The ten best and ten worst Gemstones episodes, from the incredible "Wicked Lips" to the nonsensical, queerbaitiing "Burn For Burn, Stripe for Stripe"

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Jensen Gering: Fans say that he's gay, and played a gay singer on Nickelodeon. Are they right? With his brother, dad, Giovanni Ribisi, and Drake Bell

 

I found a file named "Jason Gehring" at the bottom of my "profiles to do."   There are several Jason Gehrings out there: a baker with a Grindr profile, a nurse from Milwaukee, an artist from Germany, and a history student from Syracuse, but none of them look like this.

Could it be "Jensen Gering" (no h), who has 70 pages of photos on the teen idol site?  A brief google reveals that Jensen is either gay in real life or played a gay character in a teencom called Erin and Aaron, or both, so let's try a profile.

Jensen's bio states that he is a singer, songwriter, guitarist, model (began at age one) and actor (began at age 13), and he's the son of the celebrities Galen Gering and Jenna Gering.

Great, two more people whom everyone in the world has heard of except me. 

Dad Galen Gering (left) was born in Los Angeles in 1971, to incredibly famous parents whom I have never heard of.  

He is a model, filmmaker, and soap opera star, best known as Rafe Hernandez on Days of Our Lives: an FBI agent whose girlfriends are variously are kidnapped, trapped in abusive relationships, sociopaths, and dying of a brain tumor.  

He takes off his shirt a lot, a requisitie for soap studs.

Mom Jenna Gering  got her start as a model at age 14.  Then she studied theater and journalism at the University of Miami, and started her acting career in a 2000 episode of Baywatch.   She has 23 credits listed on the IMDB, including episodes of Two and a Half Men, The King of Queens, Castle, Miami Sands, and Bent (not the one about gay men in a Nazi concentration camp).

Brother Dillon (left) hasn't done any acting except for an uncredited hospital kid on his dad's soap, and the reality series Dirty Soap (2011), with the dirt on soap opera stars. Galen and Jenna's dirt: they eloped to Las Vegas instead of having a church wedding.  Quelle horreur!

Jensen grew in a theatrical environment, so he was naturally drawn to acting.  He has six credits, including:

The Confab (2019): Fading child stars Ryker Baloun  and Jensen compete for the last role they'll get before adolescence renders them unemployable.  Poor guy, already a has-been in his first real acting job.

Wickensburg (2022): "an extremely formulaic and predictable mess of a family adventure" about an extremely blond woman and her young son (Jensen) moving to a small town full of extremely silly paranormal secrets.With townsfolk named Willow Darkwood and Mr. Hexenmeister, what do you expect?  

Left: Mr. Wilson is played by Maurice Dean Wint, seen here in Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001): he has covered his crotch with Gummi Bears to shows the future Hedwig his erotic interests. 

Wickensburg got two sequels, a Return (2024) and an upcoming Secrets of.   No plot synopses online, but the trailer shows Jensen with The Girl of His Dreams. 

Sigh.  Let's check to see if Google is right about Jensen's Erin and Aaron character being gay.

It was a 2023 Nickelodeon teencom about two polar opposites, the sensitive, artistic Aaron (Jensen) and the wild, uninhibited Erin (Ava Ro), becoming stepsiblings when their parents marry (isn't that the premise of Drake and Josh?)  

Their disparate personalities cause friction, and their shared interest in music (piano and guitar, respectively) results in competition more often than not. For instance, Aaron can't buy a new piano because the music store owner hates Erin.

Annoying next door neighbor Hunter (Luca Diaz) stalks them both: he wants to be best friends with Aaron and date Erin.

Reviews were awful, and viewership was in 100,000 range (in contrast, Drake and Josh episodes averaged 3-5 million viewers).  13 episodes were filmed, but only 11 were aired.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

20 musclemen who guided me through the Age of Innocence, from Bomba the Jungle Boy to the American Psycho

 This is a nostalgic journey through the musclemen who gave me my first hints that same-sex desire existed, and guided me from junior high through college and to West Hollywood. They provided a joy that transcended aesthetic pleasure, telling gay kids that we belonged.  We were welcome. 

Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy guide.

In your most need I'll be by your side.

1. Johnny Sheffield played Bomba the Jungle Boy on Tarzan Theater every Saturday afternoon when there wasn't a game.  I never actually made it through a whole movie -- they were dreadfully heterosexist.  But there was always time for those gleaming black-and-white muscles, especially when he was tied up.

2. Bruce Lee.  He died in 1973, but his movies were playing constantly on Kung Fu Theater, and everybody's older brother had his beefcake poster on his bedroom wall.

3. Michael Forest played a god of masculine beauty (literally the God Apollo) on an episode of Star Trek which I saw sometime in the 1970s.

4. Denny Miller. Moments of gay promise as a surfer and a jungle man on Gilligan's Island.

5, David Naughton.  The cutest guy of the Disco Era showed us his dick and butt in in American Werewolf in London (1981).  Plus he also gave us a strong gay subtext in spite of the 1980s homophobia.

6. Yukio Mishima.  It wasn't hard to find gay-themed books in the early 1980s.  Just look for "evil" or "hidden" in the title.  So I found Confessions of a Mask, with Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima's obsession with male muscles, sex, and death.  

7. Arnold Schwarzenegger.  The 1980s start and end with Arnold, who single-handedly brought bodybuilding into the mainstream and made it respectable.

8.  Sylvester Stallone gave him a little help with his grunting, sweat-soaked Rambo and Rocky.  We saw his dick in The Italian Stallion, a recast of his early porn movie.  

9. John Amos.  Gordy the Weatherman on Mary Tyler Moore, a warrior in a Conan rip-off that we all saw, and my gym buddy.

10. Lou Ferrigno, who played a muscular green Hulk against Bill Bixby's David Banner, dropped by often when I was working at Muscle & Fitness.  Did I mention our hookup?

More after the break

Pontius Gemstone, the Boy Named Stacy, and the Erotic Alphabet. With a special appearance by Gideon Gemstone.

Previous: "My Three Gay Sons and...ugh...Vance Simkins": A Jesse Gemstone Adventure, with Guest Star Karl Montgomery

A: Anal

B: Bondage

C: Cock sucking

D: Docking

E: Edging

F: Feet

G: Golden showers

Stacy awoke with Pontius' arms wrapped around him, his head on Pontius' chest, and his hand cupping his butt cheek.  Pontius was aroused, rock hard, his gorgeous cock rising into the air like a flagpole!  Stacy couldn't help reaching down to stroke it.  

"Mmm...keep doing that."  His eyes still closed, Pontius took Stacy's hand and helped him squeeze harder.  

"Sorry, I didn't know you were awake."

"I try not to sleep when you're lying in my arms.  I don't want to miss any of it."  He leaned up, and they kissed, both of them hard and pressing together.

"Good morning."  Pontius' gaze was intense, yet warm, comforting, loving.  

"I love you," Stacy said.

Instead of saying "I love you" back, Pontius moved down and started sucking his cock!  "Well, this says love, doesn't it?," he thought as Pontius' tongue darted around the head, and his lips moved up and down the shaft.  Or maybe it doesn't.  It says that he likes cocks.

Suddenly Pontius leapt out of bed.  "Be right back -- gotta pee."  He bounced to the bathroom, his cock still sticking out in front of him.

 While listening to the pee-sounds  -- why was that erotic?  -- Stacy looked around the room: New dresser, desk cluttered with books and headphones, a map of the world taped to the wall, drawings of car designs, a bookcase with mostly Matchbox car models, three dusty guitars that no one had ever used, a glowing neon P.  

Pontius had replaced a poster of a bikini babe with a muscleman because Stacy asked him to, and cleared a drawer for some shirts, socks, and underwear, but it was still his room, Pontius with capital P, in the house he shared with his brother. 

They met last July, when Stacy was shot in the Gator Farm Massacre, and Pontius visited him at the hospital.  Since they, they had hung out almost every day.  

There were movies, concerts, plays, Queer Youth Game Nights. dinner at Jason's Steakhouse after church, volunteer work, a Halloween Party, Thanksgiving with Stacy's family, Christmas with the Gemstones, New Year's Eve in Myrtle Beach -- yet whenever Stacy hinted at moving in together, or getting their own place, Pontius deflected, changed the subject, or bounced out of the room, and God forbid he say "I love you."  Did he think of Stacy as a boyfriend or a buddy? 

Sound of the water running, a towel being yanked, and then Pontius rushed out of the bathroom.  How was he still aroused?  

"So, what were we talking about?"

"Me on my stomach, I think," Stacy said.

"No, on your back. I want to look at you."

More after the break

Russell Posner: The incredibly cute gay teen of "The Mist" plays a politician, gets tied up, shows his dick, and vanishes. With bonus nude Morgan Spector and Jack Black

I used this photo of an incredibly well hung guy as an  illustration for my profile of the Norwegian Fire Viking.  He looks a lot like the incredibly cute Russell Posner, so I thought I would do a profile, on the off chance that they are the same person.

Turns out that the incredibly cute Russell Posner is not too easy to track down.

Famous Birthdays promises "A complete biography," but the complete biography consists of: "Canadian actor, born in 2003." 

Rotten Tomatoes adds: "began acting in commercials while in elementary school, and made his stage debut in Lost in Yonkers in 2012." When he was nine years old?

Broadway World likewise promises a "complete biography," and says only that he starred in The Mist.

His listing on We Audition says only that he's a "New York based actor" 

Trying to find him by googling "Russell Posner" and any of "high school," "college," "theater," "commercials," "Canada," and "actor" yields a guy from Florida who died at age 77 and a postdoctoral researcher in oncology.

Plus a shirtless photo of an incredibly cute guy who doesn't look like him.

Russell has 14 acting credits listed on the IMDB, beginning with the 11 year old son in Eugene! (2012), a tv movie starring Eugene Mirman.

He played the 14-year old son of  Dan Landsman (Jack Black) in The D Train (2015).  Dan is organizing a high school reunion, and tries to get the most popular guy in school, Oliver (James Marsden), to come.  They end up doing some incredibly sexy stuff, but the buns belong to Dan as he gets up from a tryst with his wife.

Next Russell played the son of a journalist who decides to research The Pirates of Somalia (2017).

Russell's most famous work to date is in The Mist (2017), based on the Stephen King novel.  I just read the plot synopsis on the fan wiki, but it sounds incredibly homophobic:

As a murderous mist descends upon the town, high school Adrian (Russell) is at a party with his girlfriend, getting bullied for being gay (wait, that doesn't...).  Later while taking refuge in a hospital, he kisses Tyler (Chris Gray), who beats him up, then relents and agrees to sex.

He is kidnapped by a psych ward patient who sees "the incredible evil" in him.  They must mean being gay.

His Dad says that he could have loved him "in spite of being gay,"  if only he were "right in the head."  In spite of?  

More after the break

Dashiell Messick: A homophobic tv mom, a gay brother, a pretty princess outfit, and a hunky male au pair, all before his 12th birthday

 

I don't usually profile preteen actors, because they won't have played any gay characters yet, and it's impossible to tell whether the buddy-bonding in their private lives is romantic or platonic.  But Dasheill Messick, age 11, played the son of gay dads and has made some explicitly femme fashion choices.  That's enough for a profile of Dashiell and his twin brother Fox. 

 

Plus there are some cute adults in their lives, like their Argentine au pair  (top photo and left), and their hot dad (below).

Mom Kacy Andrews , the CEO of Bigfoot Entertainment, has documented the twins' career since their gestation.  She is infertile (and an advocate of infertility awareness), so a friend of 25 years, her soul mate and part of her chosen family, offered to become her surrogate.   They only implanted one frozen embryo, but on December 5, 2014, twins came out!  

The two began appearing in tv commercials at the age of two months, and in 2016 won the role of Tommy Fuller Jr. on the Full House sequel Fuller House (2016-20).  They appeared in 75 episodes, moving from baby to toddler.

Tommy Jr. is the son of focus character DJ and her deceased husband.  He has two brothers, Jackson (Michael Campion, top) and Max (Elias Harger, left).

I profiled the grown-up Elias, and decided that he is probably gay, but there were no gay regular characters on the show.  Showrunner Candace Cameron Bure is vociferously homophobic, and insisted that her show be "family friendly", that is, heterosexual only.  They did manage to cast trans actor Miss Benny (then presenting as male) as a gay high schooler in two episodes, but cautioned that Candace would try to fire her. So don't speak to any of the Fuller adults, don't look directly at Candace, and prepare for a firestorm of hate from her homophobic core fans. Gee, I think I'd give that role a miss.

Tommy's main plot arc involves getting therapy for being a "late talker,"  reflecting the twins' real-life speech delay.

While starring on Fuller House, the twins, alone or together, had other acting gigs:

The music video Sunrise Sunset (2018) with the song from Fiddler on the Roof covered by Juan Pablo di Pace (left).  He's straight but played a gay guy in The Mattachine Family.   Elias Harger, Adam Hagenbuch, and Michael Campion from Fuller House also appeared, presumably growing older to the lyrics.

Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears

An episode of Grey's Anatomy (2019) as a child whose mom overdoses and abandons him.  A bystander brings him to the hospital, where the doctors advise keeping him away from mom until she gets help.

Two episodes of the DIY show Home & Family (2019), with Mark Steins as the co-host.

An episode of  Danger Force (2020), starring Cooper Barnes as a wacky superhero.  His Danger Force of teen superheroes kidnap a toddler, thinking that he is a baby-faced supervillain.  Eventually they track down his dads and return him.

More after the break

Aidan Merwarth: Finn's wannabe boyfriend, pencil factory exec, juvenile delinquent, brat, with 3 d*cks and inconclusive social media

In Season 2 of Unprisoned, gay-coded Finn (Faly Rakotohavana) and his family go to group therapy. Mom complains  that he spends all day online, not interacting with anyone in real life, so he'll never "fall in love, get married, and have a nice life."  I'm not getting into the assumption that you have to be married to have a nice life.  The therapist assigns Finn to "make a friend," presumably a friend that he could fall in love with.

He invites Spencer (Aidan Merwarth), to his room but doesn't want to play video games or watch tv or anything.  Dude, if you're not going to make out with him, at least give him something to do.

Spencer plays with his phone for awhile, gets bored, calls Finn a "baby" (you wanted a real man?), and leaves.  He re-appears at the college fair to taunt Finn again. Well, can you blame him?  Dude thought he was going to get at least some smooching, and maybe some beneath-the-belt action.

Finn remains gay-vague, his sexual identity unconfirmed through two seasons.  

I wanted to know about this guy who is playing a gay subtext or maybe gay-text teenager.

He was born in July 2002, and grew up in San Antonio, where he weas homeschooled.  So either he's a fundamentalist Christian, or he goes on so many auditions that he has no time for school. 

 

He has 133 friends on Facebook.  

He's an acrobatic gymnast.  In 2015, at the International Acro Cup in Poland. Aidan and his sister Devon won second place in the mixed pair 11-16 age range

He attended the Los Angeles Film School, graduating with a B.S. in Animation in 2025.

He has eight acting credits on the IMDB.

A Girl Named Jo (2019). on Brat TV, features two girls trying to unravel a mystery at Attaway High School in 1963.  Aidan appears in four episodes as Felix, apparently Jo's boyfriend.

Another Brat TV series, Crazy Fast (2019), has a group of outsiders join the track team at Attaway High. Colin McCalla (left) stars.  Aidan plays Eamon, a runner "whose past with Rowan threatens everything."

Another straight guy, darn it.

The Forgotten Place is a short about Eric (Jeff Locker), who wants a friend.  He finds one (Brian Flaccus), but apparently he means a platonic friendship.

In Saving Paradise (2021), a "ruthless corporate executive" (William Moseley) has to return to his small town when he inherits his father's struggling pencil factory. At Christmastime.  He has to save it and win The Girl (named Charlie, just to fool you into thinking there's a gay romance).

So Paradise is a pencil factory?  I guess it beats saving the annual Christmas festival.  Aidan plays the  rutless corporate executive as a teenager, already in love with The Girl.

But a pencil factory?  When was the last time you used a pencil?  Or saw one?

More after the break

20 gay and gay-friendly teen actors: a fierce, fabulous Barbie boy, Pugsley Addams, Harvey Milk, a Russian bodybuilder with a cat,....

I usually profile teen idols after they've graduated to adult hunkiness, but sometimes I can't wait: they're playing gay characters, going to Pride events, wearring  femme/fabulous outfits, or hugging their boyfriends while still teenagers.  Their openness to gay potential gives me hope for a less homophobic future.  I won't look for or post n*de photos, of course, but I usually include some adult co-stars to keep things interesting.

1. Taylor Gregory: At 17, the fierce, fabulous Barbie boy had grown up to become a bodybuilder and fundamentalist. 

2. Alfie Williams (left), star of 28 Years Later and 28 Years Later: Bone Temple, is 15 as of this writing, but hangs out with a surprising number of gay guys, who call him "one of the girls"

3. Eldon Jones: Actor in gay projects, dancer, artist with a gay brother and a pink shirt. 

4. Isaac Ordonez (not pictured). The sweet, sensitive, queer-coded Pugsley Addams on Wednesday dates dudes.

5. Alkaio Thiele. The wizard in training on Beyond Waverly Place and Kayden Koshelev (below) used to be an item.

6. Kayden Koshelev (left). Drag boy and nonbinary firetruck, Alkaio's Other Half before their breakup. Not to worry, he's moved on.

7. Recker Eans. The gaydar boy on Beyond Waverly Place drums in gay-friendly videos and sings in a boy band with gay-friendly songs.

8. Bentley Storteboom (not pictured). His name and physique had me fooled.  I thought he was 25, and Dutch.

9. Benjamin Pajak (right) played six gay characters before age 15, and sang as Harvey Milk.

More after the break

Ben Pajak plays the gay kids of Wolverine and Paul Blart, Harvey Milk, Max von Essen's buddy, and a gay Corey Haim. But is he...

The Lost Boys (1987) starred teen idol Corey Haim (right) as Sam, a teenager trying to save his older brother (Jason Patric, left) from a pack of motorcycle-riding, leather jacket-wearing vampires. Sam is as gay as you could portray in the homophobic 1980s:he takes a bubble bath, has a poster of heartthrob Rob Lowe on his bedroom wall, wears a "Born to Shop" t-shirt, and sings that "I'm a lonely girl, ain't got a man."  That's not enough for most fans, of course, who proclaim loudly, "Straight guys do that!  It doesn't make him gay!"

Left: Jason Patric's butt and cock, or maybe the cock of his partner.  I can't tell their gender from the photo.

A musical version of the iconic film opened on Broadway in April 2026, with the same plotline: single Mom Lucy and her two sons move to Santa Carla, the murder capital of the West Coast, where older brother Michael (LJ Benet), falls in with a crowd of rock star vampires.  But 40 years have passed, and his relationship with the vampire David (Ali Louis Bourzgui) can be openly homoerotic:

Wanna get you alone / Caress your collarbone / No preacher would condone / What I would do to you, baby

And now younger brother Sam (Benjamin Pajak) can be overtly, obviously, coming-out speech gay:

Maybe I can be a hero here/ And make it cool to be queer/ Maybe that's my superpower.

Wait -- Benjamin Pajak.    Wasn't he in Playdate?   Paul Blart is trying to de-gay his shirt-raiser stepson Lucas  (Ben) by teaching him football, when they run into Reacher and his sociallly awkward son CJ (Banks Pierce).  The two boys hit it off instantly, so the dads arrange a playdate.  But government agents or evil corporate clones are after CJ, and...it gets weirder and weirder, with multiple plot holes, but dang it, those boys are obviously into each other.  They do everything but kiss.  

That's one gay and one "an inch away from flying a Pride Flag" role.  I need to do a profile of this kid.

Benjamin Pajak was born in March 2011, in Westfield, New Jersey, about 20 miles from Manhattan.   The family is Jewish but not observant.  The Paper Mill Theater was across the back yard, so acting and singing were an ever-present part of life. 

He made his Broadway debut  in The Music Man (2021): con artist Harold Hill (Wolverine Hugh Jackman, left) wooes the prim-and-proper Marian the Librarian.  Her younger brother  Winthrop (Ben) rejects a date request from a girl and speaks with a gay-stereotype lisp, which he overcomes with Harold's mentorship. If I was writing a scholarly article about musicals, I'd have a lot of fun queering that text.

Three gay and gay-light roles so far.

In June 2023, Ben performed as the Young Harvey in the oratorio I am Harvey Milk, about the assassinated gay rights leader. 

Four for four, Ben Baby.

He has also performed in Oliver!, Golden Rainbow, Nine, and Ragtime.  His songs appear in four albums: Rails, Figaro, The Music Man, and Christmas Time in the City.

More after the break.