Robert Rhodes: The visual difference hasn't stopped him from playing a dragonrider, a cultist, and a thug, and finding a boyfriend (or two).

In House of the Dragon, the Game of Thrones prequel, the crowning of King Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) has led to civil war in the Medieval fantasy world of Westeros, and several dragons left without masters. In Episode 2.7  (2024), a group of Dragonseeds is  ordered to try to claim them.   Sorry, after researching two fan wiki and wikipedia, I'm still not sure who dragonseeds are, and why they have to be the ones to tame the dragons.

Silver Denys (Robert Rhodes) volunteers to go first, but as he reaches out to touch Vermithor the Bronze Fury, it breathes fire and incinerates him, along with most of the other dragonseeds. Finally a blacksmith named Hugh managed to trick the dragon into obedience.

Silver Denys was on screen for only about a minute, and had no lines, but he became the subject of extensive fan debate.  Was he brave or foolhardy?  Some fans also criticized his appearance: the stage makeup was amateurish, not realistic, grotesque, an obvious symbol of his incestuous parentage, and so on.  Others stepped up to "defend" him: it's his real appearance, he's  "deformed."

Robert called them out: "Call it a scar or a difference. The word deformed isn't very pleasant and insinuates I am half formed/incorrectly formed.  I'm not incorrect, just a bit different."

For a long time, Robert responded to the stares with anger, but now, if he's not tired from telling the story 1,000 times a day, he'll say "Is there anything you want to ask about?"  

The story: he was born with a congenital melanocytic nevis -- a birthmark that covered half his face.  Doctors worried that it would become cancerous, so he spent his childhood in and out of hospitals, undergoing tissue expansions and skin grafts.  He had his last surgery at age 17.

When he was in high school, Robert realized that he was gay, and worried that he'd be doubly stigmatized when he tried to make connections.  Would he ever be able to find a partner? Was he going to live as an perpetual outsider among his own people?

Then he auditioned for Hairspray -- and won the part of Link Larkin, the hunky heartthrob  (played by Zac Efron in 2007 and Garrett Clayton in 2016).   That's when he decided to become an actor, to have people look at him for his hotness and acting talent, not for his scar.

After high school Robert attended the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in South London, where he received a B.A. in Performance in 2018.  He started filling up a resume with acting roles:

Commercials for Enterprise  and Kandar 

The lead in the music videos Heroist (left)  and God for a Day 

Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame 

Bill Sykes in The Invitation 

It was a little harder to break into on-screen acting.  Robert is an ambassador for Changing Faces UK, which combats the stigma around people with visible difference.  Especially in mass media, where they are portrayed as "shy, broken, desperate" outcasts, or more commonly as villains:

Kylo Ren in the Star Wars universe

Tony Montana in Scarface   

Scar in The Lion King

The Joker.

So he tries to find roles where his visual difference is irrelevant to the character.

 His first  professional acting role was in a tv adaption of the Agatha Christie novel Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (2022).  Will Poulter plays as a golfer who stumbles upon a dying man.  His last words are "Why didn't they ask Evans?" I don't know what Robert's character does.

Next he played an orderly in three episodes of Masters of the Air (2024), which I thought was a steampunk series with dirigibles flying over London.  It actually stars Austin Butler, Callum Turner, and Anthony Boyle (left) as bomber pilots during World War II.

More after the break

Caspian Diament: With a name like Caspian, can we expect Narnia? Or at least some gay roles? With nude Dylan and Danish dicks

 

I wanted to profile Caspian Diament (not Diamant)  because of his unusual, rather scary eyes, and his odd name -- was he named after the Caspian Sea, which would make him Russian, or maybe Persian? 

No, he's American, born in Los Angeles, son of Debra Diament, former lead singer for The Januaries.  She is of Danish ancestry.

Ok, then, Prince Caspian in the Chronicles of Narnia?  

Caspian was born in 2006, and began acting in 2012, with roles in Faerie Tales and Dragons, Toy Shop, and Peter Pan, a lot of print ads (for "straight" jeans, har har), and some tv commercials.  

 He begins his on-screen career in 2013, playing  a variety of kids.  According to the demo reels on his resume:

Scared of a monster in the closet

An obnoxious gamer kid

Responding to a friend who has killed someone.

A supportive friend offering comfort

A touching father-son moment

Angrily confronting his parents

And a confident young prince in a school play.

He doesn't mention which of his 13 IMDB credits correspond to each performance, but I surmise that the Confident Young Prince  is from an episode This is Us (2016-22), about the problems of three adult siblings.  Tess, the daughter of Randall (Sterling J. Brown, left), is cast as Snow White in the school play.  She is black.  The white parents laugh, leading to a discussion of racism. 

Later the teenage Tess comes out as gay, and starts dating the nonbinary Alex.

A lesbian co-star?  Caspian is gay-adjacent, anyway.

As far as I can tell, Caspian's movie and tv characters have all been heterosexual or heterosexual-by-default.  Plus I found an annoying heterosexist reference: "Chicks dig me."  His Mom responds "That's what I've been saying since you were born."  When he was born, how did you even know that he liked chicks, lady?

But there are also gay references. In 2018, Caspian posts a video of his hip-hop class, with the taglines "Cute Boy.  Gay.  Artist."

Left: gay hiphop artist Milan Christopher.

More after the break

The Top 16 Short Guys from my Collection, from Ryan Pinkston to Gerran Howell. With dicks, butts, and exceptional gorgeousness

 I like them short, the shorter the better.  My boyfriend in West Hollywood was 5'4", and my current partner is 5'3".  If you're pushing toward 6'0", I'm not really interested.  So I've compiled quite a collection of short guy profiles.  Here are the top 16, some old favorites, some new discoveries.

1. Ryan Pinkston (left): Hottest of the Short Guy Brigade, martial artist, gigolo, gay cop. With some costar dicks

2. Jason Marsden: Second hottest of the Short Guy Brigade, Steve Smith, Max Goof, and Robin. With Marsden penis

3. Joe Mande: The incredibly gorgeous Ben on "Modern Family" writes for tv shows that I don't like, shows his junk but not his chest.

4.  Shayne Topp (left): Nickelodeon teen, Barry's buddy, bodybuilder, sketch comedian who pretends to be gay and have a massive d*ck. We'll see.

5. Travis Turner: Short Guy Brigade, gay subtexts, cutesy cartoons, Christmas romcoms, and hip-hop. With n*de photos and Drake Bell

6. Yani Xander: Headless ghost, Speechless body double, Telugu cop, hottest guy on the planet has a boyfriend and a tree-trunk

7. Matt Crabtree (left): Shy, quiet, stuttering Southern boy grows up to "Modern Family," "Will and Grace," one-man shows, and dicks

8. Eddie Ramos: Teen chimera with a boyfriend, gay cage fighter, probably gay artist, DMV short guy. With his butt and cock, of course.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Comic Books and Cocks at the Furniture Store. With bonus Desi guys

 When I was a kid, we drove to northeastern Indiana to visit my parents' relatives at least twice a year.  I loved it: haunted houses, hidden rooms, long-ago ghosts, endless fields and country roads, magic, glamour, the rough cold beauty of my uncles going hunting, the sleek shivering beauty of my cousins in the swimming pool, the delight of cuddling against Cousin Buster as we fell asleep in his narrow bed in the Trailer in the Dark Woods.  A sense of almost mystical belonging.

But as I grew, the sense of belonging faded away.  I began to find the visits boring or uncomfortable,  the world of northeastern Indiana more and more alien.

It wasn't just that I couldn't go home again.  What really hurt was, I didn't want to go back.

All tied up with that world was Harvey Comics  -- the ghosts, witches, devils, and other paranormal beings in the bucolic Arcadia of the Enchanted Forest.

You couldn't get them in Rock Island.  I had only the few that my Indiana relatives gave me, and memories of reading as many as possible in Cousin Buster's room while spending the night.

It never occurred to me for an instant that the stories were supposed to be funny.  I found them deadly serious.  Casper, Spooky, Wendy, and Hot Stuff fight space aliens, mad scientists, evil wizards, save their friends or the whole world countless times.

But really, the stories were irrelevant: it was the comics themselves, the physical books that I could hold in my hands and remember what Indiana used to mean.

One day when I was about ten years old, I asked Cousin Buster where he got his collection of Harvey Comics.  Were there stores with huge racks of them on open display?

"I get them at the Walgreens."

"We have Schneider's Drug Store in Rock Island, but all it has are Gold Key and superheroes.  Anyplace else?"

"Whenever I go to a movie, I check the comic books at Manuel's Newsstand next door."  

"No newsstands in Rock Island.  Where else?"

He thought for a moment, and then said "The furniture store."

"Furniture? Like davenports and dining room tables and junk?" 

"They have comic books, too."

It didn't seem logical, but Cousin Buster was two years older than me, and not a Nazarene, so he knew about all sorts of "worldly" things that I was kept from.  

"When I was a little kid, I didn't know that you could actually buy furniture," I told him.  "I thought it came with the house.  How could a store be big enough to display it?  What car could big enough to carry it home?"

"It comes in a big truck."

I started to fume.  Of course I knew that now.  Did he think I was a baby?

"And the guys who unload it -- they take their shirts off," he said in a low conspiratorial voice.

I was shocked.  Where did Cousin Buster get the idea that I liked looking at guys with their shirts off?  Only my boyfriend Bill knew about that.  It was shameful, a sissy thing, just for girls.    

I had to deflect, restore my masculinity.   Maybe with wieners?  Everybody liked looking at them.  Cousin Buster and I once climbed up into the loft in the barn to peek down at my uncle as he "cleaned his gun." 

"Do they take their pants off," I asked, "So you can see their wieners?"

He shrugged.  "Sometimes, if they're big enough."

So I could get Harvey comic books and see some wieners at the same time?

But how to convince Mom and Dad to take me to a furniture store? I couldn't say that I wanted to buy comic books there.  Or see naked men.

I had to talk them into buying a piece of furniture.

A new bed!

"I'm getting too big to sleep in the same bed with Kenny," I told them.  "I have a later bedtime, so every time I go to bed, I wake him up.  And he kicks!"

"Maybe you're right," Mom said.  "Boys your age shouldn't sleep together.  We'll go pick out two twin beds for you on Saturday."

Uh-oh.  Mom and Dad never took us shopping, except to buy new school clothes every August.  They left us with the neighbors, or one went shopping and the other stayed home.  But I had to actually go to the furniture store to get my comics and see the naked men!

"No!  We want to pick them out!  Me and Kenny.  To see..um....if they're cool enough."



I spent the week imagining the furniture store, with its racks of Harvey Comics, Casper, Spooky, Hot Stuff, Ghostland, Devil Kids, Witch World, an endless array of intriguing, brightly-colored covers and evocative stories.

I didn't spend any of my 25 cent allowance all week, and there'd be another 25 cents on Saturday morning.  Plus I found a dime on the floor, and I borrowed 50 cents from Bill for a total of $1.10.  I'd be broke for nearly a month, but I could buy 9 comic books!

On Saturday after breakfast we drove to a place called Carson Piri Scott, in Moline.  I remembered their ads on tv.  It was huge warehouse like structure with entire living rooms set up, like a hundred houses all crammed together.

"The beds are on the second floor," Mom said, steering us toward the escalator.

"Wait -- um...." Where were the comic books? The huge display case must be against an outer wall.  "Um....I have to go to the bathroom."

"Ok.  Do you want Dad to take you?"

"No, I see where it is.  I'll be up in a minute."

More after the break