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Celtic Festivals: Guys in Kilts, Phallic Symbols, and the Most Homeorotic...
When I was a kid, the Celtic world was everywhere. Every year there was a Celtic Festival in downtown Rock Island to celebrate the heritage of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Nazarenes weren't allowed...
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10 Body Parts That You Didn't Know were Attractive
Connoisseur of male beauty know that the most attractive body parts aren't necessarily the biggest, most obvious, and most dramatic. Sure, we all love a nice chest, biceps, and beneath-the-belt...
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Spirou and Fantasio: The Bellhop and his Boyfriend
The young hunk and his blond, balding but still youthful boyfriend recline cozily on the couch, watching tv, their legs pressed together. The young hunk places his foot atop his boyfriend's in a...
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10 More Body Parts That You Didn't Know Were Attractive
I've been going through the body parts which aren't as big, dramatic, and obvious as the biceps, pecs, and beneath-the-belt gifts, but still can be emblematic of masculine beauty. With #1-10, I barely...
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Beefcake and Bonding in The Seven Ages of Man
September 12, 1967, a Tuesday night. I am six years old, almost seven, just beginning first grade at Hansche Elementary School in Racine, Wisconsin.At 7:30, I want to watch The Invaders, but my...
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Swordsmen and Sorcerers of the 1980s
For over a century, people have been rejecting naturalistic literature to write heroic fantasy. In Britain, mostly about unlikely heroes who travel through magic-laden Medieval landscapes to fight...
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Luke Perry: From Teen Idol to Hot Gay Nerd
Viewers of the prison drama Oz in the spring of 2001 were treated to the sight of disgraced evangelical preacher Jeremiah Cloutier (Luke Perry) having his towel stolen as he leaves the shower, forcing...
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I Fall Asleep in a Sailor's Arms
When I was 10 years old, my Grandma Dennis took me on a train trip from the station at Garrett to Washington, DC, and then to Walterboro, South Carolina, to visit my uncle and aunt and cousins. We...
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Roy the Farmboy
No one came out casually in the 1980s, but it didn't take long for me to suspect Roy, the sophomore education major who worked with me at the Eigenmann Hall Snack bar.He had big hair and wore bright...
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That Boy: My First Porn Film
It may be a little strange to mention a porn film in a G-rated blog, but That Boy (1974) is special. It was a defining moment in my life, the first gay erotic film I ever saw, in the spring of 1984,...
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Andy Warhol: Gay without Pride
I've been reading the Diaries of Andy Warhol, where the famous pop artist spends about a thousand pages recording how much he spent on cabs during the last ten years of his life (1977-87). It's tough...
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12 Things to Like About Autumn
It's only the 25th of August, still summer according to the sidereal calendar, but in the real world calendar, classes have started, so it's autumn. My favorite season of the year.1. Everything is...
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What Happened to the Black Beefcake?
During the 1960s, there were only a few Black actors working on television, and they never, ever displayed their physiques, not even in teen magazines.In the 1970s, I liked Mike Evans of The Jeffersons...
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John Wayne was a Sissy
During the 1950s and 1960s,, John Wayne was the symbol for an all-American frontier masculinity that never really existed, but many people longed for: tough, surly, taciturn, quick with his fists and a...
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"I'm a Try Something, OK?": Picked Up by the Boy and His Dog
In Upstate New York, I used to run 4 miles from home to Wilbur Park, then down East Street to Maple, and home again. One afternoon I was about halfway through the run, when I saw a young kid, a...
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William Smith: the Bodybuilder of Laredo
Before Arnold Schwarzenegger gave the bodybuilder a human face, there were two kinds of roles available for him: Italian sword-and-sandal, and American beach bunny, an object of ridicule, vain, silly,...
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Razzle Dazzle:1970s Variety Shows
When I was a kid, I hated variety shows like Carol Burnett. even though the dancers wore tight pants. So I tried my best to avoid the several thousand comedy-variety hours that populated the late...
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My Babysitter's a Vampire
When you're a gay kid, the adults want desperately to believe that you don't exist, and they'll try their hardest to make you believe it, too. So the tv programs, movies, books, comics, and toys that...
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My Date or Trick with Mario in the White Room
In spite of my nostalgia-infused memories of West Hollywood as a paradise, it had some big problems. For one thing, it was completely segregated. Only 3% of its residents were black, 5% Asian, and...
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Superman: You'll Believe a Man Can Fly
Superman first flew in 1938, and for the next 40 years he had comic books, movie serials, cartoons, and radio and tv series, but no feature films. Nor, for that matter, did any superhero except for...
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