NYSocBoy's Beefcake and Bonding

When I was a kid, all of the good comic strips -- Peanuts, the Wizard of Id, Doonesbury -- were in the Moline Dispatch. In Rock Island, all we got were bargain-basement knockoffs and doddering relics last popular before the invention of radio: Out Our Way, Our Boarding-house with Major Hoople, Barney Google and Snuffy Smith. They were unfunny, incomprehensible, and downright disturbing. And the most disturbing of the lot was Bringing Up Father by George McManus, which got its start in 1913!

It starred Jiggs, no first name, an elderly, pudgy person, and his wife Maggie, who had pug-dog noses and scary, pupil-less eyes and used dashes instead of periods to end their sentences -- see how bizarre that looks -- it's just wrong --

They had a daughter, drawn as a 1920s glamour girl, who didn't have a name -- her parents called her "Daughter."

Other male characters are drawn as beady-eyed scarecrows, and the women are all glamour girls.

Jiggs and Maggie were noveau-riche. Jiggs longed to return to the old neighborhood, to have working-class corned beef and cabbage at Dinty Moore's diner. But Maggie doted on her newfound status. She kept going to teas, receptions, operas, and dinners with people whose names were horrible puns.

When Jiggs got out of line, Maggie unlashed a torrent of abuse, calling him an "insect" and a "worm," and assaulting him with pots and pans and a rolling pin from the kitchen.

Obviously a critique of the myth of the heterosexual nuclear family the most evolved, most stable, most normal of all family types.

For some crazy reason, toy producers in the 1920s thought that kids loved the stories about Jiggs trying to sneak out of the house to drink with Dinty Moore. They produced toys of all types, including dolls, cutouts, and Big Little Books.

There were dozens movie adaptions and comedy shorts, beginning in 1915. In 1928, Daughter (named Ellen) got a boyfriend played by Grant Withers (top photo). The last film appearance of Maggie and Jiggs was in the The Man Who Hated Laughter, a 1972 installment of the Saturday Superstar Movie, based on yet another ludicrous belief that the ancient strip attracted child readers.

By the 1960s, the writers were throwing in contemporary references -- or at least references that were only about 10 years out of date, like this beatnik from 1968.

Anachronisms that merely added to the discomfort.

Recently I bought From Sea to Shining Sea, a compendium of strips from 1939-1940 written primarily by McManus's assistant, Zeke Zekley. It featured a continuity in which Daughter marries a British nobleman, Lord Worthnotting. The family celebrates by taking them an extended cross-country honeymoon.

Wherever they visit, Maggie and Daughter go shopping, leaving Jiggs and Lord Worthnotting to go skiing, hiking, camping, and sightseeing on their own.

Before the continuity is over (and Lord Worthnotting vanishes from the strip), the two have buddy-bonded so extensively that one could almost mistake them for the newlywed couple.

Apparently Zeke Zekley knew something that McManus didn't.

When McManus died in 1954, Zekley was in line to take over the strip, but the syndicate gave the job to Vernon Green instead, who returned to the nuclear-family-foibles.

Zekely went on to draw his own strips, including those used in The Tab Hunter Show (1960-1961), with the gay beefcake actor playing a horny "bachelor cartoonist."

He died in 2005.

See also: The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie

My first date was in October 1968, when I was in third grade. One day a boy named Gary pushed through the recess crowds to the blacktop where we were playing army men, and asked “Wanna go to a movie Saturday? My Dad’ll drive us.”

I almost said no. Movies, or what old people called "the show," were the main thing God hated! But when Mom and Dad said ok, I decided to risk it. Gary had muscles, and besides, the movie was Village of the Giants (1965), starring Tommy Kirk, a cute teenager who was gay (back then all I knew was he that he seemed to like boys, not girls).

The promise of sitting next to a boy with muscles and seeing a teenager who liked boys outweighed my fear of getting God mad.

God didn’t strike out when Gary’s Dad dropped us off at the Fort Armstrong, or when Gary bought our tickets and orange-colored popcorn. But He revealed His anger when the lights dimmed: the opening scene showed Tommy Kirk and a girl kissing! Tight close-ups of their faces smashed together!

We covered our eyes, occasionally peeking through our fingers to see if the disgusting display was over, but we couldn’t block out the smooching sounds. The ordeal seemed to last for hours. I promised God that I would never again go to to the show, if only He would make Tommy Kirk like boys again.

The story was about a weird concoction that turned some teenagers into giants. Their clothes got shredded off, so they were naked at first, and then they made togas out of theater curtains and danced in slow motion, the camera lingering lovingly on their bulging arms and sculpted torsos. It was nice to see muscles, but our deal, I reminded God, was for Tommy Kirk to like boys, not girls.

God did provide Tommy with a cute best friend, Johnny Crawford of The Rifleman, but they obviously didn’t like each other. They didn’t even work together to save the town. Johnny Crawford grabbed a bottle of antidote and catapulted himself onto the bosom of one of the giant girls to shrink her. The audience cheered. I wanted to go home.

When the movie was over, we stumbled out with the crowd to the sidewalk outside, where Gary's Dad would be waiting, but somehow we found ourselves in an alley between two dark-brick buildings. We followed it to a gigantic, nearly empty parking lot. There were deserted streets on the right and left, and on the far side, the back ends of some three-story brick buildings.

“This isn’t the right way!” Gary exclaimed.
“We must’ve went through the wrong door,” I said, struggling for a logical explanation.I had never been downtown before – I had only been in Rock Island for a few months -- but I knew it wasn't supposed to look like this. The signs on the buildings didn’t make sense. The parking meters were a weird pea-green col-or. The sky was almost black. The wind was sharp and stinging, making us shiver in our thin autumn jackets.

This wasn’t just the wrong side of the theater. We were in a whole different town, maybe a whole different world!

“Let’s go back to the alley,” Gary suggested. “Maybe that will take us to the right door.”

But we couldn’t find the alley again. Behind us was a solid wall of buildings! We ran around the corner, past a statue of a soldier on a horse and a billboard that showed a depressed man being rained on. We saw a marquee in the distance, and ran toward it – but instead of “Fort Armstrong,” it had a crazy foreign word: “Ar-cade.”

Scared, exhausted, we sat down on the curb and started to cry.

Then I heard a soft calm voice: “What’s the matter, kids?”
I looked up to see a teenager standing on the side-walk behind us. A hippie -- he had blond hair and a scraggly beard, and he was wearing hippie threads: a fringed jacket, a red tie-dye t-shirt, and bell-bottom jeans with a green belt.

“We’re lost," I said.

“Dad won’t know,” Gary added, to clarify the situation.

“Don’t sweat it. We can find your folks – we just have to work together.” The hippie sat down on the curb and squeezed between us and wrapped his arms around our shoulders. I collapsed onto his chest.

It was hard like steel! And warm, and fuzzy with little blond hairs!

I hugged the teenager, squeezed against his hard-steel chest, breathing his acrid-sweet hippie smell. He wrapped a thick arm around me and pressed me close. Suddenly I didn’t feel like crying anymore.

“Hey, little bud, it’s ok. Where did you see your folks last? Did they drop you off at the Arcade?”
“Fort Armstrong,” Gary whimpered. Why was he still crying? Why wasn’t he gasping with joy at the hippie’s muscles?
“We went to see Tommy Kirk,” I explained, “But Tommy Kirk liked girls, not boys, and God was mad, and then we went out the wrong door.”

The hippie laughed. “Wal, you’re durned close, pardners – the moving picture the-ater is jest a block thataway.” We giggled at his pretend cowboy talk. He stood and drew us to our feet and took our hands. “C’mon, I’ll take you over.”

In a few moments we were reunited with Gary’s Dad, still waiting on the sidewalk as the last of the kiddie matinee crowd came blinking from the theater. He shook hands with hippie who rescued us and gave him a quarter.

I went to the Fort Armstrong many times after that, and whenever I told the story, my friends insisted on trying to retrace our footsteps that day. We went through every door of the theater, even the one marked “Employees Only.” We circled the building, circled the block, peered into every alley. But we never found the deserted parking lot, the statue of a soldier on a horse, or the arcade where a hippie with muscles came to the rescue.

Heterosexism is commonplace in the "girl! girl! girl!' banter of popular music. But some songs are so heterosexist, homophobic, or otherwise horrible that I literally can't stand to hear them. If they come on tv, I click the channel, and if I can't find the remote, I run from the room. If they're playing in a store, I leave. And heaven help the friend who starts singing one of them!

1. "It's a Man's World" (James Brown, 1966)

It's a man's world, but you're nothing...nothing at all, without a woman!

(See: Homophobic Moments in Music)

2. "She Bangs" (Ricky Martin, 2000).

A gay guy singing about how much he likes the way a girl moves, and then a pun on "shebang" and a dirty phrase for sex. Can't get any more Uncle Tom than that.

3. "Stand Tall" (Burton Cummings, 1976)

December 1976: I was home sick, looking for a gay comic book, and thinking "No way am I a swish!" And I heard on the radio:

Stand tall, don't you fall, don't go and do something foolish
All you're feeling right now is silly human pride.

Right, not gay, don't do anything foolish.

4. "Lady" (Kenny Rogers, 1980).

October 1980. I was cruising at the levee, looking for love, negotiating the incessant "what girl do you like?" chants of my family and friends. And I heard:

Lady, I'm your knight in shining armor, and I love you.
Let me hold you in my arms forever more....

5. "When Doves Cry" (Prince and the Revolution, 1984).

June 1984: I'm on my way to Hell-fer-Sartain State University for the worst year of my life, and this ultra-feminine, super-gay coded guy starts singing about a heterosexual breakup:

How can you just leave me standing, alone in a world so cold?
Maybe I'm just too demanding
Maybe I'm just like my father, too bold

(See Looking for Beefcake in Nashville.)

6. "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (Judy Garland, 1944).

Once I was sick and stayed home on Christmas day, and the drag queen next door was playing this horror by gay icon Judy Garland over and over and over. It's still the main cause of the spike in suicides every Christmas:

7. "Que Sera, Sera" (Doris Day, 1956)

What will happen in the future? Will I get married? Will I have kids? Or will I endure years of misery and pain in a cold, lonely world? Rather a heterosexist question, especially for gay icon Doris Day, who was best buddies with her sex-comedy costar Rock Hudson. The answer is:

Que sera, sera -- what will be, will be.

More after the break.

8. "Give Me a Reason" (Dave Mason, 1975)

Dave Mason is often rumored to be gay, but he has no connection to any gay community institutions. Instead, he offers this nihilist father-son chat:

Give me a reason for laughing, give me a reason to cry.
Give me a reason for living, Daddy, won't you give me a reason why?

Sorry, can't think of one.

Who is God, and what's on His mind?
"That's a good question" I reply.

That is a good question.

More after the break.

9. "Suicide is Painless" (M*A*S*H, 1970. Originally by Johnny Mandel and Mike Altman).

The movie was about a soldier in the Korean War who thought he was gay because he couldn't perform properly with ladies. He therefore intended to commit suicide, until his buddies convinced him that he was straight after all.

A song suggesting that gay people commit suicide? Great.

10. "Don't You (Forget About Me)" (The Breakfast Club, 1985. Originally by Simple Minds.)

Gay people weren't forgotten in this movie about high schoolers bonding through an all-day detention. It begins with a shocking reminder of how vicious homophobia got in the 1980s -- nearly as bad as Family Guy today.

11. "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" (Life Goes On, 1989. Originally from the Beatles).

I hated the tv series, and I hate the song, about an impoverished heterosexual couple making ends meet and saying "Ob-la-di, ob-la-da" to each other. I guess that's Jamaican for "Que sera, sera."

12. "Fireflies"(Owl City, 2009)

I'd get a thousand hugs from ten thousand lightning bugs
As they tried to teach me how to dance a foxtrot above my head.

Not particularly heterosexist, but come on -- if a bunch of bugs flew into my room, I'd be running for the fly swatter, not asking them for dance lessons and hugs. And the Owl guy isn't even particularly cute.

See also: Barry Manilow; 10 Gay Movies I Hated; and The 39 Dumbest Things on TV.

After the wealth of Asian guys available in California -- Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Korean, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Burmese, Malaysian, Filipino -- I felt deprived when I moved to New York -- during four years, I was only with six Asian guys:
1. Peter, the Filipino undergrad who is #3 on my Sausage List
2. Jun, a Japanese gymnast who I met in Montreal
3. An undergrad history major from Shanghai. We had just one date.
4. A guy I met at the Eagle, whose name I don't remember.
5. Mario the teen model.
6. And the Man in Black, a priest or something who cruised me in the street.

I felt even more deprived in Fort Lauderdale. In four years, I was with only two Asian guys, and one of them I met while back in California for a visit..

By the time I got to Dayton, I was desperate. If I didn't get some Asian action soon, I'd be hopping the next plane to Hong Kong.

Unfortunately, the population of Dayton is less than 1% Asian, and I wasn't meeting any.

The rest of the story is too risque for Boomer Beefcake and Bonding. You can read it on Tales of West Hollywood.

Nickelodeon may be somewhat less beefcake-heavy than the Disney Channel, but it makes up for it with lots of gay subtexts. ICarly, Zoey 101, Drake and Josh, and today's Marvin Marvinand Supah Ninjas are particularly strong in the subtext department. Unfabulous, not so much.

But the all-time winner is Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide (2004-2007, and still airing in reruns), about a boy (Devon Werkheiser) who offers tips for surviving middle school.

1. Inclusivity. Ned regularly advises his viewers, “When you like someone,” not “When a boy likes a girl,” and a school dance is depicted full of groups and trios rather than boy-girl couples.

When a Life Studies class requires students to pair up as "parents," two boys are paired along with the boy-girl couples.

An episode about puberty discusses hair in weird places and sudden fits of rage, but not "discovering the opposite sex."

2. Same sex couples. The bully Loomer (Kyle Swann) and his sidekick Crony (Teo Olivares, who would later star in the gay-themed Geography Club) hang on each other in a manner that would elsewhere signify romantic attachment, and high-five each other obsessively, for any reason and for no reason at all except that it allows them to momentarily clasp hands.

In one episode, Crony struggles to “come out” to the other students about his gender-transgressive interest in fashion design, a veiled metaphor for coming out as gay; he is particularly apprehensive about telling Loomer, for fear that the revelation might destroy their friendship.

3. Same-Sex Dating. Jennifer (Lindsey Shaw) has a crush on school hunk Seth (Alex Black), and begs her buddy Ned to ask him out for her. Seth believes that Ned wants the date, and replies “Sure, but just as friends. I like you, Ned, but not in that way.” The statement rather boldly implies that being gay is unremarkable at Polk Middle School; Seth could only misinterpret Ned’s intent if he knows about same-sex dating, and respond so nonchalantly if there is no stigma attached to it.

Seth eventually agrees to a date with Jennifer, but he expects to keep the "date" with Ned, too. He spends the rest of the day grinning at him, hugging him, accidentally sabotaging his own attempt to date a girl.

In the last scene he tells Ned, “I’ll pick you up around seven tonight. We’ll catch a flick and get a corn dog.” Ned starts to protest, but when Jennifer assures him that she doesn’t mind, he shrugs and acquiesces: a date is a date. The scene fades with the three friends walking away, Seth trying to put his arm around a squirming Ned.

4. Same-sex Romance. When Ned tries to cheer up a depressed boy, Marc Downer (Ronald Patrick), he reasons that “opposites attract," and introduces him to the cheerful Martin Qwerly (Tylor Chase). Names often describe character personalities on Ned’s Declassified, so one cannot help but suspect the name “Qwerly.”

They fail to hit it off, so Ned tries again, this time with a Goth girl. The two “downers” fall in love instantly and walk away, happily discussing the meaninglessness of life. Although a heterosexual relationship was effective, Ned tried matching Downer with a boy first, and obviously considers same-sex relationships equally valid.

5. Acceptance of gender diversity. Girls are good at shop class; boys study fashion design. When Loomer beats up a boy in drag, he is careful to explain that the drag is not the reason.

One day in the winter of 5th grade, when I was ten years old, a cute boy named Mark approached me after school.

"Wanna go out to eat?" he asked.

That was an odd dating request. Boys usually just invited you over to play, or to Dewey's Candy Store. If they were were rich, they invited you to a movie downtown.

But I said "Ok" anyway. Mark was short and solid, with blue eyes and a severe military crew cut, and his brother Darryl was a junior high wrestler. "Out to eat" meant the whole family, so I could see them both!

"When do you want to go?" I asked, expecting him to say "Friday night." But he said "Right now."

"Is your Dad here?" I looked around for a car.

"No, just you and me."

"That's dumb! There's no restaurants in the neighborhood."

Our "neighborhood," the parts of Rock Island we could roam freely through without supervision, was bordered by 18th Avenue on the north, 31st Avenue on the south, 38th Street on the west and the city of Moline on the east.

There was nothing in it except Dewey's Candy Store and Schneider's Drug Store.

Was there some new place that I didn't know about?

"I have to go home first, and tell my Mom where I'm going."

"Don't be a baby!" Mark exclaimed. "We'll be back before Captain Ernie is over."

We walked right past my house -- it would take only a second to go in and tell Mom. But Mark, and his blue eyes, and his muscles, led me on, past 20th Avenue, all the way to the corner of bustling 18th Avenue. There were cars streaming in both directions, and the only traffic light was way down on 38th Street.

There were several restaurants on the other side of 18th Avenue, but the one that caught my eye was the Hasty Tasty Pancake House.

I had never seen anything so beautiful. It glittered in red and gold like a palace from the Arabian Nights.

The Forbidden Fruit.

"I'm not allowed to cross 18th Avenue by myself," I protested. "It's too busy. We'll get run over."

"I do it all the time! It's easy -- watch." Mark waited until there was a momentary lull in the traffic and darted across the street. My heart pounding, I followed.

The other side of the world!

Everything was different here. The sky was darker, the air was cooler. The houses were small and grey and shabby.

We went inside and sat at a bright red booth, and Mark bought us pancakes and milk.

They didn't taste good. I felt too guilty for being on the other side of the world without telling Mom.

It was 4:00. Sometimes I played after school, or went to Dewey's, but I always got home by 4:00, in time for Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat. Mom would be wondering where I was.

"I have to get home to watch cartoons," I said.

"Come to my house. We can watch Captain Ernie there."

"Well...it's late, and..."

"I'll let you feel my wiener,"Mark offered with an evil grin.

"Um...well..." I had only seen a few wieners before, and I never felt one. Bill never let me. And Mark was cute...

"It's real big, As big as my brother's, and he's in junior high."

That sealed the deal. We darted back across the street and walked to Mark's house, on 20th Avenue near the border of Moline.

Mark had a portable black and white tv set in his room. We sat side by side on the floor, watching Cartoon Showboat for a while. There was no clock, so I couldn't tell what time it was.

Dad got home at 4:00, and we ate dinner at 5:00. I had to go! What was the hold up?

Finally, after an eternity of cartoons. Mark turned the tv off and drew the blinds. Smiling, he took my hand and pressed it against his crotch.

"No fair! All I can feel is your pants!"

"Ok." He started to unzip.

Then we heard a noise in the hallway outside, and he quickly zipped up. The door opened, and a big boy came in. Not Darryl, the junior high athlete -- another brother, in high school, or maybe even college! He had his shirt off -- he had muscles!

"What you dorks doing in the dark?" he asked, leaping onto the bed and turning on the light. "Whoa, what a workout! I need a massage! Either of you guys an athletic trainer?"

"I am!" I said with a grin.

"Ok, great -- it's right there in my shoulder. Dig in good."

I got to sit on the butt of a semi-naked high-school boy and rub his muscular shoulders! But still, I felt guilty. I shouldn't be here! Dinner is at 5:00 -- Mom and Dad will be worried!

Eventually Mark's brother said "Thanks, little man" and left. Mark shut the door behind him.

It must be almost 5:00 by now. I had to hurry. "You said I could..." I began.

"Oh, sure." Mark unbuttoned his pants, and pushed my hand inside.

It was nice, an impressively solid shaft.

"Now I get to feel yours, too."

I unzipped, and we fondled each other for awhile.

"I know how to make it get bigger," Mark said.

"But I have to...."

Then a voice yelled up the stairs, "Mark, is your friend staying for dinner?"

We quickly zipped up again. He looked at me. "Do you want to?"

"If my parents say it's ok," I said. "Can I call them?"

"Sure. The phone's in the kitchen."

There was also a clock in the kitchen. 6:30!

My heart started to pound with fear. "6:30! But you said it was dinnertime!"

"That's right -- we eat at 7:00."

I was three hours late! Without saying goodbye, I rushed out the door, into the winter darkness, and raced home. Mom was calling all of my friends, and Dad was out scouring the neighborhood. They thought I had either been kidnapped or fell into a ditch.

Years later, I learned that I could get away with any misdeed by claiming that I had been trying to meet a girl or impress a girl.

But "I was trying to feel a wiener" didn't work.

See also: A Hippie to the Rescue: My First Date and A Glimpse of Cousin Joe's Shame

During the late 1960s, our local afternoon kid's show, Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat, played a serial called Journey to the Beginning of Time, about four boys on a field trip to the Museum of Natural History in New York who find a secret passage leading to a mysterious river. They paddle down the river through different geological eras, rescuing each other from mastodons and dinosaurs, learning to survive in the prehistoric wilderness.

Finally they pass the Precambrian Era and see the dazzling psychedelic fireworks of the Earth's creation.

The serial made no sense. The boys' costumes and hair styles changed; they got taller and shorter; the voice-over narration didn't match the action; no one wonders how they're going to get back home again; and where did boys visiting a museum get a boat, anyway?

Still, it became one of the iconic images of my childhood, maybe because it made no sense. It was a puzzle, a mystery to be unraveled, and that puzzle involved boys facing the world together.

In a pivotal scene, Doc (Josef Lukas) loses the diary with his scientific notes of the journey, and Jo-Jo (Victor Betral) fights off a dinosaur to retrieve it. Their subsequent moment of emotional intimacy reverberated through my childhood.

Turns out that in 1966, producer William Cayton took the river sequences from a Czech movie, Cesta do Praveku (1955), then filmed new opening and closing segments in the United States with different boys, figuring that the dumb kids in his target audience would never notice.

I noticed, but I didn't care. I was busy watching the boys bonding with each other through science fiction adventure.

When I first moved to West Hollywood in 1985, every Wednesday night my friend Mark, who introduced me to Michael J. Fox, drove me up to a house in the Hollywood Hills, where there were about twenty gay men, most involved in the film industry, drinking wine, eating fancy hors d'oeuvres, and waiting until 10:00.

To watch tv.

What was all the fuss about?

Brothers (1984-89), a sitcom on the premium cable network Showtime, about three grown-up brothers who run a bar.

1. Macho ex-football player Joe (Robert Walden, left, formerly the roving reporter on Lou Grant).

2. Macho construction worker Lou (Brandon Maggart, left).

3. Cliff (Paul Regina, right), who, in the first episode, dumps his fiance on his wedding day and tells his brothers that he is...gay!

A gay character on tv!

In 1984, gay characters appeared on network tv very rarely, usually in "old high school buddy comes out" episodes of sitcoms. There were no gay characters in starring roles. There were no tv series about gay people.

Brothers was revolutionary.

Cliff knows nothing about the gay world, so he and his brothers work together to explore cruising, dating and romance, gay organizations, gay rights, AIDS, and homophobia of various types. Their tour guide is Donald (Philip Charles Mackenzie), a stereotypic swishy queen who is loud and proud.

Both are actually shown dating men, getting involved in relationships, and even kissing guest stars like Charles Van Eman, Jay Louden, Matthias Hues, and John Furey (right, the one with the basket).

Other gay characters in the 1980s were portrayed as completely sexless, announcing that they are gay but never doing anything about it. Revolutionary again!

As the show progressed, episodes increasingly focused on non-gay topics, like machinations at the bar, Joe's dating and eventual marriage, or Lou's wife and kids, including a seminary student (John Putch) and a teenage prodigy (Yeardley Smith, later the voice of Lisa on The Simpsons).

In the fall of 1986, I enrolled in a Wednesday night class at USC, and couldn't go up to the Hollywood Hills anymore. Brothers aired until 1989.

You can watch episodes on youtube, but I don't think I will. I prefer to keep it part of my memories of those first months in West Hollywood, when everything was exciting and fresh and new.

I hate driving: the congestion, the rude drivers, the lack of parking. I try to live in a gay neighborhood, where everything is in walking distance, or barring that, at least walking distance from work.

Here are the worst cities for driving in America, and the reasons they are worth it.

1. Washington, DC. It's a big square bisected by the Potomac, with streets all the same, except for NW, NE, SW, or SE. If you mix them up, you end up in a war zone on the south side.

Worth the drive: the Mall at dawn, just as the sun is rising over the Capitol, followed by the National Museum of Art and Kramer's Books and Afterwords on Dupont Circle

2. Oklahoma City. It's 40 miles from one end to the other, and the only way to get anywhere is to go through the heart of downtown.

Worth the drive: The National Cowboy Hall of Fame, La Salsa Grille for Tex-Mex, and then Oklahoma City's gay neighborhood" on 39th Street.

3. Fort Lauderdale. The highways are Road Warrior death zones. Where else can you see a car zoom sideways across eight lanes of traffic to squeeze in between two cars at 80 miles an hour?

Worth the drive: The Sebastian Street Beach, Thai food, and The Club on Oakland Park.

4. San Francisco. If your destination is 2 miles away, it will take you 20 minutes to drive there and an hour to find a parking space, which will be 2 miles from your destination.

Worth the drive: Castro Street at dawn, South of Market after dark

5. Los Angeles. Don't ever go on the freeways. Not at 2:00 am on a Tuesday morning. They are bumper to bumper 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Worth the drive: Brunch at the French Quarter, down to Melrose for the Pacific Design Center and the Bodhi Tree, and then hang out in West Hollywood.

More after the break.

6. Houston. 100 miles from one end to the other, and lanes on the highway change from northbound to southbound at random.

Worth the drive: Museum Row

7. Atlanta. 18 streets named Peachtree that all intersect with each other: "You want the corner of Peachtree Lane and Peachtree Avenue South, which is a block from Peachtree Circle and Peachtree Avenue Street North."

Worth the drive: 56% of the population is black. Oh, and if you have any free time left, you can visit The World of Coca Cola

8. Cleveland. Signs pointing to freeway entrances are nowhere near the freeways they allude to, and the east-west ones actually go north-south.

Worth the drive: The Cleveland Museum of Art, followed by the Flexx Club.

See: A Beefcake Tour of Cleveland.

9. Indianapolis. Every street downtown is a one way, including several in a row that are one ways in the same direction. Everywhere you want to go requires a torturous roundabout.

Worth the drive: the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians, followed by The Works.

See: Matt the Bartender, Nudity, and the Y2K Bug.

10. New York. It's not a question of freeways -- there's literally no way to drive into the city, unless you want to spend 6 hours going 5 miles.

Worth the drive: Everything. But if I had to choose, I would say the Museum of Modern Art, Central Park, and the gay neighborhood of the East Village.

See also: The 10 Best Gay Neighborhoods in North America.

When I was a teenager, I could get away with any stupid mistake by claiming that I had been trying to meet girls or impress a girl. Actually, everyone assumed that the reason every boy did anything, from joining a school club to selecting a college, was to meet girls or impress a girl.

In gay communities, they don't make such assumptions. If you join a garden club, everyone assumes you like gardening, not that you're trying to meet guys or impress a guy.

So I have no excuse for going to a meeting of the Log Cabin Republicans.

Except this one:

He was a short, tightly-muscled, amazingly goodlooking 22-year old named Tom, who took my Sociology of Religion class at Florida Atlantic in the fall of 2002.

He kept grinning at me during class, especially during the lecture on gay Christians, and after the final grades were posted, he stopped by my office to cruise, just as I had with my own professor back at USC in 1986.

Over coffee, Tom told me that he grew up in, and was still attending, the Calvary Chapel, an ultra-fundamentalist mega-church.

Religious! Just my type! We bragged about the deprivations we faced growing up fundamentalist. No movies -- no theater -- no eating out on Sunday -- and so on.

"Of course, I'm not out to my parents. They would just start yelling. Almost as loud as if I told them I turned Democrat!"

I interpreted this to mean that he was not out to his parents as gay or a Democrat.

"There's a Christmas party at the club next week," Tom offered. "I'll have to introduce you as my professor, not my date, and we can't dance, but...anyhow, can you come?"

The Club turned out to be the St. Andrew's Club, the most exclusive and elegant of Boca Raton's many country clubs.

It was fun going undercover in a roomful of conservative, rich, straight people. I met Tom's teenage brother and trio of hunky country-club buddies, and his parents, who said things like "Tom just thinks the world of you! He found your class so enlightening!"

Everyone asked about "my wife." I said she wasn't feeling well.

The dancing was a bit uncomfortable. Tom had no problem cozying up to teenage debutantes, but I stood on the sidelines, being cruised by innumerable middle-aged ladies and not one man.

Afterwards we drove (in separate cars, of course) to the beach to walk in the moonlight, and then we went back to my house in Wilton Manors to spend the night.

I should have guessed earlier, but I was having so much fun deceiving the straights that it didn't occur to me that Tom's conservative-speak was not part of the act.

I figured it out over breakfast in the morning, when Tom praised some statement by President Bush.

"That homophobic a*hole!" my housemate Barney exclaimed. "He's worse than Reagan!"

"Reagan did a fine job, considering what he had to work with," Tom said. "Remember, it was the 1980s."

Then Tom came out: he was a Republican!

"How can you be a gay Republican?" Barney asked. "It's like being a Jewish Nazi, or a black Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan!"

"You can be gay and still want a strong economy. I know that some of the Republican leaders need to be educated."

"Educated?" I said. "President Bush is trying everything he can to keep us second-class citizens. But he's a lot better than Governor Jeb Bush, who doesn't think we should grant civil rights to 'sodomites.'"

"What about the mayor of Fort Lauderdale, Jim Naugle? He doesn't like the Sun-Sentinel because there are too many 'homos' on the staff, and he's a Democrat. All of our leaders need to be educated about gay people. That's what the Log Cabin Republicans are all about."

Log Cabin Republicans!

So this guy wasn't just pretending to be straight among his parents and their friends, to make sure he got his inheritance. He was Tom the Uncle Tom, actively collaborating with our oppressors.

I should have showed him the door. But....

Remember what he looked like?

We went out again after I got back from my Christmas visit back home.

And I ended up going to a meeting of the Log Cabin Republicans with him!

It was full of doddering, elderly, elegant gay men wearing fancy rings, sipping martinis, complaining about America's faltering role in world politics, and cruising. They approached the few young guys shamelessly, ignoring the rule that younger must always approach older.

I kept my arm tightly attached to Tom to signify that he was taken, but he still got extensively cruised.

"Guys who are into Daddy types must get a lot of action here," I whispered.

"Oh, you have no idea!" Tom said with a smile.

The "celebrity" guest speaker was Ruta Lee, an elderly actress who was in some Westerns and sitcoms during the 1950s. She said "You should keep trying until the Republican Party gives you a place at the table."

"Wait -- your own party won't acknowledge you?" I asked.

Tom squirmed in his seat, embarrassed. "We're still working on them. They need a lot of education."

So they weren't even Uncle Toms. They were Uncle Tom Wannabes, just hoping for a chance to collaborate with our oppressors.

Or were they all just there to meet guys, or to impress a guy?

Tom and I went out two more dates. I may be liberal, but I'm not crazy -- did you see what he looked like?

The Log Cabin Republicans were finally recognized by the California GOP in 2015. The national organization still won't acknowledge them.

See also: I Hook Up with the Most Conservative Professor on Campus

Paul Anka was the first teen idol to be known for his physique as well as his music. Other teen idols of the 1950s -- Bobby Rydell, Bobby Darin, Ricky Nelson, Pat Boone -- may have been dreamy, but the teen magazines emphasized their cool threads, not their muscular chests. Paul not only had a face and a voice, he had a body, and he knew how to use it to his advantage.

His first single, "Diana," hit the top of the charts in 1957, pushing hits by Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley out of the way. "Puppy Love,""Put Your Head on My Shoulder," and "Lonely Boy" followed, all chart toppers, mostly about lost or unrequited love.

In the early 1960s, as the British invasion limited the appeal of the 1950s-era teen idols, Paul re-invented himself as an adult contemporary performer, and continued to enjoy a string of hits: "In the Still of the Night,""You're Having My Baby,""One Man Woman."

And he made movies that required more underwear, swimsuit, and semi-nude shots than any other teen idol of the era. Look in Any Window (1961) is particularly memorable.

Craig Fowler (Paul), the teenage son of dysfunctional parents, has a paralyzing "sexual abnormality." He goes to a youth center and ogles the buffed athletes working out.

Then he spies on his hunky neighbor (Jack Cassidy, David Cassidy's dad), kissing his wife in the swimming pool.

Meanwhile rumors of his sexual deviance run through the neighborhood. Two teenage boys chase him, yelling threats, and the cops are on his trail. "Let me get my hands on any guy that isn't normal!" one grunts.

Craig tries to pursue a "normal" life by courting girl-next-door Ellen (Gigi Perreau), but eventually even "true love" can't repress his aberrant desires.

Nope, Craig's not gay -- that would have been too controversial for Hollywood in 1961. There are still almost no gay teenagers in mainstream film. Craig's a Peeping Tom. But the gay symbolism is obvious.

Assumed gay in real life, Paul was actually heterosexual, though he was friends with gay teen idol Sal Mineo and bisexual Rat Packer Sammy Davis Jr..

When I moved to West Hollywood in 1985, I joined the All Saints Metropolitan Community Church, and I saw John there every Sunday. He always sat by himself in the third row. Eventually he joined the Food Bank Committee, and then he served on the church board, but he still sat by himself.

He was about five years younger than me, a junior at UCLA when we met, short and slim, with ruddy blond hair and blue eyes. Very cute.

But I never even thought about asking him out.

Maybe it's because I usually dated Asian guys, or gym rats like the Pentecostal Porn Star and the Thug on my Sausage List.

Or because I never saw him at the French Quarter, the Different Light, the gym, or anywhere in West Hollywood. He seemed to exist only in church.

But it's probably because John just didn't seem like the dating kind. He never sat with anyone; he never cruised anyone. At the coffee hour after church, he was all Attitude, staring into the crowd without making eye contact. He would talk to you about business, the church's financial goals and Food Bank program, but offered few personal details.

The only conversation we ever had on another topic: he came up to me one day and said "I hear you work for Muscle and Fitness."

"Just part time. I'm mostly in it to meet bodybuilders."

"Oh." He walked away.

In four years, I probably saw John 200 times, and said 200 words to him.

When I started dating Lee in 1989, I dropped out of MCC. We attended the gay synagogue, Beth Chaim Chadashim, or the Episcopal Church.

A few years later, around 1991, I was visiting a friend in the San Fernando Valley, and we went to the gym together. As I walked into the locker room, I saw John! He was just out of the shower, with a towel around his waist. He had bulked up a bit, with nice six-pack abs.

"John, how are you!" I exclaimed. "Small world!"

"Yeah, hi, Jeff." He caught me sneaking a peak at his rather small endowment, and quickly turned away.

As he got dressed, I got undressed. I told him about Beth Chaim Chadashim, and he told me about MCC and his job doing some kind of statistical analysis.

Then he said, in a rather odd, stilted voice, "I might go for... um... coffee... um... um... never mind." And he was gone.

He had been trying to ask me for a date!

I started wondering about John. What was his story? Why was he so standoffish? Or maybe I just didn't express any interest. Maybe there was a hidden gem at the All Saints MCC that I was too caught up in the big, loud gym guys to notice.

Too late now. I was in a relationship, and besides, I didn't even remember his last name.

But gay neighborhoods are small. Sooner or later, everyone you have ever met will show up again.

The years passed. I moved to San Francisco, then New York, and then Florida, where I shared a house with Yuri and Barney, a former bodybuilder who owned a gym in Wilton Manors.

Every morning Barney prepared us a bodybuilder's breakfast of egg white omelets, seven-grain pancakes, or oatmeal infused with spinach and kale (try it). On special occasions, cinnamon buns.

All three of us were dating and hooking up, and we often got out-of-town guests, so you never knew who would be sitting at the breakfast table in the morning.

But I never expected to see John!

One morning in the summer of 2002, I came into the kitchen, where Barney was making whey-protein French toast with apple slices and strawberry yogurt.

"Jeff, this is my friend John from Seattle," he said. "He's here on vacation for a few days."

"Nice to meet you," I said, glancing at the kitchen table, where Yuri was drinking coffee with -- John from West Hollywood!

Not the slim, shy college kid I knew at the MCC. Middle aged, graying at the temples, a little craggy, and heavy muscled, a semi-pro. But umistakable!

We stared at each other.

"This is my other housemate, Jeff," Barney continued, his back to us.

"Small world," I managed.

"Oh, do you guys know each other?"

"Yeah, from West Hollywood."

"From the All Saints MCC!" Jack exclaimed.

"Is this one of your church boys?" Yuri asked. "He's so hot -- did you date him?"

"No." I sat down next to John, and we hugged. "I would have liked to, but it never happened."

Over breakfast John told us about being a shy, closeted college student going to his first gay venue, the All Saints MCC, but too self-conscious about his scrawny body and undersized endowment to approach a guy.

Who didn't have sex until 1988, when he was 23.

Who started weight training to increase his self-confidence, found a lover who dumped him for a celebrity, found another lover, and now was immersed in a community of gay bodybuilders and fans in Seattle.

Not bad for a guy who, a just few years before, couldn't even ask someone out for coffee.

Barney did a lot of sharing that weekend.

See also: The Pentecostal Porn Star and The Thug on My Sausage List

When I was a kid in the 1960s, China didn't seem likely as a "good place." There was a My Village in Japan, but no My Village in China. Chinese art involved vast natural landscapes rather than the muscle gods of Greek myth, and all of the movie adaptations of the travels of Marco Polo gave the Italian explorer (Alfred Drake, Horst Buchholz, Desi Arnaz Jr.) a girlfriend.

Then came Bruce Lee and the kung fu craze, and the late 1970s was all awash with muscular Chinese martial artists: Sonny Chiba, Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao (left). Sometimes they got girls, but often they enjoyed homoromantic bonds with fellow martial arts students, kung fu masters, and "blood brothers."

So I took a course in East Asian Culture and Civilization, and found some hints and signals.

Chinese poetry minimizes heterosexual romance to concentrate on the manly love of comrades:

Drawing up the green silk coverlets,
placing our pillows side by side;
like spending more than a hundred nights,
to sleep together with you here (Bo Yuji)

In West Hollywood in the 1980s, I took a course in Chinese literature at USC. The professor assigned The Dream of the Red Chamber, the 18th century masterpiece by Cao Xueqin, but "forgot" to mention that the main characters are all bisexual.

When Pao-Yu, is an adolescent, he meets Chin Chung, handsome "but too shy and effeminate." They become inseparable friend -- or more. "Let's not talk about it now," Pao-Yu said. "I'll settle with you later, after we go to bed."

The narrator continues: "It is not known what settlement Pao-Yu made with his friend that night nor how, and we will not venture any speculations."

See also: Confessions of a Mask

When I was growing up in Rock Island, almost every kid had a "homeland": their grandparents or great-grandparents came from Sweden, Germany, or Belgium, or less commonly Greece, Poland, France, Italy, or Estonia.

Except me: As one of the few plain generic Americans, with ancestors from Indiana and Kentucky as far back as anyone kept records, I was always left out.

Teachers were constantly assigning us reports on our homeland.

We had to bring food from our homeland to club meetings and church socials.

We had to learn the song of our homeland for pageants.

Every new acquaintance asked "Where are you from?", and wouldn't take "Indiana" for an answer. "No, where are you from?

One day in the spring of fifth grade, my boyfriend Bill said "Why don't you just pick a country? You can be adopted!"

That was a great idea -- I could adopt a country!

I was already making a list of "good places," where boys could hug and kiss openly and grown-up men could live together without wives. I could be from a good place.

During recess Bill, Joel, and I went to the school library to look for a place. We sorted through all of the My Village books, by Sonia and Tim Gidal, photo stories of real boys in villages in Germany, Ireland, France, Switzerland, on and on.

Bill liked Yugoslavia, because there was a picture of two boys hugging.

Joel voted for Finland, because there was a picture of the boy naked in the sauna.

I liked Italy, because the boy had a lot of hunky adult friends.

But wait -- why did it have to be a European country?

I knew where the men were always naked!

I took Joel and Bill down into the basement storage room, where my mother's old set of Collier's Encyclopedias sat on a lonely shelf.

"These books have all kinds of naked guys in them," I aid, handing them the pertinent volumes.

We leafed through old black-and-white photos of naked men.

Bill liked some Indonesian athletes, because they were holding hands.

Joel liked African tribes, because they were muscular and naked.

I liked the Philippines, because the guys were cute.

"Wait -- I know where we can get pictures in color!" Joel exclaimed.

We ran over to his house. In his basement there were shelves of old National Geographic magazines -- his older brother once had a subscription.

The guys were never naked, but there were lots of shirtless pictures.

Cambodian boys splashing in the ocean.

Dour Amazonian men carrying blowguns.

Pygmies of the "Belgian Congo."

Japanese athletes in singlets with noticeable bulges.

"We shouldn't decide just on a couple of pictures," I said. "We should do research."

Through the spring semester, and into the summer, we worked on our project, reading geography books like The Land and People of Israel and Come with me to India, looking up old magazine articles on Switzerland, New Guinea, Ethiopia, Bolivia, and Spain.

When we had sleepovers, we interrogated the Fifth Boy about his homeland, the food, the costumes, the songs.

For my birthday trip in May, we went to the Putnam museum (with Randy the Golden Boy tagging along) and got a whole new revelation: why did it have to be a modern country?

Why not the Aztecs, or the ancient Egyptians?

Or ancient Greece, where they worshiped naked musclemen?

For that matter, why did it have to be a place in the real world?

Soon we were looking at Leonard Wibberly's Encounter Near Venus, the Basidium of The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, and the oxygen-rich canals of Robert Silverberg's Lost Race of Mars.

It was time to reel it in, get back to the basics of men with muscles.

One day in Joel's basement I leafed through the December 11th, 1970 issue of Life Magazine, and found an article: "The Samurai Who Committed Hara Kiri."

It was about the ritual suicide of Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima (without mentioning that he was gay, or that his novels were infused by gay themes).

I was already taking judo lessons. My sensei, Sammy, turned out to be married, but I was reasonably sure that he liked boys, not girls.

Mishima's gleaming, muscular physique and suggestively packed fudoshi settled it.

"I'm from Japan," I announced.

When sixth grade began, and our teacher assigned yet another essay on "our homeland," Bill wrote on Indonesia, Joel wrote on Ethiopia, and I wrote on Japan (without mentioning the suggestively packed fudoshi). She gave us all B+'s, with the comment "very imaginative!"

See also:; 6000 Ways to Say Penis; and Ten Ethnic Groups on My Bucket List.

When I was a kid in the 1960s, we had to sing "Yankee Doodle" in music class every five minutes.

They told us "It's a great patriotic song, nearly as great as our national anthem! It celebrates rugged American masculinity."

Like this Currier & Ives print of a muscular American trouncing the effete British dandies.

Except it didn't make sense. Yankee Doodle was the dandy.

And what's the nonsense about sticking a feather in your cap and calling it macaroni?

And the immeasurably heterosexist "With the girls be handy"?

Turns out that the song was a British satire intended to signify that American men were prissy, feminine, and not interested in the ladies.

The high "macaroni" wig with a tricorner cap atop it was popular among British fops of the era, and an all-around term for feminine or gay men.

Rictor Norton's sourcebook of gay history reprints a British newspaper article from the 18th century complaining that: "the country is over-run with Catamites...or Macaronis."

A broadside explains:

Macaronies are a sex, Which do philosophers perplex;
Tho’ all the priests of Venus’s rites agree they are Hermaphrodites.

The admonition to be be "handy" with the girls was pure sarcasm. Yankee Doodle would never dream of putting his hands on a lady. A man, maybe.

The gay coding of "Yankee Doodle" continues in the famous painting "The Spirit of '76," by Archibald Willard. It was originally entitled "Yankee Doodle," intended to be humorous.

Willard only decided to make it serious after seeing the determination in the eyes of his models, especially the younger drummer (modeled by railroad magnate's son Henry Devereaux) gazing with sullen admiration at the older (modeled by Willard's father).

And in the 1942 movie Yankee Doodle Dandy, a fictionalized biography of composer George M. Cohan. James Cagney as Cohan falls in love on schedule and sings the obsessively heterosexist "Yankee Doodle Boy":

I've got a Yankee Doodle sweetheart -- she's my Yankee Doodle joy.

But his mannerisms are so flamboyant that the gay coding seems almost deliberate. Cagney's movies are generally loaded down with gay subtexts, and he may have been bisexual in real life.

Johnny Sheffield began playing Boy, adopted son to Johnny Weissmuller's iconic Tarzan, in 1939, when he eight years old, and finished in 1947, when he had grown bigger, taller, and far more muscular than his movie Dad and could hardly be called a "Boy" anymore.

A couple of years later, he started on a series of 12 Bomba the Jungle Boy movies (1949-55), ostensibly based on the series of boys' adventure novels, but really about a teenage Tarzan -- Bomba borrowed Weissmuller's trademark loincloth and "Me Tarzan" patois, and the short-lived comic book spin-off was subtitled "TV's Teenage Jungle Star."

The Bomba movies, which I saw on tv during the rare Saturday afternoons in the 1960s that didn't have a game or a repeat of The Magic Sword, seemed to have the same plot, with minor variations.

Bomba is summoned by a scientist or colonial administrator, who tells him about the bad guys and introduces his attractive teenage niece, visiting from America. Bomba and niece flirt. Bomba is captured by the bad guys, but escapes. The niece is captured, but Bomba rescues her and defeats the bad guys. The niece goes back to America. Bomba goes back to the jungle.

The 30 or so minutes of action was turned into a feature-length movie through some stock footage of African wildlife and 20-30 minutes of close-ups of Johnny Sheffield's body.

When Bomba takes a nap, we don't get an establishing shot and then a switch to the next scene: the camera slowly travels down the length of his body for a good five minutes.

When he is tied up by the bad guys, he struggles with his bonds for the amount of time it takes the cameraman to go down to the commisary for a sandwich.

When he goes back into the jungle, he climbs a tree, and the camera obligingly zooms in on his semi-nude butt.

This wasn't an accident of direction or editing. It was obvious that the African adventure and the heterosexist boy-meets-girl romance were just window dressing; the entire point of the movie was to put Johnny Sheffield on display as often as possible, for as long as possible.

Not that the audience, comprised primarily of preteen gay boys and straight girls, was complaining. They could think of lots worse ways to spend a dull Saturday afternoon than gazing at Johnny Sheffield.

He influenced a generation of muscular, semi-nude jungle boys, such as Gunga on Andy's Gang and Terry on Maya

After Bomba, Johnny filmed a tv pilot called Bantu the Zebra Boy, which is available on youtube. He then went to UCLA, got a degree in business, and had a successfully fully-clothed career in real estate. But was always happy to chat with his fans, gay or straight -- Johnny was refreshingly gay-friendly for someone of his generation.

He died in 2010.

See also: Why is Bomba the Jungle Boy always tied up?

If you watch every episode of a 100-episode sitcom, you've spend 2300 minutes, not including reruns. That's the equivalent of 19 feature-length movies or 11 novels (at the average adult reading speed).

If it was a 60-minute dramatic series, make that 38 feature length movies and 22 novels.

Then comes the series finale. There will be no more episodes.

You know the characters better than many of your real-life friends. Saying goodbye is going to be painful.

For years you've set aside a special part of your week for the program. You rarely missed it, and when you did, you taped it watch later. You watched all of the summer reruns.There will be a hole in your life for quite some time.

So you sit down for the series finale, hoping for a warm, funny, memorable sendoff. But instead, you get garbage. Mind-destroying, depressing, confusing, WTF garbage.

May 10, 1983: Laverne and Shirley (1976-1983). A sitcom about two bromantic "girlfriends" sharing an apartment in 1950s Milwaukee, right? Except by 1983, there was just Laverne, it was Los Angeles, and the heart of the 1960s (Laverne's boyfriend is a Star Trek fan). Way to destroy your premise.

But the series finale isn't even about that; it's about Laverne's singer/dancer/male prostitute friend Carmine going to New York to audition for Hair.

We don't find out if he got the role or not. And we don't see his nude scene.

May 21, 1990: Newhart (1982-1990): For eight years, Bob Newhart played the owner of a bed and breakfast in a small New England town full of quirky residents, whom you grew fond of over the years. Who can forget "I'm Larry, and this is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl?"

But on May 21st, 1990, Bob wakes up in bed as Dr. Bob Hartley, the psychologist in his old series, and tells his old wife, Emily, "What a dream I had!" Way to destroy beloved characters, Bob!

July 20, 1994: Dinosaurs (1991-1994). A nuclear family spoof starring cute, cuddly dinosaurs in ABC's kid-friendly Friday night lineup. Remember "I'm the baby, gotta love me"?

How best to end the hearwarming series: how about with a eco-catastrophe that kills every dinosaur on the planet? Including the entire Sinclair family? Including the baby?

May 20, 1997: Roseanne (1988-1997). The queen of lower-middle class urban blight and her ragtag family spent eight seasons being the anti-Cosbys, not affluent, or educated, or elegant. It featured Johnny Galecki as a teenager with a terrible hairdo. Then Roseanne wins the lottery, and spends the last season hob-nobbing with the rich and famous.

That's not the worst of it, though -- in the last episode, we are told that this has all been a story that Roseanne has written. The real people are all different. Dan is dead. Jackie is a lesbian, so her husband and child don't exist. But Mom isn't a lesbian. The daughters switch husbands. Everything we thought we knew about the show is wrong.

May 14, 1998: Seinfeld (1989-1998). In this execrable finale for what critics termed the best series in the history of television, the Fab Four are facing jail time for violating a "good Samaritan" law that, if it existed, would get them a fine, at most.

And everyone they've interacted with comes rushing to town to complain. Their honest attempts to help are recast as diabolical plots. Mistakes and accidents are recast as deliberate malice. Everything we thought we knew about the show is wrong. Oh, and they go to prison.

More after the break.

August 9, 1999: Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1985-1999). For 12 years, Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank tortured the hapless heroes on the Satellite of Love, Joel/Mike and the bots, with "cheesy movies, the worst that we can find." The only way they could keep their sanity was to riff on the cheesy plots. In the series finale, Mike and the bots finally escape.

Do they change the world? Reveal the diabolical plot in a tell-all book? At least find a life far removed from their 12-year imprisonment? No -- they are shown living in a small apartment, eating pizza and riffing on bad movies.

At least they don't meet girls.

September 8, 2004: The Drew Carey Show (1995-2004). This program was all about setting: the sprawling Winfred-Lauder Department Store in downtown Cleveland, where Drew worked as a middle-management drudge, Mr. Wick as head of personnel, and Mimi as his secretary.

So how to handle the last season: end the department store, drop some of the characters, and give the others nonsensical new jobs at a new store.

May 18, 2006:Will and Grace (1998-2006). After endless seasons of proclaiming that gay men are really women, that gay men all have sex with women, that gay people simply do not exist, Will and Grace went out with a bang: Will and his cop beau adopt a daughter, Grace and her husband gave birth to a son, and twenty years later, the son and daughter marry.

Whatever momentary glitch being gay caused in the cosmic order, it has been resolved with a man and a woman gazing into each other's eyes forever.

May 20, 2010: Lost (2004-2010). For five seasons, we were told that the crash survivors facing paranormal peril on a crazy island weren't in Purgatory. Well, guess what -- they are. Well, actually, in an alternate world where they forget that they were ever on the island, until they are reminded. Then they get back together and go into the light.

And Vincent the Dog dies.

Sometime in 7th grade:

I start to hear that guys' beneath-the-belt equipment turns into a gigantic baseball bat at random moments, with no prior warning.

The process is called "getting a boner," or "popping a boner," when it happens in an embarrassing situation, like when you are visiting your grandmother or giving an oral presentation in class.

8th grade, around my 13th birthday:

I start experiencing my own baseball bats at random moments, in the locker room, in science class, at church. They are usually easy to cover up with a hymnal or a science textbook, so no one notices.

The story goes on from there. No way I could publish it on this blog. You can read it on Tales of West Hollywood.

That's right, Cleveland.

Since flying became such an ordeal, I've been driving back home every year to visit my parents in Indiana, and Cleveland, Ohio is about halfway.

It has the Flex Spa, one of the best gay resorts in the U.S., housed in the old Greyhound Station (2600 Hamilton). Downstairs there's an indoor pool, an outdoor pool, a steam room-maze, a bar and restaurant, lounge areas, and a fully equipped gym.
Upstairs are the private rooms, porn theater, dark rooms, and a rooftop lounge area.

You can get a full-sized hotel room and spend the night, but it's in a nasty neighborhood, so you should stay elsewhere.

There are two good restaurants nearby:
1. Slyman's Deli, 3106 St. Clair, for enormous portions of corned beef and Christian fundamentalist tracts.
2. Siam Cafe, 3951 St. Clair, for the best Pad Thai outside of Bangkok.

In between sessions at the Flex Spa, drive east on Euclid to University Circle, where all of the museums in town are arranged in a walkable loop: The Botanical Gardens, the Natural History Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Art, the Institute of Art. Other than the hunky Carnegie-Mellon students jogging around the Wade Oval, the best beefcake sights are in Museum of Art (on East Drive).

1. Hosner's Sleeping Faun (above)

2. Rodin's Age of Bronze.

3. Bandelli's Nude Study (left)

4. Meynier's Apollo.

5. Jacques-Louis David's Cupid and Psyche. Ok, he's with a woman, but you have to admire the smirk!

6. Minne's Solidarity, two naked guys hugging.

More after the break

7. Behind the Museum of Art, the massive, nude Thinker leads the way to a nice formal garden sprinkled with beefcake statues.

8. Such as Boy with Panther Cub.

9. The City: Fettering Nature (left)

10. And Beach's The Sun Drawing the Waters.

11. Next, head downtown, for the statue of Jurisprudence on the Federal Building. Jurisprudence is a naked woman, but there's a naked, muscular man at her feet, asking for a favor.

12.And Energy in Repose, on the Reserve Bank Building.

13. Take Carnegie Avenue across Hope Memorial Bridge, looking out for the "Guardians of Traffic" statues on the pylons.

14. Continue on Carnegie Avenue to West 25th Street, turn right, then left to 2814 Detroit, and Bounce, a gay club with naked male dancers.

See also: The Drew Carey Show

Many gay boys growing up in the 1950s and 1960s dreamed of dating Superman. In 1954, Daily Planet reporter Jimmy Olsen got his chance: he began to appear in his own comic book title, as Superman's "boy pal."

What, precisely, was a boy pal? A boy sidekick, like Kaliman's Solin? An adopted son, like Batman's Robin? Jimmy wasn't a boy or even a teenager: he was tall and sturdy, with the standard comic book body-by-Michelangelo (since reporter outfits are not particularly revealing, almost every story required him to be in underwear, in a swimsuit, or ripped out of his clothes).

The "boy pal" relationship differed considerably from ordinary friendships:

1. It was physical. Superman and Jimmy flew with their arms wrapped tenderly around each other, a position that no one else, not even Lois Lane, rated.

2. It was romantic. Superman gave no one but Jimmy a gift of jewelry (a special signal watch).

3. It was of public interest: “There goes Superman’s boy pal!” passersby would whisper, and when the duo quarrels in “Superman’s Enemy” (Jimmy Olsen 35, March 1959), every stage of their breakup and reconciliation made Daily Planet headlines.

4. It was exclusive: each had other friends and even other sidekicks, but in “Superman’s Super Rival” (Jimmy Olsen 37, June 1959), when Jimmy seems to be courting a newly-arrived superhero named Mysterio, Superman is so jealous that he challenges the rival “pal” to a fight.

5. It threatened heterosexual romance: in a fantasy story, “Jimmy Olsen’s Wedding,” (Jimmy Olsen 38, July 1959), Jimmy’s girlfriend agrees to marry him only under the condition that he never see or contact Superman again (one can’t imagine why). He complies for several years, but eventually he cannot bear to be separated any longer, and arranges a secret rendezvous with his “pal.” His wife discovers him in the act (of what?), shrieks in anger. and leaves him.

Such an overt same-sex romance made me scrounge to beg or borrow all of older Jimmy Olson comics I could. The issues I could buy in the store (the series lasted until 1974) were no good; about 1965, Jimmy and Superman broke up. Though they stayed on friendly terms, no further stories featured their romance.

And the special signal watch was never seen again. Perhaps Jimmy returned it the day he told Superman over coffee, “it’s not you, it’s me.”

In 1972, Jimmy found a new boyfriend, an African-American cop named Corrigan, whom he sometimes even called his “pal.”

Unfortunately, the homoromance was not maintained in tv versions of the Superhero. Smallville gave Superman two boyfriends, but neither were Jimmy Olsen.

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