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14 Shirtless Stanleys of "A Streetcar Named Desire"
A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams (1947), is probably the most-beloved American play of all time. It's staged incessantly in big cities and small towns; it's been filmed six times, it's...
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My Celebrity Boyfriend, The Director, and the Cute Young Thing
West Hollywood, March 1987The Celebrity and I have been dating for over two months, and I still haven't met any of his friends! Friends always want to meet a new boyfriend, to make sure he's good...
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March 2016: Hooking Up on the Basis of a Beneath-the-Belt Photo
Last week I was sick with the stomach flu, and spent 3 days in my apartment, binge watching Fargo and eating toast. On the 4th day I was well enough to go back to the gym, lift weights, and have lunch...
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The Lost Bodybuilder Cop of Tulsa, Oklahoma
This was the cover photo of a book on constitutional law. A sculpture of family of muscular naked people about to be squished by a scary giant hand.Where did it come from? I wondered. Was it part of...
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Matt's First Night with Fred and His Brother
West Hollywood, March 1993Whenever a new boyfriend is admitted to a social group, he always has to tell his coming out story. It's a rite of passage. But in the five years we've known Matt, Fred's...
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Justin Bieber: DEFINITELY Gay
Former teen idol and contemporary pop star Justin Bieber is gay.I wouldn't dare say a bad word about him. Millions of his fans, nicknamed Beliebers, lash out against anyone who casts any aspersions on...
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The 10 Most Gay-Positive Nickelodeon Shows
Guys my age and older are always talking about a golden age, back when things were nicer, kinder, simpler, more innocent, interesting, authentic, creative, humane. They usually mean their childhoods,...
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The Teenager at the 40+ Party
When I first moved to the Plains, faced with the absence of gay organizations, gay churches, gay bars, or gay anything within a hundred miles, except for a single gay-friendly coffee house, I started...
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Lord of the Flies
The "boys alone" genre (White Water Summer, Toy Soldiers, Bless the Beasts and Children, The New People) usually features a group of teenage boys isolated from adult society, stripped down to their...
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Fargo, the Series: Homophobia, Heterosexism, and 70s-Bashing
I always get sensitive when people say "Life used to be so great, and now it's so terrible ! We cared about each other then! It was a simpler, more innocent time!"I have binge watched Fargo Season 2,...
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20 Blond Beach Boys, Boy Toys, Hookups, and Dates
I'm attracted to darker guys, dark skin, dark hair. Black, Hispanic, Asian, Middle Eastern, Greek, Italian. Blonds and redheads, not so much.Maybe because Rock Island had a huge Swedish population....
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Jimmy McNichol and the Gay Coach
Many gay teenagers in the late 1970s and early 1980s were more familiar with Jimmy McNichol's body than the bodies of their real-life friends. They saw it more often, tanned and pleasantly muscular,...
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The Blond God at the Gay-Friendly Coffee House
Plains, March 2016Earlier today I was on my way to the gay-friendly coffee house down the hill from my apartment. Just as I got to the side door, a red car pulled into an empty parking spot, and...
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Brian Krause: Not Charming on Charmed
When Brian Krause starred in Return to the Blue Lagoon (1991), yet another "discovering girls on a desert island" movie, there was a collective groan from West Hollywood. Sure, gay teens probably...
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The Vietnamese Twink at the Swedish Lutheran College
March 2014, St. Peter, MinnesotaI'm at a conference at Gustavus Adolphus College, a small Swedish Lutheran college in a small town on the Minnesota River. It's fun being immersed in my Lutheran roots....
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Finding the Gay Men in Old Photographs
I love finding beefcake in old photographs: hard chests, bulging biceps, perhaps a hint of beneath-the-belt gifts, men and boys caught at a moment of time a century or more ago, bright with promise and...
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Weird Science
The 1985 movie Weird Science was terrible, an entry in the "sex with the babysitter" genre that featured nontop assertions that gay people don't exist. But strangely enough, the spin-off tv series...
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Spring 1996: The Bear and the College Boy
San Francisco, Spring 1996Lane and I were living in San Francisco, gay heaven. I was 35 years old, far beyond my twink years. He was 40, graduated to Daddy.Our best friend was probably Drake, the...
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Carl Sandburg's Two Gay References
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) was from Galesburg, 60 miles south of Rock Island, so my teachers loved him. I didn't.Although he does look nice naked.It seems that every English, language arts, writing, and...
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Zack Hooks Up with the Prince of Sweden
Providence, Rhode Island, Spring 2000I''m in graduate school in New York. Zack the Photographer, who I met four years ago when he was dating Drake the teddy bear artist, is now enrolled in the MFA...
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