Nick Stahl: A career of playing scarred, traumatized teens, with being gay as one of the traumas. Plus zombies, DeKay dick, and a glory hole

 In the summer of 2001, everybody in the East Village was talking about Bully, starring 22-year old Nick Stahl.  The South Florida teenager beats his friend Marty (Brad Renfro) until he is unconscious, sexually assaults him, and humiliates him by forcing him to become an entertainer in a gay bar. They even make a porn video to sell at adult bookstores.

 Bobby also rapes Marty's girlfriend Ali, while forcing her to watch gay porn, and when his own girlfriend Lisa announces that she is pregnant with Marty's child, watch out!  The three friends set out to murder him, with the help of Ali's new sex buddy (Michael Pitt).

It was not a pretty movie -- girl parts outnumber boy parts ten to one, and the gay world is portrayed as unfailingly sordid and decadent.  Nevertheless, every gay magazine -- In Touch, XY, The Advocate -- gave it a favorable review as a cautionary tale about the effects of internalized homophobia.  If only Bobby had the guts to come out...

Nick was born in Harlingen, Texas, in 1979 (Texas...ugh!), moved to L.A. in 1992, and was cast in a few small roles before his big break, playing opposite the then-famous Mel Gibson in The Man Without a Face (1993).  The Man and the boy are both gay in the original novel by Isabelle Holland, but straight in the movie.

My Son is Innocent (1996), Eye of God (1997), Promised Land (1997), and Disturbing Behavior (1998) cast Nick as scarred, traumatized, victimized, violent teenagers, leading to Bully.  Afterwards he did a horror movie (Taboo, 2002) and a true crime (Bookies, 2003), but found himself being schtupped by manipulative older women ( In the Bedroom), having sex with men but denying being gay (Twist), or raping and murdering young girls (Sin City). Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) must have come as a welcome relief.

In the Terminator mythos, John Connor manages to save the human world after it is destroyed by a sentient internet, so Arnold Schwarzenegger is sent back in time (naked) to kill him.  In T3, he returns (naked) as an ally, to protect young adult John and his future wife Kate (who is unfortunately engaged to someone else). 

Nick was the second actor to play John Connor.  There have been several others, including Thomas Dekker (left) and Christian Bale.

Carnivale (2023-25) features paranormal beings working in a carnival during the Dust Bowl of Depression-era Oklahoma.  Nick plays Ben Hawkins, a farmer, chain gang fugitive, and healer who joins the carnival and eventually becomes an Avatar of Light.  He's heterosexual, but one of his girlfriends, Sofie, is a lesbian.

Tim DeKay (left) plays Jonesy, who runs the ferris wheel, and Michael J. Anderson, the backwards-talking dwarf on Twin Peaks, his boss, Samson.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Sonny Kendall: Obviously gay, too young for nude photos, so his EastEnder teen had better pay off. With Boreanaz and twink cocks

 

 Sonny Kendall (the short one) appeared on the teen idol website flexing and hugging guys.  These two are nearly holding hands.

As of this writing, he is 16 years old, so I won't be looking for nude  photos (beefcake is ok).   

I've checked his social media, and there's no question that he's gay. 

Left: Sonny's date starts hugging before they even get a chance to order.  

So this profile will just answer Question #1: Any gay roles?

Sonny was born in East London in 2010.  He was attending the Rhodes Theatre School in Romford in 2021, when he was cast in the soap EastEnders.

Whoops, it looks like the EastEnders gig is Sonny's only on-screen role.  But it has gotten him nominations for Best Young Performer at the British Soap Awards in 2022 and 2025,  Rising Star at the National Television Awards (2023), and Favourite Young Actor at the TV Times Awards.  So let's check it out.

The East End, north of the Thames and east of the Tower, is known for its Cockney rhyming slang, poverty, crime, and industrial blight.  This is where Jack the Ripper found  his victims, and Oscar Wilde found his rentboys.  

In the 1990s, my boyfriend Lane and I went to the World Congress of LGBT Jews, held in a hotel on the Isle of Dogs, East London.  It was dreadful. 

The soap opera EastEnders, on since 1985, features the  impoverished, the down-and-out, and the criminal .  We don't see British versions of the Lords of One Life to Live or the Quartermaines of General Hospital.  At least, not many of them.

It is known for "difficult," controversial plot arcs, involving murder, rape, drug addiction, and human trafficking.  And LGBT people.  The first male same-sex kiss on British tv, between boyfriends Colin and Guido (Michael Cashman, Nicholas Donovan), in 1987.   It didn't happen on American tv until 2003.

Left: When you search for nude photos of Nicholas Donovan, this one appears.  I think it's David Boreanaz.

Sonny's character, Tommy Moon, is the son of Kat and Alfie Moon (Shane Ritchie), who have a tumultuous relationship, with various infidelities, a brain tumor, prostate cancer. an injury in a fire, and having twin sons named Bert and Ernie.   Oh, and Tommy turns out to be the biological son of Alfie's cousin, the villainous Michael Moon (Steve John Shepherd, left).

Tommy is born in 2010, and starts out life in a controversial plotline about being switched with a dead baby.  It takes a few plot twists for Alfie and Kat to realize that their kid is actually alive, and get him back.  He lives through more murders, diseases, and infidelities, until 2014 , when the parents win the lottery and get the heck out of the East End.

More after the break

The Face of Pure Evil at Denkmann Elementary School

This is the Face of Pure Evil
 

And the House Where Evil Dwells.

When I was a kid, it was painted grey, and that attic window had bars on it.

I lived on 41st Street, the the north side of Denkmann Elementary School  My boyfriend Bill lived two blocks north, by 18th Avenue -- a busy street that I was not allowed to cross.

To the east was Darry's house (we hadn't met yet), and eventually  Country Style Ice Cream.

To the south was Dewey's Candy Store, Gary's house, and  eventually the Nazarene Church.

To the west was Schneider's Drug Store, where you could buy comic books. 

But we never took the direct route to Schneider's.  We walked all the way up to 18th Avenue and around to the back, to avoid The Maniac and his house.

There were lots of Mean Boys at Denkmann who would steal your lunch money, call you names, or pound you for infractions of the rules of grade school behavior. Like Dick, who hung out by Dewey's Candy Store and pounded you for being a "girl."  Or Mark, who hung out by the south door, and challenged smaller boys to fight him.  But The Maniac was by far the worst.

Most bullies choose one or two victims to torment; everyone else is safe.  But the Maniac was indiscriminate, targeting everyone except girls and bigger boys.  He interpreted the most innocent statement or gesture, even standing too close to him, even looking at him, as an insult that must be redressed: "Now we have to fight!"

If you refused, he attacked on the spot, or if you were inside the school, ambushed you on the way home.

If you agreed to fight, you met your doom later, on the west side of the school yard, a desolate space of dead trees and yellow grass across the street from his house.

Snarling like a rabid dog, The Maniac punched and kicked you everywhere, in the face, the chest, the belly, the balls.  When you collapsed, bloody and sobbing, he poured dirt on you, spat in your face, and moved on.

When you tried to tell teachers, they simply said "No one likes a tattle-tale."

When you tried to tell parents, they  simply said "You have to learn to fight your own battles."

The only escape was to avoid the Maniac: don't sit near him in the cafeteria, don't stand near him at recess, run home as fast as you could after school, and at all costs stay away from the House of Evil.  Don't go anywhere near 40th Street.

But one day during the summer after third grade,  I was stupid.  Mom asked me to return a cake-decorating kit that she borrowed from the Old Lady Schoolteachers for some PTA event.  They lived on 40th Street, two houses south of the House of Evil.

 

I should have walked all the way around Denkmann School, but it was hot, Cartoon Showboat was coming on soon, and besides, the Maniac might not even be home.  So I cut diagonally across the parking lot and the schoolyard and came to 40th Street exactly parallel to the Old Lady Schoolteachers' house.

(Model is over 18).

I peered at the House of Evil -- it looked deserted -- took a deep breath, and crossed the street.  I was in the yard -- almost up to the screen porch.  Almost safe.

"Hey, Fairy!"

More after the break

"Hollyoakes" tackles trans bullying, with teen bodybuilder and ant Dan Hough as the bully. Plus bonus n*de twinks

 

In the spring of 2024, the British soap Hollyoakes featured a storyline where Tony Hutchinson (Nick Pickard) and his estranged wife Diane discover that 14 years ago a drunken midwife switched the babies, so their biological child was raised by someone else, who has since died, so.....welcome to the family, Rose! 

Rose was played by Ava Webster, but after he comes out as transgender and changes his name to Ro, the part was taken over by trans actor Leo Cole, seen here with his recast siblings, Brook Debbio and Alex Fletcher. 

Tony already had a gay son who was murdered, a daughter who died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and a daughter by the wife of his kidnapped best friend, who was then murdered.  Diane had an affair with Tony's father while he was kidnapped, was a murder suspect, and saw her "we were on a break" boyfriend murderd. So a son who was transitioning?  Not a problem.

Tony's girlfriend Marie and her two adult sons were perfectly accepting of the new member of their family, but not her youngest son, Arlo (Dan Hough).  

Dan Hough began to play Arlo in March 2024, and spent his first season in a standard soap opera plotline (for Hollyoakes), being kidnapped by his half-brother (Tyler Conti), re-kidnapped by his Dad (Andrew Dowbiggin, left), re-kidnapped again, sedated,  murdered (and in a big reveal, found to be alive after all), and returned to his Mother.   His next season involved bullying.

He grew jealous when Ro befriended a girl he liked.  He tried to force Ro to do his homework, and when his future stepbrother refused, attacked.  Ro pulled a knife to defend himself, but accidentally stabbed his deaf friend Oscar, leading to his arrest. 

Arlo began a course of violent attacks, transphobic insults, and cyberbullying, with suggestions that he self-harm-- while being perfectly polite around the parents. This causes Ro to fall into a deep depression, drink heavily, skip classes, and stay away from social events.

Hollyoakes changed its logo to the colors of the Trans Pride Flag for episodes that aired during Britain's Mental Health Awareness Week, 12-18 May, 2025.  An online friend suggested that Ro join a trans youth support group.  He set out, but changed his mind and announced that he was going to end his life.  After some searches by his frantic parents and Marie and audience suspense, he turned out to be fine: he called the real-life National LGBTQ+ Helpline  (with the number displayed at the end of the episode),  talked to a trans counselor,  and wants to go on living.

Not coincidentally, the episode aired shortly after Britain's Supreme Court determined that the 2010 Equality Act did not apply to trans people, and the Health Secretary announced a ban on puberty blockers for trans youth under age 18.  Trans rights are under attack in Britain nearly as virulently as in the U.S.

What about Arlo?  When his role in the bullying came out, Mom Marie interrogated him.  He claimed that he didn't hate trans people, he was retaliating for Dad Tony's abuse.  That turned out to be a lie, so he admitted that he hated Ro because "he has everything, and I have nothing."  . 

This was Arlo's last appearance on Hollyoaks, but Ro is a continuing character.   

I wanted to researched these boys who have had such a positive impact on LGBT youth in Britain. There's not much out there on Leo Cole: he's from Manchester, came out as trans at age 12, has an older brother, and is into motorbiking.  This is his first on-screen acting role.

There is quite a lot about Dan Hough (Arlo).  He was been nominated for the TV Times Favourite Young Actor Award and the Inside Soaps Best Young Performer Award (for Hollyoakes), and the London Film Critics Young Performer of the Year Award (for Speak No Evil).  -- all  in the same month!  And...wait, what's he doing with a bodybuilder's physique at age...ten?

More after the break

Björn Mosten: His "Love and Anarchy" nude hugeness made him a star, but he's also played a gay boarding school bully and Oddgeir's buddy.

 

In the Swedish comedy Kärlek och anarki (Love and Anarchy, 2020-22), middle aged publishing house consultant Sofia (Ida Engvoll) and young IT guy Max (Björn Mosten) fight a flirtatious "dare war,"  trying to one-up each other with increasingly drastic dares:

Dress like pop singer Cyndi Lauper.

Walk backwards for a day.

Get too drunk

Mimic people

Walk into a restaurant and pretend that you work there.

Dribble

Do everything as fast as you can

And:  Get naked in front of your family.

Whew, our boy is huge.

Frontside and back.

This was the 23-year old actor's only nude scene in the series (he takes off his shirt a few times), but it was enough to seal his popularity among gay men in Sweden and abroad.

His cuteness and his acting ability too, of course.

The cover story of Kupe tells us that he is "An Overnight Star."  

Björn wasn't planning to become a star.  He was a small town boy, from Dvärsätt in central Sweden (the nearest big city is Trondheim, Norway, three hours away).  In the summer of 2019, he was just finishing up his degree in engineering at Uppsala University, and enrolled in the master's program in Computer and Information Engineering.  Lisa Langseth was casting an IT guy for her new comedy drama.  He had done some modeling, so why not audition?

After Love and Anarchy, Bjorn starred in the theatrical play Jakten (2022), at the Stockholms Stadsteaterat.  

It means "The Hunt," as in "Witch Hunt": a grade school teacher (Henrik Norlén) s falsely accused of sexually assaulting a child in his class.  Bjorn plays Marcus, his teenage son.

Next came the tv series Ondskan ("Evil," 2023): Erik (Isac Calmroth) is expelled from public school due to being a violent thug, enrolls in an exclusive private school, becomes a bullying victim, and commences an affair with the lunch lady. 

More after the break

Pilot Bunch: Unbreakable boyfriend, zombie boyfriend, teen Jesus manager. With n*de dudes from New Orleans and Hawaii

 

I may have met Pilot Bunch, who played Johnny B., buddy of the teenage Jesus on The Righteous Gemstones, at a Halloween party a few years ago. No, we didn't hook up.

Today he looks a lot like my niece before she began transitioning.  And coincidentally, their boyfriends look very similar, too.

Pilot was born in Kazakhstan, but grew up in Atlanta, where he graduated from Woodward Academy in 2025.   His first acting role was in The Lion King, performed at his elementary school.  He got an agent at age 11, and began appearing on tv at age 14.  To date he has twelve on-screen credits  listed on the IMDB, including:

Four episodes of Drama Club (2021), a Nickelodeon mockumentary about a middle school drama club recruiting a football player (Chase Vacnin).  Sounds like "High School Musical."

Pilot plays Colin, the chem-class lab partner of focus character Mack (a girl).  In an interview in TresA, he says that he loved the character: "witty, sarcastic, and always messing with Curtis (Reyn Doi).  Reyn Doi usually plays gay characters, so we can assume that Colin is gay-subtext or gay-vague.

In 2021, Pilot played Vincent, a resident of the Alexandria Safe Zone, in  the post-apocalyptic The Walking Dead.  "A reckless, immature bully," he and his friends play "chicken" with a child zombie (Augustus Morgan, son of Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays antagonist Negan).  He says that the role was fun because he got to hang out with Augustus in his zombie makeup. 

He also has roles on The Wonder Years, 115 Grains, The Hill, and Red One, and some theater, including Shenandoah.  He plays Robert, who is kidnapped by Union soldiers during the Civil War (right, with Caleb Baumann as Gabriel)  Robert isn't dead; Gabriel is his best friend, not an angel.

Pilot's biggest role to date is in The Unbreakable Boy (2025), a biographical heartwarmer featuring Austin (Jacob Laval), who has a brittle-bone disorder and is on the autism spectrum.  Pilot starts out a bully, but becomes Austin closest friend and supporter. In a feature article in Pop Size, he notes that the role has special significance for him, because his brother is on the autism spectrum

Pilot's Instagram contains no pictures of him with girls, except for this one, but he could hardly help it: it was at a friend's birthday party.  Otherwise it's boys all the way down.

More after the break. Caution: Explicit

Kurt Ostlund: Disney Channel's Slab, comic book fan, bank robber, gay best friend, n*de bodybuilder

Mr. Young (2011-13), on Disney XD, featured Brendan Meyer as a genius who graduates from college at age 15 and, instead of taking a professorship at MIT and working on the string theory of the universe, becomes a high school science teacher.  In standard teencom style, he has a best friend, a crush, and a bully -- all students at the school -- and hilarity ensues.  And a lot of tongue-lolling, jaw-dropping "Girl of My Dreams" heteronormative ideology

But it wasn't totally execrable. There was a gay-subtext bromance between the buddies, and the bully Slab (Kurt Ostlund) only expressed heterosexual interest once.  Plus he had some gender-atypical traits that key in to gay stereotypes.

I've checked the adult careers of the three main male actors, and it looks like Slab is the only one with gay potential.  So let's take a look:

Not him, a Playgirl model from 1991 and current disc golf champion.  The name is close, though.

Our guy went on to play more slabs in heteronormative projects:

Hothead in Mark & Russell's Wild Ride (2015): two high schoolers try to win the Girl of Their Dreams or something.

Oggy in Unseen (2016): A family man who's invisible searches for his missing daughter.  It's not a comedy.

But then he went full-on bear to play gay-vague or "no expression of heterosexual interest" characters, such as a comic book fan who is targeted by a ghost for stealing important issues in an episode of Supernatural (2018).

Soldiers in Project Blue Book (2019) and The Terror (2019).

Strong Boy in 15 episodes of Snowpiercer (2020-2022), about a train that carries the last survivors of humanity after the world becomes a frozen wasteland.  He is brain-addled from his trauma, but eventually recovers, joins the resistance (there's always a resistance), and sacrifices himself to save his friends.

More after the break

Gavin's Cute/Cool Photos, Part 4: A boy and his bully, a boy and his stuntman, Kelton Dumont, Santa Claus, and some n*de dudes

 

Previous: Gavin's Cute/Cool Photos, Part 3: A boy and his monkey, a boy and his fish, bikers, surfing, and bodybuilder buds

This is a collection of cute/cool photos of Gavin Munn, who plays Jonathan on Raising Dion and Abraham on The Righteous Gemstones.  He was under 18 at the original post, so no n*de photos, but I included some of his costars and friends.

1. Such as Jesse La Flair, parkour athlete, who will be the stunt double of Kimball Farley in Righteous Gemstones Season 4.

2. In Dear Santa (2024), a dyslexic boy writes a letter to Santa Claus, but it accidentally goes to Satan (Jack Black), who appears to help him gain self-confidence, best a bully, and win the Girl.  Gavin plays the bully.  

I don't know why he needs a mannequin.  Does Satan, like, shoot him out of a cannon?

3. Bullies wear colorful outfits

4. In case you want to see Satan and Santa Claus riffing.  That's actually Kyle Gass, who plays a science teacher.

5. A boy and his fish.

6. A boy and his boat

More Gavin and buds after the break

Picco: A lot of male nudity amid the brutal, homophobic denizens of a German youth prison

 Someone recommended the German psychological horror movie Picco, about the inmates at a juvenile detention center  -- "lots of naked bodies on display."  There's bound to be some buddy-bonding, and maybe some homoerotic relations, right? 

Wikipedia says that it features a "troubled young man" named Jakub, who becomes enmeshed in a "harsh social hierarchy" and "the brutal realities of life behind bars."  That's like every prison movie ever made.

The IMDB doesn't mention a Jakob.  Here it's Kevin, a new boy in the prison, played by Constantine Jascheroff, and his three surly, belligerant, homophobic cellmates. The Variety review names them:

1. The psycho-violent Marc, played by Frederick Lau.

2. His belligerant crony, Andy, played by Martin Kiefer

More after the break