Clik here to view.
Benito Cereno: Master and Slave Become Lovers
Speaking of beefcake covers on classic novels, check out this cover to the new edition of Benito Cereno (1855), by Herman Melville, the gay author of Moby-Dick and Billy Budd.Plus there's a nice gay...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mario David: Bodybuilder Turned Gay-Vague Comedian
What is it with bodybuilders and comedy? Â It's as if film directors are deliberately trying to mask the erotic potential of muscles through jokes and pratfalls.Case in point: Mario David (1927-1996), a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Myrtle Beach: Gay Beefcake in a Red State
I have relatives in South Carolina, so I visited a couple of times when I was a kid.But as an adult, I'm scared of it, in spite of the quality of the beefcake.My Cousin George, who told me that "only...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Secret Cabinet of Homoerotic Art
When I studied Greek and Roman art in school, I noticed something curious. A beefcake paradise: thousands of male figures, massively muscled, exquisitely detailed bicep-bulges and hard-rock pecs. We...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Omar Sharif and His Grandson
When I was a kid in the 1960s, our newspaper, The Rock Island Argus, had several interesting columns: Dear Abby, a criptoquip, and "Omar Sharif on Bridge."Nazarenes weren't allowed to play cards, so I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Innocents: In the South of France, Everybody Wants Everybody
Movies and tv programs typically permit same-sex relationships only when they are interracial. Â The racial stratification "stands in" for gender stratification, male-female transposed into white-black...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Top 10 Public Penises of Washington DC
Have you ever wondered why so much official American art is homoerotic?Prague may win the award for the most public penises, but Washington, DC is a close second. Â Here are the top 10 naked men in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Not-Gay Bullying on "One Life to Live"
During the last decade, conflicted gay teenagers have become a staple of daytime soap operas. But not the long-running One Life to Live, which I watched occasionally after Dark Shadows when I was a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Gay Origin of Yankee Doodle
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! Â It celebrates rugged...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Naked Ghost Festival of Thailand
When I was in Thailand in 1988, I had a job to do: rescue Alan from his ex-gay mania. Â So I didn't have time to drive 6 hours north of Bangkok to Dan Sai, near the Laotian border.It's a small town with...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tom Hanks' Bachelor Party
During the 1980s, there was a fad of movies about the crazy maneuvers that hetero-horny guys go through en route to getting laid, usually with tons of female nudity and tons of racism and homophobia,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dante's Inferno: Beefcake and Buddy-Bonding in Medieval Italy
The Divine Comedy gets a bad rap. Â It's not incomprehensible, elitist, or heterosexist, like many other "great" works of literature (Ulysses and The Sound and the Fury spring to mind). Â Granted,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mickey Rooney: Gay-Vague Teen Hunk of the 1940s
Mickey Rooney has been playing elderly men for so long that it's hard to remember that once upon a time he was the biggest teen hunk in Hollywood. Born Joe Yule in 1920, Mickey got his start as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
10 Most Beefcake-Heavy Horror Movies: the 1950s
My brother and I spent many Saturday nights in the 1970s in our attic room, watching old horror and sci-fi movies on Chuck Acri's Creature Feature on our portable black & white tv set (it was past...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rocky Horror Show Live: New Brads, Janets, and Rockies in Gold Lame Shorts
What can you do with a movie that encouraged a generation of LGBT people, "Don't dream it -- be it"?That encouraged the audience to participate by talking back, throwing things, and playing along with...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fall 1990: Teaching Gay 101 at Juvenile Hall
Wrestling TournamentAfter I quit my job at the Getty Consternation Institute in June 1990, I found a job as a youth counselor at Camp Routh, a juvenile probation camp (alternative to prison). It was in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Homoerotic Hamburgers of the 1970s
When I was a kid in the 1960s, we had three fast-food burger joints: Henry's, Sandy's (where cute college boys in kilts sold Edin-burgers), and A&W (where my boyfriend Bill and I became a Mama and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The 10-Foot Penis of Mongolia
Mongolia is a little remote for most Westerners, 20 hours by air from New York, 17 hours from London, but it might be worth the effort for the Naadam, the Festival of Manly Arts, held throughout the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Goldbergs: 1980s Beefcake for a New Generation
Heterosexual adults always envision their adolescence as a Golden Age, simple, fun, and joyous, when people looked out for each other and you could walk down the street without fear. Gay people know...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ted Shawn: A Life Devoted to Muscles in Motion
Speaking of modern dance, one of its innovators was Ted Shawn (1891-1972).He grew up in a conservative Methodist church where dancing was forbidden, and attended the University of Denver, intending to...
View Article