later becomes the leader of his own band of refugees. No heterosexual romances during his 13-episode run, so maybe he's gay.

The actor is Jose Pablo Cantilo, born in 1979 in Marshfield, Wisconsin, on screen since 2003, mostly playing gangsters and thugs.

This seems to be the fate of most Hispanic actors in Hollywood; according to one study, over 60% of Hispanic tv characters are "immoral" or "despicable," as opposed to 33% of black and 12% of white characters.

But Cantilo has managed to break out of the mold a few times. He played Marco, who has a one-night stand with a hooker in the relationship comedy After Sex (2007).

And in Virtuality (2009), a tv movie about a killer loose on a deep-space probe, he played Manny, half of a gay couple, with Gene Farber's Val. As far as I can recall, they were the first gay non-villains in any American science fiction movie.

It was a pilot for a tv series that didn't get picked up.

Today Cantilo spends most of his time going to Walking Dead fan conventions. He is a gay ally, and an ally of Emma Watson's "He for She" campaign for gender equality.

See also: The Walking Dead

Have you ever noticed that most Christmas specials are annoyingly heterosexist. Here are the worst examples:

1. Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol (1962): Why is Magoo/Scrooge so miserable? He was so obsessed with money that he lost Belle, the girl of his dreams. So he atones by helping a heterosexual nuclear family, Bob Cratchett, wife, daughter, and three sons.

2. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964): Ok, it's about accepting difference. The "misfit toys" are all adopted out, Rudolph uses his glowing red nose to save the day, and Hermey the Elf gets to become a dentist. But Rudolph gets a girlfriend, Clarice ("She thinks I'm cute!") and Hermey dances with a female elf at a party.

In the closing "Holly Jolly Christmas," Burl Ives sings that there's a girl waiting for you (a boy) under the mistletoe: "kiss her once for me." When a woman sings that song, it becomes "kiss him once for me."

3. Frosty the Snowman (1969): only a subtle a hetero-romantic subtext about a little girl in love with the snowman, but the sequel, Frosty's Winter Wonderland (1976) is all about the snowman finding a wife.

4. Santa Claus is Comin' to Town (1970): a heterosexual love story between the young-adult Santa Claus (then known as Kris Kringle) and the future Mrs. Claus (a teacher named Jessica). At least Kris (voiced by former teen idol Mickey Rooney) is a cute redhead.

5. The Year without a Santa Claus (1974). Mr.s Claus saves the day. And heterosexual monogamy.

But not to worry, there are a few inclusive ones. Here are the best:

1. A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965): a reference to the Little Red-Haired Girl and Lucy's obsession with Schroeder, but otherwise about nurturing and friendship.

2. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966): the Grinch is a green-furred outsider who dislikes Christmas, so he and his dog Max set out to ruin the holiday for the residents of Whoville by stealing all of their stuff. When he discovers that the townsfolk are happy together even without stuff, he relents, returns everything, and joins in the celebration.

No same-sex plotlines, but at least there's no hetero-romance, and few if any heterosexual nuclear families.

3. Olive the Other Reindeer (1999): a dog (Drew Barrymore), a penguin (Joe Pantoleono), and a flea (Peter MacNichol) save Christmas, and no one falls in love with anyone.

4. Billy and Mandy Save Christmas (2005): the cast of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy discover that Santa Claus has been transformed into a vampire. While looking for a cure, the Grim Reaper develops a homoromantic bond with a flamboyantly feminine, gay-coded vampire named Baron Von Ghoulish (voiced by gay actor Malcolm McDowell). They even sing about how much they like each other.

5. Prep & Landing (2009). Two high-tech Elves buddy-bond while saving Christmas.

When I was living in West Hollywood, people kept saying things like:
"I can't go out tonight -- The Sound of Music is on!"
"Which Sound of Music character are you?"
"The Sound of Music is playing at the community theater. We have to go!"

I have never seen it all the way through. It gives me bad vibes.

It's my fourth grade teacher's fault. She told us about Anne Frank and The Sound of Music at the same time, and I got them mixed up, thinking that the musical ended with everyone dying in a concentration camp.

When I used to hear the songs, they gave me a frisson of dread, since I thought they were being sung by the prisoners at Auschwitz.

But even without the horror, they made no sense. Look at "Do, Re, Mi":

Far, a long, long way to run. It's pronounced far, not fahhhh.

Ti, a drink with jam and bread. Who drinks tea with jam and bread? For that matter, what the heck is jam?

Or "My Favorite Things"
Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels. Ponies don't come in cream colors, and strudel is a soft pastry, not crisp.

When the dog bites -- when the bee stings. If a dog bites you, thinking of "favorite things" wouldn't help -- you need a rabies shot. And why would you feel sad about bitten or stung? It's not sad, it's painful.

"Oh, no," everyone kept telling me. "It's the greatest musical of all time! And the gayest!"

So I've been looking for the gay connection.

Not in the plot: it's just a "servant inspires joie de vivre in disfunctional family" story, done to death on tv: Hazel, Charles in Charge, Mr. Belvedere, Give me a Break, The Nanny. Here the nanny is future nun Maria (Julie Andrews), and the family belongs to the stern Captain Von Trapp of the Austrian army (Christopher Plummer). After they learn joie de vivre, the family hits it big as professional singers, and finally they escape from the Nazis by climbing over the hillside into Switzerland.

There is no beefcake or buddy-bonding.

There are no gay or gay-vague characters, except maybe Max Detweiler, who becomes the children's agent.

In 1965 he was played by Richard Haydn, who was gay in real life. This scene does not appear in the movie.

Maybe there's a gay connection in the cast?

Julie Andrews, of course, went on to play a woman disguised as a drag queen in Victor/Victoria (1982).

Christopher Plummer won an Academy Award at the age of 82, for playing a gay man who comes out after retirement in Beginners (2010). In the top photo, he seems to be having a little loincloth malfunction in The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969).

Nicholas Hammond (left), one of the two boys in Von Trapp's mostly female family, played Spider-Man on tv (1977-78), where he displayed a respectable bulge. He was married for only four years, and is rumored to be gay.

Not a lot of gay connection there.

What about the real life Von Trapp Family, lead by patriarch Georg Ritter Von Trapp (1888-1947)? Ok, they were professional singers long before they met Maria, and they were Italian citizens who didn't need to escape Germany -- they just bought train tickets. After the War, they opened a lodge in Stowe, Vermont.

Most of the kids eventually married, although Agathe may have been gay: she ran a kindergarten with her "friend of 50 years," Mary Louise Kane.

Still not a lot of gay connection.

The Sound of Music Live! (2013) starred Carrie Underwood as Maria and Stephen Moyer (left) as Captain Von Trapp, Christian Borle (second photo), who plays a lot of gay characters, made his Max Detweiler as gay-vague as possible.

Not much there, either.

I don't get the attraction.

See also: Charles in Charge; Mr. Belvedere

When I was in eighth grade at Washington Junior High, Dan and I were "together," but we also got hung up on other boys.

My big crushes of the year were:
Paul Getty Jr., the kidnapped heir to the Getty fortune.
Barry Williams, Greg Brady on The Brady Bunch
Teen idol David Cassidy

And Micah (not his real name), from my geology, English, and gym class.

He was short and compact, with a round stern face, severely short hair, and the tantalizing hint of muscle beneath his white button-down shirt and black pants.

Unfortunately, I never saw anything more -- for some reason he got permission to sit in the bleachers doing homework during gym.

One day he was standing at the door to the cafeteria, passing out tracts that said "Are You Ready for Eternity?" I walked over, held out my hand, and said, "Hey, Micah, I'm a Christian, too. Church of the Nazarene."

"Nazarene...." he repeated, staring as if I had said "Church of Satan." Then he shoved a tract into my hand and rushed away.

A few inquiries revealed that Micah belonged to the Bible Missionary Church, which broke away from the Nazarene Church in 1955 because we were too liberal! We permitted Bible translations other than the King James, not to mention such Satanic pastimes as tv, radio, newpapers, and sports where boys ran around in revealing uniforms. Thus, we were more dangerous than the openly-evil Catholics, Lutherans, and Presbyterians. Too dangerous to talk to, even in an attempt at soul winning!

How could I get close to a boy who thought I was the devil? Especially when he always chose another Bible Missionary kid for school assignments, sat with other Bible Missionary kids at lunch, and didn't belong to any clubs or teams?

I used to gaze at Micah in the cafeteria, as he joined hands with the other Bible missionary kids to pray, ate his peanut-butter sandwich, pudding cup, and apple, and then opened his black King James Bible to round out the lunch hour with a Bible study.

They joined hands....

One day I walked up and asked if I could join the Bible study. One of the girls giggled and scooted over so I could pull up a chair next to her -- on the other side of the table from Micah!

It was a step in the right direction, anyway.

But by the next day, word of my Nazarene heresy had gotten around, so when I tried to join the Bible Missionary table, they scooted together. "No room! No room!"

Maybe if I pretended to be just as strict as Micah?

The Big Event of the fall of 1973 was the Comet Kohoutek, rapidly approaching the Earth. It was to be the Comet of the Century, visible for weeks even in the daytime (it actually turned out to be a gigantic dud.)

Tabloids and quick-print paperbacks were yelling that Kohoutek would bring global earthquakes and floods that would destroy civilization.

Our Nazarene preacher kept mum, no doubt recalling the debacle over his prediction that the 1969 Moon Landing would herald the Second Coming. But many fundamentalist preachers, including Dan's, went wild, proclaiming that this is it! The Rapture, the Tribulation, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the White Throne Judgement!.

So we got some pamphlets and started passing them out at the door to the cafeteria.

When Micah came by, I called: "Hey, the Rapture is coming. We just have 40 days left!"

"No man knows the day or the hour of the Lord's return," he said coolly. "Anyone who claims he knows is a false prophet." He rushed on.

Ok, then, fighting against a common enemy?

Dan and I were already angry over the announcement that we would be spending a week of geology class learning The Devil's Old Lie, Evil-Lution! Maybe even being tempted to believe that the world was millions of years old, instead of 6,000, like God's Word said.

One day I went up to Micah after gym class and told him about the upcoming brainwashing.

"I know -- I saw it in the schedule. But everything we learn at public school is a lie, so how is this different?"

"It's much more serious. Believing in evolution is the source of every other heresy. Atheism! Rock music! Shopping on Sunday!" I gestured at Dan. "Some of us are getting together to plan a protest, maybe a sit-in like the college students do to protest Vietnam. I thought maybe God put a burden on your heart to help out with this important work."

He looked dubious. "It won't be at your house, will it?"

"No, at Dan's. He's a Pentecostal."

Apparently Pentecostals were different enough to be acceptable. "There won't be any girls there? Or tv?"

"Oh, no, no temptations of any sort."

So on Saturday we met at Dan's house. We didn't want to work in the living room, where adults might overhear and forbid our protest, so the six of us crammed into his bedroom. Micah had to sit on the bed between Dan and me.

Our thighs were touching the whole time!

We strategized and drew up posters and practiced anti-evolution songs and ate snacks, like we didn't come from two sides of a cosmic gulf. Micah even laughed at one of my jokes.

We held hands for the closing prayer.

My hand may have "accidentally" fell onto his lap. I may have felt something there. I don't remember clearly. But I remember the warmth and pressure of Micah's hand in mine, more clearly than many later nights of passion.

After the protest, Dan and I got a 3-day suspension, and Micah got detention. Cautioned by his parents to not "be unequally yoked with unbelievers," he went back to ignoring me.

Except for one incident in ninth grade:

After gym class, I was just finishing up my shower, on the way to grab a towel from the athletic trainer, when Micah appeared out of nowhere. He just stood there, staring as if he'd never seen a penis before.

"Um...aren't you excused from gym class?" I asked, too surprised and embarrassed to move.

"I need...I need...to use the bathroom," he stammered.

"It's back there." I regained my composure and covered myself.

When high school started, all of the Bible Missionary kids were gone. I heard that they were all being home-schooled to avoid the temptations of Rocky High.

I never saw Micah again. I don't know if he's gay or not. Probably not.

That moment of holding hands was enough.

See also: Dan and I Fight Evolution; Sleeping with Baptist Boys

When I was a kid in Rock Island, Illinois, we had a number of local celebrities, like jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke, poet Carl Sandburg, and sculptor Isabel Bloom.

Born Isabel Scherer in 1908, she grew up in Davenport and studied at Grant Wood's Stone City Art Colony, where she met and married fellow artist John Bloom. In the 1950s, she began producing distinctive sculptures carved out of Mississippi River stone or molded of mud mixed with concrete.

They were absolutely atrocious. Angels, fairies, hugging children, mothers hugging babies, cats, doves, bridal couples, snowmen, Santa Clauses, the most maudlin, sentimental, and heteronormative dreck ever imagined.

But everyone in the Quad Cities loved them. There were at least two or three in every living room; dozens more were forced upon out-of-town relatives as Christmas presents, or shoved into the hands of unsuspecting visitors as Quad Cities souvenirs.

So I should have anticipated what would happen.

I had just discovered Greek art -- rather, statues of muscular Greek gods, so for Christmas in 1974, when I was in 9th grade, I asked for "a statue."

I meant a desk-sized statue of a naked Apollo from Greek mythology, but instead my Dad said, "Sure -- let's go down to Isabel Bloom's, and you can pick out the one you want."

I couldn't tell him "No, no...I wanted a naked Greek god, not some stupid boy holding a frog!", so my boyfriend Dan and I had to fake-grin our way through a mid-December visit to the crowded studio in the Village of West Davenport, as we sorted through Angel with Wreath, Unconditional Love, Lovebirds, Boy with Flag...

Eventually Dan wandered off, but my torture continued: Girl with Pumpkin, Newlyweds, Boy Offering Girl Flowers, Baby in Crib, Sleeping Cat...

Then Dan came running excitedly from a side studio. "Hey, what about this one?" It was a nude male figure, seated, his arms around his knees. Stylized, not muscular, but a heck of a lot better than the other stuff.

John's Thinker, he read from the bottom.

"Must be a statue of her husband, John Bloom," I said, carefully taking it from his hands. It felt warm to the touch. It was thrilling to think that I might be holding an exact likeness of a real naked man.

John and Isabel Bloom

"No, she didn't do this statue, her husband did," Dad said, frowning. "It's not a real Isabel Bloom."

"Well, I want it anyway."

He looked at me oddly. "There's lots nicer ones. How about First Kiss?" He held out a statue of a little boy kissing an embarrassed little girl on the cheek.

"I don't want any statues of girls."

"It's a boy and a girl. That's like two statues for the price of one!"

Was he objecting to the price of John's Thinker? No, First Kiss cost twice as much. "This one's cheaper."

"But..you could use it as a kind of model, you know. When you want a girl to let you kiss her, just show her the statue."

"Gross!" Dan exclaimed.

"When you discover girls, I mean."

"John's Thinker, please," I said firmly.

Dad shrugged. "Well, if you're sure that's the one you want. But I don't know what you're going to do with it, Skeezix." Later I figured out that he always called me Skeezix, after a character in the old Gasoline Alley comic strip, when I expressed same-sex desire, something bizarre and beyond imagining at the time.

I still have the statue.

Recently I did some research into the work of John Bloom. He was apparently heterosexual, married to Isabel from 1938 until his death in 2002 (but then, he lived for several years in a converted ice truck with the gay artist Grant Wood).

His paintings and drawings return again and again to images of male friendship and camaraderie.

There aren't many male nudes, but one was enough on that long-ago winter day.

My Grandpa Howard died 36 years ago today.

It was easy to find the gay connection in my father's parents, Grace and Lloyd Dennis and Frank Jackson. There were anecdotes, photographs of men in swimsuits, newspaper articles, and the geneology research of my Cousin Eva.

My mother's parents, not so much. Grandpa Howard left only a few photos of Kentucky relatives, no letters, no books. He's not mentioned in old newspapers.

How can I tell if he experienced same-sex romance, or had gay friends, or even knew what "gay" meant?

All I have are the bare biographical facts and a few of my mother's memories:

1. Tony Howard was born on May 9th, 1902 on Grassy Ridge, rural eastern Kentucky. He was the youngest of 12 children, all of whom eventually married. (This is his father, John C. Howard.)

2. His 7th-great grandfather was the famous Tudor poet Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547), who wrote an unabashedly homoerotic elegy on the death of his friend, the Duke of Richmond (son of Henry VIII). But Tony didn't know that. The Family Bible went back only three generations.

3. As a boy, Tony used to go fishing and hunting with his older brothers, Elias, Repse, Silas, and Graydon. Not for sport -- for food.

4. Tony liked school. Unusual for a country boy of the era, he continued past 8th grade and graduated from high school in 1921. He was on the boxing team, and his favorite subject was music. He played the banjo and the guitar.

5. On October 6, 1922, he married 17-year old Grace Hicks, from the village of Mousie, about 14 miles south. She had five brothers and sisters. All of them eventually married except her baby brother Henry (1912-1985), who became her favorite, and the only one to visit when they moved to Indiana later.

6. From 1922 to 1942, Tony and Grace lived in a cabin near his parents in Gunlock, Kentucky. They had eleven children. Four died in infancy.

7. It was a gender-polarized world. The women were in charge of cooking, raising the babies, going to church, and believing in ghosts. Men worked when they could, but mostly they hung out, gambling, drinking, and shooting guns. Tony was especially close to his cousin, Crit Handshoe.

7. In 1942, Cousin Crit, Tony, and their families moved north to a farm near Garrett Indiana, where there were factory jobs. Tony went to work for Electric Motors, and stayed there until he retired in 1967.

8. When my mother was growing up, the house had no electricity or running water. It never had a bathroom.

The living room was cluttered with pictures, including one that showed Jesus on the cross if you looked at it one way, and the Ascension if you looked at it another way. Very Catholic, very unusual for fundamentalist Protestants. And very muscular.

9. In 1965, Tony suffered two great losses. Grace died, and Cousin Crit moved to North Manchester, Indiana to live with his daughter, leaving the Old House abandoned.

10. When I was a kid, Tony scared me. He was always carrying a gun, he smelled of whiskey, and his Eastern Kentucky accent was very, very thick. We never had an actual conversation, though occasionally when the whole family was gathered in that living room to laugh and reminisce, he addressed me:

"Jee-uff, Ah heer y'lakk sahns,"
"Jee-uff, d'y wans'm ahzkreem?"

I didn't know what he was saying, so I always answered "Yes," praying that I hadn't just agreed to help him gut some fish.

11. When Uncle Paul got married and moved out in 1969, the house was empty, except for Tony and Uncle Ed. The two men lived and ate and drank together, day after day, week after week, for the next nine years, until Tony died.

12. He died in December 1978, about six months after I figured it out. I hadn't told anyone but my brother. There was no way he could have known. But would he have understood? Would he think of Uncle Henry, or Cousin Crit, or the men who sat around all day, back in the hills, gambling and drinking and shooting their guns?

See also: My Kentucky Kinfolk; The Naked Man in the Peat Bog; and My Grandmother's Surprising Gay Connection.

Listen to my heart beat -- it's a love beat
And when we meet, it's a good vibration

Whatever that means, it brings back a rush of memories of the fall of 1973: pep rallies at Washington Junior High; accidentally touching my friend Dan's hand in science class; reading Greek mythology and Tintin comics; watching Chuck Acri's Creature Feature with my brother in our attic bedroom

The DeFranco Family never hit the heights of the Osmonds or the Jackson Five, but during the 1973-74 school year, they were everywhere, guest stars on every variety show, fave raves in every issue of Tiger Beat, competing with Tony Orlando and Cher to top the pop charts. (Here Tony DeFranco competes with Tony Orlando to see who wears the tightest pants).

They consisted of five siblings: Nino (age 18), Marisa 19), Benny (20), Tony (14), and Merlina (16).

In the tradition of Donny Osmond and Michael Jackson, Tony
was the standout star, the source of many semi-nude pinups and many misty-eyed dreams for the heterosexual girls and gay boys at Washington Junior High.

For all the media attention, they recorded only seven songs, and only three charted -- "Heartbeat" (1973), "Abra-Cadabra" (1973), and "Save the Last Dance for Me" (1974). They're all heterosexist, heavy-laden with "girls" and "babes." But sometimes tight pants and a killer smile is enough.

A series of disastrous business decisions -- and the rise of disco -- and maybe Tony's refusal to embark on a solo career -- led to the DeFranco crash. By 1975, they were working Vegas, and in 1978 they disbanded, taking jobs behind the scenes in the music industry.

Today Tony works as a real estate agent in Westlake Village, a ritzy suburb of L.A. He still performs occasionally, for fans who have fond memories of being in junior high in 1973.

The anthology series American Horror Story is a hit in gay communities. It's stylish, witty, adequately creepy -- and gay inclusive, a rarity in horror tv. Here's my rating of the gay content of the first four seasons: beefcake, buddy-bonding, gay characters, and gay symbolism. Scale of 1 (terrible) to 5 (excellent).

Season 1: Murder House (2011)

A family moves into a house overrun by the ghosts of previous residents. Interesting twist: ghosts can become corporeal, with bodies indistinguishable from those of the living.
Beefcake: lots of muscular chests and backsides. These ghosts get naked a lot.
Buddy Bonding: Troubled teen Tate (Evan Peters) seems to have a little thing for the troubled psychiatrist (Dylan McDermott).
Gay Characters: Zachary Quinto and Teddy Sears play a bickering gay couple who were planning to split up. Then they were murdered in the house, and now they are stuck together for all eternity. The other ghosts and humans are generally nonchalant about them.
Gay Symbolism: None.
Overall Rating: ****

Season 2: Asylum (2012)

An evil nun runs a creepy asylum for the criminally insane in the 1960s. With demons, Anne Frank, and alien abductions.
Beefcake: Not much. Evan Peters as an alien abductee.
Buddy Bonding: None. Again, all of the significant friendships are male-female.
Gay Characters: Sarah Paulson as Lana Winters, a lesbian reporter committed to the asylum and forced to undergo a homophobic "treatment" regiment. In the present, she's a famous writer, out-and-proud.
Gay Symbolism: None.
Overall Rating: ****

Season 3: Coven (2013)

A school for teen witches, a voodoo queen, and the re-animated corpse of 19th century murderess Delphine LaLaurie. What more could you ask for? Maybe some gay characters?
Beefcake: Lots. Madame LaLaurie had a thing for torturing hunky male slaves, and the teen witches build themselves a Frankenstein-monster boyfriend (Evan Peters again).
Buddy Bonding: Some female bonding going on.
Gay Characters: None, except for a fruity Truman Capote-esque member of the Witches Council, who appears briefly in two episodes.
Gay Symbolism: Witches hiding in the shadows, afraid to let anyone know their true identity, etc., etc.
Overall Rating: ***

Season 4: Freak Show (2014)
A financially-strapped freak show in 1950s Florida, with a murderous clown and his dapper young apprentice wandering around.
Beefcake: Evan Peters again, the bare buns of a Viking Hustler, a circus strongman, and an amazing bodybuilding little person (his name is Kyle Pacek).
Buddy Bonding: Men are mostly competitors.
Gay Characters: Several. But for a change, Dandy, the ultra-feminine murderer, is not.
Gay Symbolism: Freaks hiding in the shadows, et., etc.
Overall Rating: *****

Mary Prater was only 16 when her parents announced that they had arranged for her to be married to 33-year old Ell Hicks.

She didn't mind: he was a good catch. He had a nice farm near Pyramid, Kentucky, about 14 miles south of Prestonburg. And he was handsome, athletic, and "well-knit." Girls had been trying unsuccessfully to land him for years.

Ell turned out to be a good provider. He bought Mary the latest fashions, and took her to moving picture shows, and in 1904 they became one of the first families in the hills to own a new horseless carriage.

He was always kind to her and the children. He never raised his hand in anger.

There was only one problem, something that Mary couldn't tell anyone about except her mother. And many years later, her favorite daughter, Gracie.

Ell wasn't...um...keen on his...on doing his duty as a husband.

Mary had to coax and cajole him, and even then it happened only once in a blue moon.

She blamed Ell's friends. That's why he waited so long to marry -- he preferred the company of men. Especially that wastrel Silas. Why, they were joined at the hip, like Frick and Frack!

Sometimes those two stayed out carousing until midnight, leaving Mary rumbling around the house all by herself.

Finally Mary put her foot down. "You can't visit Silas unless I go with you!"

That quieted things down, for awhile.

One day in the summer of 1905, Ell told Mary that Silas's elderly grandmother was sick, very sick, and everyone was gathered at the house to "sit up" with her, like you did in the hills. She gave her consent for him to "sit up," too, as long as he was back by suppertime.

Well, suppertime came, and then sundown, and no Ell. At first Mary was worried. Then she got angry. Maybe he wasn't sitting up with Silas's grandmother at all. Maybe the old woman wasn't even sick! No doubt it was just an excuse to go carousing with that wastrel!

Near midnight, Mary had enough. She woke Dewey, her toddler, wrapped six-month old Gracie in blankets, and set out to catch Ell in the act.

Ell took the carriage, so she had to walk.

It was very dark, but she could see well enough in the moonlight.

She went down the dirt road for about a mile, and then she came to a crossroads. The left fork led to Pyramid, and the right on to Prestonburg.

There was something glowing on the side of the Prestonburg Road!

At first she thought it was someone holding a lantern. But no -- the light was pale and cold, like moonlight.

It was like a human figure with legs spread and arms akimbo. But much bigger -- at least ten feet tall! She couldn't make out a face.

It moaned like a ghost.

Mary was petrified with fear, but she couldn't run away, with Dewey clinging to her legs and Gracie howling.

She thought of going back, but Silas's house was closer, and there were people there. So she persevered, walking slowly, with the boy still clinging to her legs and the baby still howling.

Finally she made it to the house, where she discovered that Ell was telling the truth. It was full of people sitting up with Silas's grandmother, who died at the precise moment that Mary saw the figure in the woods.

But there was a problem: the figure was definitely male. It was naked. She distinctly remembered seeing...um...manly parts. . .dangling between its legs.

If it wasn't Silas's grandmother, who was it? What was it?

Gracie didn't remember the incident, of course. Mary told her about it when she was a teenager, just before she married Tony Howard, my grandfather. She told her other daughters, just before they married.

Years later, Gracie told the story to each of her daughters, just before they married.

Aunt Mavis broke with tradition, and told me.

No doubt the details changed over time, but I'm certain that the core of the story is intact: the wastrel, the sick grandmother, and the ghost in the woods that couldn't have been her.

What kind of cautionary tale is this for mothers to pass on to their daughters?

Maybe to be careful -- some of your husband's infidelities might not involve women.

But wait -- did Mary even know that gay men, or men on the downlow, existed? Did Gracie? Or Aunt Mavis?

Maybe to be sympathetic -- a wife can't fill all of a man's needs. Sometimes he needs to be with men.

See also: My Grandpa Howard's Gay Connection; and Cousin Buster: Growing Up a Stranger

What do you find most attractive about this guy?
A. His basket
B. His biceps
C. His shoes

If you said B, you have partialism, an erotic interest in parts of the human body other than the sex organs.

Like biceps, feet, elbows, shoulders, backsides, and women's breasts.

If you said C, you have a fetish, an erotic interest in an object other than the human body.

Like shoes, boots, leather jackets, baseball caps, cigars, feathers, underwear, crutches, balloons, cake, jello, mud, urine, and bubbles.

The list is endless. Nearly everybody has some partialism and fetishes.

And some paraphilias, erotic interest in activities that don't necessarily involve contact with the sex organs.

Like bondage, BDSM, voyeurism (watching other people), exhibitionism (having other people watch you), wearing diapers, smoking, coughing, being lifted, being tickled, saying bad words...

Again, the list is endless.

There are four main theories about how we got our fetishes.

1. Imprinting. Our earliest erotic thoughts are indelibly linked with the situation they occurred in. Even incidental details become erotic. If, for instance, you first liked a guy who happened to be smoking a cigar, you'll have an erotic interest in cigars forever.

Or cigar boxes. Or just the tips of cigars. Or having smoke blown into your face.

2. Gender Symbolism. The object or situation is aggressively masculine or feminine, distilling the "essence" of what it means to be male or female. You don't just like shoes in general, you like black leather boots or red stiletto heels. You don't like just any article of clothing, you like gym socks and jock straps or brassieres and red lace panties.

3. Dirty/Forbidden. We grow up being told that sex acts are unclean, that erotic books and magazines are "dirty." So we associate the erotic with acts or objects regarded as unclean, like feet, mud, urine, and bad words.

4. Power/Control. Sex acts are always about getting or giving up control, one partner submitting to the other. So we associate the erotic with acts or objects that involve explicit control, like police uniforms or daddy-son scenes.

Pop quiz: Why do people find it erotic to get or give wedgies?
A. First experience
B. Gender symbolism
C. Dirty/forbidden
D. Power/control

Answer: Could be any or all of the above.

Psychiatrists used to think that fetishes, paraphilias, and partialism were invariably destructive, perversions of the "sexual instinct."

The psychiatric consensus now is that they're fine, as long as they aren't your only erotic interest, so you should enjoy "real sex" too.

But really, I don't see why anyone should care. If you are happy with erotic acts involving feet or feathers, or being called bad names, or getting soda spilled on you, how will switching to penises make you happier, more fulfilled, or a better person?

There are only two problems with fetishes and paraphilias:

1. They're very specific. You don't just want to be tied up, you want to be tied to a tree with gold-colored ropes, with your hands over your head, and a gold scarf used as a gag.

It;s difficult to orchestrate such precise situations, so you might have to settle for almost right, or resign yourself to many nights without passion.

2. It's hard to find Mr. Right. Potential partners are usually either attractive but not into it, or into it but not attractive. I suggest going with the latter. Nothing is more boring than a partner who is just "putting up" with your fetish.

And if he is actually into having stir-fried vegetables eaten off his stomach while he's wearing a Ninja Turtle costume, who cares if he has muscles?

See also: Finding Larry's Fetish; and The Secretary: The Bottom Always Calls the Shots

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My 12 Christmas Boyfriends

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Cruising Preachers, Priests, Monks, and Rabbis

Legends of the Superheroes: a Long-Forgotten Beefcake Fest

Gay Connections of the "Christmas Story" Kids

Fall 1998: Landing My Boyfriend's Roommate

Spring 1981: Spending the Night with Baptist Boys

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The Top 12 Public Penises of Australia

Jose Pablo Cantilo: First Gay Character in Science Fiction

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Fall 1974: A Naked Man for Christmas

Gambling, Drinking, and Shooting Guns: My Grandpa Howard's Gay Connection

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Fetish 101: The Truth About Being into Feet, Feathers, Balloons, or Cake