Johnny Berchtold: I have good news and bad news. The good news is his cock.

I researched Johnny Berchtold, who plays the gay-vague or maybe canonically gay college student Richard Beck on Season 3 of Reacher.   

I have good news and bad news.

The good news: He is hung.

 

The bad news: The d*ck pic is from the movie A Hard Problem (2021).  Johnny plays a guy who tries to reconnect with his sister and recruits The Girl to help him clean out his deceased mother's house. Heteronormativity all the way down.

The good news:  In addition to Reacher, Johnny has a gay-vague role in  The Passenger (2023). Violent loose-cannon Benson (Kyle Gallner) decides to "fix" beset-upon fast-food worker  Randy (Johnny), killing his bullies, helping him stand up to his overbearing mother, and so on.

The script was heteronormative, but queer director Carter Smith had the actors push up the homoeroticism until they are almost a gay couple.  (Spoiler: one dies at the end).

The bad news: I couldn't find any other gay or gay-vague roles.

In Tiny Pretty Things (2023), his character is married to Claire (Katherine Hahn of Agatha All Along).

In spite of the whimsical pun-title, Dog Gone (2023) is about a dying guy and his dog, who is also dying.  He's probably straight, but I'm not sure: the plot synopsis was so disturbing that I just skimmed through.

In Gaslight (2021), which is about Watergate, not Victorian England, Johnny plays Jay Jennings, the estranged son of Martha Mitchell (wife of Attorney General John Mitchell).  He's married to a woman.

In spite of the whimsical title,  Life as a Mermaid (2016-2018) is a live-action drama about two mermaid sisters living among humans.  Johnny plays the Barnacle King, sort of a nerdish character with disgusting barnacles attached to his face.  He has a male sidekick, but I couldn't stomach watching long enough to determine if he is gay or gay-vague.

Fun fact: Life as a Mermaid is also a documentary about transgender people in Borneo.

The good news: Johnny is way into horror.  His instagram is full of photos of him in bloody and monster makeup, and getting Chucky as a roommate.  

More after the break. Caution: Explicit.

Gemstones Episode 2.9 Continued: A Perfect Christian, the Lion King, naked twinks, and lovers in old photographs.

Previous:  Episode 2.9: Who killed Thaniel?  Will Keefe ever get a place at the table?  Can we see some Gemstone alums naked?

Keefe stands alone: Keefe sits next to Kelvin on the way to the Zion's Landing ground-breaking party.  He stands next to BJ while the siblings perform.  But afterwards, he goes off to make new friends: he tries to impress them by doing the Worm, and is upset when he fails.  

Why doesn't he interact with Kelvin, or anyone in the family?  It's as if they told him "You can come, but don't be seen with us.  We don't want people thinking that you and Kelvin are together." 

Baby Billy Returns: As Tiffany sits in a cabana, Baby Billy appears!  He tells her "I'm back for good,"  Judy isn't having it "You've got a lot of nerve coming here after what you did!" 

He ignores Judy and asks Tiffany to take him back.  She refuses to answer, saying that she has to go to the bathroom.

Keefe and the Perfect Christian: Meanwhile, Keefe and Joe Jonas, the world's most perfect Christian, head to the same porta-potty.  They are so busy gazing at the guy who just exited that they both reach for the handle at the same time, and clasp hands.  It is accidental, but still a strangely erotic moment.  

Tiffany pushes them aside and rushes into the porta-potty.  Joe Jonas and Keefe continue to flirt as she goes into labor.   Don't they, like, have to go?

Personal note: Although they were only on stage for a few minutes, I used their budding friendship for a fan fiction, "Keefe's Date with Joe Jonas."  Actually he has the date with a guy on Joe's PR team.

The Lion King: Later, a crowd has gathered around the porta-potty.  Didn't anyone fetch a doctor? 

Baby Billy rushes up and asks Keefe, Pontius, and Abraham if they've seen Tiffany.  They point. She said she was going to the bathroom, you dolt! Why did it take you so long to figure it out?

Tiffany emerges, stating that she had her baby: it fell into the toilet.Gross callback to the "toilet baby" discussion.  Baby Billy reaches down and pulls the baby out.  Then, in a scene reflecting Simba's birth in The Lion King, he holds it over his head for the crowd to see.  Everyone applauds. 

Lyle's Revenge: Eli gets a phone call: Junior has used his underworld connections to trace the origin of the weapons the Cycle Ninjas used. They were sold to some boys in a gang in Texas -- where Lyle Lissons is from!  Don't jump to conclusions, Eli -- Texas is a big state.

On the beach, Jesse, still unaware of Lyle's involvement, is handing over the investment money.  Suddenly a woman appears, yelling at Lyle about the disappearance of her husband: "He was working with you, to get information on the Butterfields!  He told me all about it!"  

Finally Jesse starts to figure it out.  He confronts Lyle, who admits to sending the Cycle Ninjas to kill Eli --  he thought he was "doing you a solid," freeing up some money so Jesse could invest.  Besides, hasn't he often wished that his father would hurry up and die?  No, of course not.  But, now, worried that he might tell, Lyle attacks. They fight, and Jesse hits and kills him with a rock from the David and Goliath slingshot he used to threaten Junior. 

He rushes to his family -- um, hang on for a moment. Check out Kelvin's ultra-femme outfit and mannerisms.  He's really come out loud and proud.  He was the macho Messiah of the Musclemen an episode ago, and now he's my Aunt Sadie. 

And why isn't Keefe there?  He's at the porta-potties, of course, but there isn't even a chair that he vacated.

Jesse announces that he's murdered someone.  The family follows him to the beach, but Lyle is alive, and Lindsey is armed!  She shoots BJ in the femoral artery, and forces the others to swim out into the ocean.  BJ will bleed out in 2-4 minutes unless he gets first aid.  He's doomed!

Lots of Reconciliations: One month later, we see Chad and his wife reconciling at Amber's marital group. I didn't even know that was a plot arc.   

Then Judy and BJ, who has miraculously recovered, say goodbye to Baby Billy, Tiffany, and baby Lionel as they head home. 

Nobody ain't inviting no kids to the steam showers:   Kelvin and Keefe  have started a Youth Squad for 12-15 year olds. "The whole time we've been searching for our calling," Kelvin says, "It's been right under our noses: these beautiful, innocent chil dren."

He continues, evoking a Judean retreat: "We could groom these k ids into the next generation of muscle men."  Keefe suddenly realizes that people could get the wrong idea, and suggests getting chaperones and permission slips.But Kelvin isn't ready to start planning yet; he's just brainstorming, thinking of the possibilities.  

I read fan responses to this scene before actually watching it: anger, disgust, and dismay: "Please don't let them be creeps.  Please don't let them be creeps.  Please don't let them be creeps."  The "They're straight buddies" camp was ecstatic, because who would give gay characters lines like that?  When I watched, I was upset by the structure: everyone else gets a heartfelt scene, and the guys get pe dophile jokes. But one fan who grew up in an Evangelical church set me straight, so to speak.  I paraphrase a bit:

This IS a touching scene!  Friggin' homophobe, thinking that because the guys are gay, they must like little ones!  

The kids are not dressed in revealing outfits, and at least one of them is a girl!  Kelvin and Keefe  do not say one single thing that suggest an erotic interest in the "little angels."  Keefe notes that a particularly muscular b oy is popular with other b oys, and Kelvin fiddles with his "wedding ring," to let you know that he and Keefe are partners. 

The Youth Squad is a perfectly legitimate way for them to combine their interests in youth ministry and physical fitness.  Note that the kids are not training for bodybuilding, which is not permitted for anyone under age 15.  They are doing strength training exercises, which are recommended for ch ildren aged seven and up.   

Plus it makes structural sense.  The heterosexist trajectory includes job, house, wife, and k ids.  Baby Billy does not become a man until he holds his infant son.  BJ and Judy have no ch ildren of their own, so they adopt Tiffany. Nurturing ch ildren is the final step in Kelvin's movement into manhood.

(Sorry for the skipped letters, but any term referring to a young man gets the blogger censor upset.)

Lovers after the break

Mark Patton: Freddy Krueger's boyfriend, George Clooney's buddy, artist, scream queen. With his butt and bulge and Clooney's dick

I wanted to do a profile of Mark Patton, the Scream Queen who hooked up with Ricky Schroder in 1988, at least according to my friend in West Hollywood, Zach the Photographer.

He's called the Scream Queen because of Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985), where he plays a gay-vague teenager beset-upon by the nightmare psycho-killer Freddy Krueger.

Plus continuing the tradition of Nightmare hunks like Johnny Depp (left), he shows some butt and bulges.

Mark thought that Nightmare would be his "big break" into mainstream movies.  He was mistaken.

Previously he (right) had played a gay boy in the 1950s (actually a  transgender woman before transitioning), Chuck Connor's son, and the brother of a cloned girl, all roles with gay potential.

When he was cast in Nightmare, he assumed that his character was gay,  but his costar Robert Rusler (above) said "Hell, no!  And if you know what's good for you, you won't mentions gays to David [writer David Chaskin], ever!  He'll have you fired and on the first bus back to Missouri!"

I found the movie homophobic, even for the homophobic 1980s.  There are lots of "fag" slurs. The evil gym coach (Marshall Bell) dies when nightmare killer Freddy Krueger assaults him from behind in the shower, the homophobe's fear of what a gay predator might do.  The boy's "deviant impulses" are cured through the love of a woman.  

In a recent interview, David Chaskin admitted that he put gay codes into the script deliberately, but his goal was homophobic, to point out that gay people are monsters.  Still, the movie has been reclaimed as a queer classic, a gay teenager struggling to come out in a homophobic society that thinks gay people are monsters. 

After Nightmare, Mark found himself at the mercy of agents who tried to de-gay him.  They went through his closet to eliminate "gay" outfits, told him to avoid West Hollywood, and forbade him from being interviewed in The Advocate.

Mark managed a role as straight teenager in a CBS Schoolbreak Special (1986), and the buddy of the guy (George Clooney, left) who is having an affair with his mother on an episode of Hotel (1986).

In 1987, he was cast as a gay teenager, but told that he had to be closeted in real life, so he walked, and became an interior designer.

He lost his first partner, Timothy Murphy, to AIDS in 1988.  According to the story told by Zach the Photographer, he hooked up with Ricky Schroder later that year.

In 2000, while hospitalized for bronchitis, he was diagnosed as HIV positive himself.  

More after the break

"Howl" for Ricky Schroder, with Ricky's d*ck

 

I saw the cutest guy of my generation destroyed by madness, ranting hysterical naked...

Who played a "poor little rich boy" on Silver Spoons (1982-87) on my dream Saturday night, immersed in the buddy-bonding of Bosom Buddies, Jennifer Slept Here, and Mama's Family.

Whose boyfriend, Alfonso Ribeiro, went on to display his muscles and bulge on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

Who became a teen idol without taking off his shirt, who made gay boys sigh just with his dreamy eyes and smile

Who graduated to play a young soldier (Too Young The Hero, 1988), a cowboy (Lonesome Dove, 1989), and the juvenile brother of Brad Pitt (Across the Tracks, 1990), all men who knew the manly love of comrades

 Who hooked up with Mark Patton the Scream Queen but then threw himself into the closet of wives and sons and locker room homophobia

Who buddy-bonded with Dermont Mulroney in There Goes My Baby (1994), before they were both shipped off to Vietnam, one to die and the other to open a surf shop and cry over his lost love

Who forgot the endless summers of our youth

Seeing, touching, and tasting c ocks and endless balls.

Who crashed into movies and tv shows that no one saw, harsh, gritty, repellant, "make America great again" vehicles.

Who played a detective on NYPD Blue (1998-2001), with a woman's body below his gyrating backside

A nurse named Flower on Scrubs (2002-3) , who was queer coded but in love with Elliot

More after the break