Nick Vardakas: Sex toy guy, lucky f*king dude, Atari spirit, Dillon's boyfriend, IT major. A lot of d*ck pics, but is he gay?

 

 In Righteous Gemstones Episode 3.1, Kelvin and Keefe start a Smut Buster project with the teens, buying up sex toys (so adults can't get them?).  Nick Vardakas is shown examining a toy that's particularly popular among gay men.

In Episode 3.3, Nick is one of the teens making anti-smut signs as Kelvin invites Keefe to Cousin's Night, and in Episode 3.4, he appears at the Parents-Teens United Party where Keefe is outed.  

Hi father is played by Nick Arapolglou, who later confronts Kelvin about the "rumors swirling around" (after confiscating the toy from his son's room?).

Our Nick grew up in Charleston and attended Wando High School in Mount Pleasant, where the Gemstone Salvation Center is located (in fiction).  He appeared in Way Off Broadway and Dracula: A Radio Play, and participated in Army Junior ROTC and the swim team.  He also posted a video of a school film project where he tries to get the courage to talk to a cute boy.

Wait -- talk to a cute boy?

Nick's social media up to that point consists entirely of buddies -- no girls except his mother.  No mention of a senior prom.

No girls at his graduation party in June 2021.  

Those are some interesting femme rings, buddy, and did you get your hair frosted?

But he's interested in mechanics and ROTC.  He and his buds visit a Porsche Museum.  These aren't the typical gay guy's interest.

Nick's first professional acting job, on The Righteous Gemstones, came while he was a student at Triton Technical College in North Charleston.  He also started a career in modeling (in case you are wondering, 6'0", waist 32", shoe size 12"). 

He received a certificate in cyber security in 2023, and transferred to the College of Charleston, where as of this writing he is majoring in IT.  His "About Me" page says that he has experience in acting, mechanics, cooking, IT, and customer service, and speaks English, Spanish, and Italian. Not Greek? Vardakas is a Greek name.

And three more acting credits:

In Lucky F*king Kid (2024), an ad for Lucky Energy Drink shown "on all social media," Nick plays a 23-year old "no money loser" who is paid to deliver a "totally unpaid testimonial."

The Hitchhiker (2024) was written and directed by Ben Beauchamp and Timons Flower (who directed  Spider-Man: The Dark Age with Jak Kristowski) and stars Gemstone alum Dillon Brady as the Hitchhiker.  Nick plays his boyfriend or victim (it's hard to tell from the trailer).

I usually put a n*de photo on the first page of profiles, but I couldn't find any of Nick that weren't explicit, so they have to go after the break.  

Caution: explicit.

Gemstones Episode 2.2 Kelvin clenches, Keefe dances, and everybody flirts with Eli. With proof that everything is bigger in Texas.

Previous:  Episode 2.1, Continued: Keefe's kiss, Kelvin's boner, and a thug with broken thumbs. With Jonah Hauer-King and a proper erection bonus

In Episode 2.1, while we establish the Kelvin/Keefe, Judy/BJ, and Jesse/Amber conflicts of the season, Eli's old friend Junior stops by, and acts very much like an ex-lover.  They go out to dinner and beat up a tough.  Now we see the aftermath.

Title: "After I Leave, Savage Wolves will Come."  In Acts 20.29. Paul tells the Ephesians that after he leaves, savage wolves or false teachers will tear the flock apart. So, who is the wolf invading the Gemstones' lives?

Eli Gemstone indicted! Thaniel Block sits on the porch of his rental house in the South Carolina woods, reading some news stories from 1993: Gemstone Family Studios to close due to "a financial and rumors of  sexual scandals," with $4 million missing.  Another article: "Eli Gemstone indicted on charges of fraud and conspiracy." But Episode 2.5 takes place at Christmas 1993.  When did all this happen? Geezer Tim drops by to criticize him for living in New York and having a "nasty attitude." 

A Hot Piece of Tail: Judy and BJ visit Eli to ask him to officiate in BJ's baptism.  They find him asleep on the couch in the parlor. Junior enters and asks "Who's this hot piece of tail?"  He's actually looking at BJ, but Eli assumes that he means Judy and says that she is his daughter.  He apologizes and asks if BJ is her lesbian partner. BJ starts to answer, but Judy cuts him off: "He's big-dicking you."

There are several takeaways here.  First, Eli and Junior did not sleep together; Eli fell asleep on the couch. Weren't there any guest rooms in his mansion? 

Second, check out Junior's magenta bathrobe, jaunty hand on him, and pinky ring: he is deliberately presenting as queer.   

Third, Eli may have mentioned that one of his children is gay, and Junior forgot which.

Execretions and Hep C Loads:  After Junior heads to the kitchen to make coffee, Judy wants to know what's going on.  Eli tells her that "things got a little carried away last night," which she interprets to mean that they are having rough sex.  He grimaces in disgust, but plays along to mess with her.  

Her main criticism is that Junior is unattractive: "I always hoped that if you were gonna yank a pole, it would be someone hot."  So Judy has considered the possibility that Eli is bisexual for a long time. 

She states that the "hookup" signifies that Eli doesn't care about his family.  Remember that Jesse likewise complains that Kelvin "popping boners" with the muscle men is "selfish, not helping the family."  But it's not just gay sex; on this show, having a partner of any sort is framed as a betrayal.  The family is aghast when Judy wants to move off the Compound with BJ; Baby Billy is still hurt over his sister Aimee-Leigh "leaving him" to marry Eli.  

As they storm out, Judy cautions BJ to not touch anything, as there are probably execretions and Hep C loads everywhere.  This is a call back to Abraham leaving his semen everywhere in Jesse's house, plus an awareness that Hepatitus C can easily spread through anal sex, so it is particularly common in gay communities.

Good Sniffer Seats: After they leave, Eli joins Junior on the back patio, overlooking the reflecting pool that leads to Aimee-Leigh's shrine.  Eli invites him to church, but he worries about the cost.  Junior avers that he's been to enough strip joints to know that you have to pay for the "good sniffer seats."  I can't find the term "sniffer seat" defined anywhere, but I guess that it's a seat close enough to the stage to smell the performers.  There are male strip clubs, but he's probably referencing a lady's club, being a hetero horn dog, backing off from the implication of same-sex activity. 

But not entirely: Eli offers to reserve a good seat for him, and the guys hold hands!

On closer examination, it turns out to be a man and a woman holding hands. We have cut to a scene involving Jesse and Amber's marital advice group. But it is so abrupt that the misdirection must be intentional.  The man is even wearing a shirt the same color as Junior's robe.

After the group meeting, Matthew and Chad ask why Jesse's old crew isn't hanging out together anymore.  This is all marital stuff, heterosexual nuclear family stuff; what happened to the band of brothers, savage and free?  Gregory explains; "I love you guys, but happy wife, happy life." You must abandon same-sex loves for heterosexual destiny.

You Got a Hound Dog Here: Cut to Thaniel visiting the Salvation Center, where he admits that he has sexual-scandal dirt on Aimee-Leigh, gathered from household staff.  Well, at least Kelvin is off the hook.

The World's Most Famous Christian: Next, Jesse and Amber visit the Lissons in Texas for a party to celebrate the proposed Zion's Landing resort. Joe Jonas, the World's Most Famous Christian, leads everyone in a line dance.  He proclaims his heterosexuality, singing about the "beautiful girls" he's been with while wearing a formless leopard robe and pink bandana, the antithesis of Kelvin's tiger jacket and porn-star-bulging jeans. Desire for women un-mans a man, renderng him soft and sickly; only in the manly love of comrads can a man be strong and free.

Keefe dances: At church, they welcome those who have found God in the past month, including BJ. He has always been a non-believer before; it is unclear whether he has actually had a "born again" experience, or is just pretending to be accepted by the family.  

The welcome is framed as a heterosexual union, with Judy hugging BJ and Kelvin grudgingly hugging a female convert. He's disgusted by touching "females," even as part of his job.  Meanwhile, on a balcony far removed from the stage, Keefe leads the God Squad in a dance, invisible, ignored, forever cut off from heterosexual practice, forever cut off from the family.  

Nude Texas dudes after the break

Harry Potter's privates: Daniel Radcliffe's top 12 nude, beefcake, and gay-subtext performances.

 

You know that the last of the Harry Potter movies was released nearly 15 years ago.

You haven't returned to them because the world is so complex and self-referential, and because there are a lot of problems that you didn't notice as a kid.  Antisemitic stereotype Goblins?  Slaves who enjoy their slavery?  A headmaster who is gay, but we can never mention it on screen?  

But you still think of Daniel Radcliffe as David Copperfield...um, I mean that wide-eyed boy who emerged from Under the Staircase in 2001 and enrolled at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

 

As of this writing, Daniel Radcliffe is 36 years old, with 49 acting credits.  Most move him far away from Hogwarts, to worlds where gay people -- and male nudity -- exist.  Here are his top 10 nude, beefcake, and gay-subtext performances:

1. Merrily We Roll Along (2025), which is not about the theme song to the Looney Tunes.  It's about two heterosexual chums in love with the same girl. I haven't seen it.

2. Now You See Me, Now You Don't (2025) brings the Horsemen out of retirement for a diamond heist (are we expected to know who the Horsemen are?). Daniel plays the villain.  I haven't seen it, but think the guy with him is hired muscle, not his boyfriend.

3. The Lost City (2022) sounds like a remake of Romancing the Stone, with romance novelist Loretta kidnapped in the jungle.  It's up to her cover model/Love Interest (Channing Tatum) to rescue her.  We see his butt, but only so Loretta can pick leeches off it.  Daniel plays the (presumably straight) villain.

4. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) is a  biopic of the parody song performer.  Entirely heteronormative -- dude even dates Madonna, which didn't happen in real life.  I liked the seduction scene:

Al: "Welcome to my house.  Would you like a tour?"

Madonna: "There's only one room in this house that I'm interested in."

Al: "Oh, there's a bathroom down the hall."

5. The Jungle (2017): in 1981, the Israeli backpacker Yossi Ghinsberg and his buddies set out to search for a lost city in the Bolivian jungle.  But the jungle has other ideas.

I haven't seen it, but keyword searches don't reveal any gay subtexts.

6. Guns Akimbo (2019) was too heteronormative: a mild-mannered video game geek unwittingly signs up for a game where you fight to the death in real time. His opponent/Love Interest is a lady.  Come on, dude, you've only played one "openly gay" character.  Get with the allyship.

But we see Daniel's prosthetic cock missing the toilet.

More after the break

Gemstones Episode 2.1 Continued: Keefe's kiss, Kelvin's boner, and a thug with broken thumbs. With Jonah Hauer-King and some boners

Previous: Episode 2.1: Junior likes dicks, Kelvin likes pecs, and f*k yeah, we got both!

In the last scene, Keefe is excluded from Sunday dinner with the family.  Now we see what he missed:

Judy and BJ accused of betraying the family because they got married at Disney World (by Prince Eric, the "hottest guy in the Disney catalog").

There's also a jab at Kelvin's muscle obsession. But it’s not just homoerotic desire.  Heterosexual desire is also incompatible with the family: when Jesse disses Judy for not being a mother, she argues that she's trying to keep her body "foine" to incite BJ's desire.  Nope, they need to have a family. 

Left and below: Jonah Hauer-King, who played Prince Eric in the Litle Mermaid movie.

More Disruptions: We cut to Eli playing croquet, gazing at women's butts, and flirting with a lady.  Suddenly Junior, his friend from his wrestling days, appears amid sinister music!   Eli ignores him and drives away.  A homoerotic disruption of Eli's heterosexual dalliance, parallel to the God Squad disrupting the nuclear family procession earlier. 

Next, the Jesse-Amber plot, a new Christian-themed resort, Zion's Landing, proposed by their megachurch pastor chums, Lyle and Lindy Lissons.  Jesse doesn't have any money of his own, so he'll have to convince Eli to invest.  He's got a job at the church; he should get a salary.  Daddy Eli is super over-controlling, like his daddy was, and like Kelvin will be with his homoerotic Band of Brothers.

My Mans:  The family flies to Florida to inspect the site of the Lyssons' proposed resort.   When they return, Keefe and the God Squad meet them at their private airfield.  The family is shocked: didn't they know about the God Squad? 

"Uh-oh, my mans!" Kelvin exclaims, rushing forward to tell Keefe "You are looking great!"  In Southern Coastal grammar, "mans" is singular, "mens" plural.  He means Keefe.

Keefe tries to move in for a kiss, but Kelvin blocks him with an awkward hug.  He tries again, and Kelvin blocks him again. Finally he makes a blatant "enough!" gesture and backs off.  Judy finds this little dance hilarious.   It reflects the couple's conflict this season: Keefe wants to join the family as Kelvin's partner, the equivalent of BJ, sitting at the dinner table being criticized, while Kelvin isn't sure that same-sex romance is even possible.  His muscle cult is about desire: no love allowed. 

We cut to Eli in his office, watching a tv news show: Thaniel Block being interviewed about the "salacious scandal" story that took down Pastor Butterfield.  How famous was this guy?  I thought he was just the anonymous pastor of a satellite church.  They preach "sex only between married heterosexual partners, or you're going to hell," but privately they do everything under the sun.  Who will he target next?   Maybe Kelvin-- "Secretly gay youth minister holds wild orgies with his stable of muscle boys."  Ulp.   

Damn, we got old: Later, Eli is standing at the docks, worrying, when Junior approaches him and grabs him from behind, another homoerotic intrusion into his heteronormative life.  Junior complains that Eli forgot that he existed. 

Then: "We got old.  I look like a piece of shit, but damn!  You look sturdy!  Still got that mass going on!"  He grabs Eli's butt to check. Sort of presumptuous, dude, thinking that your ex will still be into you after fifty years. 

Eli thinks that Junior plans to blackmail him over revealing their days as loan enforcers (and lovers?), but he claims that he's just there for nostalgia, looking up an old friend.  "Why you all nervous, Eli?  Why are you bein' all weird?"  In this series, "weird" usually refers to sexual frustration.

Junior tries to hug him again, but Eli pushes him away.  On a scale of 1 to 100, how certain are you that these guys spent the psychedelic 1970s enjoying free love?  

As Eli walks away, Junior guilts him into a dinner invitation.

Sticky Stephens:  Nuclear families are  eating at Sticky Stephens, a parody of the Sticky Fingers Restaurant in Charleston that closed down in 2020.  Both sound dirty. The 1972 Rolling Stones album of that name  depicted a pair of jeans with an enormous bulge, leaving no question about why the fingers are sticky.

Junior points out a kissing couple: "Damn, look at that piece of tail he's with!" Ok, so he's bi.  Everybody watches as the man, Randall (Rene Rivera), lifts his girl onto the counter so they can have sex right in the restaurant!  Why doesn't someone on staff intervene? Eli yells at him to "tone down romance," and Randall yells "Suck my dick, Grandpa." But the couple leaves.

Over dinner, Junior reveals that he's now a wrestling promoter: "I got a stable full of fellas I keep working."  Tell me more, tell me more.  What do they do besides wrestling? Stripping?  Sex work?

"I wonder what my Daddy would think about you and me being reunited," Junior says.  Eli answers: "He put us together, so he would think he did a pretty good job."  Except they were separated for a lifetime.  That's not a great job of matchmaking.

Junior says that his Daddy just disappeared one day, setting up a major mystery of the Season: Did Eli murder Glendon Marsh?

Proper erections after the break.  Warning: explicit