How fans deny queerness in "The Righteous Gemstones" and other tv series. With examples and dicks.

 

New book on fan reaction to queer codes in tv series, especially how and why some fans on social media refuse to admit that a character is gay.

Gideon Gemstone's room is plastered with pictures of musclemen.

He's obviously straight.  He wants to look like them, not at them.

On The Middle, Sue's friend Brad begins "I'm...."  and is cut off when she says "I know" and hugs him.  

Obviously he was going to confess his love for her.

On What We Do in the Shadows, Guillermo tells the vampires, "I was about thirteen when I realized that I was..." and is cut off.

Obviously he was going to say "shy around girls."

On The Hollow, Adam has a Pride flag in his room.

So what?  Lots of guys like rainbows.

He tells his friends, "I'm gay."

Obviously he didn't mean it like that.

Gideon and Scotty have a romantic candlelight dinner while the background song tells us: "The way you look when you get down, you knock me out."  

Straight guys can go out to dinner.  There's such a thing as friendship, you know.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Nude photos of Joaquin Phoenix: Skip the downer movies and check out his junk. With bonus Marky Mark and Kieran Culkin

 

Everyone in Wilton Manors saw Igby Goes Down in 2002: the trailer and the title made it sound like a gay coming-out story with a lot of "going down," har har.  Actually there's no gay content at all.  Igby is a sarcastic 17 year old with an institutionalized stepfather and a dying mother (first rule of fiction: somebody always must be dying or dead).  He hooks up with his biological father's "heroin-addicted trophy mistress" and her "terminally bored" friend before euthanizing his mom and getting the heck out of Dodge.

Imagine sitting in the theater expecting a lot of gay sex, and seeing...this.  We were so disgusted that we vowed to never see anything else that the actor appeared in.  20 years later, I didn't even remember his name.

Until I saw this nude photo from Edgerton (2025).  During the COVID pandemic, small-town sheriff Joe Cross disapproves of the mayor's mask edict, so he runs against him, then kills him and his Black-Lives-Matter son, and is eventually killed himself.  

I recognized him as the star of Igby, Joaquin Phoenix, still churning out downer movies.  

Joaquin Phoenix is straight, with several girlfriends and a kid.  And apparently homophobic; he was scheduled to play a gay guy who flees to Mexico with his boyfriend, but "got cold feet" and backed out five days before filming was to begin.

But he has a big cock, so instead of a profile, I'll check to see where he's shown it off 

Beau is Afraid (2023): One of those surreal indie films with a nonsensical plot.  A lot of people die, including Beau's mother, his father, a girl he is having sex with, and eventually Beau himself. We get a blurry dotado as he is being traumatized by something or other.  

Napoleon (2023): The butt of the Emperor of France, who made vassal states of practically every country in Europe. And since this was the Age of Colonialism, practically every country in the world.  When he wasn't having "energetic sex" with his wife and mistresses.

A butt crack (not shown) in The Master (2012): World War II vet has problems, joins a cult, drops out, has sex with women. 

A backside in The Yards (2000): A union organizer goes to work for the Mob, kills some people, buddies with Mark Wahlberg, has sex with girls.  Of course his girlfriend dies.  

Bonus: Mark Wahlberg's backside.

Igby-style chest in Return to Paradise (1998): A tourist in Malaysia is arrested for hashish possession and sentenced to death, unless his friends turn themselves in. Vince Vaughn agrees, but Joaquin is executed anyway.

There are lots of movies where people don't die, buddy. 

Wait -- what happened to Igby?  From 2000 to 2003, Joaquin starred in The Yards, Gladiator, Signs, It's All About Love, Quills, and Brother Bear, but no Igby Goes Down.

Turns out that Igby was played by Kieran Culkin.  A natural mistake -- the guys looked alike in their youth, and they both prefer roles in downer movies, with lots of sex with girls and people dying, often at the same time. 

And both have big cocks.

But Kieran's career is a little more gay-positive.  He played the sassy roommate in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and a human in love with Skyler Gisondo as a bat-alien on Solar Opposites.

See also:Solar Opposites Episode 4.9: Skyler Gisondo plays a muscular bat-alien with a human boyfriend, plus Thomas Middleditch penis

Richie Rich joins a gym. With bonus Rory and Kieran cocks, and Kelvin Gemstone Comics

Peter Billingsley: The lingerie lamp kid, a Beverly Hills brat, Whips, ropes, and perhaps Peter's peter

Theo Taplitz: Jewish homophobe, gay kid, wyrm, artist, filmmaker, with some cocks and butts, and a lot of "after the death of"

  

Having had a Jewish partner for ten years, I get sort of nostalgic for Jewish culture, so  when a cute guy appeared on the icon of Bad Shabbos (2024), I clicked without doing any research.   I found three siblings and their partners preparing for Shabbos dinner with their upscale New York parents.

1. David (John Bass, seen here nude in Baywatch) and his shiksha-but-converting girlfriend Beth.  Her parents from Wisconsin are coming, too, and he is worried that they will "freak out."  It's dinner with prayers, what's the big deal?

The security guard downstairs tells the girlfriend to be sure to sit next to Ritchie, because "He's the shit."  So I kept waiting for Ritchie to arrive.  But no such person appears in the cast list. 

2. Abby and her boyfriend Benjamin (Ashley Zukerman), who hate each other.  He actually hates and insults everything.

3. The third sibling, Adam (Theo Taplitz), is still a teenager, in his room, working out to strobe lights and techno music.  David cautions that his future in-laws are from Wisconsin, not used to families arguing, like New York Jewish families do, so play it cool.

"But what about Benjamin?  The way he insults me!  Do I have to be polite to that slimy cocks*ck?"

"Yes, even to that...um...cocks*ck."

"Ok, I'll try.  But if that cheating cocks*ck starts something, I can't promise that I won't defend myself!"

Ok, three homophobic slurs in ten seconds.  I'm out.  But I wanted to know about Theo Taplitz, who so easily agreed to batter around homophobic slurs and insult LGBT viewers.

An article in Adroit gives his biography: Born in Laurel Canyon in 2003, attended the Los Angeles High School for the Arts, became a Scholastic Art and Writing National Gold Medalist twice, graduated in 2021.  

Enrolled at Columbia University as a John Jay Scholar, probably graduated in 2025.  His work "explores the middle ground between objective and subjective experience and the ruptures that occur in that unstable territory."  Um...does this explain why you're ok with homophobic slurs?

He's got 15 writing/directing credits on the IMDB, beginning when he was 13.  Quite a prodigy, but.....

True Places Never Are (2015): A boy trapped in sadness...next!

Requiem for Mr. Cromwell (2016). A boy trapped in sadness...again?

Dybbuk (2017): his little brother plays the dybbuk

Goodbye, Sam (2018): Sam is a dead parrot.

This House Has Eyes (2019): The eyes are watching a father and son at the end of the world.

Grey Heart (2019): After the death of...  When I was studying Creative Writing, they told me that the first rule of short fiction is: someone has to die or be dead.

Gable (2023): A young man uses the voice of Clark Gable to communicate with his catatonic grandfather.  Darn, I thought it would be about the House of the Seven Gables.

I'm getting depressed.  Let's get Theo's butt in here.  And there's nothing particularly homophobic about the content so far.

Theo has 17 acting credits on the IMDB, but they are mostly the shorts he wrote and directed.  Only a few other projects:

Little Men (2016): After the death of -- well, who cares, all fiction must have someone dead -- Jake (Theo) and his parents become the owners of an apartment building. He becomes friends with Tony (Michael Barbieri), whose mother has a dress shop downstairs.  They help each other out; Tony even defends Jake when bulllies "insult his sexuality."  Of course, being called "gay" is a horrible insult, because gay people are so horrible, right?  But Jake's dad decides to triple the rent; Tony's mom can't pay, and is evicted.  And of course the boys can no longer be friends.

More after the break

Ilia Bolshaya: Collegiate swimmer with a 3.97 GPA and a huge sausage. With nude swimmers and why gay men don't major in science

 

The nude celebrity subreddit posted a photo of Ilia, who is walking into the room with his cock swinging.  I figured he was an actor, but research reveals that he was a college swimmer.  Quite a prestigious one, with a lot of awards.

But the subreddit took him down right away, so they don't consider him celebrity enough.

I'm torn.  Are a lot of swimming awards enough?

I was convinced by learning that fraternity initiations at his college often involve stripping the guy, so there are a number of nude photos around (left and below). 

 But I'll compromise by changing Ilia's last name (Bolshaya means "huge" in Russian, as in большая сосиска, "big sausage").  

I'll also omit the names of his colleges, so he can't be tracked down easily (searching for "Ilia" and "swimmer" doesn't do it).

Ilia is originally from Moscow.  As a teenager, he competed in swimming events across Europe, including this one in Regensburg, where I spent a quarter abroad during my sophomore year. 

He graduated from a gymnasium (high school) in 2016, and enrolled in college in the U.S., where he majored in biology.

He was on the swim team, of course.  His favorite dish was sushi, and his favorite non-swimming activity was reading.

He joined a fraternity where they typically strip candidates.

In 2020, Ilia received his B.S. in Biology, with a 3.97 GPA, and went to graduate school in Biomedical Engineering.  As of the summer of 2025, he is a Ph.D. candidate, researching the intersection of pharmacogenomics, artificial intelligence, and mathematical modeling.  He also has an internship in quantitative pharmacology, and five publications.

Ready for the nude photo?  After the break.  Caution: Explicit.

'Chad Powers": A-hole footballer disguised as a college student, with a gay roommate and lots of bare chests. And other bare stuff.

I have no interest in -- or knowledge of -- football, but when the new Hulu series Chad Powers is advertised by two hunks gazing at each other, ready to fight or kiss, what choice do I have?  

Wait -- the two hunks are both Glen Powell, who you recall from Scream Queens and Top Gun: Maverick.  He's playing Russ Holliday, a famous college football player who was cancelled after an altercation with a kid in a wheelchair (and various other a-hole acts).  He schemes to get back into the game by creating a new identity, Chad Powers, and playing for the  struggling Catfish football team at South Georgia College (like, he's catfishing them, har har).  Presumably he'll take classes, too.   

Left: Glenn's butt.

In Episode 1.1, he steals a lot of supplies from his Oscar-winning makeup artist Dad to create the character, goes to the campus, and has a meet-cute with team mascot Danny (Frankie Rodriguez), a fashion-and-pop culture junkie who offers to help him with the deception.  "Your new identity needs to be a modest, likeable guy.  Just play the opposite of yourself."  Danny is also a makeup artist. Dude is obviously gay.  

I'm reviewing Episode 1.2, where Russ tries to maintain his new identity at a party at the coach's lake house -- shirtless hunks are promised.

Scene 1:  Russ and Danny are behind the building, near the dumpsters.  Russ roils at his prosthetic cheeks, but Danny insists: "You have to become Chad Powers. But don't talk much."  Dylan (Jordan Mendoza) arrives with his new identification materials and transcripts, "but I couldn't find him a home address."  No problem, he can stay with Danny.  Tell me more. 

Gross -- there's a bug burrowing into his prosthetic cheek!

Frankie Rodriguez is gay in real life, and has played gay characters in High School Musical: the Series, Modern Family, and Will and Grace.  I'm sure that Danny is gay, too, but they may not give us more than a few hints.

Scene 2:  Football practice.  Subplot involves the fussy Coach (Steve Zahn) and his assistant, secretly his daughter (doubtless also Russ's Love Interest). 

Coach summons Russ/Chad to note a problem with his transcripts: he was homeschooled in West Virginia, in a wilderness surrounded by wolves (nope, no wolves east of Minnesota).  So how did he manage to play high school football?

"Oh, I played...um...with the wolves."

Um...ok.  The Coach needs a winning season, or he'll be fired, so he's willing to suspend his disbelief.

Next Gerry (Colton Ryan), from the scout team and backup, introduces himself.  So far, we have five named male characters.  I'm getting a testosterone high. Who cares what a "scout team" and "backup" are?

80% of the photos Colton Ryan's Instagram show him hugging, kissing, and frolicking with a lady, and the other 20% show her alone, dressed as a man, showing her legs, smooching at the camera.  I'm guessing that he's straight. 

Wait, here's one where he's by himself.

Back to Chad Powers: Gerry teaches Russ/Chad his secret handshake, "a p*ssy symbol, because I get a lot of it."  I know -- I've seen the first 300 pictures on your Instagram. 

Gerry may want to be friends, but the other players ridicule Russ/Chad, especially Bully Nishan (Xavier Mills).

They start the practice.  Russ/Chad screws up and is demoted to backup: "Hey, Flowers for Algernon, this is where you grab this clipboard." Literary reference, har har.

Football research: There are two quarterbacks on each team. The Starting Quarterback is chosen for his ability to draw photo-ops, fawning articles, and hefty donations from boosters.  The Backup does the grunt work while the other players call him names.  But if the Starting Quarterback is injured or traded to another team, won't the Backup take over, and the players who thought he was worthless will have to do what he says? 

On the sidelines, Russ/Chad asks his Love Interest why Coach demoted him to Backup.  "The Starting QB hasn't been decided yet," she assures him.  "Coach wants you and Gerry to compete for the role."  

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Manny and Gavin D. : Gay-coded Wisconsin brothers, a wrestler and a bodybuilder, aren't into girls, until.... With some d*ck pics

 

Several years ago, I became a friend of Gavin D. on Facebook and some other social media sites.  He was a college wrestler from Wisconsin, about 200 miles away from my college town.

He never mentioned girls, but he mentioned other boys quite often.  I figured that he was gay, but not quite ready to come out yet.

His younger brother Manny was quiet, artistic -- also gay-coded.  

Apparently Manny was feeling left out, with two wrestler brothers and a sister who was a gymnast. At age 14 he joined the wrestling team, then began bodybuilding combined with intermittent fasting.  Strength training is fine for teenagers, but they are generally discouraged from bodybuilding until their bone structure is fully developed, and their body fat should not drop below 6-10%.  

 Manny shredded down to 3%, then down to an unhealthy and unattractive 1%.  Soon he was competing in venues like the Brew City Classic in Waukesha, and was the the subject of adulating video and articles "Insane 16 year old bodybuilder!"; "The Wonderkid Bodybuilder"! 

More after the break

Giovanni Ribisi: Cute on "Friends," then all dreary, depressing, homophobic art-house movies. At least he shows his d*ck

 

I first saw Giovanni Ribisi on Friends, where he had a recurring role as Phoebe's cute, naive younger brother Frank (1995-2003).  Nice biceps, buddy.

His plotlines were extensively heterosexist -- it was Friends, after all.   Eventually he falls in love with a much older woman (Debra Jo Rupp of That 70s Show), and asks Phoebe to be the surrogate mother for his child.

But the 21-year old actor, son of a talent agent and a musician, had been on screen since he was 9 years old, with recurring roles in The New Leave It to Beaver, Davis Rules, My Two Dads, The Wonder Years, and Family Album, and guest shots practically everywhere.

Here Teddy and Boz (Giovanni, Stephen Dorff) rib their "dateless amigo" Bud Bundy on a 1989 episode of Married With Children. 

As a young adult, Giovanni had a lean, rugged frame and a handsome but quirky face.  I got such a strong gay vibe that I expected a lot of gay characters or subtexts in his work.  Instead, he played a lot of brooding, depressed heterosexuals in art-house movies: 

SubUrbia (1996): a group of teens in small-town Austin, Texas (of all places) experience angst and want to escape.   Nice physique, buddy

Lost Highway (1997):  A neo-noir by David Lynch, so of course it makes no sense.  No men show their stuff, as one expects from Mr. Lynch, but there are lots of lady parts.

First Love, Last Rites (1997): Two Generation X-ers, Giovanni and a girl, do bedroom stuff and are bored.  

Nice backside, buddy.

Scotch and Milk (1998): Written, directed, and starring Adam Goldberg: "A brooding self-styled swinger loses himself in booze and night clubbing amongst similar other men. Meanwhile he pines for the woman he really loves."  In spite of the gay tease, there aren't any gay characters.  Giovanni plays his friend.

More after the break

"English Teacher": Gay teacher, his ex-boyfriend, and his homophobic buddy face woke culture and get naked

I spent the worst year of my life teaching English at Homophobe State University in Hell, aka a far northern suburb of Houston, Texas. The minute I submitted the last of the final grades, I got in my car and drove nonstop until that blessed "You are now leaving Hell" sign was receding into the distance.

So the new Hulu series, English Teacher, about an English teacher in small town Hell...I mean Texas...piqued my interest.  I could relive how hideously horrible it was, from the safe distance of my living room a thousand miles away.

Score -- none of the promotional materials let on, but this English teacher, Evan, played by Brian Jordan Alvarez,  is gay.  Let the rampant homophobia begin.

Left: the worst place in the world

And Brian Jordan Alvarez's cock, to take your mind off the horror.

Wait -- in English Teacher, everyone knows that Evan is gay.  Not a problem.  The problem is, he's kind of a jerk.

The much more woke students want to cancel him, for instance, because he said that he couldn't understand why lesbians aren't attracted to men.  Lots of people aren't attracted to men, idjit!

In the first episode, a parent wants him fired, claiming that he turned her kid gay by kissing his then-boyfriend and current hookup, played by Jordan Firstman, in front of the class. 

Left: Jordan's dick.

More after the break

Hell-fer-Sartain: After a horrible year teaching at Homophobia U., I escape to Anywhere That's Not Texas

 

After getting my M.A. from  Indiana University, I spent a year (actually 210 dreadful days) in Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, about 15 miles north of Houston -- which meant an hour's drive on thoses parking lots they called freeways -- teaching English at Homophobia State University.  Nine months of frustration, anger, embarrassment, loneliness, anger, frustration, and frustration. 

1. The entire population of the U.S. moved to Houston that summer, so no one knew how to do anything.  The bank gave me checks for one account and put my money in another.  I used to walk down the street and pick up my mail from all of the houses where the postman dumped it.

2. And the most minor task, even going out to eat, meant a 30-minute drive in bumper-to-bumper traffic, past a construction site (so flat tires were a constant hassle), and waiting in an endless line.

3. I lived in a two-room apartment with no heat ("this is the South -- we don't need heat") in the coldest winter Houston had seen since 1891, with a heavy-metal enthusiast in the apartment next door and Larry the Cable Guy downstairs.

4. The students in English Composition were beyond illiterate; in Survey of American Literature, they complained to the department chair when I assigned poems by Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes (only white men counted as canon); and in my side job teaching report writing at Houston Police Academy, they passed out a map of the neighborhoods where "homosexuals and other deviants" congregated.  

5. God forbid I come out to anyone, so I was beset upon by male colleagues asking me to rate the attractiveness of female movie stars, and female colleagues trying to fix me up with their unmarried sisters and nieces.

Left: University of Houston Chapel.  Ask the Hunky Jesus for deliverance.

6. The Montrose neighborhood had clandestine gay bars and the Wilde and Stein Bookstore, but it was too frustrating to get to, with hour-long traffic jams and constant flat tires, so I depended on a personal ad in The Montrose Voice.  First I was looking for dates, but soon I settled for a hookup.  Even then, it was a mess: 

"Why do you want to know my name? Are you a cop?"

"There was a car in the driveway of a house three doors down, so I got scared and bailed."

"Meet me at the public restroom somewhere far away, and we'll do it there."

The nickname comes from South from Hell-fer-Sartan, a collection of Kentucky folk tales.

I applied for jobs and graduate programs furiously, and finally made it into USC!  I'd be moving to West Hollywood!  But first I had to go home to Rock Island for the summer.

I purposely didn't assign any final papers or final exams, so classes ended on Thursday, and I was ready to go on Friday.  I walked my final grades to the horrible dean's office, turned in my office key, walked through the sweltering Sahara of a parking lot, and started driving.

The quickest way to get back to Rock Island was to head north, but that would mean five more hours in Texas, so instead I drove south on the I-45 toward Houston for twelve miles.

Fortunately I turned onto the I-610 before it became a parking lot.

Ten more miles around the eastern edge of Houston in traffic that was just horrible, not a parking lot.  Mostly I was surrounded by roaring trucks and nondescript Brutoian warehouses

Then the I-10 east in more horrible traffic through horrible Houston suburbs: Jacinto City, Cloverleaf, Channel View. Greens Bayou, Marwood.

Left: Jacinto City wrestlers.

I hooked up  with a guy in Jacinto City once.  I felt like the town's first  mayor, a guy named Inch Handler.

The suburbs went on endlessly. Nothing to see but billboards, car dealerships, warehouses, and the occasional streetful of fast-food joints.

Past Burnett Bay, the traffic thinned out,  and the highway narrowed.  I was out of Houston's clutches, but still in Texas, driving through a swampy no man's land,without even a billboard.

Or a rest stop.  I didn't care. I wasn't stopping until Texas was a distant memory.

At the small redneck town of Winnie, home of the Texas Rice Festival, the I-10 veered northeast.

More after the break