Jay R. Ferguson: The "obviously gay" teen idol of the 1990s moves on to play a 1960s sleazoid and the dad of gay sons. With Jay and Carter cocks

In the early 1990s, I was living in West Hollywood, and completely immersed in the LGBT community.  Media from the Straight World was suspect, if not homophobic than heteronormative, presenting men and women gazing at each other as the meaning of life.  So we chose our television programs carefully. On Monday nights, it was Fresh Prince of Bel Air (Carleton, sigh!), Blossom (Joey Lawrence, sigh!), and Designing Women (drag queen inspiration Suzanne Sugarbaker).  Certainly not Evening Shade (1990-94), with Burt Reynolds as a football coach (ugh!) in a small town (ugh!) in Arkansas (ugh!).

So when this photo of a shirtless, partying young man began appearing on all of the gay celebrity websites, we had no idea who he was. 

The photos kept coming.  We discovered that he was Jay R. Ferguson, who played Taylor, son of Burt Reynolds' character Wood.  Wood?  Really?

 Generally he was swishing it up, as in this iconic photo: apparently saying "Hey, Girl!" in a classic twink outfit, a short top. a bare midriff, and jeans with a club bulge.  Obviously gay!  

In the days when television was entirely heterosexist or homophobic,when even the most flamboyant actor stayed in the closet or saw his career fade away, seeing "one of us" was amazing.  

Unfortunately,the only way to conduct research was to buy a teen magazine -- and the Different Light bookstore on Santa Monica did not stock Tiger Beat.  

The show ended, the photo stream ended, and we forgot about the obviously-gay Jay.  .

For thirty years.

Until 2025, when The Real O'Neils (2016-2018) appeared on Hulu.  A conservative Irish-Catholic family has to deal with a number of problems: Dad wants a divorce; the daughter is an atheist; the oldest son (Matthew Shively) has an eating disorder; the youngest son (Noah Galvin) is gay.  

Yeah, I don't like "gay" being portrayed as a problem, either.  But I like Noah Galvin.

And the hunky dad is played by...Jay R. Ferguson!

Three questions:

1. What has he been doing in the years since Evening Shade?

2. Any nude photos?

3. Is he really gay?

1. What has he been doing?

Jay's first project after Evening Shade was Higher Learning (1995), which is not a teen sex comedy: Omar Epps (left) stars as a student experiencing racism at Columbia University.  But Jay did show us his butt (while sexing a girl).

And an under-the-covers erection, probably a prosthetic.

Next  Jay moved into teen horror (Campfire Tales, 1997),  sex comedy (Pink as the Day She Was Born, 1997), teen angst (Blue Ridge Falls, 1999), and dark secrets (The In Crowd, 2000), before finding his niche in television:

Glory Days (2001-02).  Oddly, it's not about soldiers, it stars Eddie Cahill as a writer who dished the dirt on residents of his home town, and is surprised when he returns to find that they don't like him.  Jay plays the sheriff.

Judging Amy (2003-4), which is not about a judge named Amy.  A woman has problems with her mother, husband, and child.  Jay plays a doctor.

In a 2005 episode of Medium, Allison realizes that her troubled half-brother Michael (Ryan Hurst) has a "secret."   One assumes that it's being gay, but it's actually that he shares her gift of seeing the future.  Jay plays his buddy.  That's as close to a gay character as he gets.

Surface (2005-2006):  Marine biologist Lake (Lake?): her "will they or won't they?" sparring partner, insurance salesman Rich (Jay), and a teenage boy (Carter Jenkins, left, recent photo) discover a "new and dangerous" species of marine life.  This one actually looks interesting.

By the way, Carter, who went on to star in Shadow Diaries, has a j/o video (after the break).

"The Treasure of Foggy Mountain": Enough beefcake and queer codes? With dicks and a random Adam Devine butt

 

Please Don't Destroy is a sketch comedy group consisting of  Ben Marshall (left), Martin Herlihy (right), and John Higgins (below), who have graduated from the short films of your dad's generation to TikTok videos.  They were hired to write for Saturday Night Live in 2021, and their first movie just dropped on Peacock: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain.  

It's recommended by Adam Devine, but I'd have to subscribe to Peacock to see it, so I've been checking trailers, synopses, and reviews for gay characters, gay subtexts, and beefcake.

The plot: Like Adam, Anders, and Blake of Workaholics, the three play "themselves" as clueless dudebros who live together, work together, and haven't quite made it to adulthood --  which in movies usually means hetero-romance.  Only Martin has a girlfriend.  

Ben wants to impress his Dad by being a business success, and John is content to play video games and drink beer.  They decide to go on one last adventure, searching for a lost treasure, a bust of Marie Antoinette worth several million dollars. 

On the way, they run afoul of a homicidal hawk (who becomes an ally), greedy park rangers, a gang, a cult, fireworks, fist-fights, and danger.  

Heterosexism:  Martin already has a girlfriend, and John falls in love with one of the cult girls.  As far as I can tell, Ben stays unattached.  

Gay Characters/Subtext: None that I could tell from the plot synopsis or reviews, but Bowen Yang, who plays the head cultist, is gay in real life and plays a lot of gay roles.  

There also might be a queer code in this scene of a communal bath: Martin and Ben are being soaped up by men, and John by a woman.  Or it could be a homophobic joke; it's hard to tell.

Beefcake: The guys are shirtless at least twice. Also, when they are learning to glide off mountaintops, with the help of their hawk buddy, John's suit busts open, and we see his penis swinging around.  

Penises after the break

Ten Hawkeye hunks: Mason City muscles, Bettendorf bulges, and Davenport dicks

 

From 3rd grade through college, I lived in Rock Island, Illinois, across the Mississippi from Davenport, Iowa.  It was the big city, where we went for culture: museums, art galleries, bookstores.

And shirtless athletes from St. Ambrose College.

Bettendorf, to the east of Davenport, was the wealthy suburb, where the property values were double those of Rock Island and the high school offered Russian and Mandarin in addition to plain old Spanish and French.  We hated the Betten-dorks. 

At least the athletes had a state-of-the-art weight room.

Decorah, in the northeast corner of the state, is known for Vikings and Lutherans.  I had my first real sexual experience at a music camp at Luther College.

Luther has a state-of-the-art gym, too.

The Vikings in a team-building exercise

Mason City is known for gay artist Grant Wood, who painted that American Gothic thing that everyone in Iowa hates, and for the Spirit of Mercury, a muscular art deco lighting fixture.  You can buy souvenir versions.

More Hawkeye Hunks after the break. Warning: explicit

Black Monday Episode 2.4: Downlow financier, closeted Congressman, and a photocopied dick in the homophobic 1980s.

 

Black Monday, October 17, 1987, is named after a stock market crash that resulted in a drop of 22.6% in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and $500 billion in losses in the U.S., 1.7 trillion dollars worldwide.  I didn't hear anything about it at the time: in West Hollywood we didn't concern ourselves with such trivial matters as finances.  But apparently in the straight world, it was a big deal.  

I still find the world of finance immensely boring, but I happened to notice that an episode of the 2019-22 Black Monday tv series showed Andrew Rannells having sex with a guy -- the scene I used as an illustration for my Gideon-Keefe fan fiction -- so I checked out Episode 2.4, "Fore."

Scene 1: Bosses Dawn, a middle aged black woman, and Blair (Andrew Rannells) , a swishy white man, show horndogs Wayne and Yassir(Horatio Sanz, Yassir X) a photocopy of an enormous penis. They've received an anonymous sexual harassment complaint.  Blair yells at them: "The women in the office don't want to look at that, and neither do I."  

And this is a bad time: Congress is about to pass deregulation, so we'll be getting generational wealth. You'll be able to set up your kids' kids' kids If Amerasavings gets wwind of this,.... Ugh, economics and politics.  Let's get some zombies up in here.

The guys protest that it wasn't them, but they are punished by being placed in the "Rubber Room" for a month, and they have to apologize to every woman in the office.  Then Blair leaves --- he has to go play golf with Congressman Roger  (Tuc Watkins, Andrew's real-life boyfriend) to ensure that he will vote for deregulation.  Dawn can't come, because she's not a white man. Wait -- he calls her "babe."  Are they romantic partners, too?

Scene 2:  The horndogs figure that they've been framed, targeted by "some lying bitch" for being the last old-school "women should enjoy getting their butts grabbed" horndogs in the office. Their plan: find out who issued the bogus complaint, apologize, and then "get revenge." 

Scene 3: Blair goes back to his apartment -- still under construction -- and starts making out with his boyfriend -- Congressman Roger!  

Meanwhile, a lady bursts into the office to yell at the "home-wrecking harlot" who's destroying their marriage.  She wasn't expecting a middle aged black lady: "Blair" sounds more like a young, giggly blond, like the girl from Facts of Life.   

"This is a mixup from the tits up," Dawn assures her.  Blair is a man.  He goes golfing with Congressman Roger to push for his deregulation vote.  A downlow romance!  Neither of the wives know!

"But they golf all the time, in Palm Springs, San Francisco, Fire Island,,," Gay meccas, har-har.

"Standard business trips." A perfect example of heteronormativity: gay men cannot exist, so everything must have a heterosexual explanation.

The Wife, Corky, insists: "Blair and my husband are having sex...with other women, and using each other as alibis."  Come on, no one is that stupid!

Dawn calls Blair to prove that he is playing golf -- just as he is about to.... The wives will be driving out to the country club to meet them on the golf course.  "um...what hole are you in?"  Har-har.

Uh-oh, Blair knows nothing about golf, and it's too late to learn!

Scene 4: The horndogs try to play "good cop/bad cop" while interrogating the women. Except Yassir thinks they're supposed to both be bad cops, because "all cops are bad."

Scene 5: On the way to the country club, Wife Corky complains that Congressman Roger has betrayed her with a "nancy."  Dawn insists that Blair isn't gay, but Wife  Corky meant "a Nancy Reagan," who stole future President Reagan away from his first wife, Jane Wyman. Har-har.

She does happen to be the daughter of a Jerry Falwell-like homophobic televangelist.  He sells a special cologne that can "spray the gay away."

More after the break