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Frank Frazetta: The "Good" Muscle Artist
During the 1970s, any paperback or comic book about Tarzan, Conan, or any other barbarian hero was likely to show him heavily-muscled, half naked, holding a sword aloft, with a naked woman lying at his...
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Bubba Lewis: Not Just Zac Efron's Life Partner
Bubba Lewis is best known as the BFF of teen idol Zac Efron -- the two have been passionate heterosexual life partners for eleven years, ever since they starred together as autistic twins in a sappy tv...
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50% of College Professors Think That You're a Deviant
Most colleges aren't as homophobic as The Fashion Institute of Technology, but still, sociology professors are very likely to think that you're a deviant.In 2012 Franciscan University, a small Catholic...
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Serge Lifar: Gay Masculine Beauty during the Jazz Age
During the 1920s, the go-to guy for masculine beauty was a Russian ballet dancer named Serge or Sergei Lifar. Born in Kiev, Russia in 1905, Lifar went to Paris in 1923 and joined the Ballet Russes as...
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Fall 2005: After 20 Years, My Relatives Still Closet Me
When I was a kid, we visited my relatives in Indiana at least once a year, sometimes more often. But in high school and college, I often had other things to do, and my visits became infrequent. After...
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Rockford Files: Buddy of the Week
When I went to graduate school in Bloomington, Indiana in 1982, everyone kept assuming I was from Rockford, Illinois, and therefore a big fan of The Rockford Files (1974-80). It was useless to point...
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Spike Island: Manchester Boys Bond at a Rock Concert
It seems that every year in the U.S., we see yet another movie about a group of high school friends facing the prospect of Growing Up: a heterosexist myth in which one abandons the exuberant...
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The Gay Couples of "Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag"
In some movies, you get exactly what the title says: Snakes on a Plane; Sharknado; Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag (1997).The heads are in the custody of mafioso Tommy Spinelli (Joe Pesci), who is...
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Fall 2004: The Ugly Guy Makeover
When I moved to Florida in 2001, I quickly discovered that the age restrictions of West Hollywood and New York were gone. I was in my early 40s, but regularly got asked out by everyone from 18-year old...
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Lurich and Aberg: Wrestlers Who Lived and Died Together
The Estonians love wrestling, and they love nudity. So Georg Lurich (1876-1920) is a national hero. He grew up in Väike-Maarja, Estonia, which was then part of the Russian Empire, and became a...
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West Side Story: Stick to the East Side
When I was in high school, we had to read West Side Story in conjunction with Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. They were even bound together, in the same book. Plus the orchestra played highlights...
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Cheech and Chong: The Original Stoner Couple
Comedy duo Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong were the original stoners: their comedy albums were about the "hilarious" things people say while high, and their movies were about the "hilarious" hijinks...
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What's Wrong with the Word "Homosexual"?
Some people who comment on this blog actually use the term "homosexual." I delete their comments. The word makes my ears hurt. I will not permit it to be said in my classrooms. I never use it in my...
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Bobby Hull: Hockey's Beefcake Boy
When I was a kid, I hated sports, but that didn't stop my parents and Santa Claus from loading me down with sports equipment and sports-themed toys.Well, the action figures were ok -- you could pretend...
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Boris Vallejo: Bodybuilder turned Fantasy Artist
During the 1970s, the covers of your Conan, Tarzan, John Carter, Doc Savage, and miscellaneous barbarian hero books were likely to feature a heavily-muscled, naked or nearly-naked muscle-god fighting...
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Summer 1966: The President's Not Cute
Everyone in the Boomer generation and older knows where they were on November 22, 1963, when they heard of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.My Cousin Joe remembers a murmur going through...
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Spring 1967: Marrying the Boy Next Door
Long before I met Bill, before my first date, when we were still living in Racine, Wisconsin, I married the boy next door.This isn't him; he would have about my age, six or seven years old, in first...
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An Excruciatingly Boring, Heterosexist "Boyhood"
In college I learned that whenever someone tells you that a novel like Ulysses is Epic! Marvelous! Stupendous! The Best Thing Every Written!, it's bound to be heterosexist. Not to mention deadly...
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Herman Brix: Almost the First Tarzan
The iconic Tarzan has always been Johnny Weissmuller, who took Edgar Rice Burroughs' sophisticated, multilingual Lord Greystoke and embued him with "me Tarzan" jargon, the fake-African "Umgawa," the...
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Manly P. Hall: Gay Psychic Murdered by His Lover
When I lived in Los Angeles, there was a University of Philosophical Research at 3910 Los Feliz, near the Silverlake gay neighborhood. But it wasn't a university, and it didn't do any philosophical...
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