"Honest Men": South Africa-teasing, porn-teasing, claustrophobic, confusing...but at least there are a lot of gay guys.

 

Honest Men on Prime Video has a shirtless hunk on the icon and the promo: "Unraveling family dynamics, Honest Men follows Colby's return home after his father....(probably his father's death: somebody is always returning home after the death of somebody).   The names of the cast members sound African (King David, Donta Hemsley, Tripp Ali), so it's probably set in South Africa, and we'll get some interesting citscapes of Johannesburg or Cape Town

 Scene 1: Closeup of a man's back. So far so good. Suburb at night, then Colby (King David) addresses the camera, talking about his friend named Andre when he was a kid, who had a violent, abusive father  but nevertless was "sexy as hell." While he speaks, the violent, abusive father disrobes behind him and steps into the shower.  Colby: "Don't judge me for what I'm about to do.  I was only 17."  He starts beating off while watching. Hey, a gay character!  I guess he meant that the father was "sexy as hell."

King David is very hard to research.  Even if you specify "King David" and "actor," you just get the many, many actors who have played the Biblical king: Russell Crowe, Daniel Craig, Clive Owen, Christian Bale (left), Michael Fassbender...

Scene 2: 4 years later: Closeup of Colby's hands as he opens the door, puts his keys on the counter.  This is very tight, claustrophobic.  Very tight,  very claustrophobic.  I'm thinking we're not going to see Constitution Hill in Johannesburg or the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town. 

A lengthy scene of the guy changing clothes, with very tight closeups of part of his eye and his neck.  Then a butt shot but no dick.  At least we have nudity.  

After watching the scene several times, just to make sure that I'm being accurate, har har, I conclude that the guy we're watching is not Colby, but Mark, the Abusive Father (Donta Hensley).

More partial body bait and switch -- you think it's more Abusive Mark, but it's actually Colby as he checks his messages: Wait -- who has an answering machine in their house anymore?  This must be Dad's apartment.  

#1: Funeral home guy complementing him on his coffin choice: "Rest in peace with our great prices."   Har har

#2: Mark the Abusive Father.  He was doing some work on Colby's Dad's fridge, and wants to stop by Saturday night to finish the job.  Saturday night?  Really?  Sounds like there's more than one job you want to finish.

 Scene 3: Semi-body part closeups as Colby answers the door.  It's Mark the Abusive Father, dressed like a refrigerator repair guy in a porn movie.   He suggests that Colby is taking his death hard, but no, "He stopped existing long before he died."  Some people like staying home, dude.  They got their books, their music, their Grindr hookups....

Mark remembers at Colby and Andre's graduation, Colby stood up and yelled some shit about his Dad, who never forgave him. "Well, I hated him."

"That's weird -- my son Andre loved him."  You were abusive, buddy.  

Mark confesses that he hated his son, too:  the kid came into the world and ruined his life when he was 14 years old.  "But I changed."  "Too bad my dad didn't."  Got it, Andre and Colby, both with abusive dads and hate all the way down.

Hey, these guys both have American accents.  I'm starting to think that the South African names are just a tease

Scene 4: A young man in his underwear, feeling himself up, talking to himself about how "she" is going to be so impressed tonight that he'll get him some.  

Text from his mom: Tell your Dad about the graduation party. A flashback to the night of the graduation, where Colby yelled some stuff and Dad never forgave him?  So this is probably  Abusive Mark's son Andre.

Andre texts a tight closeup of his Dad's various body parts but instead of the grad party, it's "Submit J's grad fees before Friday."  Dad's body parts groan, hating his kid.   Wait -- Andre does not appear in this episode, and he's not named J.  This must be JTT (Tripp Ali).  A third kid with an abusive dad?

More after the break

Dean Geyer: "Neighbours," "Glee," romcoms, "Single Women," "Little Women"...well, you get the idea. At least he's got a big one

 

I found photos of actor Dean Geyer on a general n*de men website, but the byline said he was an actor, so let's take a look (d*ck after the break).

He grew up in South Africa.  Here he shows off his cache of snacks from the homeland.

At some point he moved to Australia, where he appeared on 244 episodes of the soap Neighbours (2008-09) as Ty Harper,.  Ty drops out of uni to pursue a musical career, and romances a lot of girls.

He rates a cover of New Weekly, with the quote "I once waited for an hour outside a girl's school to give her a Valentine's day present," and a "Perv Poster."  Presumably in Australia the term doesn't have the horrifying connotations that it does in the U.S.

 His American film career starts out quite homophobi, with Never Back Down 2: The Beatdown (2011), about four fighters who band together to save their mentor. One of them, Case (Michael Jai White), has a sleazy gay dad, which causes the others to lambast him with homophobic slurs.  

Then came episodes of Single Ladies (he's straight, we get it), Terra Nova, and Glee (2012-13), the American series about a glee club. His Brody Weston is a junior at the New York Academy for Dramatic Arts, sharing an apartment with Kurt, the gay character, and dating Rachel, but also working as a gigolo. 

Rehearsal (2015) evokes the rehearsal for a Chekhov play going awry due to the incursion of an American screen hunk. Dean's character may be gay: Blaise Remington?  Who has ever named their kid Blaise?  But the director is named Turner Horatio Longfellow.  Really?

No, in the trailer Blaise Remington is surrounded by ladies.

Blaise?  Really?

After some romcoms where his characters go the other way, with the most generic names imaginable, or not imagined at all (Josh, Gabe Hudson, Mark Henderson), Dean appears in Zoey 102, with the gang from the Nickelodeon teencom all grown up, complaining that "no one told you life was gonna be this way," and finding love.  He plays Todd Shupert, an actor that the grown-up Zoey hires to be her date at her friend Logan's wedding.  Todd insists that he's not the Malibu Murderer, but...

More after the break

Gemstones Episode 2.3: Kelvin topples, Keefe cuddles, and Titus is caged. With bonus semen loads

Previous: Episode 2.2: Kelvin clenches,Keefe dances, and everybody flirts with Eli. 

Episode 2.3 explores the darkness at the heart of Eli and Kelvin's empires.  

Title: "For He is a Liar and the Father of Lies." In John 8:44, Jesus complains that the Pharisees are children of the Devil, "for he is a liar and the father of lies."  I wonder who the liar is here.

Four guys in the steam showers:  A montage of the God Squad in their compound outside Kelvin's house, working out with wooden equipment, shaving with an axe, growing crops.  Performers that Kelvin hired would have apartments in town and ordinary social lives, with friends and families.  This is a whole society, a homoerotic alternative to the mundane world of men constrained by wives and children, imprisoned in small square houses "made of ticky tacky."  

In literature and film, the adventure ends with marriage.  The hero is domesticated, exchanging his battles and intrigues for a mortgage and a briefcase, his band of brothers for the Eternal Feminine.  The God Squad offers an escape: "no women allowed," either in the Squad or hanging about outside, hoping to "civilize them."

Kelvin congratulates Keefe on his leadership, then says  "I'll meet you in the steam showers, but bring Titus and Odd Chris.  I could smell them during worship."  Every guy working in the hot sun all day will be pungent; in-universe, he is obviously inviting the other men so he and Keefe can each have a sex partner.  The leaders of many messianic cults require sex with random members.  

No one named Odd Chris appears in the cast list, but Titus will be the first God Squad member to rebel. Interestingly, in the Bible the Apostle Paul set Titus to Corinth to deal with a challenge to his authority.

After Keefe leaves to prepare the orgy, Jesse drops by to reveal his theory that Eli murdered Thaniel Block and the other men.  Kelvin refuses to hear it, and wants to defend Eli's honor.  "You ain't as tough as you think, boy!" Jesse exclaims, putting up his fists.  Then he sees the God Squad preparing to defend Kelvin, and backs off.  Messiah Kelvin has some loyal followers!

Junior Threatens Brock:  We cut to Eli at home, putting his bloody pants from last night into the hamper and watching a news report about the murders. Security guard Brock calls to tell him that Junior wants in.  "Tell him I'm not here." Was Junior his partner in the murders, or did he do the job on his own?

Junior blusters and threatens him, but finally he drives away. You may recall that in Season 1, Scotty flirted with Brock to gain access to the Gemstone compound.  But Junior has moved away from his gay-subtext flirting; he is pure threat. 

The Human Pyramid:  We see the God Squad perform before an audience of teens.  Kelvin introduces the strongest member, Torsten, who dated a "female" in high school before she tried to seduce him, and he had to decide on "his celibacy or his soul."  It is clear that by "celibacy," Kelvin means much more than avoiding sex with women.  You must reject the entire heterosexist trajectory of job, house, wife, and kids, the nuclear family myth, the domestication and civilization threatened by the "female."  The way to salvation lies in the beauty of male bodies, in homoerotic desire unhindered by emotional connection. 

But when they move on to a human pyramid, with Kelvin on top, it topples.  The House of Cards collapses.  Maybe it can't be all about the penis after all.  Keefe behaves like a concerned boyfriend, rushing onto the stage and embracing Kelvin -- to protect him from plummeting musclemen?

Kelvin Wants to Spoon: What follows is very difficult to read. Fans are likely to shake their heads and say WTF?  during their first, second, and third viewing. The showrunners want us to be unsure whether the guys are actually gay, of course, but that's been obvious since Episode 1 to anyone with a basic knowledge of queer codes.  The real question: is Keefe Kelvin's assistant and acolyte, or his romantic partner?  Are they friends with benefits, or are they in love?    

On the surface, it seems easy enough.  Kelvin, in underwear, is looking out the window at the God Squad below. Keefe enters, having drawn him a bath, and tells him that both Liam and Titus were injured in the human pyramid debacle.  Kelvin thinks that it's their own fault for being soft on the fundamentals and skipping leg day.  "Something might have to be done about Titus," he says menacingly, an action-adventure movie villain.  

Keefe: "I completely agree."  Note that he is not an assistant, or his opinion would be irrelevant.  They are equal partners in the God Squad Cult.  "But some of the others have been questioning their place here as well. That's the downside of assembling an entire group of alpha males.  As they grow stronger, they grow more defiant."  The men are not content with being mere objects of desire; they want autonomy and control. 

Kelvin slips off his underwear and hands them to Keefe, who helps him put on his bathrobe -- from behind.   He has to press his body against Kelvin, crotch to butt.  Then he caresses Kelvin's thighs instead of breaking away. It would be much easier from the front.  Why does he go in from the rear?  

When he is finished, Keefe walks over to the mirror, but Kelvin isn't having it, and moves in front of him to get into the butt-to-crotch position again. 

Their gestures and positions are blatantly erotic.  Kelvin is in physical and emotional distress, and wants to be comforted.  In a society where romance is forbidden, this is how lovers cuddle.

"Brother, what's troubling you? " Keefe asks. "Your mind seems dark and black."  It's a secret.  Keefe promises not to tell anyone.

Kelvin turns around to reveal that his Daddy may be a murderer.  Their faces are only a few inches apart, far too close even for lovers, unless they're about to kiss.  One of them must back up to a comfortable conversational distance.  Kelvin is right against the mirror, so it's up to Keefe to back up.  Why doesn't he back up?. 

We see here Keefe struggling with his desire to move the relationship from "erotic partners" to "boyfriends," struggling with his urge to kiss Kelvin. Notice that he says "Are we in trouble?", not "Are you in trouble."  He is not an employee, who could just find another job if the church went down.  They are romantic partners; they are in this together.

Eli lays down the law: In the next scene, Eli notes that Liam (Peter Kaasa), who was injured during the human pyramid stunt, is suing the Gemstones. They don't need another scandal right now. 

He tells Kelvin to "stop acting like a child" and "grow up."  It's time to "put on your big boy pants, and stop playing with your muscular boys."  Kelvin yells "They're muscle men, Daddy," but he has missed the point.

 Eli thinks that Kelvin's erotic play is immature and childish.  Adults can't be all about desire, about doing things behind closed doors; they need connection to the greater society.  His talk omits the usual "find a girl, get married, and have kids" part of the heteronormative litany, since he knows that Kelvin will never relate to a woman in that way.  But he still needs relationships based on love as well as desire.  He needs to be part of a family.  

Sorry, I ran out of space, so Titus will be caged and do the coming in the next section.  But I included a few photos of guys depositing semen loads to put you in the mood. 

Bonus semen loads after the break.  Warning: explicit.