20 musclemen who guided me through the Age of Innocence, from Bomba the Jungle Boy to the American Psycho

 This is a nostalgic journey through the musclemen who gave me my first hints that same-sex desire existed, and guided me from junior high through college and to West Hollywood. They provided a joy that transcended aesthetic pleasure, telling gay kids that we belonged.  We were welcome. 

Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy guide.

In your most need I'll be by your side.

1. Johnny Sheffield played Bomba the Jungle Boy on Tarzan Theater every Saturday afternoon when there wasn't a game.  I never actually made it through a whole movie -- they were dreadfully heterosexist.  But there was always time for those gleaming black-and-white muscles, especially when he was tied up.

2. Bruce Lee.  He died in 1973, but his movies were playing constantly on Kung Fu Theater, and everybody's older brother had his beefcake poster on his bedroom wall.

3. Michael Forest played a god of masculine beauty (literally the God Apollo) on an episode of Star Trek which I saw sometime in the 1970s.

4. Denny Miller. Moments of gay promise as a surfer and a jungle man on Gilligan's Island.

5, David Naughton.  The cutest guy of the Disco Era showed us his dick and butt in in American Werewolf in London (1981).  Plus he also gave us a strong gay subtext in spite of the 1980s homophobia.

6. Yukio Mishima.  It wasn't hard to find gay-themed books in the early 1980s.  Just look for "evil" or "hidden" in the title.  So I found Confessions of a Mask, with Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima's obsession with male muscles, sex, and death.  

7. Arnold Schwarzenegger.  The 1980s start and end with Arnold, who single-handedly brought bodybuilding into the mainstream and made it respectable.

8.  Sylvester Stallone gave him a little help with his grunting, sweat-soaked Rambo and Rocky.  We saw his dick in The Italian Stallion, a recast of his early porn movie.  

9. John Amos.  Gordy the Weatherman on Mary Tyler Moore, a warrior in a Conan rip-off that we all saw, and my gym buddy.

10. Lou Ferrigno, who played a muscular green Hulk against Bill Bixby's David Banner, dropped by often when I was working at Muscle & Fitness.  Did I mention our hookup?

More after the break

Pontius Gemstone, the Boy Named Stacy, and the Erotic Alphabet. With a special appearance by Gideon Gemstone.

Previous: "My Three Gay Sons and...ugh...Vance Simkins": A Jesse Gemstone Adventure, with Guest Star Karl Montgomery

A: Anal

B: Bondage

C: Cock sucking

D: Docking

E: Edging

F: Feet

G: Golden showers

Stacy awoke with Pontius' arms wrapped around him, his head on Pontius' chest, and his hand cupping his butt cheek.  Pontius was aroused, rock hard, his gorgeous cock rising into the air like a flagpole!  Stacy couldn't help reaching down to stroke it.  

"Mmm...keep doing that."  His eyes still closed, Pontius took Stacy's hand and helped him squeeze harder.  

"Sorry, I didn't know you were awake."

"I try not to sleep when you're lying in my arms.  I don't want to miss any of it."  He leaned up, and they kissed, both of them hard and pressing together.

"Good morning."  Pontius' gaze was intense, yet warm, comforting, loving.  

"I love you," Stacy said.

Instead of saying "I love you" back, Pontius moved down and started sucking his cock!  "Well, this says love, doesn't it?," he thought as Pontius' tongue darted around the head, and his lips moved up and down the shaft.  Or maybe it doesn't.  It says that he likes cocks.

Suddenly Pontius leapt out of bed.  "Be right back -- gotta pee."  He bounced to the bathroom, his cock still sticking out in front of him.

 While listening to the pee-sounds  -- why was that erotic?  -- Stacy looked around the room: New dresser, desk cluttered with books and headphones, a map of the world taped to the wall, drawings of car designs, a bookcase with mostly Matchbox car models, three dusty guitars that no one had ever used, a glowing neon P.  

Pontius had replaced a poster of a bikini babe with a muscleman because Stacy asked him to, and cleared a drawer for some shirts, socks, and underwear, but it was still his room, Pontius with capital P, in the house he shared with his brother. 

They met last July, when Stacy was shot in the Gator Farm Massacre, and Pontius visited him at the hospital.  Since they, they had hung out almost every day.  

There were movies, concerts, plays, Queer Youth Game Nights. dinner at Jason's Steakhouse after church, volunteer work, a Halloween Party, Thanksgiving with Stacy's family, Christmas with the Gemstones, New Year's Eve in Myrtle Beach -- yet whenever Stacy hinted at moving in together, or getting their own place, Pontius deflected, changed the subject, or bounced out of the room, and God forbid he say "I love you."  Did he think of Stacy as a boyfriend or a buddy? 

Sound of the water running, a towel being yanked, and then Pontius rushed out of the bathroom.  How was he still aroused?  

"So, what were we talking about?"

"Me on my stomach, I think," Stacy said.

"No, on your back. I want to look at you."

More after the break

Zackary Arthur: The gay teen with the murderous Chuckie doll bulks up, shows his physique, and dates...with a potential penis and a Man in Full

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Peter Berlin: "That Boy" uses his physique and his cock to show us the wonder of the Gay World

His actual name was Peter Berlin, but all you needed to say was That Boy, and the old guys of West Hollywood (that is, men over 30) would remember: the Boy sunning himself on the beach, the "Dancing Queen" at the disco, the leatherman glaring from the back bar, all blond hair, bronze muscles, and hard cock.

He was not handsome -- actually, he had an unremarkable long horse-face.  Nor was he blond. And the world he traveled was more often graffiti- and gang-strewn Tenderloin than the Fire Island of the A-gays.  But that didn't matter.  You saw him half on screen, half in your dreams.

There was no such thing as a closet in Peter Berlin's world, no such thing as homophobia.  Only endless nights of cruising -- but not the meaningless, destructive tricks that the straights condemned us for.  A glorious sexual freedom that was, in itself, fulfilling enough to be the sole purpose of life.

 

 That Boy (1974) was a defining moment of my coming out, the first gay porn film I ever saw, in 1984, during my second year in grad school at Indiana University.  My friend Viju and I drove into Indianapolis to go to the bars, and someone invited us to see it with him.  There was a midnight showing in a sleazy theater near Monument Circle.

Peter is not actually the boy of That Boy.  He plays an unnamed sexual Everyman who wanders through the Castro and the Tenderloin of  a straight-free San Francisco, cruising on the street and in back rooms, looking at men, and being looked at.  He finds the gaze, being the object of desire, more glorious than the sex acts themselves.  But then he looks at That Boy, but the boy does not look back.

Could this be the one person in the Gay World who does not desire him?  No, the boy is blind!  Peter is intrigued, and invites him for coffee and conversation. They walk hand in hand through the park and sit by the pond to look at (or hear) the ducks, making a romantic connection before heading to the back room.

Peter was born Armin Hagen Freiherr von Hoyningen-Huene. the son of a baron, in December 1942, and raised in Berlin, in a family of diplomats and fashion photographers.   After secondary school, he worked as a photographer for a German interview program, met famous people like Alfred Hitchcock and Brigitte Bardot, and cruised.  

A double life, respectable by day, sleazoid by night, was a standard part of the gay experience in the 1960s, when straights and gays alike believed that we were destined to be permanent outsiders, constantly hiding, denizens of a seedy underworld.  But Armin took pride in being gay.  He cruised in outfits of his own design, photographed himself and his tricks, turned the gay sex act into a work of masculine beauty,

More after the break.  

Russell Posner: The incredibly cute gay teen of "The Mist" plays a politician, gets tied up, shows his dick, and vanishes. With bonus nude Morgan Spector and Jack Black

I used this photo of an incredibly well hung guy as an  illustration for my profile of the Norwegian Fire Viking.  He looks a lot like the incredibly cute Russell Posner, so I thought I would do a profile, on the off chance that they are the same person.

Turns out that the incredibly cute Russell Posner is not too easy to track down.

Famous Birthdays promises "A complete biography," but the complete biography consists of: "Canadian actor, born in 2003." 

Rotten Tomatoes adds: "began acting in commercials while in elementary school, and made his stage debut in Lost in Yonkers in 2012." When he was nine years old?

Broadway World likewise promises a "complete biography," and says only that he starred in The Mist.

His listing on We Audition says only that he's a "New York based actor" 

Trying to find him by googling "Russell Posner" and any of "high school," "college," "theater," "commercials," "Canada," and "actor" yields a guy from Florida who died at age 77 and a postdoctoral researcher in oncology.

Plus a shirtless photo of an incredibly cute guy who doesn't look like him.

Russell has 14 acting credits listed on the IMDB, beginning with the 11 year old son in Eugene! (2012), a tv movie starring Eugene Mirman.

He played the 14-year old son of  Dan Landsman (Jack Black) in The D Train (2015).  Dan is organizing a high school reunion, and tries to get the most popular guy in school, Oliver (James Marsden), to come.  They end up doing some incredibly sexy stuff, but the buns belong to Dan as he gets up from a tryst with his wife.

Next Russell played the son of a journalist who decides to research The Pirates of Somalia (2017).

Russell's most famous work to date is in The Mist (2017), based on the Stephen King novel.  I just read the plot synopsis on the fan wiki, but it sounds incredibly homophobic:

As a murderous mist descends upon the town, high school Adrian (Russell) is at a party with his girlfriend, getting bullied for being gay (wait, that doesn't...).  Later while taking refuge in a hospital, he kisses Tyler (Chris Gray), who beats him up, then relents and agrees to sex.

He is kidnapped by a psych ward patient who sees "the incredible evil" in him.  They must mean being gay.

His Dad says that he could have loved him "in spite of being gay,"  if only he were "right in the head."  In spite of?  

More after the break

Dashiell Messick: A homophobic tv mom, a gay brother, a pretty princess outfit, and a hunky male au pair, all before his 12th birthday

 

I don't usually profile preteen actors, because they won't have played any gay characters yet, and it's impossible to tell whether the buddy-bonding in their private lives is romantic or platonic.  But Dasheill Messick, age 11, played the son of gay dads and has made some explicitly femme fashion choices.  That's enough for a profile of Dashiell and his twin brother Fox. 

 

Plus there are some cute adults in their lives, like their Argentine au pair  (top photo and left), and their hot dad (below).

Mom Kacy Andrews , the CEO of Bigfoot Entertainment, has documented the twins' career since their gestation.  She is infertile (and an advocate of infertility awareness), so a friend of 25 years, her soul mate and part of her chosen family, offered to become her surrogate.   They only implanted one frozen embryo, but on December 5, 2014, twins came out!  

The two began appearing in tv commercials at the age of two months, and in 2016 won the role of Tommy Fuller Jr. on the Full House sequel Fuller House (2016-20).  They appeared in 75 episodes, moving from baby to toddler.

Tommy Jr. is the son of focus character DJ and her deceased husband.  He has two brothers, Jackson (Michael Campion, top) and Max (Elias Harger, left).

I profiled the grown-up Elias, and decided that he is probably gay, but there were no gay regular characters on the show.  Showrunner Candace Cameron Bure is vociferously homophobic, and insisted that her show be "family friendly", that is, heterosexual only.  They did manage to cast trans actor Miss Benny (then presenting as male) as a gay high schooler in two episodes, but cautioned that Candace would try to fire her. So don't speak to any of the Fuller adults, don't look directly at Candace, and prepare for a firestorm of hate from her homophobic core fans. Gee, I think I'd give that role a miss.

Tommy's main plot arc involves getting therapy for being a "late talker,"  reflecting the twins' real-life speech delay.

While starring on Fuller House, the twins, alone or together, had other acting gigs:

The music video Sunrise Sunset (2018) with the song from Fiddler on the Roof covered by Juan Pablo di Pace (left).  He's straight but played a gay guy in The Mattachine Family.   Elias Harger, Adam Hagenbuch, and Michael Campion from Fuller House also appeared, presumably growing older to the lyrics.

Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears

An episode of Grey's Anatomy (2019) as a child whose mom overdoses and abandons him.  A bystander brings him to the hospital, where the doctors advise keeping him away from mom until she gets help.

Two episodes of the DIY show Home & Family (2019), with Mark Steins as the co-host.

An episode of  Danger Force (2020), starring Cooper Barnes as a wacky superhero.  His Danger Force of teen superheroes kidnap a toddler, thinking that he is a baby-faced supervillain.  Eventually they track down his dads and return him.

More after the break

20 gay and gay-friendly teen actors: a fierce, fabulous Barbie boy, Pugsley Addams, Harvey Milk, a Russian bodybuilder with a cat,....

I usually profile teen idols after they've graduated to adult hunkiness, but sometimes I can't wait: they're playing gay characters, going to Pride events, wearring  femme/fabulous outfits, or hugging their boyfriends while still teenagers.  Their openness to gay potential gives me hope for a less homophobic future.  I won't look for or post n*de photos, of course, but I usually include some adult co-stars to keep things interesting.

1. Taylor Gregory: At 17, the fierce, fabulous Barbie boy had grown up to become a bodybuilder and fundamentalist. 

2. Alfie Williams (left), star of 28 Years Later and 28 Years Later: Bone Temple, is 15 as of this writing, but hangs out with a surprising number of gay guys, who call him "one of the girls"

3. Eldon Jones: Actor in gay projects, dancer, artist with a gay brother and a pink shirt. 

4. Isaac Ordonez (not pictured). The sweet, sensitive, queer-coded Pugsley Addams on Wednesday dates dudes.

5. Alkaio Thiele. The wizard in training on Beyond Waverly Place and Kayden Koshelev (below) used to be an item.

6. Kayden Koshelev (left). Drag boy and nonbinary firetruck, Alkaio's Other Half before their breakup. Not to worry, he's moved on.

7. Recker Eans. The gaydar boy on Beyond Waverly Place drums in gay-friendly videos and sings in a boy band with gay-friendly songs.

8. Bentley Storteboom (not pictured). His name and physique had me fooled.  I thought he was 25, and Dutch.

9. Benjamin Pajak (right) played six gay characters before age 15, and sang as Harvey Milk.

More after the break