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Icarus: The Boy Who Flew Too Close to the Sun
I mentioned before that artists interested in depicting men without women around have only limited mythological and religious themes to choose from, and most involve tragedy.Take the tragedy of Icarus:...
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A Date with the Somali Teenager
Moving to the Plains, I expected to meet a lot of Swedes and Norwegians who hung out at saunas and ate lukefisch, or Germans who did complicated gymnastic routines at Turnerverein.And, in fact, 30% of...
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Grease Live: Still No Gay People at Rydell High
Grease (1978) was my coming-out movie, mostly because of the theme song, with lines I misheard::The adults are lying, only real is real.We stop the fight right now, we got to be what we feel. The movie...
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"The Bicycle Man": A Very Special Episode of "Diff'rent Strokes"
Diff'rent Strokes (1978-86) is one of those iconic 1980s tv series that everyone knew about but no one watched (at least no one I knew watched). Everybody could quote Gary Coleman's incredulous...
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Why I Read "Pearls before Swine," Homophobia and All
As social media makes everyone's life a fishbowl, an ongoing issue becomes: should I read this book or comic strip or see this movie after the author or director has made a homophobic comment?There are...
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The Thug on my Sausage List
When I was making up my list of the 15 biggest "sausages" I ever "cooked," I completely forgot about T (for Thug).Spring 1986: I had been in West Hollywood for about six months, and I was starting to...
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The "Late for Class Dream"
I have a recurring dream where I'm late for class, but I can't find the classroom. I run across an unfamiliar campus, try to find a recognizable landmark, rush down the corridors of random buildings,...
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The Mysterious Disappearance of Richard Colvin Cox
Richard Colvin Cox from Mansfield, Ohio, was conforming to the expectations of Cold War culture, to the letter. In high school he was an accomplished athlete and well-liked by both adults and other...
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The Gay Villages of Sonia and Tim Gidal
When I was little, my search for a "good place" often led me to the My Village books. Tim Gidal (1909-1996) was a a pioneer in the field of photojournalism and a respected academic at the New School...
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Bodybuilding, Weightlifting, or Powerlifting?
Although many people use the terms interchangeably, bodybuilding and weight lifting are quite different sports.Bodybuilding is about the definition, symmetry, and proportion of the muscle groups....
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Lorenzo Lamas: from Gay-Vague Prettyboy to Straight Kickboxer
The son of Hollywood royalty, Fernando Lamas and Arlene Dahl, Lorenzo Lamas had a delicate, prettyboy face, big hair, a slim, hairy chest, and a penchant for semi-nudity that made him perfect for...
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A Search for a Roommate Leads to Three Hookups and Two Dates
Germantown, Pennsylvania, September 2012When I got a temporary one-year position at a small college in a distant suburb of Philadelphia, I was ecstatic. Finally I could move back to a gay...
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Jimmy McNichol and the Gay Coach
Many gay teenagers in the late 1970s and early 1980s were more familiar with Jimmy McNichol's body than the bodies of their real-life friends. They saw it more often, tanned and pleasantly muscular,...
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My Third Grade Boyfriend
Rock Island, July 1968When I was 7 1/2 years old, we moved from a nice house in Wisconsin, a block from the beach, to a gross house in Ill-An-Noise, in back of the grade school. Yuck!This new world was...
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Willie Wonka and the Torture Factory
Name a movie that about a lavender-coated, gay-vague monster who lures five children into his lair with the promise of candy, then tortures and terrorizes them, killing three, before inviting the one...
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Endymion: The Eternal Sleeper
When I was in grad school in English, we had to read the poem "Endymion" by John Keats (1818). Four thousand dreary lines about the ancient Greek shepherd Endymion, who is in love with Diana, the...
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Daniel Clark: Brother for Life
Speaking of Robert Clark, if you watched any children's tv during the early 2000s, you probably saw his older brother Daniel (born in 1985) in a series of buddy-bonding roles.On Eerie, Indiana: The...
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My 10 Best, 10 Worst, and 10 Most Erotic Summers
I hate the summertime. It's hot, boring, isolated, and depressing, with the sun staying up until an ungodly late hour and people always trying to force you to play outside. 7 weeks left (groan!).So I...
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Joe Dallesandro: Counterculture Icon with the Most Famous Face, Physique, and...
Joe Dallesandro had one of the most recognizeable faces, physiques -- and bulges -- of the 1960s.When the teenager met Andy Warhol in 1967, he had already had a colorful career as a juvenile delinquent...
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The DC Comics Jungle
When I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s, DC Comics were not known for their beefcake -- Batman, Superman, and their superhero coworkers were fully clothed all the time. You had to go to Gold Key to...
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