It's a "Different World" than where you come from. There are gay guys at Hillman College now, with muscular physiques and cocks

In 1987, daughter Denice (Lisa Bonet) of The Cosby Show spun off into college, "A Different World than where you come from."  It aired between Cosby and Cheers, so we had no choice but to watch.  But no problem: there was a lot of beefcake -- I especially liked Short Guy Ron (Darryl M. Bell) -- and some gay-subtext buddy bonding; the snobbish aristocrat Whitley stole the show; and the historically black Hillman College was interesting, "a different world" to many viewers.

It wasn't actually a comedy, at least not after the first season, when Denice leftt and Whitley was promotd to focus character. The world became a cold, dark place, with episodes about sexual assault, abusive relationships, AIDS, and a lot of racism. I especially disliked the constant victimization of math major Dwayne Wayne (Kadeem Hardison), who for some inexplicable reason starts dating Whitley, his polar opposite. Eventually we stopped watching. No point in getting depressed every Thursday night.

Nearly 30 years later, a new generation of first-years has arrived at Hillman for a rebooted Different World on Netflix. The focus character is Deborah Wayne, the daughter of now-divorced Dwayne and Whitley.  Hillman is her safety school, even though her dad is provost or something --- all of the old gang have stuck around, and now have important jobs at the college.

A homophobic Redditer complained, "Why do they have to make 99% of the characters on every tv show gay? It's like straight people don't even exist anymore."  So let's look for the gay characters.  The character and episode descriptions on Netflix and Wikipedia offer some clues.

There are seven main male characters.  Five are identified as heterosexual:

Superstar basketball player Shaquille Johnson (Cornel Young IV, left), son of Short Guy Ron, chose Hillman against his dad's advice that he go to a Big 10 School and then turn pro. He starts dating Deborah.

Jalen (Elijah J. Roberts, left) is a "sexy point guard" on the basketball team, who starts dating Deborah's friend Hazel.

Ghanian-Nigerian fashion design major
Koji (Chbuikem Ujike, left) is in college only to please his parents. He actualy wants to drop out and start his own fashion company.  Sounds promising, but Netflix says that his main pastime is "charming girls."

Left: I went through the cast list, looking for nude photos of the male stars, and found Michael Vargas being oiled up in a video on XYMen.

More after the break

Yuchi Chiu: The naked man on Leighton's couch teaches special education, plays gay guys, likes penises. With three examples.

 

We're watching Dark Matter (2024-26), starring Joel Edgerton as Jason, as a struggling physics teacher who is kidnapped and zapped into a parallel world -- by himself! The Parallel World Jason invented a device that can zap you between worlds. He wanted Our Jason's wife and kid (the show is aggressively heteronormative), so he decided to for a switch. 

In Episode 1.4, Imposter Jason visits Leighton (Dayo Okiniyi), who funded the device back home. Here he's a partyboy living on his grandpa's trust fund.  As they talk in his swanky apartment, a naked person gets up from the couch and walks toward the bedroom.

"That's a naked man!" I exclaimed.  "Leighton is gay!"

"No way -- this series is entirely heteronormative," my partner countered. "It must be a woman." But he rewound the sequence.

"Look -- short hair, no hips."  

"I'm not sure.  They're in the background, and the scene lasts for a second."

I had to agree that it was very subtle, easy to miss if you weren't looking for it, but still, a queer code.

The naked man is listed on the IMDB as Yuchi Chiu.

Who has a beautiful physique.

According to his resume, Yuchi was born and raised in L.A., but moved to Chicago for college.  After receiving a B.A. in Communication and Commercial Music from Northwestern in 2015, and a M.A. in Special Education from Dominion in 2017, he became a teacher.

This isn't good: in 2017 Yuchi goes to church to hear one of his special education students sing, and hears Christian rapper Chancer give his testimony.  Sounds like our boy is on the fundamentalist side, which usually means homophobic.

Chance the Rapper's penis, in case you're interested.

While teaching, Yuchi starred in the short Audition: a down-and-out violinist (Amy Meek) seduces a conductor (Yuchi) to get a chair in his orchestra.

Rather a heteronormative start to your career, buddy. 

And BJ's Mobile Gift Shop: A young hustler (not that kind of hustler) makes the rounds in Chicago.

He also did some Calvin Klein modeling.

In 2022, Yuchi moved into full-time acting, with guest spots on Chicago Med and Stuck in Reality.

In 2023, the shorts Kairos, which seems to be about a father and daughter, and ba.la, about a competitive swimmer with PTSD.

In 2024, the shorts Parting Piece and The Coder, and Naked Man on Dark Matter.

His butt, anyway.  His penis after the break

"Sinners": Twin brothers fight vampires and klansmen in the Mississippi Delta. With Jordan junk and O'Connell butt

For movie night this weekend, we actually went to a movie in a theater, for a change: Sinners (2025), about twin brothers fighting vampires in the Mississippi Delta in 1932.

The first hour is quite naturalistic: Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan in a dual role) return to the Deep Delta from their gangster career in Chicago with a lot of money and Irish booze, buy the old abandoned mill from a klansman who says he's not a klansman, and organize a juke party. We get the sense of the vast emptiness of the cotton fields, and the terror of everyday life for African-Americans in the Jim Crow South.  

You had to be very careful; glance at or speak to a white woman, accidentally bump into a white man, and you would be attacked.  Gay people live with a similar fear -- hold hands with your boyfriend or display a Pride flag, and you could get attacked or killed.  But at least heteronormativity ensures that most gay people are assumed straight, and can keep hidden in the riskiest situations.  Most African-Americans could not.

Left: Michael B. Jordan

The brothers pick up Preacher Boy (Miles Caton), who is torn between the church and the guitar (which his Preacher father calls Satanic).  After he agrees to perform tonight, they split up.  

Stack and Preacher Boy go to town, where they recurit another performer, the elderly, alcoholic Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo).

They hire shopkeeper Bo Chow (Yao) to make up signs and fry the catfish.

Left: Malaysian actor Yao received a MFA from Yale University in 2023.  He played a gay character in #LookatMe (2022).

They pull Cornbread (Omar Miller) from the cotton fields to act as bouncer.

The brothers are so intimate that I was sure that one or both would be gay, but heteronormativity is running rampant.  Both of them, and Preacher Boy, get girlfriends, whom they have s*x with, one after the other.

1. Stack with his ex-girlfriend Mary, who is an octaroon (one-eighth black), so Jim Crow laws still apply to her.

2. Smoke with his estranged wife Annie (Wummi Musaku).  She's rather old , so I thought she was his mother until they started doing things.  

She's also quite butch, so I figured that the actress must be a lesbian. LezWatch says that she is cisgender, unspecified sexual identity, but she has played at least three queer characters.

3. Preacher Boy with Pearline, a married singer.  Fortunately, her husband isn't around. 

It keeps going like that.  Bo Chow has a wife (we learn their favorite s*xual activity).  Cornbread has a pregnant wife.  Delroy Slim isn't married, but discusses the hetero exploits of his youth.

Left: Michael A. Newcomer, who plays a bartender in a white joint, is gay in real life.  

Vampires after the break

Gogo Lomo-David: "Shameless" actor, singer, model, motivational speaker. Did I mention his cock?

Nigerian-American actor Gogo Lomo David was born in Indiana, Pennsylvania but grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, where his Dad taught business analytics at the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.  

He graduated from Dad's school (free tuition!) in 2013.  Summa cum laude, with two degrees: a B.F.A. in Professional Theater and a B.A. in Business Management.

Gogo has 28 acting credits listed on the IMDB, quite a lot for someone whose screen career began in 2014.  Well, except for a short, Wrap It Before You Slap It (2011).

His first major screen role was Israel in Field of Lost Shoes (2014), which, he tells us, won Best Dramatic Feature at the GI Film Festival (for movies about military veterans).  It's about the cadets at the Virginia Military Academy drafted into the Civil War, oddly presenting them, and every Confederate, as not at all racist. 

Other significant roles include:

Loterna in a 2015 episode of Zoo, with Jason Wolk as the leader of a team trying to figure out why animals are starting to attack.

Walter in Evil Nanny (2016), also starring Demetrious Stear (left)

Danjuma Okafor in two episodes of the crime drama Shameless (2019), "Adios Gringos" and "Sparky."  The character is not listed in the fan wiki or wikipedia synopsis.

Gogo's biggest role to date is Craig Simkins, the younger brother of the Simkin siblings, arch-rivals of the Gemstones, in the Righteous Gemstones.   He defeats Jesse at car racing in Episode 3.1 and defeats Kelvin at Bible Bonkers in Episode 3.9.  

And he'll be back in Season 4, maybe as an ally of Big Bad Vance Simkins, maybe working against him.  

His resume says that he appeared in Iron Man 3, Banshee, Homeland, and Under the Dome, but they aren't listed on the IMDB. Maybe he was a background player.

Also commercials for Bojangles, Inforeach, Republic Wireless, the North Carolina Lottery.

And theater: A Raisin in the Sun, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Shadow Box, Black Nativity, Midnight of the Soul, and The Wiz.

More after the break

John Amos: Kunta Kinte, Gordy the Weatherman, James Evans, a gay husband, and my gym buddy

Former footballer and coast guardsman John Amos was everywhere on television in the 1970s and 1980s.

The adult Kunta Kinte in Roots (1977).

Left: Levar Burton played the young Kunta Kinte.

Gordy the Weatherman on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77).

The longsuffering dad James Evans on Good Times (1974-79)

The sword-and-sorcery fighter Seth in Beastmaster (1982)

Plus guest shots on Sanford and Son, Maude, Police Story, Love Boat, The A-Team...you name it, he was in it.

I didn't see much of him during the 80s and 90s -- not on screen, anyway.  We went to the same gym in West Hollywood.  

John was always gracious to his flirtatious gay fans, leading us to speculate that he was gay in real life -- he's been married to women twice, and has two children, but you never know.  

We never became friends, but we developed a nodding acquaintance.  And I saw him naked in the locker room once or twice.

Naked after the break