NYSocBoy's Beefcake and Bonding

I heard that Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) was a gay classic, the coming-out film of the pre-Stonewall Era, when gay men snipped "But ya are, Blanche!" at each other as gleefully as my generation said "Come up to the lab, and see what's on the slab!"

Legendary drag queen and dramatist Charles Busch, who recorded the DVD commentary, says that it's "one of those handful of movies you have to see to get your gay card."

Well, I got my gay card quite a few years ago, so I thought I'd better get around to seeing what all the fuss was about.

Previously I had seen Bette Davis only in All About Eve, Return from Witch Mountain, and Death on the Nile, and Joan Crawford in nothing (unless you count her portrayal by Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest), so I was coming in fresh.

There are 3 parts.

1917: Baby Jane Hudson is a 10-year old Vaudeville star whose signature song is the maudlin "I Wrote a Letter to Daddy." Her older sister Blanche is jealous.

1934: The young adult Jane Hudson is a flop in Hollywood, but Blanche has become a big star. Jealous, Jane runs into Blanche with her car, crippling her. The director cleverly avoids showing Blanche, and shows Jane only in one of Bette Davis's old movies.

1962: Jane (Davis) and Blanche (Crawford) have spent their lives in seclusion in a decaying Hollywood mansion, seeing only their housekeeper and business manager.

When Blanche's old movies are broadcast on television, gaining her a new generation of fans, Jane gets jealous again, and starts torturing her. During a two-day period, she kills Blanche's pet bird, tries to feed her the bird and a rat, rips the phone out of the wall, ties her up, and...well, that's about it.

Blanche tries to signal to various people that she's in trouble, but Jane always intercepts the message.

Finally Jane has a complete breakdown, dragging Blanche to the beach and reverting to her child self.

Then comes the stunning reveal: Jane wasn't trying to kill Blanche the night of her accident. Blanche was trying to kill Jane!

Ok, so that makes no sense at all. But really, nothing about this movie makes much sense. Like, shouldn't a wheelchair bound person get a room on the first floor?

And I still can't figure out the gay connection.

1. Buddy-bonding male friendships? No. There aren't any significant male characters, except in a humorous subplot about the middle-aged Jane trying to revive her child star career. Victor Buono plays Edwin Flagg, a layabout she hires to help with the musical arrangements, who gamely asserts that her idea is genius, and even flirts with her in the interest of getting his paycheck.

2. Lesbian bonds, then? No. Blanche and Jane hate each other.

3. Same-sex desire of any sort, even hinted at? Not a bit.

4. Critiques of hetero-romance? Maybe a little. No one is involved with anyone. The next-door neighbors consist of a mother and daughter. Blanche's courting of Edwin Flagg comes across as creepy and unhinged, like her incest-tinged relationship with her father.

5. Gay symbolism? When Blanche laments, "If only I weren't in a wheelchair!" Jane replies acidly, "But ya are, Blanche!" Maybe the gay men of a certain age used to lament, "If only I weren't gay!", to which their witty friends replied acidly, "But ya are, Blanche!"

6. Gay author or director? No.

7. Beefcake? A little, maybe. Victor Buono looks like he might have a nice hairy chest, and during the beach scene, some hunks in swimsuits stare aghast at Jane's breakdown.

I guess you had to be a gay man in the pre-Stonewall era to get it.

The 1991 remake was, apparently, even more over-the-top. Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave play Blanche and Jane. Instead of a housekeeper, there is massage therapist Dominick (Bruce A. Young), who is probably gay, and instead of a drunken musician, Jane flirts with aspiring filmmaker, drag queen, and pedophile Billy (John Glover, top photo).

See also: All About Eve

Of all the villains who befuddled the Dynamic Duo on the 1960's Batman series, Frank Gorshin's Riddler was easily the most memorable -- for his giggly, frenetic energy, for his rather clever riddles, and for his obvious crush on Robin. He preferred capturing Robin alone, with no Batman interfering, so he could caress the Boy Wonder's chest and shoulders, touch his hand, draw his face close, and look for all the world as if he wanted to kiss rather than kill him.

And for his physique. Most Batman villains were dumpy at best, but the Riddler was hot, lean and toned, and his green jumpsuit was even more revealing than Robin's (after a few episodes, the censors forced him to wear a silly green business suit to hide his obvious gifts beneath the belt).

Frank Gorshin was a bulging fixture in 1960s tv. In a famous 1969 episode of Star Trek, he plays Bele, the crazed survivor of a race of black-white aliens who all died trying to kill a race of white-black aliens. Lou Antonio, right, who played his white-black nemesis, was equally bulgeworthy).

But Frank Gorshin was more than revealing tights and frenetic energy. He began his career playing juvenile delinquents in the 1950s, and starred in dozens of movies, playing mostly villains and tough guys. A skilled impressionist, he won a Tony for playing comedy legend George Burns in the one-man show Say Goodnight, Gracie. And, although he was married for 50 years, he was reputedly gay in real life. He died in 2005.

This is the time of year when you will probably be dragged out of the safe haven of your home and family, shoved onto an airplane, and forced to spend ten days "back home" in the Straight World.

Where, inevitably, one or more of your crazy fundamentalist relatives will spend the entire 10 days hitting you with a Bible and shrieking "God hates you!", presuming that you have never heard the message of hate before.

Or, if you are not out, walking around the house muttering "God hates gay people!"

When faced with such a relative, I suggest leaving. Get out of the house. Go to the gym or the park. Maybe you'll see a cute guy lifting weights.

But if you can't get away, or you are tired of the homophobic diatribes, here are 10 facts guaranteed to have an impact. Maybe not change their mind -- haters gonna hate -- but surprise them enough to shut them up.

1. According to a recent survey, gay people are just as likely to be religious as heterosexuals. In fact, gay men are more likely than straight men to think that going to church is "very important" in their lives.

2. About 40% of Protestants in the United States belong to denominations that accept LGBT members.

3. There are five Protestant denominations with a mostly gay membership. The largest, the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, has congregations in over 40 countries around the world.

4. Only five verses in the Bible are used to support homophobia. But they aren't about gay people at all.

5. There was no word for gay people in ancient Hebrew or Greek. The word "homosexual" in your Bible is a homophobic mistranslation of the Greek arsenokoitai ("men who have sex"), and malakoi ("men who are soft").

6. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is about being inhospitable to strangers, a terrible sin in desert cultures.

7. And that verse in Leviticus, "Thou shalt not lie with man as with woman," is a reference to temple prostitution, not a general prohibition. Leviticus also states that anyone who eats shellfish, disobeys their parents, or engages in interracial marriage should be stoned to death.

8. The Bible verse often used in wedding ceremonies: "Where you go, I will go...your people will be my people," was spoken by Ruth to Naomi. A same-sex couple.

9. Jesus didn't mention gay people, but he did mention eunuchs, who often engaged in same-sex activity. He liked them.

10. "If God hates me so much, why didn't He say anything about it when I talked to Him this morning?"

December 31, 1999, a Friday night. I spent Christmas in Rock Island with my brother (and saw my Sunday School teacher's stripper sons), and now I am in Franklin, Indiana, visiting my parents. They don't go out for New Year's Eve, so I am on my own.

They have been living in Franklin for 3 years, and I visit twice a year, so I've been around a lot, and managed to make a friend in Indianapolis: Matt the Bartender. He actually is co-owner of one of the gay clubs in town.

He's upbeat, energetic, and knowledgeable. We've gone out to the bars twice, and once to The Works, one of Indianapolis's gay saunas.

Whenever I visit, he asks me to spend the night, but I politely refuse. He's not at all my type: tall and thin, a bit on the feminine side, and he drinks. And it's only a 45 minute drive down to my parents' house in Franklin.

Tonight Matt invites me to a New Year's Eve party at his apartment on Vermont Avenue, around the corner from his bar.

There are 10 gay men there. We play risque party games, run around naked in the snow, eat Swedish meatballs, flirt...and worry.

Everyone is talking about the Y2K Bug, the global catastrophe predicted due to computers storing years as only two digits: 75, 83, 98, and so on.

Apparently when they were invented, the 21st century was decades away, and no one thought about the problem of distinguishing the year 2000 from 1900.

So when 99 rolls into 00, everything will reset. There will be massive power failures. Airplanes will fall from the sky. Bank accounts will empty. Credit cards will be useless. And, maybe, nuclear weapons will fire at the nearest target.

We don't really believe that these terrible things would happen, but just in case, we all have extra food and water at home, and some of us converted our bank accounts into cash (not that paper money would be of much use after the Apocalypse).

At 11:00 we walk down to Matt's bar to ring in the New Year 2000. At the stroke of midnight, the lights flicker a bit, but nothing else unusual happens. Someone turns on a tv: no news reports of planes falling out of the sky or nuclear weapons firing. Of course, it might take a few hours.

The other guys want to stick around for awhile, but I'm tired, so Matt offers to walk me to my car, back at his apartment.

We walk out into the dark, silent parking lot, and turn south on Park Avenue, past a deserted school. The street lights are flickering oddly.

"That's weird," Matt murmurs.

At the corner of Michigan, the street is blocked. It's wet, and shimmering. There's a fire truck, and people in hazmat suits. We turn left to avoid them and go around the block.

Mat wraps his arm around my waist. "It's ok -- gay neighborhood," he say.

I don't mind the comfort.

The Lockerbie Pub is closed, with a handwritten sign in the door: "No trespassing."

"It was open yesterday. What happened?"

We look at each other. This is getting weirder.

Somewhere in the city, we hear gunfire.

We reach Vermont. -- a 5 minute walk has turned into 15 minutes in the frigid cold.

"Maybe you shouldn't risk driving all the way back to Franklin tonight," Matt says. "Call your parents and tell them you're spending the night with me."

I agree.

In the morning I discover that there were no major Y2K problems. The weird walk home was just a coincidence, and skittishness.

But Matt was really good about using it to his advantage. What better way to get a guy to spend the night with you than the fear of the Apocalypse?

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" fallen 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 first moved to Rock Island at the start of third grade, there was a cute boy in my class named Danny, who wore a leg brace.

On the first day of class, Miss Johnson pointed him out, and asked for a volunteer to be his "special friend" to carry his books and lunch tray, and play "quiet games" with him at recess.

A boy named Jimmy shot his hand up. Danny grinned at him -- apparently they were already "special friends."

But I raised my hand, too, and for some reason Miss Johnson granted me the honor -- maybe she thought that the new kid needed friends, too

Danny gamely accepted my attentions through the year, while his friend Jimmy sat nearby, glaring at me.

Since then I've noticed that, in gay communities, there is heavy competition for men who are disabled: blind, deaf, on crutches, in a wheelchair.

There are several explanations:

1. Being physically different makes you stand out in the crowd, and seem more attractive.

2. Guys are curious about your sexual appetites and interest.

3. They want to be your "knight in shining armor," protecting you from the bad things in the world.

4. They are hung up over minor imperfections of their own, such as belly fat or acne scars, and they believe that you will be more accepting.

But however many guys clamor to go home with you, few are willing to stick around the next day, begin a romantic relationship, and participate in your daily struggles with accessibility and visibility.

So disabled guys tend to be a little leery of romantic overtures. They may even try to scare you off by describing their daily maintenance routine on the first date.

That may have been a problem with my date with Tommy the Blind Guy.

I saw him at the Columbus Metropolitan Community Church one Sunday morning in March 2006: In his 20s, shorter than me, pale, with short brown hair and a solid, muscular frame -- plus religious! Three of the five traits I find attractive. He walked arm-in-arm with a friend, so I assumed he was taken. But during the coffee hour after church, the friend, Marcus, left him eating doughnuts by himself to cruise someone on the other side of the room. Therefore, single!

How do you go about cruising someone who can't see you? I went with a strong handshake and a deep voice, and it worked!

The next weekend, we saw The Libertine (yes, blind people go to movies), followed by dinner at a Mediterranean restaurant.

You would think that Tommy would be tired of being asked questions about "what it's like to be blind," but he told me in detail how he ate, how he shaved, how he found his way around a strange room.

How he judged a guy's physical characteristics without having to reach out and touch them:

"If he has a strong handshake, that means he has nice biceps."

"The angle of his voice when we're talking tells me his height and weight."
His weight?

"I can figure out whether he's hung by listening to him urinate."
No way!

It turned out to be less a date than a lecture from Blind 101 class.

I was a little bored. Did this guy have any interests other than being blind?

After dinner, we went back to the apartment he shared with Marcus.

Gifted beneath the belt! Another plus.

But for the day to day tasks of a romantic relationship, I needed more than a cute face and a nice-sized endowment. Did he have any other interests?

The gym? There have been several blind bodybuilders, like Greg Rando Not really. He did a little jogging.

Pets? Seeing eye dog? No. I get along fine with a cane.

Religion? I go to MCC for the companionship, but I'm not really into it.

Paranormal? You believe in that nonsense?

Literature? Dickens? Stephen King. I don't read a lot.

Um...politics? Not really.

Music?

That got a rise out of him. Oh, I love Cher, Madonna, Barbra Streisand...

Oh...I don't really listen to pop music. It's so heterosexist, all about girl! girl! girl!

Rihanna, Gwen Stefani, Kelly Clarkson.

Any classical in that mix? A little Mozart here and there?

Jessica Simpson, Mariah Carey, Jennifer Lopez...

Opera? Jazz? I'll even take show tunes...

Christina Aguilera, Carrie Underwood, Beyonce...

Ok, how about a male performer? At least somebody for me to look at -- Justin Timberlake, maybe?

The Pussycat Dolls, Ciara, Fergie...

We didn't have a second date.

See also: the Bodybuilder on Crutches; The Gay Psychic Angel

Like Rob Lowe, Jason Priestley became famous for a wardrobe malfunction; while frolicking naked on the beach with Jerry O'Connell and Gabriel Olds in Calendar Girl (1993), he turned suddenly, and everyone in the world got a glimpse of a frontal.

Not that you really needed a nude shot to notice his superheroic endowment.

Born in 1969, Jason had guest spots on MacGyver, Danger Bay, Teen Angel, and 21 Jump Street, plus a year-long story arc on Sister Kate, before hitting it big on the teen soap Beverly Hills 90210(1990-2000).

He played Brandon Walsh, a cleancut Minnesota boy who moves to Beverly Hills and experiences culture shock among the rich kids. For ten years, he provided the stable center to the teen and post-teen angst of Luke Perry and Brian Austin Green. After graduation, he got to big-brother several gay teens as they faced issues involving coming out, homophobic harassment, and even dating.

Meanwhile his movie career took off, starting with the teen sex comedy Calendar Girl (1993) and the Western Tombstone (1993).

Plus many gay and gay-friendly roles:

Love and Death on Long Island (1997); a teen idol who becomes the object of an older writer's obsession (a sort of updated version of Death in Venice).

Common Ground (2000): a gay guy in the closeted 1950s (it also starred Jonathan Taylor Thomas).

Die, Mommie, Die (2003): a gay hustler.

Love Monkey (2006): friend of a gay sportscaster.

Currently Jason is starring in Call Me Fitz (2010-), a Canadian sitcom about the racist, sexist, homophobic used-car salesman Fitz (Jason, right) and his "conscience," Larry (Ernie Grunwald, left).

Not surprisingly, Jason is a real-life gay ally.

When you google "Saki," this picture comes up. I don't know why.

As far as I know, Saki, aka Hector Hugh Monro (1870-1916) never posed nude.

You also get this picture.

But as far as I know, Saki was never a professional wrestler.

He was a writer of the aesthete-decadent school, along with Oscar Wilde and Kenneth Grahame. His savagely humorous stories critiqued Edwardian society, especially the glorification of the heterosexual nuclear family.

His most famous story is "The Open Window," about a girl who tells a visitor that her father and brother died in a hunting accident three years ago, but her deranged mother always leaves the window open for them, believing that they are coming home. Then the visitor sees them walking across the yard!

I read it as a kid, in a collection of ghost stories, and thus didn't realize that the girl was playing a joke.

You probably didn't know that Saki was gay. Wikipedia demurs, as usual, saying that he may have been gay, but there's no doubt about it.

He took his pen name from a cupbearer in the Rubayat of Omar Khayyam: a beautiful youth, the object of desire.

He introduced a pair of coded gay characters, Reginald and Clovis.

He liked cruising. According to his biographer, he had a hookup every two days, or if he was especially busy, every three days.

That's a lot more action than anyone gets today. Cruising must have been a lot easier then.

See also: The Wind in the Willows.

In gay neighborhoods, tv is the enemy, an incursion of heterosexist brainwashing, but when I moved to Dayton in 2005, it became warm and comforting, an emblem of home. My favorite program was My Name is Earl (2005-2009), set in the same world as John Waters'Pink Flamingos, a redneck suburban wasteland of trailer parks, mini-marts, and rednecks with missing teeth.

Earl (Jason Lee) was once a small-time crook and petty scoundrel, but now he's reformed, and going through a list of people he's wronged to make amends:

62. Stole a neighbor's gas.
86. Stole a car from a one-legged girl.
239. Made a kid scared of the boogey man.
263. Broke bus stop while looking for Poncho the Blue Fish.

Each episode involves an item on the list, crazy situations, and quirky characters.

Earl is assisted on his quest by his dim-witted brother (Ethan Suplee), his caustic ex-wife (Jaime Pressley), and her current husband Darnell (Eddie Steeples), plus a vast assortment of friends, crooks, and people he has wronged.

There was a semi-regular gay character, the nerd Kenny (Gregg Binkley), who Earl bullied as a child.

Plus a number of characters who didn't express much heterosexual interest, such as reformed thief Donny (Silas Weir Mitchell, left) and non-reformed thief Ralph (Giovanni Ribisi, top photo), leaving room for plenty of gay subtexts.

Plus a substantial beefcake quotient, lots of shirtless or semi-nude rednecks, lots of close-ups of baskets and bulges.

Disabled athlete Cameron Clapp had a cameo as the boyfriend of the One-Legged Girl.

Josh Wolf played a Bargain Bag employee who Joy accidentally kidnapped.

It was fun while it lasted. Then Season #3 abandoned the List and sent Earl to prison, then put him in a coma. I don't know what happened in Season #4 -- I stopped watching.

Producer Greg Garcia went on to Raising Hope, set in the same world, with just as much beefcake but fewer gay subtexts.

During the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, the first thing you did after "figuring it out" was pack all of your stuff and move to a gay neighborhood, where you could be free free from stares and jeers and shrieks of "God hates you!"

Once you arrived, you never left, except when absolutely necessary, for work or required Christmas visits "back home." You wouldn't accept a date with anyone who lived outside, in the Straight World. On vacation, you visited other gay neighborhoods.

Many gay kids today don't grow up dreaming of a safe haven. Being gay is no big deal at school. Their families and straight friends are perfectly accepting. Why not stay where you are?

But the gay neighborhoods are still there, waiting for those of us who grew up in homophobic small towns, who are tired of the incessant heterosexism of the Straight World, or who want to see what it was like to have a home.

I've lived in four gay neighborhoods in the U.S. and Canada, and visited about a dozen others. Here are the biggest and best:

The Bravest:
The Montrose, Houston (top photo).
Today Houston has gay rights ordinances and a gay mayor, but when I lived in Texas in 1984, there were sodomy laws and rednecks with shotguns, and police cadets were warned about the "homosexual deviants" lurking at the corner of Montrose and Westheimer. Just walking down the street was perilous. In spite of the dangers, gay people carved out a newspaper, a bookstore, political action groups, and lots of fun cowboy bars.

The Most Political:
Dupont Circle, Washington, DC.
A bit cramped, hard to find parking, but an architectural gem, and only a mile from the White House.

Who would expect a thriving Community Center a stone's throw from government homophobes? Dupont Circle is home to over 50 gay organizations, everything from the Human Rights Campaign to the LGBT Fallen Heroes Fund.

The Most Literary:
Washington Square West, Philadelphia
Philadelphia has some of the world's best gay clubs and restaurants, and it's the site of the first Gay Rights demonstration in history. But its biggest claim to fame is Giovanni's Room, the second oldest and largest gay bookstore in the world, founded back in 1972, when there were almost no gay-positive books in existence, and certainly none available in mainstream bookstores.

It closed recently, bankrupted by online giants, and re-opened as a thrift store with proceeds going to AIDS services.

The Friendliest:
Wilton Manors, Fort Lauderdale.
This was home for 4 years. There were great beaches, gyms, clubs, and restaurants, but what I remember most was the great sense of camaraderie.

Maybe it was because many residents were older, and had lived through the horrors of the pre-Stonewall police state.

Maybe it was because, once you left Wilton Manors, you ran into some of the most horrifying Bible-thumping redneck cities in the country.

But in Wilton Manors, everyone was welcome; everyone knew your name.

The Brawniest:
Hawthorne, Portland (Oregon).
I thought Texas had the biggest of everything, but when I visited Portland in 1995, I found a bookstore that covered an entire city block, a bath house with room for 3000 patrons, and a bar crowded with the biggest, most buffed men this side of Muscle Beach.

More after the break.

The Best for Cruising:
Boystown, Chicago
Halsted and Broadway, east of Clark, the first gay neighborhood I ever heard of, back in college. I haven't visited often -- an occasional conference or job interview -- but each visit has been an adventure. The Cellblock, the Sweat Lodge, the Jackhammer, Man's Country. The only dark room I've seen in the U.S. Plus private parties, biker runs, bear clubs, even a gay nudist group.

You'll be lucky if there's any time left over for the museums.

The Best for Food:
Rue Ste. Catherine, Montreal.
Montreal is one of my favorite cities in North America, with enough museums, architectural masterpieces, and cruising spots for a hundred memorable visits. But what I like most is the food. Especially Vietnamese, which is hard to find in the U.S.: The Cafe Saigon, Pho 21, La Gout de Vietnam. But also Moroccan, Greek, Mexican, Thai, Chinese, Japanese... You need to work out six hours a day just to keep up.

The Most Spiritual:
The Castro, San Francisco.
I'm not talking about Glide United Methodist Church, the first to open its doors to LGBT members. Or the Radical Faeries, the first gay pagan group. Or the many other gay religious groups based here.

I'm talking about the Castro.

Get off at the Castro Street Muni Station at dawn, when the air is chill and the sky is just beginning to turn blue. No one is around except a few early-risers having breakfast at Orphan Andy's. Walk south past the Castro Theater, past the rainbow flags, through the hush of morning,

You are in heart of the gay world, safe, and accepted, and loved. This is what heaven looks like.

The Most Historical:
The West Village, New York.
This is the best documented gay neighborhood in the world, the subject of countless histories and biographies. Gay Liberation was born here. During the 1970s and 1980s, a group of writers called the Violet Quill wrote a dozen novels set here, cementing the still-common belief that all gay people live in the West Village.

Even in Manhattan, most gay people live elsewhere. The West Village is home to an older, affluent, conservative gay crowd, the type who go to the opera and listen to Barbra Streisand. And remember their history.

The Best of the Best:
West Hollywood.
Home for 13 years. Crowded, expensive, no decent jobs, no place to park. Lots of hustlers, con artists, and wannabes. Lots of Attitude.

It's the best place in the world.

See also: Why San Francisco is Still Gay Heaven;

At a New Year's parade sometime in the 1960s, as the Woody Woodpecker float passed by, the reporter said "Almost everybody agrees that Woody Woodpecker is their favorite cartoon character."

WTF?

Everybody I knew hated that psycho bird, in spite of his risque name.

He was a relic of my early childhood, off the air by the time I was six. But that was long enough for his maniacal "ha-ha-ha-HA-ha" laugh to scare me to death.

And the Wood Pecker didn't work alone -- he had "friends":
Chilly Willy, a penguin who sold cigarettes.
Andy Panda, modeled after 1940s teen star Andy Hardy
Homer Pigeon, who sang and tap-danced.

"Apple Andy" (1946) has Andy Panda stealing and eating green apples, whereupon he dreams that a devil panda in a dress drags him to a purgatory for gluttons.

I was scared by both the drag-queen devil and the apple-core chorus girls.

Although the song by Louis Jordan was jazzy:
When temptation comes around, don't listen to the Devil in the White Nightgown.

In the early 1970s, the comic book industry was in decline due to rising paper costs and changes in distribution patterns, and Gold Key started scrounging for properties to adapt. Like Walter Lantz cartoons.

I didn't want to devote my comic book budget to the stuff that scared or disturbed me as a little kid, but sometimes my friends and cousins had a few issues on hand.

In the comics, Woody Woodpecker was no longer a psycho: he was a Donald Duck wannabe, a single father raising his orphaned niece and nephew. Stories involved terrible jobs, nasty neighbors, and vacations that go wrong. He even had a girlfriend, Winnie.

Occasionally he resisted heterosexism, as when this cave man drags him off to be his "mate."

But Andy Panda, now an adult, shared his house and his life with a same-sex partner named Charlie Chicken (apparently there was an age difference).

Their stories involved spies, monsters, pirates, aliens, with buddy-bonding and nick-of-time rescues.

And risque jokes that subtly illustrated the more physical side of their relationship.

Why are you so surprised, Andy? Anybody who hangs out with a guy named Woody should know that these things happen in the morning.

Especially when you're sharing a bed with a "chicken."

See also: The Subtext in Casper the Friendly Ghost; and Bugs and Porky Meet a Drag Queen.

In 2008, my "visiting" position in Dayton was coming to an end, and I had to find a new job. I only applied to colleges in Blue States (liberal, Democratic). First just in gay neighborhoods.

As January and February passed and the best jobs were taken, I expanded to an hour away from gay neighborhoods.

Then three hours.

Just as I was about to start searching in Red States (conservative, Republican), I was offered a job in New York!

Well, Upstate New York, about six hours by car from the gay neighborhoods of Manhattan, Boston, and Montreal.

I figured I would be driving to one or the other every weekend. Maybe even renting a second apartment there.

But snow, car wear and tear, the expense, and being busy limited my weekend jaunts to once every couple of months.

So 98% of my life happened in the Straight World, in a small town Upstate with no gay bars, just one gay-friendly church, and no gay organizations except PFLAG.

Just like in Dayton, most adult gay men had fled to gay neighborhoods elsewhere, Most of the others were living aggressively heterosexual public lives: they escorted women to events; they had no gay friends; they took their same-sex dates into the next town over to avoid being spotted at home.

But there was a coterie of gay men, a Gang of Twelve, who were out and open.

They were mostly in their 40s and 50s, one or two older or younger. Most had lived their whole lives Upstate, so they knew the towns and the people: the restaurants where they could be served without a fuss, the stores where they could shop without rude stares, the clubs where no women would hit on them.

So, except for a few basic precautions like not holding hands on the street, they were not closeted.

The New Guy in Town is always popular, but Upstate, my social calendar filled up astonishingly fast. All I had to do was meet one of the Twelve, and he told his friends, who told their friends. Phone calls were made, emails sent, meetings arranged. By Christmas, I had been out on dates with five of the twelve. By summer, nine (the others were involved or not interested).

1. The Rich Kid (top photo) got "dibs": he was first in line for everything in the county. He and his sister and parents owned most of the county, sat on every board of directors, donated to every charity.

I was impressed by his physique: short, compact, and quite buffed for someone in his 40s.

He took me to Alex and Ika's, a very expensive restaurant in Cooperstown, for sesame-encrusted wild salmon and a plantain and goat cheese salad. Then back to his family's summer home -- a gigantic wood-lodge on Lake Otesaga, decorated in a weirdly incongruous Southwestern motif.

The Rich Kid was a bit on the domineering side, but he had two of the five traits I find attractive, and he was well-educated, articulate, and generous. I would have gone on a second date, except before we got around to it, he ordered me to attend the Glimmerglass Opera Festival next Tuesday night He was on the board of directors, and they needed ushers.

Drive 30 miles to be an usher at a production of Madame Butterfly? No, thanks.

One simple didn't say "no" to the Rich Kid. He cancelled our second date, and sent out memos to the other 11 that I was "cute but stubborn."

2. The Truck Driver from Zambia. A tall, thin white guy with ruddy skin, expressive hands and a cute British accent. He invited me to his apartment for a "traditional Zambian dinner": a chicken breast, some kind of corn gruel, and mushrooms in peanut sauce. I was still hungry afterwards.

Then he suggested that we watch a DVD from his collection of every British sitcom ever made. I selected Are You Being Served. But when I invited him to sit down next to me on the couch, Truck Driver hesitated and then yelled: "But I don't want to have sex with you!"

"Um...since when does sitting on the couch count as sex? I've sat next to my brother lots of times!"

He ran into the bedroom, collapsed onto the bed, and started crying.

"I'm sorry," he sobbed. 'I just broke up with the Love of my Life. My friends thought I should start dating again, but I'm not ready...I'm just not ready..."

He then told me all about the Love of His Life. The relationship, from start to finish. His faults, fetishes, faux-pas, and favorite foods. What he should have said that time. What happened at the Rich Kid's Christmas party. Did I think there was any chance of them getting back together?

This turned out to be commonplace: most of the Gang of Twelve had dated most of the others, so on most dates, I got an earful of the others' problems with jobs and relatives, triumphs and defeats in cruising, and scandals from a decade ago.

And, since they all talked to each other, my size, shape, pecadillos, and preferences were soon common knowledge.

But this breakup was new, raw, and still painful.

I didn't realize at the time that the Truck Driver was describing the next guy on my social calendar! Apparently the ex-boyfriend was also being advised to start dating again, and the Rich Kid gave him my email address. We had a date tomorrow night!

Next: My date with the Truck Driver's ex-boyfriend.

In the fall of 2008, I was living in Upstate New York, dating guys from the Gang of Twelve, who had all known each other for years and talked to each other about everything. Especially their hookups, dates, and boyfriends.

The Rich Kid set me up with the Truck Driver, and then, without telling me, his ex-boyfriend, the Rapper. Days after they broke up.

3. The Rapper. The photos he sent with his introductory email were amazing. He was in his 20s, African-American, short, muscular but tending to fat, and super-sized beneath the belt. Exactly my type!

He grew up in the City, and came Upstate to study music management at SUNY Oneonta. Now he was working in an insurance agency, but hoped to launch a rap career.

On our date, the Rapper took me to a program of African dance and music at the university, and then back to his apartment, where he performed one of his rap numbers

.I hate rap, but I politely said "You're very talented. You should have no trouble getting a record contract."

Of course, I spent the night. In the morning, over breakfast, I told him about my dates with the Rich Kid and the Truck Driver.

"The Truck Driver!" he exclaimed. "That's my ex! Figures that the Rich Kid would fix you up with both of us, and wait to see the fireworks!"

I stared, feeling stupid. How could I have gone through dates with both of them and not noticed?

"He was exactly my type, " the Rapper continued. "I'm into tall white dudes with muscles and an extra-big package. Man, he had everything!"

"Well, I don't like to brag, but..."

He grinned. "Don't get jealous on me, man. You have everything, too."

"Do you think the Truck Driver will mind us dating?" I asked.

"Well, it's kind of soon after the breakup, so don't tell him, ok? Or the Rich Kid. Not for awhile, anyway."

But there were only a small number of gay-friendly venues Upstate, and the guys in the Gang of Twelve. all talked to each other.

For our second date, the Rapper and I drove into Cooperstown to the Fenimore Museum and dinner at Alex and Ika's -- where one of the Gang of 12 saw us and made some phone calls.

The next morning we were getting ready to go to breakfast, when the Truck Driver banged on the door.

"You don't waste any time, do you?" he yelled in his cute British accent. "How long did you wait before cruising the New Kid? Twenty minutes?"

"You had a date with him before I did!" the Rapper exclaimed.

"But nothing happened! We just talked. But not you -- you sent him X-rated pictures before you even met!"

"How did you find out about that?" He glared at me. "Not much for keeping secrets, are you, New Kid?"

"I didn't say anything!"

No third date. But other members of the Gang of Twelve were waiting for their turn.

4. The Grabby Male Nurse. In his 40s, formerly muscular but now a little paunchy. On our date, we went shopping at some of the antique shops in town.

For all his interest in secrecy, the Rapper gossiped as much as everyone else in the Gang of Twelve. He gave the Nurse notes: "can't keep a secret"; plus moment-by-moment accounts of our two nights together.

So the Grabby Male Nurse was expecting a porn star.

He acted like one of those obnoxious guys in the clubs who keep leering and groping regardless of how much Attitude you display. Of course, in public, he had to leer and grope subtly, when no one was looking. Which made it all the more annoying.

Plus he turned everything I said into a sexual reference.

"I taught in Dayton for three years."
Wow, hot college boys! How many of them did you offer a little...um....extra credit in your office? Leer, leer.

"I grew up in Illinois."
Ooh, Chicago! I bet you got a lot of action there! Leer, leer.

"My grandmother studied art."
I see -- Grandma liked painting those nude male models, did she?"Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more!

We had dinner at the Neptune Cafe, one of those East Coast diners with a 30-page menu, everything from moussaka to tacos. The owner was gay-friendly, so lots of the Gang of Twelve hung out there. But it was still a straight place.

Yet the Nurse acted like he was in a cruise bar, trying to grope me, leering at the male patrons, flirting with the waiter -- an Asian guy named Chad -- even asking him an inappropriate question about the size of the Asian penis. I gave him an extra big tip to make up for the embarrassment.

Then the Nurse suggested that we go back to his apartment.

I was done. "Sorry...my favorite tv show is on."

"You can watch it at my place." He grabbed my crotch. "Or we can watch porn. Your choice."

I disentangled myself and ran home and hid.

The Nurse sent notes to the rest of the Gang of Twelve: Nice guy, but all he can think about is sex.

Next: I see Chad again during Date #5: The Satyr.

When I was a kid in the 1960s, I never saw anyone who was Black, except at the Longview Park Pool in the summertime, and when I visited my Cousin George in South Carolina. Over 20% of the population of Rock Island was Black, but they were segregated into the West End. My neighborhood, on the Hill, was exclusively white (except for one Asian kid in my junior high).

In school, we learned about slavery and the Civil War, and after that apparently all African-Americans vanished. Everyone the teachers talked about, or showed us in books, was white.

There were no African-Americans on tv, or in movies or comic books. So, sadly, my first exposure to African-American culture came through the Little Brown Koko books.

There were two of them in the house, very old -- I think they originally belonged to my mother when she was a girl -- written by Blanche Seale Hunt, illustrated by Dorothy Wagstaff. The stories were originally published in the magazine Household in the 1930s, and then appeared in book form in the 1940s.

Little Brown Koko is a young boy who is drawn as a chubby blackface minstrel and speaks in a weird slur. He lives with his single mom in an exclusively-black rural community, where everyone is poor but has money to prepare and consume enormous amounts of food.

Adjectives abound. Koko doesn't just have a mother, he has a "nice, good, big, ole, fat, black Mammy." He doesn't just eat cake, he eats "nice, good, ole, sweet, moist, dark, chocolate cake with rich, thick, good, ole, creamy, white frosting."

The dialogue and illustrations are bitingly racist.

What characteristics of African-American culture did I learn about, at the age of seven, from Little Brown Koko?

1.Sensuality. A world of vibrant senses, touch, taste, and smell (paragraph after paragraph just to describe food).

2. A shared humanity. Koko's adventures were instantly recognizable: he gets lost; he babysits; he wins a prize; he has to make a speech.

3. Same-sex attractiveness. In spite of the minstrel-show illustrations, I imagined a world of sleek, glowing bodies, so beautiful that they required a dozen adjectives.

4. Freedom from the nuclear family mandate. Every household in my world was occupied by pairs of men and women, but none of the adults in Little Brown Koko's world had marital partners.

5. Gay romance. Blanche Seale Hunt dedicates the book to a woman: "When I spun dreams, you did not laugh. You always were a kind and caring friend" (I'm paraphrasing). I imagined that the two women lived together, supporting each other, loving each other. Which explains why she didn't depict any heterosexual romances.

Not bad for a series of racist children's books from the 1940s.

Ok, you've seen some pictures of African-American hunks. Are you ready for some of Little Brown Koko? Don't say I didn't warn you:

When I moved to Upstate New York in the fall of 2008, my social calendar was soon crowded with invitations from members of the Gang of Twelve, guys who had known each other for years, and who shared everything, from gossip to boyfriends.
1-2. The Rich Kid and the Crying Truck Driver.
3-4. The Rapper, and the Grabby Nurse.

All of them told me, "You have to meet the Satyr!" But they all had different stories.

The Rich Kid: he's a muscle bear who used to work in porn movies.

The Truck Driver: he's cultured, artistic, and very romantic.

The Rapper: he's a Sugar Daddy with a fetish for black men.

The Grabby Male Nurse: he's a sexual dynamo, able to keep going all night (thus his nickname).

Date #5. The Satyr

He didn't send any photos or give any stats, so I didn't know what to expect when I drove to old Victorian on the west side of Oneonta. But I certainly didn't expect Chad, the waiter from the Neptune, to answer the door.

"Hey, Chad! I didn't know the Satyr had a roommate."

"I'm not his roommate," he said with a cryptic smile. "He's still getting dressed -- come on in and wait in the parlor."

He ushered me into a room cluttered with heavy leather furniture, old black-and-white photographs, bookshelves, a coffee table made out of an old crate.

I was left alone for about ten minutes to leaf through coffee table books on Asian art and try to make friends with a skittish cat, until the Satyr finally came down the stairs.

A tall, husky, bearded bear, around 60 years old. Broad shoulders, round belly. And, when he gave me a hug, I felt that he had a baseball bat down there, all revved up and ready to go.

"Don't take it personally," the Satyr said with a chuckle. "I'm always like that when I meet a new guy."

"You're always like that when you're breathing!" Chad re-appeared with a tray of cheese and crackers.

"I see you've met my boy toy."

"Housekeeper!" Chad insisted.

"How many housekeepers get paid to keep the boss's bed warm?"

"How many boy toys hook up with studs of their own?"

I thought I'd seen every kind of relationship, but this was a new one. I spent the evening looking for clues on how it worked. Chad cooked dinner, and ate with us-- sesame chicken, fried rice, and seaweed salad. But when we took our ice cream and coffee into the parlor, he vanished.

I was disappointed -- I liked Chad. He was not a stereotypical hustler. He was studying art history at the university, he spoke four languages, and he had some interesting stories about growing up gay in a conservative Korean-American family.

The Satyr, however, was annoying, rather boastful, and a name-dropper. When he was a teenager, hustling in Times Square, one of his clients was Christopher Isherwood.

"Um...well, I met Andrew Lloyd Webber..."

When he was a camera man in Hollywood, he dated Tom Selleck, Rob Lowe, and John Travolta.

Um, well...I dated a former teen idol..."

While he was working at the American consulate in Japan, he had an affair with the son of Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu that caused a major scandal.

I was not at all interested in a relationship with the Satyr, but who can turn down a baseball bat? So when he suggested we go upstairs, I consented.

"Chad! We're ready for bed!" he yelled.

Wait...what? You don't "share" roommates on the first date! Or housemates, or boy toys, or whatever he is!

When we got upstairs, Chad was waiting, naked, in the Satyr's bedroom. But he just gave us massages and left.

Very weird date, so far.

The baseball bat, by the way, was the second biggest I've ever seen.

Later, on my way to the bathroom, I passed Chad's bedroom. His door was open. He was lying in his bed, watching Saturday Night Live.

"Hey, I haven't seen that in years!" I exclaimed.

"Well, come on in and watch it with me." He grinned and pulled up the covers.

"Won't the Satyr mind?"

"Not at all. Lots of his dates end up in my bed, or my dates end up in his bed, or our dates find each other and head to the guest room. You need a score card to keep track!"

We watched tv, talked, and cuddled, but no erotic activity happened-- "I want to take things slow with you, not just grab and go," Chad explained, rather paradoxically for a professional bed warmer.

I never shared the Satyr's bed again. Chad and I dated through the fall and winter of 2008, but I always insisted that he come back to my apartment. I was never really comfortable with the housekeeper-boy toy thing.

Later The Klingon, Date #6, told me that he had dated Chad, too, and broke up with him for the same reason.

When I was a kid, I hated DC and Marvel comics. Every time you bought one, you stumbled upon part 10 of a 20-part story, extending over several titles, and referencing things that happened a hundred issues ago. Infuriating!

Besides, those costumed superheroes never took their shirts off.

Besides, they all had girlfriends.

In 1975, comic books were getting harder to find. Schneider's Drugstore stopped stocking them. You had to go all the way to Readmore Book World downtown, where the clerk leered at you and said "Got some heavy reading to do tonight, huh?"

I avoided going there.

But suddenly, in the summer of 1975, a new assortment of DC non-superhero comics made the trip and the leers worthwhile. They were musclemen, with bare chests and shoulders displayed.

Hercules Unbound, from Greek mythology, here incongruously fighting the Loch Ness Monster.

Kong the Untamed, a prehistoric mama's boy who interacted with dinosaurs and savages.

Tor, another prehistoric boy, except this one lived 1,000,000 years ago, and there were no dinosaurs.

Kamandi, a prehistoric boy in the post-apocalptic future.

An adaption of Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan.

Marvel was doing a Conan the Barbarian book, so DC tried to get a piece of the action with Claw the Unconquered, (complete with the Frank Franzetta image of lady supine between his legs). Except he had a clawed hand.

The only significant gay subtext came in Richard Dragon, Kung Fu Fighter, an attempt to capitalize on the Kung Fu craze. Richard fought for G.O.O.D. (The Global Organization of Organized Defense) along with his best buddy Ben Turner.

Both fought with their shirts off.

All of these muscleman comics faded away within a few issues. But they provided substantial beefcake during the waning years of the comic book industry.

See also: The Comic Book Jungle; and The Last Boy on Earth

Knight Rider (1982-86) was similar to many of the detective adventure series of the 1980s, especially Magnum PI -- a sly antihero with a hairy chest and tight jeans solves crimes (mostly involving supermodels) with the assistance of an uptight, gay-vague mentor. But in this case the mentor is a talking car named Kitt (voiced by William Daniels).

Apparently the producers wanted buddy-bonding without any of those pesky gay subtexts, and what better way to eliminate longing glances than by making the buddy a car? And, indeed, during the first few seasons, longing glances are at a minimum as Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff) rescues or teams up with ladies: con artists, thiefs, daughters of ranchers, ex-girlfriends, reporters, even a student at a bodyguard school.

It sounded far too heterosexist to even glance at, so I never saw a single episode. Until I moved to West Hollywood in 1985, where it was a gay favorite.

Why? Hasselhoff was cute, but he rarely took his clothes off, and he was surrounded by ladies.

It turns out that the talking car wasn't enough. In the fourth season (1985-86), producers gave Michael a human buddy: RC3 (Peter Parros), an immensely muscular, street-smart mechanic whom Michael encounters fighting some bad guys. He gets a job at Michael's funding organization, FLAG (Foundation for Law and Government), and spent his time yelling "Michael, help!" or "Are you all right?" or glancing longingly at Michael.

They went undercover together, took vacations to Chicago to listen to jazz, and got tied up by baddies side by side in muscle shirts. Michael continued to court women, but RC3 displayed little or no heterosexual interest. His devotion to Michael was total.

After Knight Rider, David Hasselhoff went on to the long-running Baywatch, a Playboy series about the breasts of lady lifeguards jiggling in slow motion (with an occasional far shot of a guy). He is rumored to be gay in real life, and his performed his nightclub act, "An Evening with the Hoff," at gay clubs.

Peter Parros starred in a revised version of Adam-12 (with a gay-bashing episode) before settling down to a career of taking off his shirt in soap operas.

When I moved to Upstate New York in the fall of 2008, my social calendar was soon crowded with invitations from members of the Gang of Twelve, guys who had known each other for years, and who shared everything, from gossip to boyfriends.
1-2. The Rich Kid and the Crying Truck Driver.
3-4. The Rapper, and the Grabby Nurse.
5. The Satyr and his roommate Chad, who I dated through the fall and winter.

A few days after Chad and I broke up in February, the Klingon emailed me for a date.

We met last fall, and saw each other occasionally at the Neptune or the Gay Men's Potluck in Utica. But when I asked him out, he refused. Later I figured out that the Gang of Twelve was a class-based society.

The Upper Class -- the Rich Kid, the Male Nurse, and the Satyr -- got the first chance with all of the New Kids in town.

If no romance resulted, or if a romance began and then ended, The Middle Class got their turn. (The Truck Driver and the Rapper were middle class, but cut in line due to the special circumstances of their recent breakup).

So the Klingon had to wait until the Upper Class guys (and Chad) were finished with me.

Date #6: The Klingon

He was in his 30s, shorter than me, husky, with a round face, a beard, and a very hairy chest, very cute. And a science fiction fan! I figured we would be wildly compatible, maybe even soul mates.

On our date, we saw Coraline, an animated movie about a girl who discovers a secret world, followed by gyros and a visit to the Bearded Dragon Comic Book Store, and then back to the Klingon's apartment.

In case you don't know, Klingons are an alien species on Star Trek with cranial ridges and a warlike culture, a favorite for costume play at fan conventions. A linguist developed a complete Klingon language, which people learn and use to talk to each other. At the San Diego Comic Con, trolley signs are posted in Klingon.

Discussing the Klingon language was lots of fun, but I got a little bored hearing about role playing games, anime, manga, and the Dark Knight. He was like the Comic Book Guy, who I dated in Florida.

Except the Klingon's bedroom was perfectly comfortable.

On our second date, we ordered Chinese food and watched a DVD of X-Men: The Last Stand. His bedroom was still perfectly comfortable.

On our third date, we drove 1 1/2 hours into Albany for a very boring role-playing championship at the Zombie Planet, followed by a visit to the bear bar, and then 1 1/2 hours back to Delhi, where the Klingon lived.

The 3 hour trip and 2 hour role-playing made me realize that the Klingon and I would have been soul-mates in college, or maybe in West Hollywood, but not anymore. I hadn't played role-playing games, bought comic books, or read fantasy and science fiction for about 30 years. I last saw a Star Trek movie in 1982, and a Star Wars movie in 1983. It was like hanging out with my teenage self. Time to yell "Next!"

There was only one problem: in gay communities, after the first or second date, it's perfectly acceptable to just not call him back. But on the third date, you become a romantic couple, and you have to go through the same break-up process as couples who have been together for years.

I invited the Klingon to lunch, but before I could say anything, he gave me the "it's not you, it's me speech." Then he sent notes to the Gang of Twelve: "Cute, but dull! Doesn't have any hobbies or interests!"

Date #7: The Sword Swallower. This one didn't take long.

I invented all of the other nicknames, but the Gang of Twelve really did call this guy Sword Swallower. I assume because he liked to swallow...um...swords and things.

He was in his 40s, tall, lanky, with a long face and thick, wavy hair. Long fingers and rings -- an immediate turn-off. ...

On our date, we went to dinner at the Mid Town Grille in Delhi, where he talked about his rather dull job doing things with numbers, and I talked about my job teaching criminology.

Things were a little awkward, but when he invited me back to his apartment, I thought "Well...he's good at swallowing..um, swords and things."

We sat on the couch, talking and drinking coffee. And talking and drinking coffee. He didn't make any moves. He didn't even touch me. I checked the clock. Then, suddenly, he reached over and took my hand.

"Well, it's not sword swallowing, but it's a start," I thought.

Staring intently, he brought my hand to his lips as if he intended to kiss it -- but instead he swallowed it!

My hand was in his throat! Saliva and mucus,and his tongue!

With a shriek I ran into the bathroom, splashed water on everything I could think of, and then said I wasn't feeling well and ran out the door.

It wasn't a lie. I felt like I was going to be sick.

I went home and called the Satyr. "Oh, he does that with everybody. And then the poor boy wonders why he doesn't get many second dates."

"When you have a crazy fetish, you should tell people in advance, not just dig in!"

"It's a rite of passage around here," the Rapper told me. "Once you've been swallowed by the Sword Swallower, you know you belong."

The Sword Swallower sent notes to the rest of the Gang of Twelve: "Cute, but not into sex. I tried my best move, but I couldn't get him interested!"

Next: The Umpire has a secret move of his own.

When I was a kid, we drove 300 miles east to Indiana two or three times a year to visit my parents' many relatives. My Aunt Mavis, who lived in a trailer on my grandfather's farm, was deeply into science fiction, or pretended to be to please her son, my cousin Buster. She watched The Invaders with us, searched the night sky for UFOs with us, bought us Space Family Robinson comic books, and sometimes took us into town to see sci-fi movies at the drive-in. During the summer of 1971, she took us to see The Time Machine (1960).

It was based on the H.G. Wells classic about George (Rod Taylor), a man who travels from the Victorian era to several dates in the future, finally the far distant future, where humanity has evolved into the monstrous Morlocks and the childlike Eloi. He meets an Eloi girl named Weena.

Not yet ten years old and nodding off in the back seat, I didn't catch the heterosexist "boy meets girl" plot; I thought Weena was like a daughter to him (by the time of the 2002 remake, I was quite aware). Instead, I was busy watching George and his friend Filby (Alan Young), whom he meets often on his travels, as if they are bound together through time.

That fall I saw Rod Taylor in Bearcats!, a sort of pre-World War I Route 66, with two hunky buddies (Rod Taylor, former Physique Pictorial model Dennis Cole) driving around in a Stutz Bearcat in sleveless muscle shirts.

It aired at the same time as another buddy drama, Alias Smith and Jones, and lasted only 14 episodes.

But they were really good episodes.

Sometime in 1972 or 1973, Chuck Acri's Creature Feature showed the peplum Colossus and the Amazon Queen (1960), with Rod Taylor as the ancient Greek muscleman Pirro, who is captured by the evil Amazon women and must be rescued by his partner Glauco (bodybuilder Ed Fury). Glauco falls in love with the Amazon Queen, but who was paying attention? He was a boy rescuing a boy!

Around the same time, I saw The Hell with Heroes (1968), starring Rod Taylor and Peter Deuel two former air force pilots trying to build a life together in North Africa after World War II. They are forced to participate in a smuggling scheme, and Pete's character meets a girl, but who was paying attention? They were trying to build a life together!

I've seen Rod Taylor in a few other movies over the years: The Birds (1963), Zabriski Point (1970), Inglorious Basterds (2009).

But nothing matches his gay-subtext record of the early 1970s. Even if I had to keep ignoring The Girl.

I was looking forward to seeing The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003). What's not to like about a Victorian England with steam-powered submarines and tanks? Or a group of secret agents made up of Jules Verne's Captain Nemo, H. Rider Haggard's Alan Quartermain, and other fictional characters of the era?

Including a grown-up Tom Sawyer (Shane West, left)? I knew that Mark Twain wrote some novels about the grown-up Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn as secret agents.

And Oscar Wilde's gay antihero Dorian Gray?

I heard some bad things about the movie. Like the stars had a three-picture contract that was scrapped. And director Stephen Norrington hated it so much that he swore off directing for good. But I said to myself, obviously some members of the audience haven't read the original novels, and won't get the jokes.

Then I started watching.

The set-up is interesting enough. The mysterious M, a precursor to the M who heads the British secret service in the James Bond novels, recruits a group of action heroes. The previously mentioned four, plus:

5. Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll (Jason Flemyng, left, whose Mr. Hyde is an Incredible Hulk clone)
6. Mina Harker (from Dracula)
7. "An invisible man" (Tony Curran, below; they couldn't get permission to use The Invisible Man, by H. G. Wells).

Their opponent, the villainous Darth Vader-like Fantom, plans to start World War I a little early by blowing up Venice.

There are more plot twists, double-agents, and betrayals. I think. It's all so very, very tedious that I kept falling asleep.

When I wasn't getting angry about the constant heterosexism. These Extraordinary Gentlemen are all very, very, very heterosexual. The older ones are all mourning dead wives, and the younger ones spend their time flirting with Mina Harker, telling each other "She's out of your league," or thinking "She'll never be interested in anyone like me."

The gay subtexts of the original novels are gone. Even Dorian Gray has been de-gayed. He gazes at men as unwelcome competition in his quest to get with Mina.

The only gay subtext of any sort comes between Tom Sawyer and Alan Quartermain, who can't keep their hands off each other, and keep talking about the size of each others'"guns." But lest we get "the wrong idea," Quartermain explains that he lost his son, and he's trying to be a father figure to Tom.

There wasn't even any decent beefcake, just the extraordinarily ugly Dr. Jekyl with his shirt off and whatever CGI muscle they used for Mr. Hyde. Nothing to take my mind off everyone congratulating each other on being heterosexual and yelling "Aren't you happy that gay people don't exist!"

I hated this movie.

See also: Robert Louis Stevenson; Jules Verne; H. Rider Haggard.

The Gay Connection of "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"

Frank Gorshin: The Bulging Nemesis of Robin the Boy Wonder

10 Things to Say to Your Crazy Fundamentalist Relatives

December 1999: Matt the Bartender, Nudity, and the Y2K Bug

The Bible Boy in the Locker Room

Spring 2006: How to Date a Blind Guy

Jason Priestley: Every Gay Teen's Big Brother

Saki: Gay Writer of Savage Humor

My Name is Earl

The 10 Best Gay Neighborhoods in America

Andy Panda and Woody Wood Pecker

The Gang of Twelve: 1. The Rich Kid and 2. The Crying Truck Driver

Fall 2008: The Rapper and The Grabby Male Nurse

Little Brown Koko: Teaching Tolerance Through Racism

Fall 2008: The Satyr and his Boy Toy

Conan, Hercules, and Kung Fu Fighters: DC Comics Muscle

Knight Rider: Detective, Boyfriend, and Car

Spring 2009: The Klingon and The Sword Swallower

Rod Taylor: Ignoring the Girl

The League of Extraordinarily Heterosexist Gentlemen