My Date with Michael J. Fox. Plus Marcus and the Scary Bulgarian Bodybuilder.

Friday, July 5th:  Two days after I arrive in West Hollywood, after my terrible year in Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, I am sitting in the human resources department at Paramount Studios, waiting to interview for a job as an administrative assistant, when Marcus comes in to drop something off.  He's my age, African-American, with very light skin, freckles, and a hairy chest.  I get his phone number.

You're probably wondering how I got a job interview two days after arriving, when one of those days was a federal holiday.  I had been applying for jobs for weeks, using my friend Tom's address and telephone number.

Saturday, July 6th: Our date, an inside tour of Paramount Studios (yes, we saw more stuff), followed by cruising at the Gold Coast and dinner at the French Quarter in West Hollywood.  He came to Los Angeles to become an actor five years ago, and has had some guest spots in tv shows and movies.

"Do you know anyone famous?" I ask with tourist zeal.

"Nobody really famous.  I mean, some guys on tv.  Robin Williams.  Tom Hulce.  I know Michael J. Fox from acting class."

I'm not impressed.  I've barely heard of Michael J. Fox -- he plays Alex P. Keaton, Reagan-loving son of liberal hippie parents on the sitcom Family Ties (1982-1989),  But I've only seen the show a few times.

Back to the Future, which will propel Michael to fame, premiered on July 3rd, but I haven't heard of it.

Marcus is a good kisser, with a nice physique and a respectable size.  But he likes nude wrestling: I have to pin him before I can go down on him.  Then he doesn't reciprocate, he just grabs me, puts me in sort of a headlock, and falls asleep.  Not my idea of a romantic evening!  

So no more dating.  But we stay friends (that's actually how we made friends in West Hollywood).

Wednesday, July 10th: I start working at Muscle and Fitness, two days a week as a "contributing editor," aka gopher.  '

Wednesday, July 17th: I meet Ivo, a stringer for the magazine, about 30 years old, a Bulgarian bodybuilder, with short brown hair, a boyish open face, massive shoulders, and slates for abs.

Saturday, July 20th: My first date with Ivo.  I'm curious about Back to the Future, the new time travel comedy starring Michael J. Fox.

"No way, man!" Ivo exclaims.  "That Mike Fox thinks he's a big deal, but he's terrible in bed.  They should call him Princess Teeny-Tiny!"

Weird coincidence!  I think.  I've been in town less than a month, and already I've met two people who know Michael J. Fox, and one of them is his ex-lover!

But Ivo is apparently better in bed -- very passionate, a top but open to doing interfemoral instead of anal -- kissing during interfemoral is a new one for me.  And open to oral -- twice before the night turns to morning, and again before breakfast.  

Sunday, July 21st: I have brunch at the French Quarter with Marcus, and tell him about my date with Ivo.

"Strange," he says.  "I'm completely out to Mike, and he's never said anything about being gay.  Sounds like Ivo is one of these celebrity name-droppers who claims to have been with everyone from Harrison Ford to Arnold Schwarzeneggar."

"But he wasn't bragging.  He got upset.  He said Michael was bad in bed and should be called Princess Teeny-Tiny."

Marcus laughs.  "Well, I don't have any information on Mike beneath the belt.  But tell you what -- he's in London right now.  When he gets back, we'll all get together, and you can ask him yourself."

Ask Michael J. Fox about his size?  I don't think so!  But it would be fun to meet him.

I date Ivo three or four more times, but his stories become more and more bizarre.

His father was the Bulgarian ambassador; he used to hang out at the White House.  

He has a degree in economics from Harvard, but turned down a professorship because he wanted to be a writer. When he returned to Bulgaria to help his cousin, he was arrested and imprisoned for six months. He has a book on his experiences coming out next year.  

Paramount is producing his screenplay about a college student who discovers that he is half-alien.  Scott Baio will be the star. They dated for awhile.

Saturday, August 3rd: Marcus and I see Back to the Future.  I'm not impressed with the heteronormative plotline.  But, he says, Michael is back in town.  Could we have lunch next Saturday?

Monday, August 5th: Ivo has me over for dinner.  While he is chopping celery, I tell him about the lunch.  He freezes, and his face turns bright red.  "Can't you ever talk about anything but Michael J. Fox?  Day after day, hour after hour, nothing but Michael J. Fox!  And now you have a date with him!"

I try to remember when I last mentioned him. "No, no, it's just a lunch.  Marcus is coming, too."

"Bah!  If you love him so much, why don't you move in with him?"

"It's just..."

"F** Mike Fox, always stealing everybody's lovers!  Well, let me tell you what happened to the last guy Mike Fox stole from me -- I cut him good!"  He stabs the air with his knife.

I am shocked -- and terrified.  Ivo is twice as strong as me, and carrying a weapon. "Fox sounds like a real jerk!" I tell him.  "I'm definitely cancelling that lunch!  Um...you know what?  I forgot to bring in the dessert -- there's a peach pie in the car.   I'll just go get it." 

 I clatter out the door and down the stairs.  

Wednesday, August 7th: He comes into the editorial office at Muscle and Fitness to drop off a story, and pretends not to know me.

Saturday, August 10th: The promised lunch with Marcus and Michael.

Marcus picks me up and drives me to a small, bare-brick cafe on Melrose.  We are just ordering drinks when Michael comes in, wearing a white shirt, buttoned down to reveal a soft smooth chest, tight bulging jeans, and sunglasses.

He's my age, short, slim, androgynous  The feminine teen idol type.

He hugs Marcus and reaches out to shake my hand, then says "What the hell" and hugs me, too.

I feel a definite bulge pressing against me.


"So, are you guys together?" Michael asks as he scans the menu.

"No," Marcus says.  "We dated once, but you know some guys can't handle ten inches."

"They just need a little practice, like that one night after acting class."  He nudges Marcus affectionately.

What night?  Did Marcus and Michael hook up?  Michael is either gay or amazingly gay-positive!

"So..I was dating another guy who claimed to know you," I say.  "Ivo the Bulgarian bodybuilder."

Michael frowns. "Doesn't ring a bell.  But you know how it is, you get a tv show, and suddenly every guy you have ever said hello to claims to be your bosom buddy."

"Or your ex-lover," Marcus adds.  But if he was making it up, why did he get so upset?

More after the break

"The Prince": The actor claims that his flashy-femme prince is "just sensitive." See for yourself. With gay-subtext homies and Turkish d*cks

 

The Prince is unfortunately the title of about a dozen tv shows and movies, but the Turkish one (2023-25) stars Giray Altinok as the Prince of Bogonia, a fictional micro-kingdom somewhere in the Balkans during the Middle Ages.  The Prince (no other name because his father hates him) is so flashy-femme, and exhibits such a strong interest in men, that viewers began buzzing.  Altinok went on social media to clear up the "misunderstanding": The Prince isn't gay, he's just sensitive.  Funny, that's what my parents used to say about me.

Of course Altinok would claim that his character is straight: Turkey is the most homophobic country in Europe. It gets 4% on the Rainbow Map of LGBT legal status, while Russia gets 8%, and Poland 15%.  Let's take a look at Episode 1, and see how "not gay" the Prince is.

Scene 1: Establishing shot of Bogonia. Several n*de women, one chained up, snooze with semi-n*de guys (one butt shot).  Can you show naked ladies on Turkish tv?   

A chained up man who has been cuddling with a man and a woman both awakens to a rap on the door, and yells at the Slave Köle (Canberk Gültekin, top photo and left).  Surprise -- he's the Prince!  Identified as bi in the first scene. Maybe Altinok meant "not gay, bi/pan."

 The King has summoned him.  "So what?"   "So what?" He returns to his orgy.

Scene 2: As everyone waits impatiently, the Prince bursts in.  He touches the cheek of one of the courtiers: "Come here, my black lamb."  He lectures against Turkish masculinity: to compete in the modern world, we need to be hugging and touching.  

The problem: The Hungarian army is at the border, and Bogonia doesn't have a big enough army to defeat them.  

"So, get help from our neighbors, like Bosnia?" "No, they all hate us."

Uncle Kalish (Serdar Orçin) suggests just surrendering and paying the tribute.  "No, we'd lose our proud history." "But this country is only twenty years old!"  This enrages the Prince's Older Brother Tenyo (Çagdas Onur Öztürk, left),  who threatens to kill Uncle Kalish for treason.

King to Older Brother: "I'm lucky to have you as a son.  Without you, my name would die with me."  So the Prince isn't going to have any kids.  Maybe he is gay, not bi. 

They decide to fight the Hungarians.  Older Brother gets the horses ready for their 50 soldiers.

Scene 3: The King meets with the Prince in private: "Everyone has some regrets in life.  Mine is you.  I can't find the words to describe my hatred of you." You're just homophobic, Dad.

The King orders Slave Kole to bring his Very Important Sword  to the Blacksmith to get the handle fixed. "The Blacksmith is my oldest and dearest friend, and only he can fix my sword."  The Prince asks him to also fetch the "big ruby necklace" that the jeweler has for him.  Dude is into drag.

Whoops, the King decides to humiliate the Prince by making him take the sword in instead of the slave.

Scene 4: Older Brother Tenyo's Wife has just taken a home pregnancy test (the Medieval version).  Still not pregnant! He is not upset: "Don't obsess over it, it will happen in due time."  But the Queen has been putting pressure on her; she sent a gigantic crib, hint, hint.   Older Brother suggests trying again now.

Scene 5: The Prince and Slave Kole in the market.  He stops to look at some fabric.  Dude is gay.  A commoner complains that the people are starving while the royals live in luxury, "especially that Prince."  "Which one?" "The ugly one."  

Upset, the prince orders him executed.  Slave Kole suggest  they could give him a chance to apologize.  Nope, he's hanged.

Next stop: the Blacksmith, the only person who can fix the King's Very Important Sword.  Except he's the guy they just executed!

Scene 6: The Prince's Sister is practicing swordsmanship when her stepmother, the Queen, bursts in and throws her sword out the window.  "Act like a Princess!"  "No -- I don't want to be a princess!"

"Too bad -- I've arranged for you to marry the Duke of Saxony!"   

"What?  No!  This is the modern world.  I want to be more than just a wife!"

Ok, the main conflicts are established: Older Brother can't get his wife pregnant, Sister wants to be a liberated woman, and the Prince is gay.

Scene 6: The royal family eating together and glaring at each other. 

Uncle  Kalish: "We can't fight the Hungarians! We'll be massacred!"  I've been checking the Prince for queer codes, but look at Uncle Kalish: 35 effeminate rings, no wife.  Dude is gay.

King: "Princess, you are going to get married whether you want to or not." 

Sister: "No!"

Queen: "The Duke of Gaul has had a son.   wish I had a grandchild."

Older Brother's Wife: "You're Older Brother's stepmother, not his mother, so any kids we have will not be your grandchildren.  Besides, how do you know it's my fault?  Maybe Older Brother's not doing his job properly."

Older Brother: "Let's fight the Hungarians right now!" 

King: "Prince, how is my sword repair coming?  The Blacksmith is a very old, dear friend of mine." Uh-oh, the Prince had him executed. 

Scene 7:  Slave Kole fixes the Very Important Sword with glue.  It will take a day to harden, but the King is coming for it now! 

 The Prince asks Slave Kole to hide in the closet (har har), and presents it to the King, who is pleased: "This is the first tim ein your life that you've followed through on a task." Whoops, he puts it in the scabbard with the resin still wet -- he'll never get it out again! A painting of a naked man is in the foreground of every bedroom scene, and there's a fresco in the back that looks like a Roman woman.  Dude is gay or bi.

The King finds Slave Kole in the closet (har har), and becomes angry at the Prince for having s*x with a slave. He has no problem with his son dating men, but they should be upper class.

 Slave Kole starts to explain that he was just fixing the sword, but the Prince cuts him off: "Shut up, Love.  He's onto us.  It's fine."   The King stomps out.  

More after the break

Gemstones Episode 3.3, Continued: A fire dance, a limp wrist, a phallic sword, and Balkan sex gods

Previous:  Episode 3.3: Baby Billy sings forever, Kelvin can't say the word, BJ poses nude, and I'm depressed

Cousins' Afternoon:  The Gemstone siblings and their partners sit on cabana chairs, insulting their cousins, the Montgomery boys,  while they swim in the trout pond.   Kelvin lays on the femme stereotyping, even flashing a limp wrist.  This will be important later.

Keefe, who of course looks at men's crotches a lot, points out that Cousin Karl has a lot of pubic hair.  Kelvin quips "Looks like he's got a chinchilla up there!"  It sounds like he is making a mean joke to draw attention away from his interest in what men really have up there.

The Fire Dance: For their entertainment, Keefe performs a highly erotic fire dance in the waning light, near a path lit by a thousand fires.  I am reminded of Coleridge's "Kublai Khan":

A savage place! as holy and enchanted as e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted by a man wailing for his demon lover.

Keefe here is the demon lover, pure erotic energy, offering his mouth, butt, and penis simultaneously. He is the new Messiah of Muscle, rejecting cozy, tepid phileo, friendship, for the eros, erotic desire, that promises ecstasy or damnation.

Top photo: the real Fire Dancer

Why would anyone perform a highly erotic dance for his boyfriend's family?  What does Keefe hope to accomplish?  I think he is showing the family -- and Kelvin himself -- that he is a sexual being, Kelvin's lover, not a "good buddy." 

Early in the episode, Kelvin couldn't admit that they were lovers. Now Demon Keefe shows him that they are.   He has never been sure if his desire for Keefe will lead him to heaven or hell.  Now he knows -- both. 

Background note: The dark, disturbing music playing is "Balkan Sex God" from A Serbian Film, 2010, which regularly appears on lists of "the most disturbing films of all time."  It features Srđan Todorović as a retired porn actor drawn into starring in a snuff film. 

Todorovic dick

Cousins' Evening:  A huge dining hall, with the family and cousins using just one table, Keefe and Kelvin sitting across from each other instead of side by side!  Why does the staging back off from depicting them as a couple?

Kelvin pours on the femme stereotypes thickly, limping his wrists constantly as if he's in a 1920s pansy act, and coincidentally or not puts his "wedding ring" on full display.

Uncle Baby Billy pretends he's the host of his Bible Bonkers game show, where families compete at Bible trivia. He goes around the table and asks  each of the "contestants" their name and what they do for a living.  The Montgomery boys work in landscaping.  Then it's Keefe's turn.  He is ready to speak, but Baby Billy skips him with a rude "nuh-huh," angering him.  But it's not a homophobic snub: Baby Billy skips over BJ, too: "You ain't family."  Only born Gemstones count. 

Next it's "the weirdo boy with the puffy muscles," the second and last reference to Kelvin's physique this season, and maybe a euphemism for "gay." But Kelvin refuses to participate. 

More Balkan sex gods after the break

Balkan Beefcake: Twelve Serbian studs, hung Herzegovians, and Croatian cocks

ILGA Europe ranks all 49 European countries on LGBT equality, and the Balkan states do surprisingly well: Montenegro scores 61%, higher than the Netherlands, and Croatia  51%, higher than Switzerland. Bosnia and Herzegovina 39.5%, and Serbia 35%, score higher than Italy.   

Of course, legal equality does not necessarily translate into gay-friendliness for the traveler. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, has only one gay-specific bar.  Guys meet through private parties and the internet.

Sex god from Sarajevo

Mostar, two hours by train south of Sarajevo, near the Adriatic Sea, is famous for its old Turkish quarter, as well as the Museum of War and Genocide Victims.  Ok...well, there are three gay-friendly bars.

Nijvice, Croatia, a resort town near the Italian border.  But you have to go through Slovenia to get there, so it takes about three hours.

More Balkan beefcake after the break

Gemstones Episode 3.3: Baby Billy sings forever, Kelvin can't say the word, BJ poses nude, and I'm depressed

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