Jonathan Tison: Short, obviously gay Harrison Houde lookalike with a boyfriend, a chest, and cock pics. Well, at least one of those.

This one wasn't my fault.  I saw the Instagram recommendation while on my cell phone: Jonathan Tillson, a cute short guy who looks like Harrison Houde, Bowie on Some Assembly Required.  Plus he has beefcake shots, and he's obviously gay -- the first 12 photos on his Instagram show him hugging, riding the back of, and visiting Greece with his boyfriend.  Perfect for a profile!    

But when I returned on my laptop, the recommendation was gone, and Jonathan Tillson is a white-haired comedian from Boston.  

Maybe Tillotson?  Or John instead of Jonathan?

It took a lot of sleuthing, including going through my search history and cache, to find short, obviously gay actor Jonathan Tison.

I like profiling little-known, obscure actors rather than superstars, and  Jonathan has only five acting roles listed on the IMDB:

A 2014 episode of the true-crime docuseries Snapped: In Mississipi in 2006, a woman killed her estranged husband, but talked her thirteen-year old half-brother (played by Jonathan) into confessing to the crime. 

A 2018 episode of the true-crime docuseries Murder Calls: In Oklahoma in 2011, a woman claims that an intruder broke into the house and killed her husband, but actually she did it.  Jonathan plays Young Tim, but there's no Adult Tim in the cast list.

A 2018 episode of the true-crime docuseries Murder By Numbers. Dallas cops track down the Eyeball Killer.  Jonathan plays the teenage Eyeball.

You're getting typecast, buddy.

Jonathan wrote, directed, and starred in two shorts:

Fade From View (2025): A teenager (Jonathan), "caught in the fallout of his parents' divorce," goes to live with his grandfather.  They bond "in the stillest hours past midnight."

Left: I think this is Jonathan's backside.

At least it doesn't begin "After the death of...", like 90% of these vanity projects.

Joint Hatred for Paul (2025): Writing partners Noah (Jonathan) and Ava discuss how much they hate Paul Shoeman (not a real person, and not in the cast list).

.

But wait -- there's more.  Jonathan has a personal website where he identifies as an "actor, singer, dancer, adventurer" from Knoxville, Tennessee, who began performing at age nine, and has worked on professional, regional, and LORT stages.  He specializes in "The Earnest Boy-Next-Door, whose infectious smile tries to distract from the truth his eyes can't hide."  

His resume lists ten theatrical credits, but most are identified as "family-friendly," which means "heterosexuals only."  I'll check those that don't have the FF label:

Double Helix, a musical about the woman who helped discover the structure of DNA, while facing misogyny and anti-semitism. Jonathan played her coworker, Raymond Gosling, who was straight in real life.

Titus Andronicus.  He played Lucius, son of the violent warrior-king.  Straight.

Urinetown has no specifically gay characters, but sometimes productions play up the gay subtexts.  But Jonathan's character, Bobby Strong, gets The Girl.

Left: Bobby was played by  Richard Fleesman in the London production.

She Loves Me: Jonathan played Arpad, the teenage delivery boy who has a gay-subtext bond with shop owner Maraczek in this ancestor of You Got Mail. 

One gay-subtext role out of 15 theatrical and on-screen performances is not a great record, Jon Baby.  But at least you're going to show us your cock, right?

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit

Peter Berlin: "That Boy" uses his physique and his cock to show us the wonder of the Gay World

His actual name was Peter Berlin, but all you needed to say was That Boy, and the old guys of West Hollywood (that is, men over 30) would remember: the Boy sunning himself on the beach, the "Dancing Queen" at the disco, the leatherman glaring from the back bar, all blond hair, bronze muscles, and hard cock.

He was not handsome -- actually, he had an unremarkable long horse-face.  Nor was he blond. And the world he traveled was more often graffiti- and gang-strewn Tenderloin than the Fire Island of the A-gays.  But that didn't matter.  You saw him half on screen, half in your dreams.

There was no such thing as a closet in Peter Berlin's world, no such thing as homophobia.  Only endless nights of cruising -- but not the meaningless, destructive tricks that the straights condemned us for.  A glorious sexual freedom that was, in itself, fulfilling enough to be the sole purpose of life.

 

 That Boy (1974) was a defining moment of my coming out, the first gay porn film I ever saw, in 1984, during my second year in grad school at Indiana University.  My friend Viju and I drove into Indianapolis to go to the bars, and someone invited us to see it with him.  There was a midnight showing in a sleazy theater near Monument Circle.

Peter is not actually the boy of That Boy.  He plays an unnamed sexual Everyman who wanders through the Castro and the Tenderloin of  a straight-free San Francisco, cruising on the street and in back rooms, looking at men, and being looked at.  He finds the gaze, being the object of desire, more glorious than the sex acts themselves.  But then he looks at That Boy, but the boy does not look back.

Could this be the one person in the Gay World who does not desire him?  No, the boy is blind!  Peter is intrigued, and invites him for coffee and conversation. They walk hand in hand through the park and sit by the pond to look at (or hear) the ducks, making a romantic connection before heading to the back room.

Peter was born Armin Hagen Freiherr von Hoyningen-Huene. the son of a baron, in December 1942, and raised in Berlin, in a family of diplomats and fashion photographers.   After secondary school, he worked as a photographer for a German interview program, met famous people like Alfred Hitchcock and Brigitte Bardot, and cruised.  

A double life, respectable by day, sleazoid by night, was a standard part of the gay experience in the 1960s, when straights and gays alike believed that we were destined to be permanent outsiders, constantly hiding, denizens of a seedy underworld.  But Armin took pride in being gay.  He cruised in outfits of his own design, photographed himself and his tricks, turned the gay sex act into a work of masculine beauty,

More after the break.  

Daniel DiMaggio: The queerbaiting boy of "American Housewife" grows up to play Count Chocula and post n*de photos

 

You may be familiar with Daniel DiMaggio, no relation to Joe DiMaggio, as Oliver Otto on American Housewife (2016-21).  I never heard of it, but I wouldn't have watched anyway.  Who wants to watch a sicom about June Cleaver or Donna Reed?  

It starred Katy Mixon as Katie Otto, a housewife who, although not pretentious herself, is immersed in the ultra-pretentious world of ladies who lunch in Westport, Connecticut, along with her husband (Diedrich Bader), two daughters, and son Oliver (Daniel). 

She has a lesbian best friend, and there's a gay character (Jake Choi) in Season 5, so there's a bit of representation.  The main problem fans had was queerbaiting Oliver.  

He is presented as gay, with everything from pictures of muscular men on his bedroom wall to an interest in ballet to a boyfriend, the wealthy, femme Cooper (Logan Bell).  Everyone thinks they are boyfriends, anyway, including Cooper himself, who is upset every time Oliver claims that they are not dating.  But then he backs off and gets a girlfriend.  

Logan Bell (the femme one) is gay in real life, and states that he played Cooper as gay.  So why five seasons of "crumbs" that led nowhere?  Fans were irate when the showrunners were too cowardly to let Oliver come out.

Daniel already has two strikes against him (baseball metaphor, har har) for five years of queerbaiting.  Let's check on his other projects.

He was born in 2003 in Los Angeles, and began acting at age nine in the short Geisho (2010): a man (Horatio Sanz) wants to become the world's first male geisha.  Kind of gender-fluid.

Next, a 2013 episode of Burn Notice, which, I discovered today, is not about a hospital burn unit, in spite of the misleading title.  It's about a spy who was "burned" (fired). How the heck are potential viewers supposed to know that?   Daniel plays the young version of focus character Michael (Jeffrey Donovan). 

More after the break

Oliver Arnold plays a gay Irish lad, Gatsby, and a lot of cowboys. Or at least models them. With his chest, two backsides, and two co-star cocks

   

I was researching the upcoming movie Last House (August 2026), looking for actors who had played gay characters or were gay in real life, when Oliver Henry Arnold,  drew my attention.  This photo seems to depict two Irish immigrants of the early 20th century in a chummy pose.  Could they be boyfriends?  But what movie or tv show features a gay romance in steerage en route to Ellis Island?

Oliver's instagram posts consist mostly of beefcake poses accompanied by little inspirational quotations: 

"Pleasures, when they go beyond a certain limit, are but punishment." - Marcus Aurelius

“Don’t waste your time looking back. You’re not going that way.” - Ragnar Lothbrok, a Viking hero of the 9th century.

“Two are better than one because they have a more satisfying return for their labor; for if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion." -- the Book of Ecclesiastes

“A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course of victory” -- not attributed

Oliver also posts scenes from his roles playing a Jazz Age Gatsby type, the Irish lad in steerage, and cowboys -- a lot of cowboys.  He must star in a lot of Westerns.  But according to his resume, he graduated from Eastbourne College, Oxford (a secondary school) in 2018.  That doesn't give him much time for costume dramas.  

And his resume lists only one starring role, a short entitled The Two Gambits (2024):  Walter (Herbert Forthuber) tells his therapist that many years ago, his wife left him to live with her boyfriend, taking her five year old daughter, Ava. He told his young son Isaac (Oliver) that they died.  

Isaac grew up angry and resentful, and finally left home, telling him "Do not try to find me."  Years later, he returns, looks up his long-lost sister, and asks her to pose as a therapist to determine why "Dad killed our mother."

Isaac never expresses any heterosexual interest, so I'm going to list him as gay by default.

The IMDB lists three upcoming roles: 

The Caged (in post-production) is based on "true events" at The Cage in St. Osyth, Essex. In the 1580s, it was a holding cell for women accused of witchcraft; then it became the town lockup (for drunks and petty criminals); and in the 1980s it became a private home.  Residents complained of slammed doors, footsteps, strange objects appearing, disembodied voices, and a face with "an evil grin." 

 Edmund Kingsley, son of the suddenly-straight Sir Ben Kingsley, stars in the movie.  Oliver's character is near the bottom of the cast list. 

Wind of Change (completed): During the Cold War, Klaus Meine of the a German rock band called The Scorpions (Ludwig Trepte, left) wrote the titular song for his imprisoned friend Andrej (David Kross, below)  It became a symbol of hope during the Fall of the Berlin Wall. 

I follow the Moskva
Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change
An August summer night
Soldiers passing by
Listening to the wind of change

Sounds like there will be a gay subtext.  

Oliver plays Soldier #2.

More after the break