Studs from the Steppes: Twelve Mongolian musclemen, Uzbek boyfriends, and Kyrgyz cocks

When I was in about sixth grade, I bought an atlas of world history in the gift shop of the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. One of the maps showed the Khanate of the Golden Horde covering most of Eurasia, from Mongolia to Poland.  Who wouldn't be fascinated by that?

Later I read The Empire of the Steppes, with Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, and Tamerlane shaping world history, and did a research project on gay personal ads in Central Asia.  I got my M.A. from Indiana University, where you can study Central Asian languages, but I decided on Mandarin instead.

 I don't want to actually visit these places: endless steppes sound a little boring, and they have some of the most homophobic governments on the planet.  But a quick look at some Central Asian hunks might be fun.

1. Mongolian guy on a gay dating site, top photo.

 Mongolia is not all nomads living in yurts. Check out the skyline of modern UlaanBataar.  

2. Ulaanbataar boy on Grindr.  A little skinny; I'd hold out for the wrestler.

3. Kazakh guy from Almaty. previously Alma-Ata, previously the capital.

4-7. Shirtless dinner in Koshetau, Kazakhstan

8. Tatar sheep-wrangler from Kazan, which is actually in Russia, a 13-hour drive from the border of Kazakhstan.   But he's cute, so who's complaining.

More after the break. Warning: explicit

Max Brumberg: Slovakian flute crafter, drag theologian, Russian-Austrian-Uzbek actor. With bonus Uzbek dicks

 

I don't know what led me to the 2021 movie Play it Cool, with someone named Reggiemolo (Alex Jason Lee King) on a cross-country trip where he's mistaken for a criminal and meets The Girl -- the trailer shows them kissing a thousand times, so it's definitely a "no way!"  But far down the cast list was a cute guy named Max Brumbaugh.

The name resonated because when I was a kid, there was an abandoned "haunted house" on my grandfather's property that belonged to the Brumbaugh family.  So I decided to research him.

Rather a difficult task.  First, his last name isn't Brumbaugh, it's Brunberg.  No, it's Brumberg, with an "m," and there are a lot of Max Brumbergs out there. 

1. Max Brumberg who makes flutes in the traditional manner, with traditional materials.  He makes Slovakian fujaras, Moldavian kavals, overtone flutes, double flutes, and many other types, out of his store in Sainte-Croix-Vallée-Français.

Another Max Brumberg is Max Brumberg-Kraus, he/him or they/them, the co-founder of the House of Larva Drag Co-operative.  They perform as drag persona Çicada L’Amour, produce both small acts and full-length queer peformance art, and belong to ARC community: "a creative collaboration for theopoetics."

They graduated from the United Theological Seminary in 2020 with a  M.A. in theology and the arts, and research interests in queer temporality, queer and feminist theology, cosmology, mythopoetics, ancient tragedy, midrash, embodiment, and reception theory.   They're the author of The(y)-ology: Mythopoetics for Gay/Trans Liberation.

Then there's the grad student at the Institute of Russian History in Moscow, and his aroused cucumber.

From Linkedin, IMDB, and an article in Voyager, I've pieced together the life of Max Brumberg, actor.  Of Uzbek and Russian Jewish ancestry.

Top photo: Uzbek guy

Fluent in English, French, German, and Russian.  Not Uzbek?

 Grew up in Vienna got a M.S. in real estate from Newcastle University in Britain, and took a job in Real Estate Structured Finance Sales, traveling between Vienna, Belgrade, and Bucharest while acting in commercials and doing stand-up comedy. 

Left: Tajik guy from Russia

While he was working as a manager at Saxon Bank in Zurich, Max realized that "something was missing...there was a void in my life." So he moved to L.A. and enrolled at the Stella Adler School of Acting. 

So far he has only six acting credits on the IMDB:

More after the break