Even Stevens (2000-2003) was one of the first, and best, of the Disney Channel teencoms, featuring middle-school boyfriends Louis and Twitty (Shia LaBeouf, A.J. Trauth). Episode plots emphasize their romance:
Louis becomes jealous when Twitty starts hanging out with a girl.
Louis becomes jealous when Twitty starts hanging out with a boy.
Louis becomes a celebrity, straining his relationship with Twitty.
I remember an episode where they were sitting together on the couch, not on opposite ends like most people, but squeezed in with their thighs pressing together. "They're not even trying to hide it," I thought.
Add Nick Spano as a hunky older brother and Fred Meyers as older sister's swishy bff, and you have a gay-subtext classic.
Seasons change, teencoms are cancelled, and the actors move on. Nick Spano, top photo, majored in English literature at UCLA and now runs the Re/Creation Cafe.
AJ Trauth, left, lives in Ohio.
Fred Meyers is a paramedic.
As far as I can tell, they're all heterosexual in real life.
And what about Louis Stevens, Shia LaBeouf?
He moved into dark, depressing indies about lost, dying, grieving, and enraged youth:
A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints: as his friends are killed or kill themselves, Shia believes that he is protected by the saints.
Bobby: The night of Robert Kennedy's assassination
Disturbia. A teen under house arrest "rear-windows" a serial killer.
When he veered into science fiction, as in Transformers, it was always a boy and a girl gazing into each other's eyes forever.
He shows his penis on screen for the first time in the 2012 music video
Sigur Rós: Fjögur píanó, which looks Icelandic but is actually in English. It's about a boy and a girl gazing into each other's eyes forever.
More dick and a Catholic priest after the break