NYSocBoy's Beefcake and Bonding

Of all the gay neighborhoods I've lived in, the East Village in Manhattan is my least favorite -- better than anyplace in the straight world, but still lacking.

It has some of the iconic sites of gay culture, including the Stonewall Inn, where Gay Liberation began. Plenty of gay bars, bookstores, organizations, and cultural events. Plus the best museums, art galleries, and bookstores in the world were a brief subway ride away.

Still, there was something cold about the City, something distant, something...well, almost grim. West Hollywood felt like home from the moment I arrived, but in the City I was always a stranger.

During my three years living with Edward in the East Village, I only had one real boyfriend: Joe the Regular Guy, who moved back to Pennsylvania after a year.

But I had a series of crazy hookups, dates, and sausage sightings.

1. A hookup with Yuri and the hippie, who talked a never-ending stream of trivia and gibberish, and turned out to be deficient beneath the belt.

2. Back in L.A. for a visit, a celebrity date with Nate Richert, who played Harvey on Sabrina the Teenage Witch. I didn't know who he was at the time.

3. The Harvard boy I picked up in the Rare Book room of the Widener Library. That was in Boston, not New York.

4. Tomor the Mongolian Shaman. Ok, he was from Paris, not New York, but how often do you meet Mongolians? Who are shamans? Who are gay? And gifted beneath the belt?

5. Barry, an acolyte at a traditional but pro-gay Catholic community, who got exorcised from a homophobic demon. I think I just wanted to date him because of the exorcism.

6. The HIV Positive bondage boy: he had just gotten his positive status, and he wanted to go to the New York Bondage Club for his birthday. He had never tried BDSM before, but he figured it was safe sex.

7. Another celebrity date, with Broadway songster Andrew Lloyd Webber. Again, I didn't have the slightest idea who he was at the time. But we had tacos in a limousine.

8. Matt the Bartender, who convinced me to spend the night with him because it was the night of December 31, 1999, and the Y2K bug was making everything go crazy. At least, that's what he claimed. That was in Indianapolis, not New York.

9. The Man in Black who just appeared one day, walking next to me on Christopher Street. Maybe he was a Catholic monk. Maybe he was an alien.

10, Mario the Teen Model, who took me on a crazy roller-coaster ride of a date involving a movie, tacos, a dance club, a bath house, and 4:00 am macaroni and cheese.

11. The Bushman. Where I answer the question: "Are Bushmen always semi-tumescent?" In South Africa, not New York.

12. Liam, who waited until the exact moment of his 18th birthday before initiating the romantic activity.

13. Jorge, a bar pickup. I was depressed, so I broke every rule of gay cruising with him. Turns out he lived with his parents, who didn't know he was gay. He had to sneak me out the back door while they were all having breakfast.

14. The Football Player Who Got Unstuck in Time. Was he really a University of Alabama undergrad from 1938 who somehow took a "step to the right" and ended up in 2000s Christopher Street?

15. My Nephew Josh. My brother's kid. At Christmastime in 2000, he asked me to teach him "about gay sex." You can't get any weirder than that.

16. The Amish Boy. I take that back. Nothing is weirder than seeing an Amish boy at the urinal in a highway rest stop, wearing red bikini briefs. A fitting end to three years of strange dates, hookups, and sausage sightings.

The complete list, with nude photos, is on Tales of West Hollywood.

Growing up in Rock Island, where most people were of Scandinavian ancestry, I heard constantly about Vikings, runestones, Peer Gynt, Knut Hamsun, Hans Christian Anderson, lukefisk, The Elder Edda, and especially August Strindberg (1849-1912), the Swedish playwright who explored subconscious drives and secret desires.

You'd expect a lot of same-sex interest among those secret desires, but mostly there are heterosexual longings and battles of the sexes.
The Father (1887): a father-daughter relationship goes wrong.
The Dance of Death (1900): a heterosexual marriage gone wrong.
The Ghost Sonata (1907): A young student discovers that the girl he likes is not what she seems.

His most famous play, Miss Julie (1888), is a standard rich-poor romance with a psychosexual twist, as the wealthy Julie and the footman Jean vie for power. It has been filmed a number of times, and there are various stage productions, including a black/white version, Mies Julie, and a gay version set in 1905 South Carolina, Miss Julie(n).

A Dream Play (1901) strays from the formula. It's about the surrealistic journey of Agnes, daughter of the Hindu god Indra, who comes to Earth to see what men are like. She runs into lots of them, of various sizes and shapes, with various ambitions, desires, traumas, and cruelties. Most fall in love with her, but some might be gay.

By the way, Strindberg is the only writer I know of who is immortalized in two different nude statues, both in Stockholm. The massive, muscular "Titan" by Carl Eldh in Tengerlunden Park.

And this more realistic version, in a group with two other equally nude writers, Gustaf Frödingshöjd and Ernst Josephson, in Stadhusparken (City Hall Park).

There are also about a dozen non-nude statues of Strindberg scattered around town.

Between 1996 and 2000, the TGIF adaption of the Archie Comics character Sabrina the Teenage Witch was the most gay-friendly of the 1990s teencoms, and not just because of the gay symbolism of outsider-with-a-secret, such as we see in that other witch sitcom, Bewitched.

It featured a surprising number of gay-friendly actors. I met Nate Richert (Sabrina's on-off boyfriend, Harvey) at a gay club in West Hollywood, and Jenna Leigh Green (her evil nemesis, Libby) spoke at UCLA during National Coming Out Week in 2000.

And references to gay people. In the first episode, Sabrina's aunts explain that they are "sisters, not an alternate couple." In "Dream Date," Sabrina is wandering the hallways looking for a boy to date. She casually asks "I wonder if that guy is taken?" Harvey says "Yeah, by that guy," thus making history by marking the first gay romantic couple in any teencom.

In "Sabrina the Teenage Boy," Sabrina transforms herself into a boy named Jack to find out what guys talk about. Jack has retained Sabrina's desire for boys. When he accidentally exclaims that a baseball player is "hot," Harvey stares in shock,so he quickly redeems himself by claiming that he meant the player's athletic prowess. But when the spell starts to fail, giving Jack makeup, Harvey says: "Your mascara is running. It doesn't bother me, but the guys will razz you." Apparently he has gotten used to the idea that his new friend might be gay.

Sabrina had no homoromantic couples in the tradition of Saved by the Bell or Boy Meets World, but in the fall of 1999, muscle jock Brad (Jon Huertas, who has played gay several times) moves to town, and falls into love-at-first-sight with Harvey. Their sizzling on-screen chemistry leaves little doubt that their attraction is both physical and romantic. They spend the rest of the season joyously making plans to be together tonight, tomorrow night, every night, while Brad and Sabrina jealously snipe at each other, and each devises schemes to get the Harvey out of the other's clutches.

In the fall of 2000, Sabrina moved from ABC to the WB Network, the writers were replaced, along with most of the cast, and Sabrina becomes aggressively homophobic. She goes to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and is disgusted by a man in the audience wearing garters!

Her friend tells about how he met a girl and discovered while they were kissing that he was really a dude. He thinks it's a funny story, but Sabrina grimaces in disgust. Kissing a dude? She was never so homophobic in high school.

The addition of David Lascher and Trevor Lissauer (right, in the gay-themed Eden's Curve) didn't help.

The homophobia has continued. Today Melissa Joan Hart is infamous for her homophobic (and otherwise nasty) jibes. In 2009 she complained about someone else taking credit for her husband Mark's song: "Mark fully wrote every bit of that song except the new lyrics in the chorus... which are gay anyhow. They turned it into a fairy love song."

She is currently paired with Joey Lawrence in the sitcom Melissa and Joey.

When I was a senior at Augustana, a freshman named Julian joined the radio station crew. Bruce, by then the general manager, planned to assign him a job as news stringer, someone who picked up and adapted news stories from the wire. But Julian's father, a VIP in Chicago politics, called his old friend President Treadway, and guess who became music director?

Suddenly 50% of our programming was classical music.

Julian was brash, sarcastic, elitist, demanding, and entitled. But he immediately piqued my interest:

1. He was into classical music.

2. He was black There were very few black guys at Augustana.

3. He was chubby. There were even fewer chubby black guys. The 1980s fashion was svelte.

4. And he was flamboyantly feminine, what we called a flamer back then. Obviously gay, though of course none of the straight guys at Augustana noticed.

I hadn't met any gay students at Augustana, just some guys who would accept a same-sex hookup as a last resort, if there were no girls around. So I was determined to get into Julian's life, as a boyfriend, a hookup, a friend, something.

Unfortunately Julian didn't like me. Not at all.

The rest of the story, with nude photos, is on Tales of West Hollywood.

I had a friend in West Hollywood, Larry, who had a very nice house in the heart of Old Hollywood, walking distance to Mann's Chinese Theater, and every year he held an Oscar party for 20 or 30 gay men.

We had to mark little ballots about who we thought would win Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Costume, and so on, and the one who got the most categories right won a prize-- a nude photo of Yul Brynner (bisexual star of The King and I), an anatomically correct Oscar statue, or a camp music album like The Odd Couple Sings.

If you got too many categories wrong, you got a spanking, bare butt, one slap on one cheek, by each of the other guests in turn.

The problem is, except for blockbuster science fiction, I saw only movies with gay characters, a promise of gay subtexts, or significant beefcake, so my knowledge was limited. Check the best picture nominees that I had actually seen at the time of the Oscars. And my spankings.

Larry's House

1987: None of the nominees. Winner: The Last Emperor. Spanking

1988: I was in Turkey.

1989: None of the nominees. Winner: Driving Miss Daisy.

1990: Ghost (which I thought would be paranormal) and Goodfellas. Winner: Dances with Wolves.

1991: Bugsy and JFK. Winner: Silence of the Lambs.

1992: Howard's End and The Crying Game. Winner: Unforgiven.

1993 and 1994: I didn't go.

1995: None. Winner: Braveheart. Spanking.

1996: Fargo. Winner: The English Patient. Spanking

1997 and 1998: I was in New York.

1999: Larry didn't do it, but another guy hosted. None Winner: Shakespeare in Love.

2000: I had actually seen the Best Picture Winner, American Beauty, plus nominees The Sixth Sense and The Cider House Rules.

2001, 2002, and 2003: I was in Florida.

2004: Finding Neverland. Winner: Million Dollar Baby.

4 spankings in 11 Oscar parties!

It wasn't all bad. Some of the guys turned the spanking into a grope, and by the end of the evening I usually had a few telephone numbers.

But still, either I have to start watching more heterosexual dramas, or Hollywood has to start nominating more movies with gay content.

Saturday, September 21st, 2002

A Saturday morning during my second year in Florida. We're all sitting at breakfast, when my housemate Barney abruptly announces that he plans to go to a bathhouse.

Yuri and I hide behind cereal boxes to hide our shock. Barney is a former bodybuilder who runs a mostly-gay gym. He lives a scrupulously healthy lifestyle: low-fat diet, daily exercise, meditation, herbal supplements. And, after he lost his partner to AIDS three years ago, no hookups.

He dates, of course, and occasionally he invites us into his bed to "share," but he would never dream of casual sex.

"Are you ok?" Yuri asks. "I don't think you liked bathhouses."

"Well, I haven't been to one for ages. But think about it -- I'm 61 years old, I have Cute Young Things clamoring to get into my bed all the time, but all the guys my age are taken or not interested. I figure the bathhouse is my best place to find someone my age.

"You know it's mostly for anonymous sex, right?" I say, dubious.

"But you often make a date with the guy afterwards. At least, you did in my day."

"Well...do you want us to go with you, show you the ropes?"

He chuckles and turns back to his egg white omelet. "I was going to bathhouses while you were still in diapers. I think I can handle myself."

We advise him that the bathhouse would have a lot of older guys in the mid-afternoon or early evening, so he goes about 5:00 pm, after pumping up at the gym. I can't wait around to hear the details.

The rest of the story, with the Giant he picked up, plus Wade the Beach Boy, is on Tales of West Hollywood.

During the "British invasion" of the 1970s, I got a taste of British science fiction on PBS: Doctor Who, The Tripods, Timeslip, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Space: 1999, UFO, and The Prisoner. One of my favorites was The Tomorrow People (1973-79), about children who are different. Like the X-Men in comics, they are the next stage of human evolution, with telekinetic, teleportation, and telepathic powers (which allows them to communicate with aliens from all over the galaxy). They work out of the Lab, in an abandoned London underground station, where they hide from the baddies who want to hurt them, fight various threats, and keep a watch for other Tomorrow People who are "breaking out" (recognizing their identity).

The gay symbolism is obvious: children realize that they are different, but must keep their identity a secret.

During Season One (1973-74), the three main Tomorrow People were Kenny (15-year old Stephen Salmon), John (24-year old Nicholas Young, left), and Carol (Sammie Winmill). But then Stephen (16-year old Peter Vaughan-Clarke, right) "broke out" and quickly became the central character. He established a strong bond with John.

Stephen and John remained paired through Season Four (1975-76), as other Tomorrow People came and went with the frequency of Doctor Who's mortal companions.

There were also lots of other kinds of "different" kids. Robert (Jason Kemp), for instance, belonged to the alien Denagelee race, who hatch from eggs, releasing enormous energy (last time they hatched, the Roman Empire fell).

15-year old Mike Holoway (right), well known in Britain as the drummer of the teen group Flintlock, joined the series in 1975, playing muscular rocker Mike. His popularity led to the dismissal of Peter Vaughan-Clark; when Season Five began, Stephen was absent without explanation.

Mike frequently expressed heterosexual interest, but his constant shirtless, swimsuit, and underwear shots made up for it. He remained the central character until the series ended in 1979. (It was revived with new casts in 1992-95 and 2001-2007).

Mike Holoway is still a recording artist, and his numerous musical stage roles, such as Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoatand Godspell, provide substantial beefcake.

The American version (1992-1995) starred Christian Tessier.

Ok, he's not Michael J. Fox, but he is a famous actor. Or was.

In March 2000, I was back in West Hollywood for my friend Larry's annual Oscar party. March 25th, the night before, Lee and Randall (the bear with the pierced penis) took me out to all our old haunts: Bodhi Tree, Different Light, the French Quarter, the Gold Coast, Mugi, the Faultline.

But we never made it to the Faultline.

I was struck by a twink sitting at the bar in the Gold Coast. A little shorter than me, broad shoulders, very handsome round face with sandy hair and glasses, kind of a Harry Potter look except for the lumberjack shirt.

I sat next to him. He said "Howdy, pardner," and held out his hand to be shaken.

I made a quip about Hogwarts. He countered with a quip about Lemony Snicket's Unfortunate Events.

Our legs pressed together under the bar. "Can I buy you another beer?" I asked.

"Heck, I'll buy you a beer. I'll buy everybody a beer. Drinks are on me!"

"Well, I don't really drink."

"A virgin margarita, then. You have to let me buy you something. I can afford it. I'm Harvey, and I'm always going to be Harvey, no matter what they say!!"

Was that name supposed to mean something? All I could think of was Harvey the Giant Rabbit in the James Stuart movie. "Ok, Harvey, a Coke will be fine."

He seemed a little soused, but not unbearably so. I reached out, unbuttoned a couple of buttons of his lumberjack shirt, and slid my hand down to feel his firm, hairy chest. Few twinks have that much hair -- I was hooked!

I reached down and groped him.

Nice bulge. Maybe a Kielbasa beneath the belt. I was even more hooked!

"Hey!" Harvey exclaimed. "This place is dead! Let's go to the Rage!"

The notoriously noisy twink bar?

"Well, I'm here with my friends. We were going to go to Mugi. We're a little old for the Rage."

"Nonsense. You're with me. Harvey can open every door."

The Rage was only a few blocks from our old apartment. Maybe it would be fun.

It wasn't. The music was blaring, the air was thick with cigarette smoke and poppers, and there were swarming munchkins everywhere. It was uncomfortable for everyone, especially the bears I dragged along.

They sat at one of the little round tables, drinking their beers, while Harvey and I danced. Or did whatever swaying movements we could with the press of gyrating twinks.

Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Randall.

"Hey, either seal the deal and let's go home and screw," he yelled, trying to make himself understood over the roar, "Or drop this twink and let's go home and screw!"

"Ok, ok." I took Harvey by the hand and led him to a dark area where couples went to kiss.

"What do you want to do now?" he asked, grinning.

"What do you think?" I put my arms around him, and we started kissing. He allowed only a brief kiss, mouth closed -- not very impressive. I reached down and groped him again. He didn't grope me in return.

A bit cool, but I was too into him to notice. "Let's go back to my place. I'm staying in my friends' guest room."

"You kidding! The night is young, and there's about a dozen more clubs we haven't been to yet. Let's go up to the Strip -- the Viper Room!"

"Well, I'm sort of ready to go now," I said anxiously.

He put his arm around me, not affectionately, but as a way of steering me away. "Another time, bro. Let me give you my number."

Suddenly I remembered that lots of guys in West Hollywood don't do hookups. They want to date, get to know you better.

I handed him a notebook, and he scribbled a number and the name "Nate," not "Harvey." I gave him mine, too.

"Are you free tomorrow night, Nate? I'm going to an Oscar party at this great house in the heart of Old Hollywood."

"Sounds great! Call me!"

I kissed him again, and reluctantly left him at the Rage.

Randall, Lee, and I went to Mugi, but they cautioned "No more twinks! Act your age!"

I was too embarrassed to try to pick up anyone else, anyway.

The next day I called Nate's number about noon and about 5:00 pm, and got an answering machine both times.

The day after that, I called the number again, got an answering machine again, and gave up.

A few weeks later, back in New York, I happened to be home on Friday night, switching through the tv channels, and I ran into Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the sitcom based on the Archie comics series. I hadn't seen it since the first season.

There was Harvey, Sabrina's boyfriend, played by 22-year old Nate Richert.

I had gone out with a celebrity, without realizing it!

Nate has had several girlfriends, and was married to his childhood sweetheart, Catherine Hannah, for several years. The couple has since divorced.

So what did that night at the Gold Coast and the Rage mean?

Was Nate gay and closeted?

Bisexual, just starting to explore his attraction to guys?

I suspect that he was straight, trying to make friends, not sure how to respond to aggressive cruising, rejecting me in an incredibly classy way.

But really, I have no idea.

The full post, with nude photos (not of Nate Richert), is on Tales of West Hollywood

If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969) was advertised as a hilarious comedy about a group of Ugly Americans on a whirlwind tour of Europe, but I found it heartbreaking. In fact, I was hesitant about revisiting it after forty years, for fear that it would bring back the intense feelings of longing and loss that had me almost in tears as a kid.

When you find something heartbreaking that the rest of the world thinks is hilarious, there must be a subtext somewhere.

There was beefcake. Lots of it. Ian McShane, the Swinging Sixties Bachelor who herds the tourists around Europe, displays his body frequently as he falls for and loses prim librarian Suzanne Pleshette.

Luke Halpin, formerly a teenage hunk on Flipper (1964-67), wanders around Europe as a hippie in painted-on jeans as he falls for and loses apathetic teen Hilary Thompson.

Even the hunky Sandy Baron, fresh from his odd-couple sitcom Hey, Landlord (1966-67), displays a toned hairy chest as he rips his shirt off and dives into a Venetian canal to avoid a marriage-crazy relative. (Incidentally, Sandy Baron would become famous thirty years later on Seinfeld, as the doddering oldster Jack Klompus).

But beefcake doesn't make for poignancy.

Sandy Baron's character doesn't seem to be interested in girls, but otherwise I find no significant gay content. No male bonding, no same-sex rescues.

So why was it heartbreaking?

Maybe it was the metaphor of escape. Dozens of Boomer movies and tv programs were about people trapped in a dangerous alien world -- Gilligan's Island, My Favorite Martian, Danger Island, H.R. Pufnstuf, Lost in Space. They are desperate to get home, to return to their conventional lives, to their jobs and houses and husbands and wives and stark heterosexist conformity. But If It's Tuesday has it backwards -- the alien world is a Paradise, an escape from their conventional lives to a world of light and color and infinite possibility.

At the end of the movie they all reject the romantic partners they've fallen in love with and go home -- you can't stay in Oz forever -- as the theme song says, "Can't wait to tell the folks back home." But for a nine-year old in a dull factory town, it was heartbreaking to know -- or to suspect -- that Oz existed, that there was a good place out there somewhere.

Dorothy is a 24-year old kindergarten teacher living with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry in 1978 Harlem, New York. They were happy to raise her, but now they're dropping broad hints: "You're grown up, practically middle aged. Move out!"

But Dorothy is paralyzed by fear. She's never been south of 125th Street, which means that she's never been to the Museum of Modern Art, about a mile away, or the Empire State Building, or to the gay village of Chelsea. Like everyone in America in the 1970s, she has heard horrible things about Manhattan: skyrocketing crime, economic decline, a failing infrastructure. It's a cesspool of corruption, misery, and perversion. There are gay people there.

Then she follows her dog Toto out into a snowstorm, and gets lost in Manhattan -- which she calls Oz.

She encounters raw racism -- taxis invariably refuse to take her fare -- and many of the urban evils that 1970s critics bemoaned: graffiti, prostitutes, gangs, drugs, gay people.

But she still visits sites that are both beautiful and powerful -- the New York Public Library, the World Trade Center, Cony Island, and the glittering emerald fantasy of Park Avenue.

She makes more friends than she ever had before in her life: a Tin Man, a Scarecrow (played by Michael Jackson), a Lion.

And she is surrounded by beefcake. Cute "numbers runners." Munckins frozen in graffiti. Sweat-shop workers who escape their masks and uniforms to reveal muscular bodies, naked except for jockstraps. Many, if not most, are gay-coded.

In the end she defeats the evil Evilene, debunks the shyster Wizard, and goes back home to Harlem.

But she is no longer afraid. She knows now that for all its dangers, squalor, and decay, Manhattan is a beautiful, magical place, where you can find friends, where difference is accepted, where you can be free to be who you are. Where being gay is ok.

The Wiz is not a great movie. It's way too long, the acting is awful, and paralyzing fear is not the best attribute for a heroine -- Dorothy has none of the resourcefulness of her counterpart in the Baum books, none of the courage of the Judy Garland version. One gets the impression that she should be talking to a therapist rather than going on a heroic quest.

But I liked the fantasy versions of New York landmarks, the soul-inspired score, the black/urban adaption of the all-white Oz of Frank L. Baum and Judy Garland. The utter-lack of hetero-romance. The beefcake.

And the gay symbolism.

When I saw The Wiz in the fall of 1978, during my freshman year in college, I had visited 17 U.S. states and 5 foreign countries, but still, my world felt as constrained as Dorothy's. Faced with constant heterosexist pronouncements about my future wife and kids, I felt, like Michael Jackson's Scarecrow, that:

You can't win, you can't break even
And you can't get out of the game

The Wiz suggested that home might be a "good place" after all. All you needed was a copy of the Gayellow Pages.

In the fall of 1999, Barry, the traditional Catholic who had been exorcised from the homophobic demon, invited me to "share" his friend Jared.

"You'll like him," Barry insisted. "He's from the Midwest, like you. And an intellectual. He knows everything about world history. Just ask!"

"What's he look like?"

He send me a picture -- not my usual type. In his 20s, tall, thin, pale, with long scraggly hair and a pretty, androgynous face.

"I like my guys with a little more heft to them, Sorry."

"Well...he's gigantic beneath the belt," Barry said. "And he really needs this. He hasn't been with anyone for months."

"Why, what's wrong with him?" I asked suspiciously.

"Nothing. He's just been going through some things. Some health problems. He can explain."

I was intrigued by the mystery, so I agreed.

On a Saturday in late November, I took the train out to Barry's apartment in Sayville (he had given up on the traditional Catholic community).

Jared was slim and fragile, sitting shyly on the couch. He had a soft, limp handshake. I put my arm around him, and he sank against my chest, as if he were cuddling with a lover.

This guy was the polar opposite of the dynamic, loquacious Barry! I wondered how they had ever become friends.

"So, what do you do?" I asked.

"I work at the Fashion Barn. But I want to get into design someday." He held me tightly and nuzzled my chest. "Sorry if I'm a little forward...it's been awhile."

"That's fine. I like being the object of attention."

He disentangled himself for dinner at the Sayville Inn. He ordered only a salad, no dressing.

"How did you guys meet?" I asked.

"At church," Jared said. "I gave up on the church when I came out, but a few months ago I came back. Barry got me involved in Dignity [the gay Catholic group], and sometimes I go to Mass with Andre at the Catholic brotherhood."

He returned to the church a few months ago? And he hadn't been with a guy for a few months? What happened?

Back at the apartment, the three of us hugged. I kissed Barry, and then tried to kiss Jared, but he pulled his head away. "Before we go any farther, I have to tell you something. I'm poz."

He meant positive for the HIV virus.

"No problem," I said. Actually, I was a little curious about what poz guys do in bed. I had never dated anyone who was poz before, that I knew of, or even had any poz friends. A couple of guys at the church, who I knew vaguely, and that was about it.

You're probably wondering how I managed to live in West Hollywood at the height of the AIDS crisis and not meet anyone poz. Literature and film of the period always describes losing most of your friends to AIDS, a dozen in just a few months.

I've wondered about that myself. I think it was just by accident.

The most common way to transmit HIV is through unprotected anal sex. I was simply not interested in that, so when I was asked, I refused, and usually didn't see the guy again. Since we typically chose our friends from among our ex-boyfriends, I built up a social circle of guys who also were not interested in anal sex, and remained negative. By accident.

I'm not blaming the guys who practiced anal sex -- they had no way of knowing that it was unsafe at the time.

Jared had a huge Mortadella+, but he doesn't get a place on my Sausage List, since I wasn't permitted to do anything with it.

We spent the night, had a replay in the morning, and then went out to breakfast.

"I thought my sex life was over," Jared said. "No one wants to be with a poz guy. But last night was great."

I hoped he wasn't implying that he wanted to start dating! Our evening together was nice, but he wasn't really my type physically, he was kind of weird, and what was up with the no kissing?

I can do without oral, but no kissing? The virus isn't transmitted that way!

A few days later, Jared called. "I'm coming into the City for my birthday. Free to get together?"

"Well...um...I'm a little busy, with finals coming up and all."

"I want to try something. I've been too nervous before. But it's my birthday, and I thought you could help."

"What is it?"

"You go to the New York Bondage Club, right?"

So on Sunday Jared took the train into Penn Station. We dropped into a diner for a piece of cake, and then went to a meeting. He asked me to tie him to a St. Andrew's Cross, blindfold and gag him, and leave him open to all comers.

I monitored the situation as he was fondled, prodded, kissed, licked, tickled, teased, edged, and spanked.

Soon I saw him at Ravi's Bear Parties, too, wandering around, fondling, teasing, edging, but no oral.

And still no kissing.

See also: The Homophobic Demon; an All-Nighter at the New York Bondage Club.

Even Stevens, Hannah Montana, and The Suite Life of Zack and Codyare not unique. American tv programs aimed at a juvenile audience are strictly forbidden from mentioning gay people or ever suggesting that heterosexual desire, practice, and identity are not universal human experience. So the Disney Channel has become very good at hints.

For example, take Wizards of Waverly Place (2007-2012), an "I've Got a Secret" sitcom about a family of wizards living in contemporary Manhattan. Jerry (David DeLuise, far right) and Theresa (Maria Canales Barrera) and their kids:

16-year old Justin (David Henrie, second from left), 14-year old Alex (Selena Gomez), and 12-year old Max (Jake T. Austin, far left). (The others are supporting characters.)

All of the characters have opposite-sex dates and relationships. Not one is Wearing a Sign. Therefore they are all heterosexual, and gay people do not exist. Are you listening, network censors? Ok, then:

1. Alex is gay. She and Justin are constantly fighting over girls that they both want. She's constantly telling Justin, "I like this girl. You can't have her." During the third season, she falls in love with a butch lesbian stereotype named Stevie (Hayley Kiyoko), but drops her upon discovering that she is a leftist revolutionary. Her main squeeze is Harper (Jennifer Stone); the two eventually move into an apartment together. No one even tries to pretend that they are platonic friends.

2. Justin is a heterosexual ally. In one episode, Alex spreads a rumor that he is engaged to a boy, Hugh Normous (Josh Sussman). Justin is angry, not because of the accusation, but because now he won't be able to attract the girl he likes. Besides, he could do a lot better than Hugh Normous.

3. Hugh Normous is gay. Alex is hit on by lots of guys at school, so she befriends Hugh, knowing that he won't have any romantic interest. In the last season, she invites Hugh to a party at her apartment, where he hooks up with a guy.

4. Uncle Kelso (Jeff Garland) is gay. He is masquerading as pop star Shakira. Alex asks if it bothers him that millions of teenage boys have his picture on their bedroom walls. He shrugs.

5. Max is probably gay.

His crush on Alex's boyfriend, Mason (Gregg Sulkin, left, with costar Dan Benson), is so intense that when they break up, Max falls into a deep depression, and when Mason re-appears to request a reconciliation, Max thinks that Mason wants a reconciliation with him.

At age sixteen, Max turns into a girl, and hates it because now he has to hang out with other girls; he likes to hang out with guys.

6. Just about everyone else in the cast could be gay or bisexual. In “Saving WizTech” (2008), the evil Ronald Longcape (Chad Duell) flirts with Alex in order to steal her powers. He admits that he wasn’t actually interested in Alex, any of the Russo wizards would do, but she seemed more gullible. Therefore he would have been perfectly willing to flirt with Justin or Max.

And that's not even counting the constant gender-shifting and transvestism.

As stated earlier, every character expresses heterosexual interest, and not one is Wearing a Sign. Therefore they are all heterosexual. Therefore gay people do not exist. Is that clearly understood?

In the spring of 2004, I went to Europe for my usual Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam circuit, and dropped in to the Bains d'Odessa, near the Luxembourg Gardens.

There wasn't much activity going on in the late afternoon hours, but as I was dressing to leave, I saw a very cute guy in the locker room, also getting dressed: in his 20s, tall, broad shouldered, with pale, smooth skin, tight muscles, nice bulge. We made eye contact, but didn't interact: I followed the rule that younger guys must always approach older.

He put on a white shirt and blue jeans, and then pulled a violin case out of his locker.

A violinist! I wasn't going to let this one get away!

I walked over to him. "I played the viola in high school."

He glared at me. "Très fascinant."

Well, that was rather a lame pick-up line.

He headed for the door. I followed. "Um...um....the first guy I datd with played the violin."

"Vous devriez lui téléphoner." Then you should call him.

I was sinking fast! He paused to pick up his valuables from the lock box. "Um...um...my high school music teacher was enormous. Almost as big as me."

"Vraiment?" He turned and smiled. "Je m'appelle Jean."

When all else fails, go for the Sausage List.

The rest of the story, with uncensored photos, is on Tales of West Hollywood.

When I was a kid, our church forbade any books except the Bible. My parents were more lenient, permitting comic books and Scholastic Book Club selections, but the Bible had an advantage -- you could read it anywhere, during choir practice or Sunday school or a screaming hellfire sermon, and the adults would pay no attention -- or they would think you were especially devout, as you got your quota of beefcake, bonding, and sex. Not to mention violence.

1. Beefcake. David looks like a veritable Conan the Barbarian, wearing only a loincloth, wielding a magic sword as he stands over the slain Goliath. And who knew that Cain assaulted Abel by kicking him in the crotch while they were both naked?

2. Bonding. David and Jonathan had a love "surpassing the love of women." That is, their homoromance far surpassed hetero-romance. If only David didn't insist on bring Goliath's head along on their dates. And why did Joseph reject women's advances to spend all of his time schmoozing with the Pharaoh ? (Photo below is Donny Osmond in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat).

3. Sex. After the Flood, Noah was lying around drunk when his son Ham "uncovered his nakedness." But to "uncover" someone's "nakedness" means doing more than sneaking a quick peek, and God got so upset over the incest that He decreed that Ham and all of his descendants (the Africans) should be slaves. The Biblical support of slavery caused the first chip in the edifice of my fundamentalism.

Fast-forward a few thousand years to the New Testament, and Philip the Apostle sees an Ethiopian eunuch on the road, invites him to spend the night in his tent, and in the morning baptizes him. Eunuchs are castrated, unable to have sex with women. So who do they have sex with? Just ask Philip. (In 1986, my roommate Alan used the story of the Ethiopian eunuch to try to get with my boyfriend.)

See also: The Sacrifice of Isaac.

When I was in Germany a few years ago, my friend Doc took me to a restaurant called the Struwwelpeter Apfelweinwirtschaft (The Slovenly Peter Apple Wine Tavern).

Its logo was a boy with wild blond hair and long sharp nails like Edward Scissorhands.

Nearby there was a statue of the same boy, along with some other children.

"You've never heard of Struwwelpeter?" Doc asked. "He's a national hero, like Bart Simpson in America!"

Turns out that all German schoolchildren read Der Struwwelpeter, written and illustrated by Heinrich Hoffmann (1809-1894), about children who misbehave and get their comeuppance -- usually a violent retribution.

A girl who plays with matches burns to death.
Kaspar, who won't eat his soup, wastes away and dies.
Hans, whose "head is always in the clouds," falls into a river.
Robert, who goes outside in a storm, blows away.

Hoffmann was a psychiatrist, though he lived before Freud's discovery of the unconscious, and many of his stories have been analyzed for their psychosexual undertones

The most obvious gay connection is in the story of Konrad, der Daumenlutscher (the Thumb-Sucker).

Though his mother warns him to not suck his thumb, Konrad persists in the bad habit. Then he encounters the Tailor with the Scissors (in modern versions, the monstrous Scissor-Man), who cuts both of his thumbs off.

Oral fixation, symbolic castration, gay anxiety, and a 19th-century Freddie Kruger!

The stories have been translated into several languages. They were adapted into a 1955 movie (available on youtube), an operetta (1992) and a musical (1998).

In 2010, Richard Mansfield filmed an explicitly homoerotic shadow-puppet version, of the Daumenlutscher story, "Suck-a-Thumb." It made the rounds of the gay film festivals.

In an even more explicitly gay sequel, Konrad is sent to a psychiatric hospital for a brutal "cure."

Don't worry, that's a door handle, not what you're thinking.

Since 1996, readers of independent comics have been treated to the adventures of Frank, a bipedal "funny animal" who looks like he escaped from a 1930s Max Fleischer cartoon. He inhabits a surreal, chaotic world called the Unifactor, surrounded by grotesque plants and animals, landforms that turn into people, monstrous god-like beings, monstrous demon-like beings, the spiritual emanations of real-world people, symbols, metaphors, and jivas (immortal essences shaped like gaudy tops).

The stories are wordless, except for an occasional cryptic remark. You are expected to find your own meanings.

It is crazy, weird, surreal fun, with lots of gay subtexts.

Frank's main nemesis is the Manhog, a naked, sweating, hedonistic hog-person, The Manhog is often abused by his superiors in the Unifactor hierarchy, and, jealous of Frank's comfort and privilege, seeks revenge. But in one story he finds enlightenment through the ministrations of a caring friend or lover, and seeks out Frank to make amends.

One of the main sources of discord in the Unifactor is Whim, a demon-moon faced stick-being who conducts weird body-altering experiments and otherwise torments other beings. But he, too, can be read with a gay subtext for his intensely physical interest in Frank.

So I thought. But then I noticed some strong, almost Puritanical moralizing in Jim Woodring's comments.

Frank is "completely naive, capable of sinning by virtue of not knowing what he's really about."

Manhog is "an unholy hybrid of human ambivalence," who has sinned so much that he deserves all of the suffering he gets.

The beings in the Unifactor are inhabiting a spiritual realm, surrounded by myths and symbols, trying to find the ultimate reality that will explain their existence.

What is the ultimate reality?

In Congress of the Animals (2011), we find out. Frank goes exploring, enters another realm of consciousness, and finds "what we all are looking for." The ultimate reality.

A girl.

At first I thought I could still salvage Frank. Maybe it wasn't a girl, maybe it was a boy, or a being of indeterminate gender. Maybe "what we all are looking for" is a friend.

Nope, it's a girl named Fran.

Is the ultimate meaning of life creating art? Helping people? Exploring? Finding God?

Nope, "what we are all looking for," is heterosexual romance.

And erasing gay people from the world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This story happened to my roommate Edward, the art appraiser I lived with in the East Village. When I knew him, from 1998 to 2001, he was in his late 50s and early 60s, tall, husky, tanned, white-haired, slightly feminine, and eccentric.

But back in 1958, he was Eddie, a 18-year old high school boy growing up in Houghton, on isolated Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Not aware that he was gay yet -- not even aware that same-sex desire existed.

Until he met the naked winged man in a field in Germany.

This story is too risque to recount here. You can read it on Tales of West Hollywood.

Whenever I'm in Boston, I try to visit Harvard University, walk down Everett and Oxford and Divinity Street, across Harvard Yard. I go into the Widener Library and Memorial Hall, down the corridors of the Law School and the Divinity School, pretending that I belong there, that I'm a student (or, more recently, a professor).

I am always shocked by how ordinary the buildings and classrooms and students look. This isn't a shimmering otherworld of universal wisdom. It could be any college anywhere. It could be Penn State.

Ok, the freshman dining hall looks a lot like Hogwarts.

However, every Harvard student and graduate I've ever known has been crazy. No exceptions. Some are just quirky or eccentric, some are bona fide nutcases.

I've dated or hooked up with eight Harvard boys. Each has had a fabulous physique or superb beneath-the-belt gifts. Each has been certifiable.

In order, from least to most insane:

1. Jermaine, the Biggest Guy on My Sausage List, with an enormous Kovbasa++++. He was remarkably kind and unfailingly upbeat, with just a few eccentric habits. Like asking "Who's your Daddy" during the sexual act, getting offended at the suggestion that he might be a top, and skinny dipping in the icy Atlantic Ocean with his uncle.

2. Ari, the Linguist Who Wouldn't Shut Up, born in Israel, with Hebrew as his native language. But he didn't want to talk about that. He wanted to talk about the pronomials of Tlingit, a Na-Dene language of British Columbia and Alaska, and the gender categories of Jingulu, an Australian aboriginal language. Yawn. At least he was gifted beneath the belt, #6 on my Sausage List.

3. Hunter the Historian, an undergrad I hooked up with in the Widener Library while visiting Boston for a conference. He was a history major who asked me an endless array of questions about life in West Hollywood in the 1980s. Was I a Castro clone? Did I go to the baths? Did I use poppers? I kept trying to steer him toward the sexual encounter.

4. Sammy Blowfish, the son of my old high school speech teacher, a new art history professor at a small private college in Iowa. Other than his odd inferiority complex and his fixation on dalmatians (although he didn't own one), his only quirk was trying too hard, initiating sexual acts a dozen times in the 24 hours or so of our date.

5. Dr. Charles Bertan, professor of Restoration and Augustan literature at USC, uptight, conservative, so completely non-sexual that I couldn't imagine him with his clothes off, let alone actually having sex with anyone. We went out on one date.

6. Ricky With a Y, a cute twink with a hairy chest and a rather small penis, who spent our whole date psychoanalyzing me. "Why do you think that is interesting?""Why do you say that?" "Tell me about your relationship with your father?"

Even in the bedroom: "Is your refusal to engage in anal really a failure to embrace your gay identity? Do you subconsciously believe that if you don't top me, you're not really gay?"

He wasn't even a psychiatrist. He ran a mail-order company that sold gay pride merchandise.

7. Matt, Fred's Cute Young Thing, a recent graduate of Andover Academy and Harvard, who spoke with a nasal Boston accent, peppered his conversation with French and German, adored the opera, and complained that everything about me was bourgeois or jejune: the Midwest, West Hollywood, USC, you name it. Plus he gossiped about everybody and everything, providing the weird voices.

In the bedroom, he kept up a nonstop monologue of his progress: "I'm getting there...un peu plus, mon chevalier...a little more....je vais arriver...a little more...bien, bien...here I go..."

What did Fred see in this guy?

Well, he was cute.

8. Santa Claus, aka Bearnárd with an accent,in his 60s, chubby, with a white beard and a hairy chest. He was actually David's hookup, not mine, but I tagged along to make sure everything was ok.

Bearnárd majored in biology at Harvard, but now he wrote fantasy novels about King Arthur and lived in a completely Medievalized apartment in the Castro. There were suits of armor, tapestries, halberds,and heavy oak tables. He offered us "mead" to drink out of golden goblets (really).

The complete list, with nude photos, is on Tales of West Hollywood.

Summer is coming, which means you will probably be dragged out of the safe haven of your home and family, shoved onto an airplane, and forced to spend ten days "back home" in the Straight World.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. "There are only five verses in the Bible used to claim that God is a bigot, and they aren't about gay people at all."

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

6. " The Sodomites weren't gay." The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is about being inhospitable to strangers, a terrible sin in desert cultures.

7. "According to the Bible, eating shrimp is worse than being gay." That verse in Leviticus, "Thou shalt not lie with man as with woman," is a reference to temple prostitution, not a general prohibition. Leviticus also states that anyone who eats shellfish, disobeys their parents, or engages in interracial marriage should be stoned to death.

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

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

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

16 Naked New Yorkers

August Strindberg: Nude Statues and Dream Visions

Sabrina the Teenage Witch

When a Bratwurst Isn't Big Enough

Getting Spanked at the Oscars

The Beach Boy and the Giant

The Tomorrow People

Celebrity Date #13: Nate Richert

If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium

The Wiz: Gay Manhattan in the 1970s

A Hookup with Barry and the Poz Boy

The Wizards of Waverly Place

Teen Hunk #10: Jean the Violinist

Bible Beefcake

Shock-headed Peter: Castration and Gay Panic in a German Children's Story

Frank Finds What We're All Looking For

5 Heterosexist and 5 Gay-Inclusive Christmas Specials

Edward's Hookup with a Winged Man

8 Harvard Boys in My Bed

10 Snappy Comebacks to Your Crazy Fundamentalist Relatives