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Kalevipoeg: Gay Epic Hero of Estonia
When I was visiting Estonia in the summer of 1998, I couldn't go anywhere without hearing about Kalevipoeg. There were a dozen public statues of him, a naked, muscular god carrying small people.There...
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Spring 1998: Serial Killer or Swedish Bodybuilder?
In 1998, Yuri and I were competing over Jaan the Estonian mountain climber, and accompanied him home for a visit, only to discover that he already had a boyfriend.We were scheduled to spend seven days...
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Suburgatory Beefcake
Suburgatory (2011-2012), a "fish out of water" sitcom about a hip Manhattan teenager trapped in the cookie-cutter conformity of suburbia, is not particularly gay-friendly. For one thing, the premise is...
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15 Public Penises of London
I haven't spent a lot of time in London, but you can't miss its obsession with monuments. There are hundreds of them, memorializing nearly every famous and semi-famous person in the world, including...
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Giuliano Gemma: The First Gay Cowboy
Born in Rome in 1938, Giuliano Gemma started out as a circus aerialist and stuntman before breaking into the sword-and-sandal craze of the 1960s, but not the usual deadly serious "bodybuilder saves...
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Spring 2001: My Date with the Teen Model
When I was living in West Hollywood, there was a strict age segregation. If your boyfriend was more than five years older or younger, tongues would wag. More than ten years, and there would be snubs...
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Parikkala Patsaspuisto: The Forest of Gay Dreams and Nightmares
When Yuri, Jaan, and I traveled from Helsinki to Saint Petersburg in 1998, the train went north to Lahti and then east, entering Russia at Vainikkala. But if you follow the border for another 75...
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Simpsons Beefcake: Homer, Bart, and Friends Bulk Up
The Simpsons is the longest running network tv program of all time, with 547 episodes to date over a period of 25 years, surpassing even The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. I watched religiously for...
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Hannes Bok: A Closeted Gay Life in Science Fiction Art
When I was in junior high, I discovered The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and thought it the best thing ever written. Was heroic fantasy always so wonderful? As it turned out, no. My friend Darry kept...
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Mark Gregory: Mascara-Wearing Man-Mountain of 1980s Actioners
You're probably seen The Warriors (1979), starring Michael Beck (of Xanadu) as Swan, a gang leader trying to get from home from the Bronx, while rival gangs try to kill him. The Bronx Warriors (1983)...
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Summer 1998: Wing Man for a Muscle God
In the summer of 1998, just after I returned from visiting Jaan in Estonia (and cruising the Swedish bodybuilder in Tallinn), it was time to travel to Montreal, to the annual conference of the...
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The Russian Beefcake Museum: Male Nudity in The Hermitage
When we visited Jaan in Estonia in the summer of 1998, we spent three days in St. Petersburg, Russia, where Yuri went to college. But most of our time was spent walking around the campus of the...
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Rasmus Kaljujärv: Getting Frisky with the Boyfriend
Rasmus Kaljujärv is one of the biggest young stars of Estonia.And the most gay-friendly.Born in 1981, he graduated from the Estonian Academy of Drama and Theater and went to work on the stage, starring...
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Sal Mineo: The First Gay Teen Idol
I saw Sal Mineo for the first time on January 2nd, 1971, on an episode of My Three Sons. His character, Jim Bell, tries to convince college-age Robbie Douglas (Don Grady) to run away with him for a...
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Seven Brothers: Homoerotic Rowdiness in a Finnish Sauna
I'm not a fan of the Kalevala, the Greatest Work of Finnish Literature: it's completely heterosexist, all about gods searching for wives.But the Second Greatest Work is about seven guys alone in the...
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Summer 1967: A Boy Named Twilight
I had a recurring dream, or an especially vivid memory, of being attracted to a boy in my earliest childhood, maybe even before I felt the biceps of the bodybuilder on the beach.A very short house with...
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The Beverly Hillbillies
The Beverly Hillbillies, one of the 1960s line of hayseed comedies (others included Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, Gomer Pyle, and The Andy Griffith Show), slogged on from 1962 to 1971, and your...
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The Gay Surrealism of Kalervo Palsa
Kalervo Palsa (1947-1987) lived and died in a cottage near the town of Kittila, a ski resort in Lapland in the far north of Finland. Like Veijo Rönkkönen, who worked in a paper mill in isolated...
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Jelle Florizoone: Is It Weird to Play Gay?
When Belgian actor Jelle Florizoone starred in the gay-teen-angst North Sea Texas (2011), the media went wild with questions: "What's it like to play a gay guy? How weird was it? How disgusting was...
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Colette's Cheri: A Male Prostitute Finds Love
The French novelist Colette (1873-1954) was a sexual libertine. Early in her career, while performing in a pantomime, she caused a scandal by kissing another woman on stage. She was married to men...
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