The shirtless parking valets: A shock of joy on "Suburgatory" on the night before Thanksgiving. With Mohr and Parker butts and a lot of bare chests

When I was growing up, you almost never saw a bare chest on tv.  On the rare occasions when it happened -- Denny Miller surfs to Gilligan's Island, Ponch and Jon hit the beach on CHIPS, Kevin poses for an art class on Mr. Belvedere -- you felt an intense, palpable joy.  Not desire so much as understanding.  This is it, what we were made for. Beauty.  Truth.  The Eternal Masculine. 

With the advent of cable and then streaming tv, nearly every actor took off his shirt frequently, and some even put their butts and cocks on display.  And of course we can go online and see 100 naked men before breakfast. When you see it all the time, that shock of joy vanishes.  

But it returned on Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011, the night before Thanksgiving, when Suburgatory aired Episode 1.8, "Thanksgiving."

Suburgatory (2011-14) starred Jeremy Sisto (left, showing his sausage) as George Altman, an architect who moves his teenage daughter Tessa (Jane Levy) from Manhattan to Chatswin, Connecticut.  She is not pleased, but she tries to find some semblance of cool amid the Mean Girls, Dumb Jocks, and Ladies Who Lunch.

It was not our favorite show -- mostly women in the cast, a lot of heterosexism, and some low-key gay stereotyping -- but it aired between The Middle and Modern Family, so we had no choice.

Left: George's butt.

In Episode 1.8, it's Thanksgiving in Chatswin, and Tessa is upset because Dad George has rejected their traditional Manhattan activities for dinner with the ultra-rich Dallas Royce.  In the B Plot, Tessa's friend Lisa is upset because her middle-class Mom, Sheila Shay, insists that she wear a "Puritan dress" to their Thanksgiving Dinner.

 When Tessa and Dad George arrive at the Royce mansion, they see shirtless valets parking the guests' cars.  

Whoa, that shock of joy came rushing back!  

Maybe because it was so unexpected.  Who hires shirtless valets?  Especially at Thanksgiving, when it's in the 30s and 40s out?  And there are twelve people at that party. Why do they need four valets?  

Director Alex Hardcastle was not even trying to be realistic. He presented us with a vision of masculine beauty to counterbalance the feminine vibe of the rest of the episode (spoiler alert: Tessa's friend Lisa spends about ten minutes of air time naked, in protest of that Puritan dress). 

The first Indian Valet vanishes immediately, but when George's friend Noah hands his car keys to the second, we get a bare chest and shoulders close-up.  He looks like a college athlete.

He disappears, but as Noah walks toward the door, we see the two Pilgrim valets, one extremely muscular, the other a rather thin twink.  No closeups, but they are visible for several seconds, organizing the various parking slips.

Later we get quick glimpses of the two Indian Valets at the Royce table,  so they must be Royce relatives co-opted for the job.  The Pilgrim Valets are visible at the middle class Shay table, so presumably they were hired. 

But who are the actors?  In 2011 I let the scene slip into memory, but last night I saw it again during a rewatch. With15 years of experience on this website, Nysocboy's Beefcake and Bonding, and Tales of West Hollywood,  I was equipped to research their other acting roles,  look for nude photos, and check their social media to see if they are gay. 

More after the break.

Luke Kokotek: The young Will from "Stranger Things" has gay friends, throws shade. With Noah bulge and Croatian cocks

 

Instagram recommeded The Luke Ellison Kokotek, "you can call me Bear," an actor known for playing the young Will Byers in two 2025 episodes of Stranger Things.  

Episode 5.1: The young Will, hiding in the Upside Down parallel world, is captured by the monstrous Vecna.

Episode 5.4: Vecna makes the teenage Will relive the capture and says that it made him realize that he could kidnap more kids and use them to take over the outer world.

That's enough for Luke to be interviewed on podcasts and invited to a lot of fan conventions, and to become friends with Noah Schnapp (the teenage Will).  Luke's mom writes: "Thanks for always being a call away...our family loves you."

Left: Noah Schnapp's bulge, in case you haven't seen it recently.

Will drops some hints about being gay in earlier seasons, and finally comes out in Episode 5.7.  Noah himself came out in 2023.  Could they have cast a gay kid to play the Young Will?

It wouldn't hurt to check.

Luke was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the youngest of the five children of May Miles H., "a beekeeper, biologist, teacher, animal rescuer, chess junkie, and actress."  I haven't found her on the IMDB, so she must be in the theater.

All five of her children are actors.  The oldest, Finnan, is over 18 and rather cute.

Their last name is Croatian, a diminuitive of kotek, "cock," as in "rooster." 

So: "Small cock."  It's not that small. (Explicit after the break).

Luke has nine acting credits on the IMDB, beginning in 2023 with 115 Grains, about a police officer dealing with the trauma of his past.  Pilot Bunch co-stars.

In 2024:

Game of Heirs.  No description available, but it's not a Game of Thrones parody.

Scared to Death.  Some ghost hunters stake out an abandoned children's home, where the ghosts of the kids terrorize them.

More after the break.  

Wes Stern (sigh): Was the cutest teen idol of the 1970s gay, or just pretending? With bonus n*de Sal Mineo and Dustin Hoffman

 

Sigh.  Isn't this most groovy, ginchy, dreamy, outta sight dude to ever have his name written amid little hearts in a chemistry notebook?

Er...I mean he's a hot snack.

Wait -- not Bobby Sherman.  I meant his boyfriend, Wes Stern (sigh).

In the spring of 1971, 27-year old Bobby Sherman was probably the #1 teen idol in the country,or maybe #2 to David Cassidy of The Partridge Family.  He had released 10 albums and 23 singles, includiing hits "Easy Come Easy Go" and "Julie Do Ya Love Me."  His shirtless photos were plastered all over the teen magazines, actually more often than David Cassidy's.  And he had displayed acting talent as the "allergic to girls" beach movie star Frankie Catalina on an episode of The Monkees, plus two seasons as Troy Bolt on Here Come the Brides (1968-70).

The minds of ABC executives started churning.  Why not give him his own tv series?  He could play "himself," and sing a different number every week.  Surefire hit, right?

They based the premise on the singer/songwriter team Boyce and Hart.  Bobby would play Bobby Conway, a struggling singer. They just needed an awkward, "girl-shy" dude to provide the comic relief and tight jeans as his nerdish lyricist Lionel Poindexter.

Thousands of groovy dudes showed up for open auditions, but Bobby really, really liked 23-year old Wes Stern (sigh).  

Soon they were seen together at Hollywood hot spots, preparing for the deep, deep, deep romance (um...friendship) that would characterize their series.  

Everybody idolized Bobby Sherman at the time, but Wes (sigh) really pushed  up the lovelorn gaze.  He was definitely up for some snogging, and I'm sure that the nearly-openly bisexual Bobby Sherman obliged. 

Interestingly, Bobby married Pat Carnel that summer, and published an introduction to Wes (sigh) claiming that he "loves girls."  Protesting too much, buddy?

Left: Bobby hasn't revealed much about his male loves, but we almost know he dated almost-out actor Sal Mineo.

And Wes (sigh)

Tie-in novels and comic books were ordered, gushing teen magazine articles were written -- Wes (sigh) lives in a "bachelor apartment in West Hollywood.".  Then, after a "meet cute" episode of The Partridge Family, Getting Together premiered in October 1971. 

We must have watched -- the alternative was All in the Family, which Mom and Dad didn't allow because of the atheists.  But I don't recall anything except Bobby and Wes (sigh) smiling at each other.  My description comes from nostalgia articles:

In the first episode, Bobby becomes the guardian of his orphaned younger sister, but she runs away when she thinks her presence is interfering with their romance...um, I mean friendship. Don't they have their own room?  

Most episodes involved their parenting problems rather than the singing-song writing stuff - dig, a teenage girl in 1971 likes The Lawrence Welk Show!

Co-parents in an alternative family, plus the guys lived in an antique shop. They couldn't be more gay-coded if they plastered their bedroom with pictures of Steve Reeves.  

Except Getting Together didn't air on  ABC's Friday night block of kid-friendly programs.  It aired on Saturday night, where it failed to make a dent in the juggernaut of Archie, Edith, and the Meathead.  14 episodes appeared through January 1972, and then the duo disbanded.  But the memory of a gay romance has lingered.

Was Wes (sigh) gay in real life, did he and Bobby have a platonic-pal bromance, or was their relationship purely manufactured? I knew almost nothing about him then, and I still don't.  He is almost absent from the internet.  All I have is a few details about the show and 13 acting roles listed on the IMDB. 

He was born in New York City on July 25th, 1947.  "Stern" means "star" in German and Yiddish, so I'm assuming Jewish, although "Wesley" is a Methodist name.  No info on his education.  In 1969 he hit Hollywood and joined the Groundlings comedy troupe.

He turned down the role of Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate (1969) to star in The First Time (1969): Three teenage boys on vacation in Niagara Falls mistake Jacqueline Bisset for a hooker and set out to lose their virginity.  Wes (sigh) is into it, but his gay-coded friend is not.

More after the break

Iain Armitage: Young Sheldon grows up, hugs guys, celebrates Pride. With nude Galecki, Fisher, and Simon Rex

 

I didn't like The Big Bang Theory (2007-19), featuring Johnny Galecki as the (relatively) stable center of a group of wacky nerd scientists who can't get any  "big bangs."  The hetero-horniness was incessant, and there were so many homophobic statements -- mostly asserting that all gay men wear dresses and prance --  that I was more amazed than offended  Wasn't Jim Parsons, who played the neurotic physics savant Sheldon Cooper, gay?  Why didn't he protest?  (Apparently he was closeted until around the fifth season.) 

But I liked Young Sheldon (2017-24), about Sheldon Cooper's childhood, growing up in East Texas in the 1990s with a conservative Baptist Mom, a macho football-coach Dad, a macho muscle-building brother, and...you get the idea.

I grew up in the Nazarene Church, which taught that Baptists were much too liberal.  I could relate. 

Plus there were lots of cute guys.  Sheldon's older brother Georgie (Montana Jordan) had musclebuilding plotlines before they switched to a "getting a girl pregnant" story arc.

Dad, Lance Barber, was a chub with a bulge.

Next door neighbor Billy (Wyatt McClure) was too young to be hot, of course, but he had that puppy-dog cuteness that makes you say "Aww, how adorable!"  I figured that he would eventually come out, but instead the writers decided to give him a crush on Sheldon's sister

And how about Rex Linn as Tom Peters, the longsuffering principal at Sheldon's high school. Wait, this is Simon Rex.

There were no gay characters -- with or without Jim Parsons as executive producer, this was still a "family friendly" (non gay) show.  But also no casual homophobia.  Just a few references suggesting homophobia, as when someone asks if Sheldon is...you know, and Dad angrily yells "NO!"

And in Season 5, Sheldon tells his roommate Evan (Motoki Maxten) that he doesn't want to date girls because they are a distraction. 

"So you're into guys?" Evan asks nonchalantly.

"No, they're a distraction, too."

Actually, he turns out to be asexual hetero-romantic, although this is never specified on The Big Bang Theory.

But I'm pretty sure that Iain Armitage (Young Sheldon) is gay.

More after the break

Invisible Boys: Gay agony porn with four Australian boys facing a homophobic 1950s society in 2017. You'll need to see some cocks.

  

Invisible Boys just dropped on Hulu: a 2025 Australian tv series set before the same-sex marriage "plebescite" (referendum) in 2017, featuring four gay boys in Geraldton, Western Australia (on the coast, 420 km north of Perth).  I was going to click on "play," but then I read the episode synopses.  And reviews.  And the Reddit discussion.  And I noped my way ou tof there. 

Boy #1: 17-year old Charlie (Joseph Zada)  is outed after his hookup with a married man (didn't the multicolored hair and makeup give people a clue?).  He is instantly rejected by everybody at his high school, because of course gay people are always outcasts, hated and shunned by the straights. 

Boy #2: 19-year old Matt (Joe Klocek, top left) starts dating Charlie, but their relationship is stymied due to the need to pretend they are straight buddies.

Boy #3:  Zeke (Aydan Califiore, doing the deed left) is dealing with the toxic masculinity of his macho Italian-Australian family, where the worst thing you can be is a poof.  He suffers from depression and body dysmorphism, and contemplates suicide.

When Ian (Isaac Davies) shows him a porn video and starts getting grabby, he angrily says "What are you doing?" and sends him away.

Left: I couldn't find any n*de photos of Boys #1-3, so I'm posting two Australian guys from my files.

Boy #4: Alpha male Hammer (Zach Blamfied) has always been a "man's man," into sports, beer, and hanging with his buds, and hating poofs.  But then his girlfriend decides that she's ready to have sex, and he's not up to the task.  Could he be gay?

But he wants to become a pro soccer player, and of course that would be impossible for a gay man.

Zeke (Boy #3) and Hammer are attracted to each other, but their romance is stymied by having to hide from their homophobic families, friends, and teammates, and the fact that they hate themselves for being gay.  "Everything I can't have in this world is due to liking men" (Pose). 

More after the break.  Caution: it gets more depressing, but there are cute guys.

Magic Thomas: Special needs teen hugs Disney hunks, celebrates Pride. With Pratt, Pascal, Peter Pan, and nude dudes with autism

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Cal Tolentino: Bodybuilder dates "Best Medicine's" Liam, rooms with Martin Herlihy, kisses a ninja. With two Cal cocks.

I've been watching Best Medicine (2026) on Netflix: Josh Charles plays a gruff physician in a small town in Maine, where there are a surprising number of diseases with weird symptoms.  Turning blue?  Suddenly seeing birds?  I like the gay characters fully integrated into the community, like sarcastic teenager Liam (Josh Hoon Lee).  

In most episodes, Liam hangs out with two girls, Harley and Amelia.  But in Episode 1.9, at a high school "sleep-in," Amelia is replaced by Kyle (Cal Tolentino), joining them for a giant-sized Connect Four and a "Skeeter" game.   

In Episode 1.13, Kyle appears as the third of the rude teenagers again, protesting the plan to bring a salmon farm to the city, which would destroy the ecosystem. They're arrested for trespassing, which they find thrilling.  Later, they sit together at the wedding of the gay couple Greg and George.

I couldn't figure out why the showrunners replaced the girl in the trio with a boy, except to imply that Kyle was dating one of the other two.  In my headcanon, he's dating Liam.

When I started researching the actor to see if he is gay in real life, I got a surprise:

The dude is built.

Cal grew up in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania, about an hour west of Philadelphia.  He competed on American Ninja Warrior Junior, a reality show where you race through a multilevel obstacle course, beginning at age 11, then switched to the teen version, where he was a national finalist three times.  But he really wanted to be an actor, so the minute he got his driver's license at age 16, he started training at Playhouse West.  Also he changed his name from Caleb Plohoros to Cal Tolentino. From Greek to Italian?

While training, Cal was in three plays: A South Philly Christmas, Meisner, and Savannah. 

He broke into on-screen acting in 2025, with four short and a tv spot:

Hundred Dollar Brawler, about boxing. Cal plays the Hype Guy.

Guardians of the Outward Plain: A boy and his lion pal try to make human connections. Cal plays a Mechanic.

Godhead, not to be confused with the other 2025 Godhead short: A man searching for his lost brother stumbles into a sinister drug den. There are four characters other than addicts: Adam, Judas (Cal), and a Preacher (Sullivan Vaughan, left).

My Teenage Great Grandma, a vertical-format drama streaming on NetShort. A scientist dies in 1945 and re-animates as a teenager in 2025. Sounds wacky.  Cal's character appears halfway down the cast list.

Plus Cal and Peyton Carson wrote, directed, and starred in 4 AM: After a "rowdy Memorial Day Weekend," two guys try to go back to life as usual, but a text message results "in a painful test of trust." It's not available to stream, and I can't tell from the description and photos if they're buddies or boyfriends.

In 2026, Cal appeared in two episodes of Good Luck, Baby Girl, a short-form vertical series streaming on TikTok and Instagram.  It's about three girls trying to make it in L.A.

Two episodes of Best Medicine.

And the movie Roommates.  This photo is misleading: Cal and Martin Herlihy aren't the stars.  It's a comedy about girls who become roommates in college, and have increasingly dark adventures.   I went through on fast forward, and couldn't find Cal, but his sister posts a clip: he walks down the dorm corridor with his shirt off, and shakes hands with one of the girls while she gazes lustfully.

Aidan Langford plays the high school-aged brother of one of the girls.  He is outed as a prank.  

More after the break.

Aramis Gomez: Teenage model/actor with six acting credits, some swimsuit photos, and lots of gay friends. With Zac Efron's stuff

 

I was interested in Aramis Gomez because he has over 1,000 photos on the teen idol site, so he must be famous for something, and because I always liked the name Aramis: one of the Three Musketeers, originally "someone from Aramits," a village in the  Basque region of the Pyrenees.  My friend Yuri and I went to Basque country several years ago in search of "the world's biggest penis."

Our Aramis seems to be primarily known for modeling.  He has only six acting credits listed on the IMDB, five of them shorts:

Bricks (2016), not to be confused with the other Bricks (2016), an adaption of Poe's "Cask of Amontillado," Bricks (2015), about two crooks arguing after a robbery, or Brick (2025), about an apartment house that's bricked in.  Our Bricks is only seven minutes long; it took me longer to look for a plot synopsis. I couldn't find one.

Why is Santa Asian? (2016).  No plot description, but no Santa Claus appears in the cast list, but Randall Park stars as Lily's Dad.

Foster Home (2017). No plot description, but directed by Sean Peavy.

Clark (2018): William McNamara kidnaps a boy (Aramis) who is "much more than he seems to be."  So, a demon, a brat, or someone who teaches him the joie de vivre.

Ghost Squad (2018): Paranormal investigators camp out in their school.  

Plus a two-episode guest spot on Animal Kingdom (2021): Liam (Taylor Handley), the abusive ex-husband of desert guru Cassandra, kidnaps their son (Aramis), so Andrew (Shaun Hatosy, left) leaves him tied up in the desert and suggests that Cassandra run away with the boy.

Aramis is a preteen or tween in all of his appearancces,  so I doubt that there is any gay content.

More after the break

Robert Rhodes: The visual difference hasn't stopped him from playing a dragonrider, a cultist, and a thug, and finding a boyfriend (or two).

In House of the Dragon, the Game of Thrones prequel, the crowning of King Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) has led to civil war in the Medieval fantasy world of Westeros, and several dragons left without masters. In Episode 2.7  (2024), a group of Dragonseeds is  ordered to try to claim them.   Sorry, after researching two fan wiki and wikipedia, I'm still not sure who dragonseeds are, and why they have to be the ones to tame the dragons.

Silver Denys (Robert Rhodes) volunteers to go first, but as he reaches out to touch Vermithor the Bronze Fury, it breathes fire and incinerates him, along with most of the other dragonseeds. Finally a blacksmith named Hugh managed to trick the dragon into obedience.

Silver Denys was on screen for only about a minute, and had no lines, but he became the subject of extensive fan debate.  Was he brave or foolhardy?  Some fans also criticized his appearance: the stage makeup was amateurish, not realistic, grotesque, an obvious symbol of his incestuous parentage, and so on.  Others stepped up to "defend" him: it's his real appearance, he's  "deformed."

Robert called them out: "Call it a scar or a difference. The word deformed isn't very pleasant and insinuates I am half formed/incorrectly formed.  I'm not incorrect, just a bit different."

For a long time, Robert responded to the stares with anger, but now, if he's not tired from telling the story 1,000 times a day, he'll say "Is there anything you want to ask about?"  

The story: he was born with a congenital melanocytic nevis -- a birthmark that covered half his face.  Doctors worried that it would become cancerous, so he spent his childhood in and out of hospitals, undergoing tissue expansions and skin grafts.  He had his last surgery at age 17.

When he was in high school, Robert realized that he was gay, and worried that he'd be doubly stigmatized when he tried to make connections.  Would he ever be able to find a partner? Was he going to live as an perpetual outsider among his own people?

Then he auditioned for Hairspray -- and won the part of Link Larkin, the hunky heartthrob  (played by Zac Efron in 2007 and Garrett Clayton in 2016).   That's when he decided to become an actor, to have people look at him for his hotness and acting talent, not for his scar.

After high school Robert attended the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in South London, where he received a B.A. in Performance in 2018.  He started filling up a resume with acting roles:

Commercials for Enterprise  and Kandar 

The lead in the music videos Heroist (left)  and God for a Day 

Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame 

Bill Sykes in The Invitation 

It was a little harder to break into on-screen acting.  Robert is an ambassador for Changing Faces UK, which combats the stigma around people with visible difference.  Especially in mass media, where they are portrayed as "shy, broken, desperate" outcasts, or more commonly as villains:

Kylo Ren in the Star Wars universe

Tony Montana in Scarface   

Scar in The Lion King

The Joker.

So he tries to find roles where his visual difference is irrelevant to the character.

 His first  professional acting role was in a tv adaption of the Agatha Christie novel Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (2022).  Will Poulter plays as a golfer who stumbles upon a dying man.  His last words are "Why didn't they ask Evans?" I don't know what Robert's character does.

Next he played an orderly in three episodes of Masters of the Air (2024), which I thought was a steampunk series with dirigibles flying over London.  It actually stars Austin Butler, Callum Turner, and Anthony Boyle (left) as bomber pilots during World War II.

More after the break