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Charlton Comics: More Gay Subtexts than Casper
When I was a kid in the 1960s, my staple was Harvey comics: gay-vague pacifist Casper the Friendly Ghost saving the world from science-fiction threats. I liked the Gold Key jungle comics, Little Lulu,...
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Country Boy #4: The Ex-Con
Nashville, August 1991I arrived in Nashville on August 18th, 1991, sad about leaving West Hollywood but looking forward to my new graduate program in Biblical Hebrew at Vanderbilt Divinity School. I...
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Chris Demetral: Dream On
Star Trek fans will recognize Chris Demetral from his role as Riker's son on a 1990 episode of The Next Generation. The 14-year old Michigan native had only been in Hollywood for two years, but he had...
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The Thirteenth Year
Every now and then the Disney Channel airs a movie over-brimming with teenage and young adult beefcake, only to hide it in a vault and refuse to release it on DVD, as if the network bigwigs find it...
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Tarik's First White Cop
Norfolk, Virginia, Summer 1993"Ok, my turn," Tarik says. "I'm going to tell you about my date with a blue-eyed demon."I'm in Norfolk visiting my friend Alan the Pentecostal Porn Star, his boyfriend...
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My Little Black Book
Someone asked "How can you remember all this stuff? Names, dates, the exact restaurant you went to?"Cruising in Tucumcari in 2004The Great Redneck Roundup of 1995.Having lunch with Michael J. Fox in...
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Oh, Calcutta!: The First Nudie Musical
The sexual liberation of the hippie generation led to a number of plays with momentary nudity and casual references to sex, but Oh! Calcutta! was all-sex, all-nude. It debuted off-Broadway in 1969 and...
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Cruising in New Mexico: The Tucumcari Twink, the Roswell Redneck, or the...
New Mexico, Summer 2004Remember my trip to visit Larry in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the summer of 2004? After four deplorable days, we had a gigantic argument, and I packed up my stuff and drove away,...
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Your Grandfather's Beefcake: Circus Acrobats
Back before physique magazines, Johnny Weissmuller movies, and superhero comics, there were few options for beefcake: J.C. Leyendecker's magazine ads, statues of Greek gods -- and the circus.The 3...
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February 2016: An Ex-Student Naked in the Locker Room
Plains, February 2016When I first arrived in the Plains, twinks were approaching me right and left. I couldn't walk through the student union without getting a dozen cruisy smiles. I couldn't go on...
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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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12 Valentine Dates, Boyfriends,and Hookups
My least-favorite holiday is Christmas, but Valentine's Day comes a close second: a corporate-controled paeon to heterosexual desire, with millions of male-female couples paraded out to proclaim that...
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February 1987: My Celebrity Boyfriend and I Hook Up With....
West Hollywood, February 1987Valentine's DayI've been dating the Celebrity, a former teen idol (I promised not to reveal his name), for a little over a month, and he's met almost all of my West...
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Skeezix of Gasoline Alley: 1930s Gay Icon
When I was a kid in the 1960s, Dad would call me Skeezix when I misbehaved:"Put down that comic book and clean your room, Skeezix!"Particularly when my misbehaving had some connection to same-sex...
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Michael Landon, Gay Ally
Michael Landon arrived in Los Angeles at age 19 and immediately started landing roles as tortured outcasts and juvenile delinquents, such as the gay-vague protagonist in I Was a Teenage Werewolf...
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Steven Ford: from President's Son to Soap Hunk
Born in 1956, Steven Ford was the youngest son of Gerald Ford, President of the United States from 1974 to 1977. By that time he was in college far from the White House, studying ranching at Utah...
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Public Cruising in Mississippi in 1984
August 22, 1984I've just finished my M.A. degree, and I'm on my way south to Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, a far northern suburb of Houston, where I will be teaching English at Lone Star State College. I...
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The Goldenboy in the Attic: Jeb Stuart Adams
There are lots of threatened gay-vague kids in movies and tv, but not many are threatened by their own parents. Flowers in the Attic (1987) is an exception. It was based on a 1979 novel by Virginia...
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Kyle XY
In the spring of 2006, ABC Family started showing ads about a new series, with a teenage boy raising his shirt to display his abs.Oh, wait, is he supposed to be showing us that he lacks a belly button?...
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A Boy, a Man, and a Caribbean Island: Two Stories of Hookups Gone Wrong
Norfolk, Virginia, Summer 1993"Ok, I'm going to tell you about the white boy who turned me into the fine, upstanding gay man you see today," Sandy says.Alan, his partner Sandy, their friend Tarik, and...
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