Hank Strong: Bodybuilder, firefighter, enforcer, leatherman, gay daddy

The Brooklyn-born Hank Strong (Henry Akinsaya) graduated from Xaverian Brothers High School in Westfield, Massachustts in 1998, then studied pre-law at NYU.  

He competed in some amateur bodybuilding competitions, worked as a bodyguard, and did some modeling where he had to show his abs.  

His acting career began in 2018, when he was cast as Lunkhead, enforcer for the villain Zachary Trumble. in an episode of Gotham (2018).   

Hank moved on to play more enforcers, bodybuilders, and scowling musclemen, notably, the fighter Iron Long on Ray Donovan.

 

He appeared in two episodes of Godfather of Harlem as Big Dick Buster. Crime lord Bumpy Johnson, a real figure from the 1960s, keeps "Big Dick" on retainer to rape men who rape black women.

 

As a firefighter in The King of Staten Island, he takes his clothes off, of course, to bond with Pete Davidson.

In 2020, Hank played Jericho, a member of Kelvin's God Squad in Righteous Gemstones Season 2. When they threaten Keefe, he defends himself by swatting Jericho's nipple.  (Actually a courageous act, since Jericho is nearly a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier than Keefe).

More Hank after the break

"Cruising": Homophobic classic about sin, degradation, and dicks in a doomed gay world. With a nude Mr. Big.

During the 1970s and 1980s, gay men appeared in movies almost exclusively as limp-wristed hairdressers and drag queens with murderous split personalities.  Cruising, 1980, promised something different: gay men with apartments, jobs, and hangouts; and who were masculine, actually super-macho, with muscles, club bulges, and leather chaps.

Sounds like fun, right?  Wrong.

The tv promo said only that Al Pacino would play a cop who "disappears into the darkness," and the theatrical trail showed him putting on makeup, plus men dancing together, and brief flashes of the words "homosexual,"  "violence," "murder," "fear," and "sex").  
The movie wasn't playing in Rock Island, so one cold Saturday my boyfriend Fred and I drove an hour west to the college town of Iowa City to see our first gay movie, ever.

The plot: in sleazy, decadent gay bar, a "homosexual" played by Arnaldo Santana cruises a mysterious stranger.  After discussing what turned them gay, they go home together, where the stranger politely asks the "homosexual," to lie still while he stabs him to death.  Santana complies!

During the 1970s, criminologists often theorized about why gay men would pick up total strangers for sex.  Some said that they were unable to control their "deviant" sexual desires, and others, that they were looking for a quick, easy way to destroy society by "wasting their seed" instead of making a baby. But most said that they felt so guilty over being gay that they wanted to be murdered.

More bar pickups, more murders. There's a gay serial killer out there "targeting his own!"  Police detective Steve Burns (Al Pacino) is asked to go undercover and catch him.  

So he moves into a sleazy apartment in the bad part of town, puts on a leather vest, applies makeup, and goes cruising.

He befriends his next door neighbor (Don Scardino), but runs afoul of Ted's effeminate, histrionic dancer-boyfriend (James Remar).

Occasionally Steve sees his girlfriend, but he becomes less and less interested in her as he is infected by the "gay lifestyle."

More sin, degradation, and dicks after the break

Matthew William Bishop: Leatherman, muscleman, actor, LGBTQ advocate. With nude bodybuilder bonus.

 

If you saw this guy standing outside a brownstone in New York, would you a) Run away screaming; b) get on your knees.

How about now?

He's Matthew William Bishop, who gave up a career in corporate public relations in 2021, when the acting bug bit.  His Some Kind of Wonderful, about four gay guy looking for love in Palm Springs, won four awards for Best LGBTQ Film. 

Then he hit the big time playing the silent supernatural Big Daddy, a symbol of AIDs in American Horror Story, NYC:  (Set during the first years of the AIDS epidemic.)

Matthew is also a bodybuilder, obviously. He took first place at the 2023 Miami Muscle Beach Contest in the NPC Open Super Heavyweight Category.

And a philanthropist, devoted to recovery, AIDS awareness, and LGBTQ advocacy.  10% of the sales of this "Make the Deposits" shirt go to the New York LGBTQ Community Center, so it's probably not dirty.

This isn't supposed to be dirty, either, although a lot of the comments on his Instagram page were from people willing to "choke on it."

"It" after the break