My Date with Michael J. Fox. Plus Marcus and the Scary Bulgarian Bodybuilder.

Friday, July 5th:  Two days after I arrive in West Hollywood, after my terrible year in Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, I am sitting in the human resources department at Paramount Studios, waiting to interview for a job as an administrative assistant, when Marcus comes in to drop something off.  He's my age, African-American, with very light skin, freckles, and a hairy chest.  I get his phone number.

You're probably wondering how I got a job interview two days after arriving, when one of those days was a federal holiday.  I had been applying for jobs for weeks, using my friend Tom's address and telephone number.

Saturday, July 6th: Our date, an inside tour of Paramount Studios (yes, we saw more stuff), followed by cruising at the Gold Coast and dinner at the French Quarter in West Hollywood.  He came to Los Angeles to become an actor five years ago, and has had some guest spots in tv shows and movies.

"Do you know anyone famous?" I ask with tourist zeal.

"Nobody really famous.  I mean, some guys on tv.  Robin Williams.  Tom Hulce.  I know Michael J. Fox from acting class."

I'm not impressed.  I've barely heard of Michael J. Fox -- he plays Alex P. Keaton, Reagan-loving son of liberal hippie parents on the sitcom Family Ties (1982-1989),  But I've only seen the show a few times.

Back to the Future, which will propel Michael to fame, premiered on July 3rd, but I haven't heard of it.

Marcus is a good kisser, with a nice physique and a respectable size.  But he likes nude wrestling: I have to pin him before I can go down on him.  Then he doesn't reciprocate, he just grabs me, puts me in sort of a headlock, and falls asleep.  Not my idea of a romantic evening!  

So no more dating.  But we stay friends (that's actually how we made friends in West Hollywood).

Wednesday, July 10th: I start working at Muscle and Fitness, two days a week as a "contributing editor," aka gopher.  '

Wednesday, July 17th: I meet Ivo, a stringer for the magazine, about 30 years old, a Bulgarian bodybuilder, with short brown hair, a boyish open face, massive shoulders, and slates for abs.

Saturday, July 20th: My first date with Ivo.  I'm curious about Back to the Future, the new time travel comedy starring Michael J. Fox.

"No way, man!" Ivo exclaims.  "That Mike Fox thinks he's a big deal, but he's terrible in bed.  They should call him Princess Teeny-Tiny!"

Weird coincidence!  I think.  I've been in town less than a month, and already I've met two people who know Michael J. Fox, and one of them is his ex-lover!

But Ivo is apparently better in bed -- very passionate, a top but open to doing interfemoral instead of anal -- kissing during interfemoral is a new one for me.  And open to oral -- twice before the night turns to morning, and again before breakfast.  

Sunday, July 21st: I have brunch at the French Quarter with Marcus, and tell him about my date with Ivo.

"Strange," he says.  "I'm completely out to Mike, and he's never said anything about being gay.  Sounds like Ivo is one of these celebrity name-droppers who claims to have been with everyone from Harrison Ford to Arnold Schwarzeneggar."

"But he wasn't bragging.  He got upset.  He said Michael was bad in bed and should be called Princess Teeny-Tiny."

Marcus laughs.  "Well, I don't have any information on Mike beneath the belt.  But tell you what -- he's in London right now.  When he gets back, we'll all get together, and you can ask him yourself."

Ask Michael J. Fox about his size?  I don't think so!  But it would be fun to meet him.

I date Ivo three or four more times, but his stories become more and more bizarre.

His father was the Bulgarian ambassador; he used to hang out at the White House.  

He has a degree in economics from Harvard, but turned down a professorship because he wanted to be a writer. When he returned to Bulgaria to help his cousin, he was arrested and imprisoned for six months. He has a book on his experiences coming out next year.  

Paramount is producing his screenplay about a college student who discovers that he is half-alien.  Scott Baio will be the star. They dated for awhile.

Saturday, August 3rd: Marcus and I see Back to the Future.  I'm not impressed with the heteronormative plotline.  But, he says, Michael is back in town.  Could we have lunch next Saturday?

Monday, August 5th: Ivo has me over for dinner.  While he is chopping celery, I tell him about the lunch.  He freezes, and his face turns bright red.  "Can't you ever talk about anything but Michael J. Fox?  Day after day, hour after hour, nothing but Michael J. Fox!  And now you have a date with him!"

I try to remember when I last mentioned him. "No, no, it's just a lunch.  Marcus is coming, too."

"Bah!  If you love him so much, why don't you move in with him?"

"It's just..."

"F** Mike Fox, always stealing everybody's lovers!  Well, let me tell you what happened to the last guy Mike Fox stole from me -- I cut him good!"  He stabs the air with his knife.

I am shocked -- and terrified.  Ivo is twice as strong as me, and carrying a weapon. "Fox sounds like a real jerk!" I tell him.  "I'm definitely cancelling that lunch!  Um...you know what?  I forgot to bring in the dessert -- there's a peach pie in the car.   I'll just go get it." 

 I clatter out the door and down the stairs.  

Wednesday, August 7th: He comes into the editorial office at Muscle and Fitness to drop off a story, and pretends not to know me.

Saturday, August 10th: The promised lunch with Marcus and Michael.

Marcus picks me up and drives me to a small, bare-brick cafe on Melrose.  We are just ordering drinks when Michael comes in, wearing a white shirt, buttoned down to reveal a soft smooth chest, tight bulging jeans, and sunglasses.

He's my age, short, slim, androgynous  The feminine teen idol type.

He hugs Marcus and reaches out to shake my hand, then says "What the hell" and hugs me, too.

I feel a definite bulge pressing against me.


"So, are you guys together?" Michael asks as he scans the menu.

"No," Marcus says.  "We dated once, but you know some guys can't handle ten inches."

"They just need a little practice, like that one night after acting class."  He nudges Marcus affectionately.

What night?  Did Marcus and Michael hook up?  Michael is either gay or amazingly gay-positive!

"So..I was dating another guy who claimed to know you," I say.  "Ivo the Bulgarian bodybuilder."

Michael frowns. "Doesn't ring a bell.  But you know how it is, you get a tv show, and suddenly every guy you have ever said hello to claims to be your bosom buddy."

"Or your ex-lover," Marcus adds.  But if he was making it up, why did he get so upset?

More after the break

Dan Shor: Tron, Star Trek, an Excellent Adventure, the South Pacific, and the Butt that Changed the World.

Sometime during the days of Blockbuster Video, we rented Strange Behavior (1981), mainly because the cover blurb said something about Galesburg, Illinois, which is near the Quad Cities. 

We weren't aware that it was written by a gay man (Bill Condon), it stars a gay man (Dan Shor), and it features something that would change movies forever.

It's got a silly plot about a crazed college professor named Dr. Le Sange (Dr. Blood), who mind-controls the town teenagers into blood-crazed monsters.

No Galesburg sites are appear mentioned; Apparently they just picked a random town in the Midwest so there would be cornfields and stereotyped farm folk. It was actually filmed in New Zealand.

The focus character is named Pete Brady, which no doubt caused a lot of eye-rolls and derisive laughs in 1981: Viewers would instantly think of the kid from The Brady Bunch (Christopher Knight, who grew up into a muscle hunk.)

This photo teases a gay-subtext buddy bond between focus character Pete Brady (har har) and Oliver (Marc McClure), but the movie is actually heteronormative, with boy-girl romance all the way down.  

I'd rather date Marc McClure, loveable nerd Jimmy Olsen in Superman (1978).

 And Dan Shor, the guy who plays Pete, is not handsome. He's got a long face, a Romanesque nose, and a lantern jaw.

But none of that is important.

What's important is a scene early in the movie where Pete Brady (har har) and his father (not Mike Brady, darn it) have just gotten up in the morning.  Pete approaches him to discuss something.  Naked.  He then moves toward the shower.  We get an extended shot of his butt.

 

It wasn't the first nude butt on film, but it was the first extended butt shot that wasn't for a comedic purpose.

There is no other nudity, male or female, in the film, not even a shirtless shot.  What was the directorial decision to film Dan Shor nude?

In an interview, Dan said that it was a political act, an acknowledgement of gay potential in the homophobic 1980s. It disrupted the heterosexual male gaze and paved the way for movies to present images of male beauty.

"And it sealed my popularity in West Hollywood," Dan joked.  Or maybe he wasn't joking.

Born in New York in 1956, Dan Shor studied acting in England, then moved to Hollywood, where he landed small parts in some serious, "artistic" movies: Young Studs in an adaption of James T. Farrell's Studs Lonigan (1979).

Enoch Emery in an adaption of Flannery O'Conner's Wise Blood (1979).

Eric in the After-School Special The Boy Who Drank Too Much (1980), starring Scott Baio as an alcoholic teenager named Buff Saunders (Buff?).

More after the break

"The Sandman": Season 2: What happened to the beefcake and gay romance? After watching, you'll need to see some cocks

 

We're watching Season 2 of The Sandman on Netflix, based on the 75-issue Neil Gaiman comic book series.  The Sandman, aka Morpheus and the Dream of the Endless, negotiates crises with humans, various magical beings, and his siblings, whose names all begin with D (Death, Destruction, Desire) and end with "of the Endless."  

1. In Season 1, the Sandman is an otherworldly creature, dark and mysterious, who rarely intrudes upon the human realm.  He spends 50 years naked in a bottle, staring at the humans as if they are a bizarre alien species.  In Season 2, he is a jaded aristocrat who hangs out in the human realm all the time, taking cabs and paying for things.

Or look at Lucifer: in Season 1, a seductive, dangerous being with motives and desires that are impossible for humans to comprehend.   In Season 2, an elderly British aristocrat who wants to sit on the beach with a cup of tea.

2. In Season 1, the Endless are responsible for the working of the human realm.  When Dream is captured, the world falls into chaos: millions of people fall asleep and can't wake up, and others can't fall asleep at all.  In Season 2, the Endless mostly engage in partying and pranks.  The only one we see doing any actual work is Death, who escorts people to the afterlife. 

3. Season 1 has high stakes. A nightmare is running rampant in the human realm, plus an unstable guy has acquired Dream's ruby of infinite power, and changes the world, with disastrous results.  In Season 2, there's some rumbling about a prophecy, but mostly it's episodic stories, like deciding who to give the keys to Hell to after Lucifer retires, or trying to track down Dream's ex-girlfriend from 10,000 years ago (who is not interested in getting back together).

4. In Season 1, there are many gay characters.  A gay couple in the first episode.  A lesbian couple in the second.  In Episode 6, two same-sex couples emerge among the six people stuck in a diner, when they are forced to tell the truth of their situation. Plus a heterosexual liason involving job applicant Mark (Laurie Brewer, left) and the lady in charge of the company.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit

Jacob Tremblay: Gay sea monster, gay-subtext Miracle, heterosexist Good Boy, Boyfriend. With Brady Noon and n*de dudes

 

You probably saw Luca (2021), the Disney/Pixar animated movie about the friendship between the closeted sea monster boy (Jacob Tremblay) and a human boy named Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer). And you were probably upset when director Enrico Casarosa vehemently denied the possibility of a gay reading of the couple.  "They're kids!  They're much too young to be gay!"   

Got it, Enrico. All boys are born heterosexual, Gay is something that happens in adulthood, after you've tried heterosexual stuff and decided that it is not right for you. Gay is who you invite to your bed,, heterosexual is the Eternal Feminine that draws us to the City of God. 

Yeah, I was unhappy, too.  

But it wasn't the fault of the actors.  I heard that Jack Dylan Grazer and Jason Maybaum (general voices) are gay.  Let's see if Luca himself, Jacob Tremblay, is involve din any gay-friendly projects.

He has 43 acting credits on the IMDB, most long before Luca.  I've never heard of most of them, but there seem to be some interesting gay subtexts here and there:

Gord's Brother (2015): The human Gord and his monster brother (Jack Irvine, Raphael Alejandro) searach for the legendary City of Monsters.  Jacob plays the Young Gord.

Wonder (2017): "The incredibly inspiring and heartwarming story" of a boy with facial differences who goes to school.  How to come up with a title that gives you absolutely no clue to what the movie is about.  

There's a girl -- there's always a girl -- but he makes a male friend (Noah Jupe), too.  

Good Boys (2019): Three six-grade boys skip school to go on an "epic adventure" involving two of them (Jacob, Brady Noon, center, recent photo) trying to win the Girls of Their Dreams (of course).  The third (Keith L. Williams) is a bullying victim who doesn't try to win a girl.  Hey, in a raunchy "coming of age" comedy, I'll take any gay hints I can get.  

Will Forte plays one of the dads.

Left: As of this writing, Brady Noon is 19.  Maybe I'll profile him next.

More Jacob after the break