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Antoine and Pierre Bourdelle: Father-Son Beefcake Artists
Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929) was a French sculptor known for sharing a studio with Rodin, and for his large-scale monuments, like the "Monument aux Combattants et Défenseurs du Tarn-et-Garonne de...
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Nat Bor, the Bulging Boxer of New Bedford
This rather bulgeworthy boxer is Nat Bor (1913-1972), born in Fall River, Massachusetts, d, where Lizzie Borden's father and stepmother were murdered in 1892. He was a short, slim boy, Jewish in an...
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I Pick Up a Boy and His Daddy at an Airport in Montana
Helena, Montana, April 2013In the spring of 2013, desperate to get out of Philadelphia, I sent out a lot of application portfolios, but being obviously over 40, with 13 years of temporary "visiting...
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A Wrinkle in Time
When I read Madeleine L'Engel's A Wrinkle in Time (1962) in grade school, I identified with Charles Wallace Murry, a shy, intelligent boy who sees things other kids can't. He seems to have a crush on...
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Beefcake in Socialist and Communist Posters
In the first years of the 20th century, socialism was not the anathema it is today. You could be a card-carrying socialist without getting ostracized. Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926) ran for president five...
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Nephew Sausage Sighting #4: My Nephew's Boyfriend
Washington DC, November 2014Of all the strange phone calls I've received from my mother over the years, the weirdest was at 7:00 am one Saturday morning in November 2014."When you're in Washington, DC...
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Sylvester Stallone
During the 1970s, the New Sensitive Man was soft, cuddly, and sensitive, but during the 1980s Reagan-Thatcher conservative retrenchment, man-mountains came into style. The first, and the best, was the...
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The Footlong of Fairbanks, Alaska
Fairbanks, Alaska, February 2008In the spring of 2008, when my temporary visiting position at the University of Dayton was winding down, I applied for about 50 academic jobs. Most were in or near gay...
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The Satyr's Hookup with Sylvester Stallone
Upstate New York, August 2010Troy, my boyfriend for the last year, has finally agreed to move in, and we're having a "housewarming" party to celebrate. We invite his college friends Micah and Jordan;...
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Peter Pan
I'm fine with drag now, but in 1966, I was freaked out by Mary Martin's portrayal of Peter Pan,a monstrous conflation of male/female and child/adult (Peter is traditionally played by an older woman, in...
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Tony Dow/Wally Cleaver
I was born too late to catch the first generation of Boomer sitcoms -- Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, Donna Reed, Leave It to Beaver -- and the teen idols they created -- Ricky Nelson, Billy...
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Four Bacon Beefcake Artists
John Bacon (1740-1799) was a British sculptor, one of the first to work in marble. He infused his public art with an appreciation of male beauty. Like this "Father Thames," a beefy sea god.His son,...
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Trauma, Terror, and Beefcake of Junior High Shop Class
I read somewhere that the number of shop classes in elementary and high schools has dropped 75% during the last 20 years.This is a cause for celebration. Shop class was the biggest trauma of junior...
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PaJaMa: The Gay Painter-Lovers of 1940s Fire Island
Back before we started acting like heterosexuals, organizing our love lives in monogamous same-sex, same-age pairs, gay men established all sorts of curious and creative "adhesive friendships": trios,...
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Nephew Sausage Sighting #5: "Do I Measure Up?"
After my parents moved to Indianapolis in 1995, I stayed with my brother on my visits to Rock Island, so I've had ample opportunity to get sausage sightings of his sons (I only count those after they...
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Robert Ellis: Gay Best Friend of the 1950s
This rather buffed young man looking rather unhappy at being hugged by a girl is Robert Ellis. He was famous during the 1950s as Dexter Franklin on Meet Corliss Archer (1951-52), the first of many...
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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Boldly Going Where No Heterosexual Has Gone Before
Science fiction has been notorious for promoting an exclusively heterosexual future, insisting over and over again that gay people do not exist. The Star Trek tv series have been the worse offenders,...
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The Football Star's Date with Tarzan
Rock Island, June 1972One day in the summer of 1971, when I was ten years old, my boyfriend Bill and I were out riding bikes near Longview Park, when we came to a big house "on the register of...
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Charles Starrett: Pre-War Bulge
Charles Starrett (1903-1986) was an action-adventure hero before there was such a thing. He grew up in Athol, Massachusetts, where his grandfather's L.S. Starrett Tool Company was the main employer,...
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Phillip Van Dyke
No relation to Dick Van Dyke or the muscular Barry Van Dyke of the show biz dynasty, Phillip Van Dyke was a popular child star of the 1990s, with guest spots on Picket Fences, Baywatch, and Step by...
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