NYSocBoy's Beefcake and Bonding

How is it possible to get into a relationship with someone that you don't even like?

I met Florian when the South Florida Gay Men's Chorus performed at our church. He was a Cute Young Thing, a fencing champion back in high school, handsome, with a firm, hairy chest, a little too tall for my tastes. But his extremely upbeat personality won me over:

"Isn't a beautiful day? Of course, every day in Florida is beautiful, isn't it? Gosh, it just doesn't get any better than this, does it? Welcome to Paradise!"

Our First Date

Picking me up:"I didn't know if you gave me the right address or not. If you didn't, that would have been ok. I had a marvelous evening planned, either way. What a fantastic house! And the decor is fabulous!"

Dinner: "This is the best crab quesadilla I've ever had! And, oh, gosh, this salad is marvelous! And aren't the waiters gorgeous? I've never had such a fabulous meal!"

The Filling Station: "Isn't that guy hot! And him, too! I've never seen so many gorgeous guys in one place before! It's like a Mr. Universe contest! I can see why you like coming here! It's the best!"

Back to my house: "This is the most wonderful evening I've ever had! You are positively incredible! I can't believe how lucky I am just to be sitting here beside you!"

The kiss: He leaned in for a kiss -- with a wide grin on his face. You never smile when preparing to kiss! It looks idiotic.

The bedroom: nice physique and beneath-the-belt gifts, but the "fabulousness" never stopped. "Oh, this is fantastic! The best ever! I can' believe how hot you are!" On and on and on.

The next morning, breakfast with Yuri and Barney: "This is the best coffee I've ever had! And cinnamon buns! Incredible!"

I walk him to the door: Gosh, your housemates are absolutely fabulous! Barney is a cuddly old bear, and Yuri is just incredibly handsome! I'm dying to ask you to share, but I guess it's a little too soon, isn't it? I should be happy with the most gorgeous guy in the world!"

I slam the door and sigh loudly. Florian was so goshdarn chipper, so in-your-face fantabulous, that I couldn't stand him!

But he was also very aggressive. Before I knew it:

Our Second Date

The movie: "This is the funniest movie I've ever seen! And the world's best popcorn! I can't believe how good it is!"

The dinner: "That shrimp tempura was marvelous, and this is absolutely the best red bean ice cream in the universe! And isn't that waiter gorgeous! Do you know the Japanese word for super-stud? I wouldn't mind eating cat food if he brought it out!"

Back to my house: "This is the most wonderful evening I've ever had! Gosh, everything was just fabulous! I can't believe how lucky I am to be dating you! You are absolutely the most gorgeous guy in the universe!"

One more superlative, and I'll pour my soda on your head! But you'd probably think it was fabulous!

I could just refuse all future dates. But I didn't have the will power, and besides, he hadn't actually done anything wrong -- he was just annoyingly chipper.

Maybe I could scare him off. BDSM sometimes worked.

I suggest a BDSM Scene: "I've never tried anything like that before, but it sounds perfectly marvelous! Tie me up and use me, Daddy! Or should I say Sir? Gosh, it's just so exciting!"

The Scene: I gagged him.

The next morning: "That was by far the most erotic evening of my life! You were just fabulous! Seriously, I couldn't imagine a better scene! But maybe we could get that super-stud Barney to join in next time! Two Sirs -- that would be incredibly amazing!"

Maybe some of life's sorrows would tone him down a bit.

Our Third Date

An auction at Out of the Closet. Discussion of George Bush: "I'm sure that he'll be defeated in the election next month! The straights are much less homophobic now than when I was a kid!"

Walk on the beach. This is the spot where Yuri had rocks thrown at him from a carload of homophobes. "Well...um...isn't he lucky that nothing worse happened! Um...he is by far the most gorgeous guy I've ever seen. Gosh, he must get cruised a hundred times a day!"

Dinner at my house with Barney. When Barney's partner died, his family refused to come to the funeral: "Well ...um......you know...he was lucky that...that he had a supportive partner...and...an alternate family...and....this is the best moussaka I've ever eaten!"

Movie: Philadelphia, with Tom Hanks as a lawyer with AIDS who loses his job. Boxes of kleenix all around. "This is...um...the most beautiful movie I've ever...um...seen. Tom Hanks is a fabulous actor...and...um...more kleenix, please?"

Invitation to the bedroom: "Sorry, I'm not really feeling well. But it's been a fantastic day. I've never had so much...um...fun in my life."

That was the end of my relationship with Florian. Instead of toning him down, I turned him off.

A couple of weeks later, I ran into him at the Filling Station with another guy: "Jeff, this is Philip! Isn't he the most gorgeous guy you've ever seen? And isn't this a fabulous place? I had to bring him here for our second date -- I knew he would have positively the best night of his life! Well, gosh, it's been great seeing you again!

Philip shot me a pained look as Florian led him away.

See also: 50 Ways of Saying "Fabulous"

I haven't seen a lot of gay-themed movies since 2005, when I moved to small-town American: they rarely make it out to the multiplex next to the Wal-Mart. But before that, living in West Hollywood, New York, and Fort Lauderdale, I saw practically everything. Some were good, but a surprising number were awful: angst-loaded melodramas set in worlds where there is no gay community, every heterosexual is homophobic, lesbians turn straight, and gay men keep falling in love with women.

Here is the list of the biggest offenders, excluding historical artifacts like Cruisingand The Boys in the Band, and movies where the gay guy dies (which I never see in the first place).

It's Still the 1950s
1. Get Real (1998). The only gay guy in the world (Ben Silverstone), who plasters his room with pictures of hunky footballers but still worries that his parents will "find out," falls for a local jock, who won't acknowledge his presence in public, continues to date girls, and beats him up to prove he is heterosexual. But there are no other options.

2. Sordid Lives (1999). In "modern" Texas, a drag queen named Brother Boy (Leslie Jordan) is in a mental hospital, undergoing de-homosexual therapy. Meanwhile, a gay man (Kirk Geiger) moves from Texas to Los Angeles, where he undergoes 300 years of therapy to accept "who he is," but is still terrified that his theater-crowd friends will "find out." Are you kidding me? (Southern Baptist Sissies is in the same vein).

3. Cruel Intentions (1999). Teenage brother and sister have fun destroying people's lives. Fruity queen (Joshua Jackson, not even the most homophobic of the Jacksons) helps them blackmail his sex partner, a closeted footballer, who tries to turn hetero by throwing out his Judy Garland cds. Excuse me? Who researched this movie?

Gay Men Really Want Women
4. The Object of My Affection (1998). Straight woman (Jennifer Anniston) and gay man (Paul Rudd) fall in love and begin a relationship. Um. . .what exactly did they think the word "gay" meant?

5. The Opposite of Sex (1998). Teenage girl (Christina Ricci) shows up at her gay brother's house and seduces his lover (Ivan Sergei), who never once states that he's bisexual. He just likes women, like all gay men.

6. Party Monster (2003). Party boy (Macaulay Culkin) says he's gay, but he falls in love with a girl, who almost convinces him to abandon his "destructive lifestyle." But it doesn't work, and he becomes a murderer.

Gay Men are Really Women

7. The Birdcage (1996). It may have been ok with La Cage aux Folles in 1978, but in 1996, the sight of one effeminate stereotype (Robin Williams) teaching another (Nathan Lane) how to butter his toast "like a man" was infuriating.

8. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001). East German boy (John Cameron Mitchell) falls in love with an American GI, and decides to become a woman for him. Operation is botched, creating a transwoman with an "angry inch," who becomes a punk rocker and falls in love with a homophobic Bible-belt boy. Same-sex desire doesn't exist; it's all male-female, regardless of the body you inhabit.

Lesbians Switch Teams a Lot
9. Chasing Amy (1997). Hetero man (Ben Affleck) falls in love with a lesbian and begins the task of converting her to heterosexuality. Isn't that a debunked myth -- lesbians will "turn back" if they meet the right man? It works, albeit temporarily.

10. Kissing Jessica Stein (2001). Jessica meets a lesbian. She's astounded, utterly unaware that such things exist. In Manhattan. In 2001. To be fair, she lives in a gay-free Manhattan, where people constantly make heterosexist statements ("Oh, you got flowers! Who's the guy?"). They begin a relationship, but then Jessica switches back to heterosexual again.

Gay as Arrested Development

11. Chuck and Buck (2000). The worst gay-themed movie since Cruising. I'll save it for another post.

See also: 10 Gay Movies I Loved; 12 Songs I Hate; and The 39 Dumbest Things on TV

Ok, here's my list of 10 gay movies that did it right: coming out is not necessarily traumatic, gay and transgender are two different things, gay communities exist, heterosexuals are not necessarily homophobic, and no one converts in the end. Many of them offer the flip side to the 10 gay movies I hated.

The rules: the movies had to have identifiable gay/lesbian, bisexual, or trangender characters in starring roles -- not just gay-vague characters or subtexts; they had to be released after 1993 -- no classics, like Making Love or Maurice; and the gay characters can't die at the end.

It's not the 1950s Anymore

1. Beautiful Thing (1996). Flip side of Get Real: high schooler Jamie (Glen Berry) falls in love with his chum Ste (Scott Neal). Mom thinks he's a little young, but is otherwise ok with it. There's a gay community: they read The Gay Times and go to the gay bar.

2. A Lone Star State of Mind (2002). Flip side of Sordid Lives. Texas redneck Earl (Joshua Jackson, last seen in Cruel Intentions) and gay cowboy Jimbo (Matthew Davis, right) go on the run when Earl's fiancee's cousin accidentally robs a drug courier. Everybody finds somebody to dance with.

3. Latter Days (2003). Flip side of Cruel Intentions. L.A. partyboy Christian (Wes Ramsey) makes a bet with his friend that he can seduce naive Mormon missionary Aaron (Steve Sandvoss), only to fall in love with him.

Gay Men Want Men

4. Patrick Age 1.5 (2008). Flip side of The Object of My Affection. Gay couple in Sweden (Torkel Petersson, Gustav Skarsgard) adopt what they think is a baby, but he turns out to be a homophobic 15-year old juvenile delinquent.

5. Eating Out (2004). Flip side of The Opposite of Sex. Two college roommates, one straight and the other gay (Jim Verraros, left, and Scott Lunsford), hatch a wild scheme to land their respective crushes.

6.Paranorman (2012). A kid's animated comedy about zombies -- with a twist. The zombies turn out to be friendly. Oh, and incidentally, the teenage hunk who drives the paranormal investigators around is gay.

Gay and Transgender are Two Different Things

7. Priscilla Queen of the Desert (1994). Flip side to Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Drag performers, the gay Tick (Hugo Weaving) and Adam (Guy Pearce) and the transwoman Bernadette (Terence Stamp), take a road trip across Australia, where Tick reunites with the son he didn't know he had, and Bernadette finds love with an outback bloke (Bill Hunter).

8. The Blossoming of Maximo Olivares (2005). Maxi, a feminine gay kid in the Philippines (Nathan Lopez), is perfectly integrated into his family and community. He gets a crush on a hunky cop Victor (J. R. Valentin), who befriends him, but doesn't take advantage of the situation.

You Can't Switch Teams

9. But I'm a Cheerleader (1999). High school girl (Natasha Lyonne) is accidentally sent to a gay re-education camp run by ex-gay Mike (drag queen RuPaul), where she realizes that she's a lesbian and starts a revolt.

10. Rolling Kansas (2003). Three stoners (including Sam Huntington, left) go on a road trip in search of a secret government marijuana field in Kansas, and along the way the ever-smiling Kevin (Charlie Finn) announces that he's gay. His friends aren't traumatized, and he spends the rest of the movie asking out various cops and stoners.

In the summer of 1980, I left my first boyfriend in Omaha and drove cross-country 3 days to Los Angeles, looking for a safe place, with no idea that I would one day be moving there. One the way back to the Midwest, I spent the night in the Delano Hotel in Beaver, Utah. I had a five-minute conversation with the night clerk, whose name I forgot. I called him Eli.

He was about my age, handsome, muscular, with short black hair and brown eyes, on his way to Brazil to be a Mormon missionary.

And, at least in my memory, we cruised each other:
I asked about "guy-only fun."
He said, "You can get anything you want in Saint George"
I protested that Saint George was too far, and he said, "It comes to you, if you're patient. I'll be here all night, if you get lonely and want to talk...about God and stuff."

I fell asleep before I could muster the nerve to call, and the next morning he was gone.

I've been kicking myself for the missed opportunity ever since.

Could I use my internet sleuthing skills to find him again, and determine if he was actually gay?

Clue #1: "You can get anything you want in Saint George."

Cruisingforsex.com lists 3 cruising areas.

Clue #2: "My church is sending me to Brazil in September to be a missionary."

You had to be 19 to become a missionary, so Eli was probably a year out of high school, a 1979 graduate of Beaver High School.

I managed to scrounge up a copy of the Beaver Utah high school yearbook. I removed guys who didn't look anything like him (or how I remembered him, anyway), and got a list of four prospects.

Clue #3: The Beaver Kid

The Beaver Kid is an underground movie by Trent Harris, who blogs on Utah oddities. In 1979 he met a young man named Groovin' Gary (Richard LaVonne Griffiths) in a Salt Lake City parking lot. Awed of the boy's impressions of Sylvester Stallone and John Wayne, Trent agreed to come to his hometown of Beaver and film a local talent show at the high school -- where Gary performed in drag as Olivia Newton-John. He's not great.

Afterwards the harassment of the conservative Mormon townsfolk forced Gary to flee Beaver for Salt Lake City, where he worked in electronics and later as a truck driver. He died in 2009, a practicing Mormon with a wife and children.

Ok, so Gary wasn't gay, and of course he wasn't Eli -- wrong job, wrong hair, wrong age. But Eli would probably have been in the audience. Or on stage -- the guitarist looked a lot like him!

Clue #4: A Christian Billy Joel

One of the four possible Elis from the yearbook looked like the guitarist. His real name was Derek, and his goal in life was to"become a Christian Billy Joel."

Next, classmates.com, facebook, and reverse white pages, looking for a Derek (with his distinctive last name) from Utah who was around 54 or 55 years old.

Found one! No wife listed, a good sign. Living in Yuba City, California, not a good sign.

Of course, he looked quite different, and his facebook profile gave no indication of gayness. Was he the guy from the hotel? Was he gay?

I shot off an email saying something like: "I happened to stumble across your profile, and you reminded me of a guy I met in Beaver, Utah in 1979. He was a night desk clerk at the Delano Hotel, and he was planning to become a Mormon missionary. We had a conversation that had a big impact on me."

Cool, huh? Noncommittal -- could be about either spiritual discovery or sexual awakening, in case he turned out to be the wrong guy, or a redneck homophobe.

Derek's Response:

"Guilty as charged! I worked at the Delano that summer. Wow, was that a long time ago!"

Further emails revealed that Derek is indeed gay. He's now married to Rodney, his partner of 15 years. Still hot, a white-haired muscle bear with impressive beneath-the-belt gifts.

And he remembers me!

"You were that cute college kid on his way back from California? Wow, was I ever into you! I wanted to come to your room, to bring you more towels or something, but I kept chickening out. I've been kicking myself for it ever since!"

I'm not the only one who missed an opportunity that night.

Derek invited me to come to Yuba City for a visit. Maybe I'll take him up on it.

See also: The Mormon Missionary

The Czechs and the Slovaks were joined into Czechoslovakia from 1918 to 1993 because they have similar histories, cultures, and religions. Their languages are mutually intelligible:

English: My penis is as big as a baseball bat
Czech: Můj penis je stejně velká jako baseballovou pálkou
Slovak: Môj penis je rovnako veľká ako baseballovou pálkou

They have the same pop culture icons, like model Jozef Mikovčák (left).

Pop singer Miroslav Šmajda (aka Max Jason Mai), a contestant in the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest.

And Ivan Mládek, the Weird Al Yankovich of Eastern Europe, whose novelty song Jožin z bažin (Joey of the Swamp) has been popular since its tv premiere in 1978.

Like the American Monster Mash parodies monster movies, Jožin z bažin parodies Czech heroic sagas, in which a swordsman kills a dragon and thereby win "half of my kingdom and my daughter's hand in marriage."

Except instead of a dragon, it's a swamp monster named Jožin (Joey), who lives in Moravia (near Brno) but mostly eats people from Prague. The mayor of the village of Vizovice offers the narrator half of the collective farm and his daughter's hand in marriage for capturing the beast. So he drops sleeping powder from a crop duster, putsJoey to sleep, and sells him to a zoo.

Sounds heterosexist, except it's typically acted out with men playing all the parts.

Sometimes the daughter is never mentioned again.

And sometimes the narrator marries the monster.

Here Jožin is played by a teenager whose dancing oddly involves multiple crotch-grabs. The narrator looks like he's trying to revive him, not subdue him.

You can see the 1978 Czech version, with English subtitles, on youtube.
And a Lithuanian version.
And a Polish version
And a German version with Hungarian subtitles.

There are versions in many other Eastern European languages. With the proper tweaking of the lyrics, it can be turned into a political satire.

By the way, the older guy who pops up out of nowhere and makes frenetic dance moves is Ivo Pešák (1944-2011), who performed in Mládek's Banjo Band in the 1970s, and was a familiar face on Czech tv. Want to see him with his shirt off?

See also: I Escape to the Gay Haven of Slovakia and Monster Mash.

Jimmy Baio never hit the stratospheric heights of admiration enjoyed by his cousin Scott, but he had a solid teen idol career, with two claims to fame that Scott doesn't: he starred in a groundbreaking tv series, and he's a gay ally.

Jimmy and Scott grew up in the same Brooklyn neighborhood. Although he was a year and a half younger, Jimmy entered show business first, in Joe and Sons (1975-76), a short-lived sitcom about an Italian-American family.

While Scott was playing a preteen gangster with a lascivious girlfriend in Bugsy Malone (1976), Jimmy was buddy-bonding. In The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977), former Little League superstar Kelly Leak (Jackie Earle Haley) decides to rejoin the team and reconcile with his father, the coach. He brings a friend from New York, Carmen Ronzonni (Jimmy), who is called both racist and anti-gay slurs by his belligerent teammates, marking the pubescent relationship as potentially gay. To assuage them, Carmen buys some Playboy magazines to pass around, but significantly doesn't read them himself.

In the fall of 1977, both cousins landed tv series. Scott was brought aboard Happy Days, to draw a teen demographic to the rapidly aging cast.

Jimmy leaped head-first into a firestorm of controversy on the soap opera spoof Soap. Even before the first episode aired, it was receiving vociferous protests from religious groups, gay rights activists, tv watchdogs, and even the National Football League.

People calmed down a little (not much) when they discovered that the program was simply a parodic exaggeration of the themes soap operas had been displaying for years, usually involving falling in love with the "wrong" person:

Your tennis coach (when you are married to someone else)
Your priest
The escaped convict who is holding you hostage
A woman (when you are gay)
Someone of another race

Billy's job was to be kind, understanding, and "normal," a stable observer of the lunacy around him. Significantly, he was the first teenage character on tv (and the only one for many years thereafter) to treat gayness as perfectly ordinary, not bizarre or gross/disgusting. His interaction with his cousin Jodie (Billy Crystal), who veered between gay, transgendered, and bisexual, is a model of nonchalance.

Stable observers don't get many plot arcs of their own, and Billy only got two: he was kidnapped and brainwashed by a religious cult (a common fear of the period), and he was seduced by his teacher -- his only heterosexual relationship during the series. After their breakup, she tried to kill him several times, in wacky and ineffectual ways.

It was a big responsibility for a child performer, and not always pleasant. Jimmy was a shy, private person to begin with, and he didn't make a lot of friends -- the other cast members were much older, and involved with their own lives. No doubt the constant complaints that he was contributing to the downfall of civilization had a negative impact as well.

When the teen magazines came calling, Jimmy allowed some shirtless shots, revealing a lean, smooth chest and surprisingly firm biceps, but being presented as an object of desire to millions of teenagers made him feel insecure and manipulated.

He refused swimsuit and speedo shots altogether. Usually he insisted on wearing clothes, and let a friend handle the beefcake (in this case, Timothy Van Patten).

His gay fans didn't mind the lack of nudity; his dreamy smile -- and the assurance that he thought they were ok -- was enough.

When Soap ended in 1981, Jimmy continued to play teenagers for several years, in The Facts of Life, Matt Houston, and Trapper John, MD. But he was disillusioned with Hollywood, and his roles became sporadic. Most recently, in 2008, he appeared in the Godfather parody Don Justice.

Today Jimmy lives in New York City, where he has happily left stardom behind. According to rumor, he doesn't get along with his conservative cousin Scott.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've seen live performances of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacificabout a dozen times, but never the 1958 musical. Until now.

Beefcake abounds, of course. But I already knew that. Then I saw the minor character Stewpot leading the sailors in "There's Nothing Like a Dame."

Was I really seeing what I thought I was seeing?

Fast forward to Stewpot's only other scene, a weightlifting contest. In a swimsuit, not a skimpy 1950s posing strap.

Sausage Sighting: impossible to mistake.

Brian's Drive-In Theater has a lot to say about Ken Clark, who played Stewpot. He was a 31-year old bodybuilder who had a string of B-movie roles in the 1950s. In the early 1960s, capitalizing on the sword-and-sandal craze, he moved to Italy, where he starred in Maciste contro i Mongoli (1963) and Maciste nell'inferno di Genghis Khan (1964) with Mark Forest, and Ercole l'invincibile (1964) with Dan Vadis. He also starred in some spaghetti Westerns and played Dick Malloy, Secret Agent 077, in some Italian spy dramas.

Ken continued to live in Rome, and perform in Italian tv and movies, through his life. He died in 2009, at the age of 81.

No word on whether he was gay or not, but he never married, and apparently he never had any girlfriends, except, just before he moved to Italy, Shelley Winters.

Ok, I heard that before -- it's the tale of a lot of 1950s bodybuilders. I knew Ken would have a magnificent physique. But would he display his Bratwurst so blatantly?

Yeah.

Here he is playing game warden Steve Benton in The Attack of the Giant Leeches (#10 on my list of the Top Horror Movies of the 1950s). That's not a giant leech in his pocket.

How did this one get by the censors? It's from a 1957 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Here's he posing "demurely" in a turtleneck sweater for an Italian movie magazine.

Too bad he wasn't cast in the mid-1960s Batman. He would have given the legendary endowments of Robin (Burt Ward) and the Riddler (Frank Gorshin) some major competition.

Paper towels are just there. They do the job. They're about as exciting as toast.

During the 1970s, two advertisers tried to make paper towels more exciting. Bounty got feisty comedienne Nancy Walker to promote the "quicker picker upper." And Georgia-Pacific countered with Brawny, sold by a Castro clone in a lumberjack outfit, open at the top so you could see his manly chest hair.

So he chops down the trees to make the paper towels? Does that make sense?

Regardless, Brawny soon became a favorite of housewives and gay kids looking for beefcake in their paper towel purchase.

Lots of gay men say that they got their first glimpse of gay culture from the Brawny guy. Seriously.

During the 1980s, he got a haircut and changed his shirt.

In 2004 he was replaced by a more muscular Bush-era hunk with a severe black haircut.

The Brawny Guy hasn't been used in tv commercials or print ads. He doesn't even have a name. But he still gets a 70% product recognition score (70% of people polled associate his face with paper towels), and some cosplay.

And a surprising gay connection.

I've always been attracted to religious guys. There's something erotic about the juxtaposition of the physical and the spiritual, muscles and Bibles, penises and prayer shawls.

I've dated or had other experiences with religious guys (not necessarily clergy) from several Christian traditions, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and paganism.

But not guys from some of the lesser-known religions, like Druze, Jains, Zoroastrians, Baha'is, and Sikhs.

The Sikhs, followers of a monotheistic religion founded by Guru Nanak (1469-1538) in northern India, are particularly interesting. They have uncut hair, beards, turbans, white cotton underclothes, iron bracelets, and kirpans (ceremonial swords).

The men all have the middle or last name Singh ("lion"). They often choose macho careers like police officer, soldier, or bodyguard. Physical fitness is very important; quite a large number are bodybuilders.

Are you getting the idea?

Unfortunately, their religion tends to be highly conservative, obsessively heterosexual-marriage oriented, and homophobic. I've never met any out-and-proud gay Sikhs, or even Sikh guys on the downlow.

There was a Sikh gurdwara (worship center) near my first apartment in Los Angeles, so I often saw them walking down the street or shopping at the 7-11. They gave us cool, disdainful Attitude, refusing to acknowledge our existence.

Once I was talking to a group of friends when a curious Sikh child started walking slowly toward us, staring as if mesmerized. But his mother screamed "Katala! Katala! Get away!"

Katala doesn't mean gay in Punjabi. It means murderer.

So much for my goal of hooking up with a Sikh!

Fast forward to 2005: I'm living in Florida, working at Barney's gym, and a Sikh named Narveer Singh comes in and asks for a tour.

Doesn't he realize that the gym caters mostly to gay men? I don't want him screaming katala!

So I ease into the subject: "As you can see, we draw a diverse crowd. Old, young, different races and religions. Mostly men, though we get a few women."

"Good, good. I wanted a gym with mostly men, to avoid the temptation, you know. Where is your free weight room?"

"A very diverse crowd," I emphasized. "A lot of young, single guys come here....um, a lot of gay men."

"Good, good. Could I try out the treadmill?"

"We..um..don't discriminate. Black, white, gay, straight, everyone is welcome."

"Good, good. What hours are you open?"

"We offer family memberships, so your wife or partner can work out with you. A lot of gay couples get them."

"Oh, my wife goes to Curves [a female-only gym]. Could I do a trial workout?"

Narveer must be completely oblivious! He buys a membership and begins working out every morning, just as we open, wearing a tight blue sweatsuit that accentuates his beneath-the-belt gifts.

So even if I can't hook up with a Sikh guy, I can at least get a Sausage Sighting!

Easier said than done. Sausage Sightings in the gym have to be very discrete. No open gawking -- you have to arrange to "accidentally" be in front of him while he's naked in the locker room.

But Narveer comes to the gym in his workout suit and leaves immediately afterwards. He never uses the lockers, shower, or sauna.

I wander around the gym, sometimes offering him instructions on stance and reps, sometimes just watching from a distance at his lean, muscular frame and blatant bulge.

Come on, God, give me a break -- don't I even rate a Sausage Sighting?

Then one day Narveer comes in wearing a business suit, carrying a gym bag.

"You're looking chipper today," I tell him.

"Oh, I have a job interview nearby, so I thought it would be easier to go directly from the gym rather than driving all the way home again."

Today he's going to use the locker room! Certainly the shower, maybe the sauna.

I wait until he's finished with his workout, give him a few minutes, then grab a clipboard and head back to the locker room. I hear the shower running, so I "decide" to check the temperature and water pressure.

I walk past Narveen's stall. His back is turned to me!

"How's the water pressure?" I ask. "We've had a couple of complaints...."

"It's fine, it's fine."

I go out to the bathroom to "check" something else.

Narveen comes in while my back is turned. I wait for him to finish urinating, and then turn back. He's already at the sink, washing his hands, his penis hidden from view.

Darn! So close!

I go out to the locker room to make sure all of the locks work. Narveen stands on the scale to weigh himself, dropping his towel to the side.

Now's my chance! "Um...that scale is running low. Let me check the calibration."

"Or I could just let you see it." Narveer steps off the scale and faces me. His Bratwurst+ hangs down in full view.

He knew what I was up to all along! "Oh..um...." I stammer, blushing. "You..."

"Well, what do you think? Am I big enough to attract gay guys?

"I would date you," I admit.

"Thanks! My wife didn't believe me -- she said 'You're crazy -- none of the gay guys at your gym are into you -- you're not big enough!' She owes me five dollars!"

He turned and headed back to his locker.

See also: Cruising Priests, Preachers, Monks, and Rabbis; The Naked Gods of Southern India.

During the 1960s, when Bill, Greg, and I zoomed into Schneider's Drug Store to blow our allowance on comic books, we zeroed in on the Gold Key jungle titles (Tarzan, Korak), Disneys (Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge), or maybe Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig as swashbuckling adventurers. I had to go back later to pick up Little Lulu, since my friends would rib me for liking a comic that was "just for girls."

But Little Lulu offered something that no other comic book or tv program or movie of the 1960s had: cute boys running around completely nude. Stylized, cartoon nudity, but still exciting for a preteen who had a vivid enough imagination to fill in the blanks.

I didn't know that I was reading reprints of comics written by John Stanley in the 1950s, and originally based on single-panel strips published in the Saturday Evening Post. So, like Out Our Way,I was mesmerized by this kid world so different from my own.

1. At Denkmann Elementary School, boy-girl friendships were discouraged, but Lulu Moppet had friends of both sexes: the self-assured Tubby (left); timid Annie and her brother Iggy (right); spoiled rich kid Wilbur; the haughty Gloria.

2. Some of the plots involved Tubby wanting to kiss Gloria or Lulu getting valentines from boys, but not many; mostly boys and girls were completely oblivious to heterosexual desire, a pleasant surcease of the girl-crazy boys on tv during the 1960s.

3. There was little of the gender segregation of my grade school. Boys had no qualms about appearing in girls' clothing. Girls excelled at boy-only pursuits.

4. They had remarkable freedom to go wherever they liked without parental supervision.

5. They lived in a urban neighborhood, a short walk from downtown shops that were curiously specialized (meat, vegetables, bread, and candy all in different stores). There were also woods, a lake, caves, and a swamp nearby; the beach was a short bus ride away.

6. There were many inexplicable dangers. Spankings, often for things they didn't do. Truant officers who wouldn't listen to reason. Goblins who stole your identity. Parental abandonment ("I found a little boy I like better, so you'll have to leave"). A witch who would turn you into a stone or a lead pipe and leave you, immobile and helpless, forever.

These dangers mirrored those of gay kids who tried to negotiate the straight world, following nonsensical rules, knowing that the slightest slip-up would mean disaster.

A Sausage Sighting is a glimpse of a guy's beneath-the-belt gifts that doesn't go anywhere else -- no dating, no romance, no hooking up, not even a few minutes in the dark room at the Duplex Bar in Paris.

Sometimes just looking is enough -- a good sausage sighting can be more memorable than a dozen nights of passion, especially when it's unexpected.

You can't count glimpses of strangers in the locker room or at the urinal, or actors getting excited during movie love scenes. It's only a valid Sausage Sighting if you know the guy, if he's a relative, friend, co-worker, or acquaintance.

I'll use the same scale as in my Sausage List (the list of gigantic endowments belonging to guys I actually dated):

Bratwurst: memorable.
Kielbasa: super-sized.
Mortadella: the stuff of dreams.
Kovbasa: Are you kidding?

1. Verne, the preacher's son. We "dated" in eleventh grade. We didn't identify the relationship as romantic, and nothing physical happened, but I did see him nude. Bratwurst.

2. Mr. Kim, a Korean immigrant, a surprisingly buffed muscle bear. When I was in college, he rented the the house next door with his family. He only stayed about six months before buying a house in Moline, but he gave me a memorable Sausage Sighting. Bratwurst.

3. Jens, a slim, blond chemistry major at Augustana. During my senior year, I joined the Baptist student union, and went on tour with them to perform at various churches. When we had to all bunk down for the night in the same room, I had the bed, and Jens had a sleeping bag right below me. He waited until the rest of us were asleep -- he thought. Bratwurst.

4. Chad, a soccer player from Australia who sat in my class in Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas. One day he came in late and stripped down to change clothes in my class. Ok, this one was in a jock strap, but I still saw enough. Bratwurst+

5. Brother Mike, a Baptist preacher who sat on the plane next to me on the way to a job interview. Brother Mike was hot! When our plane landed, we both headed to the bathroom -- along with 20 other guys. We ended up standing side by side at the urinal. Bratwurst+

6.Jon, the most homophobic of the grad students in my class at Stony Brook University. I haven't written that story yet. Kielbasa.

7.Huang, a fellow sociology student, one of my roommates during my first year in New York. In 1998, at a conference in Montreal, I caught him in the act, and learned the truth about the Formosan penis. Kielbasa.

More after the break.

8. Cousin Joe. When I was 7 1/2 years old, we stayed with my Aunt Nora for about two weeks, and I caught a glimpse of Cousin Joe's Kielbasa+ in the bathroom. It was the first I ever saw -- so years later, when I started seeing a lot of them, many were disappointingly small by comparison.

9. Mark, the Boss from Hell during my senior year in high school and freshman year at Augustana. We tricked him into running out of a urinal, where he had been reading Playboy and...you know. Kielbasa+.

10. Brother Dino, my Sunday school teacher, and also a counselor at Nazarene summer camp when I was in junior high. I saw him taking a shower. Easily a Mortadella.

11. Jake, a contractor. My parents were having their kitchen remodeled one summer while I was visiting. From my chair in the living room, I got an excellent view of Jake's front side as he stood on his ladder, doing things with wiring. Except he didn't realize that his zipper was down -- and he was not wearing underwear. His Mortadella was fully visible for several minutes before he noticed and zipped up.

12. Narveen,a Sikh guy who joined Barney's gym in Florida. I tried to get a glimpse on several occasions, and finally he just let me take a peek. Amazing. Mortadella+.

13. Dr. Chester, a former professional wrestler who taught Sociology of Sports Upstate. There was a private bathroom for faculty and teaching assistants -- one stall and one urinal. One day I went in, and there he was, preparing to urinate. He must have wrapped his faculty member around his waist a few times, like a belt. Easily a Kovbasa.

14.Thomas, the Episcopal priest with three boyfriends who Fred and I stayed with in Des Moines during my sophomore year in college. I stumbled upon him in a clinch with the 19-year old boyfriend. He invited me to join in. I was too skittish to take him up on it, but I still remember the sight of his gigantic Kovbasa+.

15. Richard,the crazy bodybuilder downstairs when I lived in Upstate New York. My balcony consisted of rough boards with wide gaps; you could look through them directly onto the balcony of the apartment below. And one night... Kovbasa++++.

See also: My Sausage List

I started working for Joe Weider's Muscle and Fitnessin July 1985. Bob Paris was on the cover.

We had a lot in common: he was one year older than me, grew up in Columbus, Indiana (near where my parents live today), attended Indiana University, and escaped to the gay haven of West Hollywood. Originally he intended to become an actor, but he soon found his way into the world of competitive bodybuilding.

He won many competitions, including Mr. Southern California in 1981, and both Mr. America and Mr. Universe in 1983.

I met him sometime in 1986 -- we never dated, but I learned that he was gay.

He came out publicly in July 1989, in an interview in Iron Man, by mentioning his lover, fellow bodybuilder (and Playgirl model) Rod Jackson, whom he had just married in a Unitarian service.

No professional bodybuilder had ever come out before. Actually, no professional athlete in any sport had ever come out during his career.

His friends advised him to stay closeted, but he was optimistic that, with all of the gay people working in bodybuilding and all of the gay fans, there would be no problem.

His career didn't exactly end -- he continued to compete through 1991 -- but he lost a huge amount of business, including advertising tie-ins, and extensive homophobic harassment, including death threats.

But many fellow bodybuilders and fans applauded Bob's decision to come out. Even the rather homophobic Joe Weider put him on the cover of Muscle and Fitness three times in 1990 -- the "Sexual Response" tag near Bob's crotch wasn't an accident.

In 1991 Bob and Rod retired from bodybuilding to concentrate being the most famous gay couple in the world. Eventually the stress of having to be perfect all the time put a strain on their relationship, and they broke up.

Rod has been busily acting, writing, and advocating for gay rights, especially gay marriage. He has published several books on fitness, plus fiction, poetry, and two autobiographies: Straight from the Heart: A Love Story (with Rod) and Gorilla Suit: My Adventures in Bodybuilding.

He has appeared frequently in theatrical productions in Los Angeles and elsewhere, including the Broadway musical Jubilee.

Today Bob lives on an island near Vancouver, British Columbia, with his second spouse, Brian LeFurgey.

He continues to act, write, and inspire a new generation of bodybuilders, gay and straight.

When I lived in Upstate, I had a third floor apartment, directly above a crazy bodybuilder named Richard.

He wasn't really a bodybuilder, but he had a respectable physique, big biceps and a thick, hairy chest, and he never wore a shirt.

Sounds nice so far, except he was crazy. Whenever he saw me get Chinese, Thai, or pizza, whenever he saw me with a Price Chopper shopping bag, he went into a tirade. That stuff was destroying the world!

Chickens were tortured to death so we could eat them!

Bananas were grown by slave labor and transported through gas-guzzling, ozone-depleted trucks, with the truckers denied access to health care!

I should only eat free-range, free-trade, gluten-free, locally grown, organic, tie-dyed vegan goop.

He had a girlfriend who was even worse.

His apartment was full of free-trade, world-saving, garbage-into-art drek: bowls made of saris by women rescued from human trafficking in Bangladesh, pillows made of discarded brown rice bags by orphans with tuberculosis in Nicaragua; planters made of gun casings by wide-eyed children forced into military service in Zaire.

Plus about a thousand palms, bonsai lemon trees, rubber trees, paduratas, ficus, and ferns. It was like walking into a rain forest.

With those ghostly, whistling Peruvian panpipes, flutes, tambors, and ocarinas playing constantly.

He could be nice -- he looked after my cat when I was out of town, and when I was sick, he brought me a green-tinted mung bean casserole (that looked so gross, I got even sicker).

And he was gay-positive. Gay rights was one of his pet causes, along with fracking, whaling, animal rights, women's rights, child labor, water conservation, and free trade.

But he was still annoying. When I ran into him at the mailboxes or in the common area, I gave him a brief "Hi-how-are-you" or flashed a smile and rushed on, to avoid the harangue about the sins of kung pao chicken, Diet Coke, plastic bags, leather jackets, newspapers, Nike shoes, basically everything I used, wore, or enjoyed.

My balcony had a floor of bare wood blanks which looked directly down onto his balcony, where Richard ate all of his meals, from his first sip of free-range, organic, locally grown, free-trade tea in the morning to his final mung-bean-compote nightcap. In the summer, when the windows were open, I could hear everything he said or did.

But one night I heard something different: Richard and his girlfriend giggling.

They were always deadly serious, moping around over the oppression of animals, the carcinogenic properties of plants, and the forthcoming carbon-emission destruction of all life on earth. Why giggling?

Curious, I walked onto the balcony and peered through the floorboards.

Flickering candles made of locally-grown, free-trade bee's wax.

Richard was lying on a pile of blankets woven from the fibers of free-range linen by children freed from sweat shops in Madagascar. The girlfriend was kneeling beside him. They had stopped giggling. Now they were kissing.

Naked.

Richard's nether regions were illuminated in orange light. His beneath-the-belt gifts in full view.

He was enormous. A Kovbasa++++. How did he wear a pair of pants?

I was mesmerized. I stared until eventually it was hidden.

After that I made a point of stopping to chat with Richard, inviting him to church and to the gym, asking to borrow some of his books on why I should feel guilty about eating cows and using kleenix.

If he wondered why I suddenly became so friendly, he didn't let on.

See also: my top 15 Sausage Sightings.

Come and play, everything's a-ok
Friendly neighbors there, that's where we meet.

Sesame Street premiered in 1969, with the goal of giving inner-city kids a "head start" in reading and math skills. We didn't get it in Rock Island until our PBS station arrived in 1972, when I was too old to have muppets teaching me numbers and letters. But my baby sister watched, so I saw some episodes.

Was Sesame Street a "good place"?

1. Beefcake: None. Some of the human characters were cute, such as Alex (Alexis Cruz, left, who starred in Rooftops with Jason Gedrick). And there was a never-ending supply of hunky guest stars, from Tony Danza to Zac Efron, but I don't recall a single bare chest.

2. Lack of Heterosexual Romance: No. There was no hetero-romantic interaction among the muppets, but among the humans: Bob dated Linda, Maria dated David, and finally married Luis.

3. Homoromance: No. Neither muppets nor humans expressed any particularly strong same-sex friendships. Indeed, pairings seemed mostly random.

The exception was Bert and Ernie, who were shown living together. Some people have pointed to them as a homoromantic couple. The Children's Television Workshop has issued a homophobic statement strongly condemning any suggestion that any character on Sesame Street is gay -- apparently gay children are unwelcome on The Street -- but that in itself should compel us to look for a subtext.

I still don't see one. Their friendship is neither intense nor passionate enough to qualify as homoromance. They behave like brothers. Bert, the older, has concerns that little kids would find boring -- a paper clip collection, a devotion to the letter "W" -- and finds Ernie childish and naive. Meanwhile Ernie keeps trying to get Bert to play with him or read to him, exactly as a younger brother might.

They live together, but they are not homodomestic partners, like Yogi Bear and Boo Boo. They do not have adult responsibilities, like paying the rent and buying groceries. They are children, not adults; their parents must be hovering about nearby, supervising their play.

4. Validation of Difference: Yes. The muppets are unique in temperament, and often "queer" in interests, tastes, and abilities: Oscar the Grouch's love of trash, the Cookie Monster's obsession with cookies, the Count's compulsion with counting.

But validation of difference (other than gay difference) is not enough for Sesame Street to qualify as a "good place."

See also: Burr Tillstrom, the gay puppeteer behind Kukla, Fran, and Ollie.

For many gay men, the ideal is on the left: thick biceps, shoulders like epaulets, xylophone-abs, minimal or no chest hair, with the icy perfection of a Greek god.

For others, he is on the right: soft and warm, with liberal body hair, and a belly so big it feels like a pillow beneath your head.

I like them both. As long as he has some mass, I don't care if the guy is a marble statue or a plush teddy bear.

So when I saw Carlos' profile on gay.com stating that he was shorter than me, Hispanic, with "a few extra pounds" and extra beneath-the-belt gifts, I thought "Just my type!"

Everyone on the internet misrepresents themselves, so he probably had 20-30 extra pounds. A cute bear! Great.

I didn't even mind when he wanted to meet at the Iron Chef, the worst Chinese buffet in Dayton, housed in a transient hotel next to a pool room.

Carlos was waiting for me on a bench outside the restaurant.

Guess what "a few extra pounds" meant:

You got it. He was a superchub.

Easily 400 pounds, as wide as he was tall, with hanging breasts, sagging arms, and multiple bellies.

A lot of guys like their men massive, the heftier, the better. They even practice forced-feeding to increase the heft of their objects d'amour to room-size.

But I do not. Aside from the lack of masculine body contours, superchubs probably don't share my interest in physical fitness, and they're beset-upon by major health issues.

Besides, their penises get lost in the folds of flesh.

But I couldn't just walk away from this poor guy grinning sheepishly at me.

And I couldn't call him on his "a few extra pounds" misrepresentation -- who hasn't dropped pounds or years, or added inches in personal ads?

The least I could do was have lunch with him.

As Carlos ate a remarkably petite plate consisting of a dab of kung pao chicken, a single fried chicken wing, one egg roll, and a lot of cucumber slices, grapes, and pineapple chunks, we talked about his attempts to lose weight, Weight Watchers and fad diets and liposuction. He was down to a svelte 250 at one point, but it all came back.

We talked about his weight-related health problems, from hypertension to diabetes to a broken ankle that still wasn't healed (he walked with a cane).

We talked about the everyday hassles of being a superchub -- having to buy two seats on an airplane, the look of horror when he sat down next to someone at the movies, the stares and whispers.

And especially in gay communities: Carlos was refused entry to bath houses and back-rooms. He was ignored in twink bars and even in bear bars. Guys he met online usually rejected him outright, without taking the time to get to know him.

"Gay men can be so shallow. There's a lot more to me than being big! I speak two languages, I write poetry, I go to church, I have a niece and nephew who love me."

I was feeling more and more guilty about my plans to dump him after lunch.

Ok, so I wouldn't dump him. Impossible -- I would feel guilty forever! I was going through with this date to its logical conclusion -- Carlos's apartment.

The bedroom activities -- actually, the living room floor activities -- were quite nice. Carlos was very passionate, and so creative that I hardly missed the lack of access to his frontside and backside.

Afterwards we watched a movie, he read me some of his poetry, he invited me to a pro-gay Methodist church where he worked as a deacon, and I found myself asking him for a second date.

"That sounds great," he said, "Do you mind if I share you with my partner?"

"Partner?" I repeated in shock. What happened to the constant rejections? I had been congratulating myself for taking pity on this guy, and he had a partner?

"Jerry -- we've been together for 8 years now. He has his own place in Columbus, but he drives out to Dayton on the weekends. And during the week, we can hook up or date other guys -- but only once. The second time, we have to share."

"Does that happen a lot?" I asked weakly.

"Not often -- once is usually plenty," Carlos said. "I get tons of action -- you'd be surprised how many guys are hot for superchubs, and the rest get guilted into it. But most of them are just plain lousy in bed. They don't know how to handle a real man."

"Well...um...I'm flattered that I meet your standards."

He laughed. "What can I say? I'm picky."

Jerry turned out to be a Hispanic muscle god with gigantic arms, a hairy chest, and a bratwust+.

So much for a waif who can't get a date.

Around 1980 or 1981, the PBS tv series Matinee at the Bijou, which tried to recreate an old-time moviegoing experience, broadcast an old black-and-white cartoon, "Minnie the Moocher" It starred a squeaky-voiced, big-headed girl named Betty Boop who runs away from home, along with her pet dog or maybe boyfriend Bimbo.

They seek refuge in a spooky cave, where a swaying, backwards-dancing walrus sings to a series of disturbing images: skeletons drink poison, collapse, and become ghosts; ghost inmates are sent to the electric chair, and die; pupil-less kittens suck the life force from a dour mother cat.

What sort of cartoon was this, I wondered, to so adroitly combine a morality play with the stuff of Freudian nightmares? To so disturbingly disrupt the images of life and death, human and animal, male and female? And then I wondered: could it also have some gay symbolism?

Matinee at the Bijou eventually broadcast a few more Betty Boop cartoons. There weren't many. Introduced by Fleischer Studios in 1930, the stylized flapper with the baby-doll voice roamed her crazy, nightmarish world until 1934, when the Production Code forced her to settle down to more conventional cartoons about kids and dogs.

During her heyday, Betty had gay friends -- a "pansy" appears as one of the guests at her party, and at her diner, another lisps "Pass me the cold cuts -- they look delish." But was there any other gay symbolism?

1. The fluidity of identity, men becoming women, animals becoming human, boys becoming men, suggests that desire, too, is fluid, not merely male desiring female.

2. Betty incites a transformative, healing desire that can heal broken bones and make old men young again. The transformative power of desire is a palliative for gay people told over and over that their desire is wrong, abnormal, or doesn't exist.

3. The cartoons are run through with men desiring men as well as women.

Most blatantly in "Bimbo's Initiation (1931). Bimbo is kidnapped by a secret society of men with melted black faces and candles on their heads, suggesting the transience of life. They sing "Wanna be a member?" Bimbo refuses, so they torture him with sinister pit-and-pendulum devices, a sword that pops out of the wall, symbolic doors that open to skeletons and mirrors (self-knowledge, perhaps). The men turn out to be an army of Bettys, so Bimbo agrees to become a member.

The men want Bimbo, and pursue him lustfully. Even the sword licks its lips in anticipation of his flesh. The fluidity of gender, male as female disguise, only adds to the homoeroticism.

One of the most interesting of my Sausage Sightings was the Asian muscle bear.

When I was growing up in Rock Island, you were white or black. There was one Chinese kid in my junior high, and my judo instructor was Japanese. And that was it.

So I was surprised, during the summer after my junior year in college, when a Korean family moved into the house next door: Mr. Kim, an engineer in his 30s, his wife, who worked in a bank downtown, and two young daughters.

Mr. Kim was a surprisingly buffed muscle bear. He often mowed his lawn or played with his dog with his shirt off and sometimes he sat in a kiddie pool in the back yard in a swimsuit, reading a magazine.

Very hot. I wanted to get to know him better. Of course, he was married with children, but so were many of the guys who cruised at the levee.

I took a class in East Asian Civilization at Augustana. Unfortunately, we barely touched on Korea, but I tried an opening on Taoism, the Way of Non-Resistance.

Mr. Kim cut me off. "I don't know anything about that stuff. I'm a Presbyterian."

Ok, so how about Korean history? The Joseon dynasty that threatened Tokugawa Japan?

Cut off again. "I don't know anything about that stuff. We moved here when I was five."

The Korean language, maybe? "Annyeong haseyo! Good morning."

"Sorry, I don't know much Korean. I took Spanish in school."

"Tengo una verga grandissima para ti!" Ok, I didn't say that.

By this point it was obvious that Mr. Kim was not particularly interested in buddying around with the teenage boy next door.

But there's more than one way to get a Sausage Sighting.

My brother and I shared an attic room with windows on each end. His bed was beside the south window that looked out on the lawn, and mine was beside the north window that looked out a very narrow side yard and then Mr. Kim's house.

I could lie in bed and look down into his kitchen.

It usually wasn't very interesting -- people cooking and getting things out of the refrigerator. But sometimes late at night I was awakened by the light coming on from next door, and I saw Mr. Kim making a snack.

In his underwear.

And one night, something more spectacular happened.

The light came on about midnight, just after I went to bed. I peered down, as usual, to see Mr. Kim talking to his wife. He was gesturing, pacing, so maybe it was an argument.

The underwear was off! Mr. Kim was completely naked! His impressive Bratwurst was swinging in and out of view as he paced back and forth. His backside, too.

His wife was wearing a bathrobe. She started making tea.

Eventually they sat at the kitchen table, and the Bratwurst was hidden from view.

The nude kitchen stop was never repeated. A few months later, the Kims moved away.

Recently I read somewhere that the Korean penis averages 3.8 inches, the smallest in the world.

If Mr. Kim was small, I'd like to see big.

See also: 6000 Words for Penis

When I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s, I hated gym class.
1. Trying to catch a projectile aimed at your head.
2. Not catching it, and being jeered by your classmates.
3. Or catching it, not knowing what in the world to do with it, and being jeered by your classmates.

Ok, I liked one thing about it.

Why was gym even a class? What were we expected to learn?

Gym class derives from the 19th century "muscular Christianity," which tried to remedy the increasing "feminization" of Western culture through hard physical labor.

But it got a kick start in 1956, when President Eisenhower decided that American youth were too sedentary, not able to compete with the Russkies, so he established the President's Council on Physical Fitness.

By the 1960s, an hour of "vigorous physical activity" every day was mandated for middle school and high school kids (grade schoolers made do with recess).

There were regular "Fitness Tests" to see if we were adequately muscular. The one I hated the most: push-ups, sit-ups, and chin-ups. The number you could do at one time was your grade:
Less than 60, F
60 to 69, D
And so on

I have never in my life been able to do 100 push-ups in one set.

The Canadian Council on Physical Fitness says that, for a 20-year old, 36 push-ups is "excellent."

But I liked the public-service announcements that the President's Council broadcast during the 1960s, lots of smiling, muscular, semi-nude all-American boys exercise.

The one I remember most clearly -- is a President's Council on Physical Fitness PSA.

It depicts a muscular teenager named Eddie Lewis, naked except for skimpy gym shorts, doing push-ups, the camera lingering on the interplay of muscles, while the narrator says that for each push-up, he's "a little bit hotter, a little bit healthier, and a little bit happier" than before.

Just watching made me a little bit hotter. And a little bit happier.

Anyone who performs wearing only a sock over his penis is ok in my book.

But I have no idea who he is.

Well, now I know he's Anthony Kiedis from the band Red Hot Chili Peppers, but I never heard of him or the band, until on the Simpsons episode "Krusty Gets Kancelled" (May 13, 1993). And hardly at all since.

They apparently haven't made much of a splash in traditional pop venues, but they've torn up the alternative rock charts, with lots of albums and singles reaching #1, including "Give It Away,""Soul to Squeeze,""Scar Tissue," and "Californication."

So that's where they got the name of that tv series starring David Duchovny.

I listened to these songs, to determine if I've ever heard them before. Nope.

Some of the lyrics seem relatively heterosexist:

"Scar Tissue" is about feeling the breasts of a young Kentucky girl.
"Californication" is about a pregnant teenage girl whom the singer wants to marry.

Some aren't:
"Give It Away." I don't know what he's giving away, but he's giving it to his mother, father, and brother, so I imagine it's not sex.
"Soul to Squeeze": he's in love, but doesn't specify with a man or woman.

Another member of the group, Flea (Michael Peter Balzary), has become quite a prolific actor, appearing in My Own Private Idaho, Motorama, The Big Liebowski, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and The Wild Thornberries.

He's straight, not to be confused with fellow insect-named performer Ant, who is gay.

Both performers are pro-gay, supporters of gay marriage, and open to speculation about their own sexual identities.

There have been 12 other members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers over the years, but these four are the "classic group." From left to right: Chad Smith, Anthony Kiedis, Flea, and probably John Frusciante.

Chad Smith and John Frusciante both have wives and children. I haven't been able to determine if they're gay-friendly or not, but at least John Frusciante had a nice pecs and abs abs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. How to avoid a woeful ignorance of sports.

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

4. How to avoid being obliterated by a flying projectile

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fall 2004: The Boy Who Cried "Fabulous"

10 Gay Movies I Hated

10 Gay Movies I Loved

Finding the Mormon Missionary Who I Cruised 30 Years Ago

Jozin z Bazin: The Czech Swamp Monster and His Boyfriend

Jimmy Baio: Scott's Cuter Cousin

Ken Clark: Bodybuilder on My Sausage Sighting List

The Gay Connection of Paper Towels. Seriously.

Spring 2003: A Sikh Sausage Sighting at Barney's Gym

Little Lulu: The Perils of the Gay Child's World

My Top 15 Sausage Sightings

Bob Paris: The World's First Out Gay Bodybuilder

The Biggest Bodybuilder on My Sausage Sighting List

What's Gay about Sesame Street?

Spring 2008: Carlos and His Two Secrets

The Gay Symbolism of Betty Boop

Sausage Sighting #2: The Korean Muscle Bear Forgets His Underwear

Fall 1970: What is Gym Class For?

Red Hot Chili Peppers: What the Socks Covered

How to Survive Gym Class