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

Link to the n*de photos 

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 c*ck

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

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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 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 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 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 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 activity into a work of masculine beauty,

More after the break.  

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

Link to the n*de photos

This is a nostalgic journey through the musclemen who gave me my first hints that gay people 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 stuff 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 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 stuff  in The Italian Stallion, a recast of his early adult 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

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

 

Link to the n*de photos.

Zackary Arthur is best known for Chucky (2021-24), where he plays the gay teen who inherits the murderous doll, but he has had a long career before, with several gay and gay-adjacent roles.

He was born in Los Angeles in 2006, the son of writer/casting agent Marci Richmond, who obligingly put him and his brother Aidan in her 2016 movie, Pals. 

His screen debut was actually two years before, in Transparent (2014- 19).  Jeffrey Tambor, a cisgender straight guy, plays a college professor who, late in life, begins transitioning with the name Maura.  Her ex-wife,  grown children, and rabbi have mixed reactions. 

 

Zack plays Zack Pfifferman, son of Maura's daughter and her husband Len (Ron Huebel, showing his stuff on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends), whom she leaves for a lady.  Apparently there are trans, lesbian, bi, and nonbinary characters, but gay men are scarce.

While on Trans, Zack starred in:

Don't Come Back from the Moon (2017): Dads suddenly abandoning their kids

Mom and Dad (2017): A plague causes parents to attack their kids

These Things Take Time (2018), a short about a boy with a crush on his teacher.  A male teacher, for a change.  It was repeated in the anthology The American Boys (2020), with several guys experiencing "a s*xual awakening," saying "I think I'm gay," and doing gay bedroom stuff.  It's on Amazon Prime, but behind a paywall. 

In Mississippi Requiem (2018), an anthology of Faulkner stories, Zack plays Young Quentin. Ugh, is he the one who is in love with his sister, also named Quentin, and does things to himself at Harvard?  I hope I got that right; I couldn't understand a word of The Sound and the Fury:  

Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. They were coming toward where the flag was and I went along the fence. Luster was hunting in the grass by the flower tree. They took the flag out, and they were hitting.

Hint: He's describing a golf game. 

But I do have a story about William Faulkner and his boyfriend (Sherwood Anderson's son) painting a guy's p*nis green. 

Next came Chucky (2021-24), with Zack as Jake Wheeler, Devon Sawa as his abusive dad, and  Bjorgvin Arnarson as a true crime podcaster and eventually Jake's boyfriend: they go on a date in Season 1, and get intimate in Season 3. They don't die, exactly, but their souls are transferred into puppets in the cliffhanger that turned out to be the series finale.

During Chucky, Zack starred in  Hero Dog (2021), Secret Agent Dingledorf (2021), and Jill (2022), "a modern fairy tale about how distrust in the collective society divides a family and how Jill many years later learns about what there is left to trust."

I don't know what that means, either, and there are no plot synopses online, but there are hippies, nekkid ladies,  Garrett Wareing, and Tom Pelphrey (n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

More after the break

"Breaking Fast": Gay Muslim gets dumped, finds a new boyfriend, shows his d*ck. But are any of the actors actually gay and Muslim?

 

Link to the n*de photos

In the short Breaking Fast (2015), it's Eid-al-Fitr, the last night of Ramadan, and Mo (Ryan Shrime) runs into Cal (probably gay bodybuilder Tom Berklund).  They discuss the suicide of Cal's boyfriend.  

That's all I can gather from Tom Berklund's demo reel: the movie is not available to stream, and the trailer is stuck behind paywalls and Trojan-infested websites.  But a review says that Mo is a gorgeous Superman-obsessed doctor dealing with tragedy (because all short films are about dealing with tragedy, right?), and the guys fall in love.

We don't have a lot of actors who are gay, out, and Muslim, so I thought I would check Ryan Shrime out.

Ryan's  Instagram starts off with three photo dumps of Christmas decorations. Dude is Christian

Then he visits Portugal and Israel with his travel buddy, a miniature Jesus.  Dude is Christian and wacko.

Next there are about 3,000 photos hugging and kissing ladies and playing with kids.  Dude is straight.

Why are you playing a gay Muslim, buddy?  Are you the only Arab-American actor willing to do it?  

Sigh.  Let's check for gay roles and nude photos anyway.  

Ryan got his degree from Harvard, then studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.  

Theatrical credits: Macbeth, King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, The Engine of Our Ruin, The Ants

Nothing overtly gay themed there.

He founded the Middle Eastern Comedy Festival and the New York Arab American Comedy Festival

61 acting credits on the IMDB: The Mindy Project, Sam & Kat, Revenge, Grey's Anatomy, Madame Secretary, On My Block, and a lot that I don't recognize.  He complains on Threads that casting agents constantly tell him, "You're so great! I'm just looking for the right role for you," then offer yet another terrorist role.

He is known for playing:

Lance Chambers on a 2015 episode of Gray's Anatomy: Meredith returns to Seattle to announce Derek's death (Patrick Dempsey) and gives birth; Amelia deals with her grief; April decides to stay in a war-torn country, upsetting Jackson (Jesse Williams); Ben and Bailey argue over an end-of-life decision. Oh, and Richard proposes to Catherine.  Lance is not mentioned in the plot synopses.  Would there even be room for him?

Ramjin Azizi on a 2017 episode of Madame Secretary, starring Tea Leoni as the Secretary of State: Blake comes out as bisexual, Stevie (a boy) misses a meeting with the Harvard Dean of Admissions when Jason gets sick, and Henry goes to Israel to retrieve the bio weapon, but ISIS agents steal it. Ramjin isn't mentioned in any of the plot synopses, but I'm guessing that he's not a terrorist.

Ryan is also known as the producer of Woe (2020): A brother and sister stumble upon their father's secret after his death. A review says that it's impenetrably art-noveau.  Well, the guy graduated from Harvard.  What do you expect?

At least he shows his d*ck (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).  Or is that misleading, too?

In 2020, writer/director Mike Mosallam released a feature-length Breaking Fast, with the parts recast.  It's not available to stream, either, but a review gives us a few more details:  Mo (Haaz Sleiman) got dumped by his boyfriend (Patrick Sabongui) on the first night of Ramadan, and is now emotionally closed off.  Until he meets Cal (Michael Cassidy), who is grieving over his dead boyfriend.  The two bond during the three nights of Eid al-Fitr.

Any actual gay Muslim guys here?

More after the break