Ryan Kwanten, Vampire Buddy

Ryan Kwanten began acting at age 15, and first became known outside Australia as a boy trapped in an East Asian fantasy world in Spellbinder (1997).  Since then, he has become famous for his physique.  Whenever he comes on screen, his shirt comes off.

He's appeared in his underwear, in a towel, in a diaper, in a swimsuit, naked in bed, naked in the shower, stripped for torture, and wearing only a sock.

He's never played a gay character, or a character who spends much time with guys -- directors are too busy pushing him into ladies' arms.

He played  horndogs on the soap Home and Away (1994-2002) and Summerland (2004-2005).

In Griff the Invisible, Griff (Ryan) falls in love with a female superhero. In Red Hill, young sheriff Shane (Ryan) has a wife and a baby.  In Not Suitable for Children (2012), Jonah (Ryan) has to impregnate as many women as possible in a month.

But sometimes beefcake is enough.

Ryan has a gay brother, and would be perfectly happy playing a gay character.  He praises his sheriff Jason Stackhouse in True Blood (2008-2013), the angst-y series about vampires struggling for their civil rights (with Joe Manganiello and Martin Spanjers).

Jason Stackhouse began as rather homophobic and vampire-phobic, but over the course of five seasons, learned to tolerate and finally accept both gay people and vampires.  In 2012, when he discovered that a gay vampire had a crush on him, he responded: "Look, I accept who you are, whether it's a vampire, whether it's a gay man, or both. But that's not the way this dog barks."

Jason has a love-hate relationship with head vampire Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgard) which has resulted in a lot of slash fiction.

Ryan would be happy to have the two men take their relationship to the next level and embark on a human-vampire romance.

British Boxing Beefcake

During the early years of the 20th century, finding beefcake was a problem.  Silent movies rarely featured male nudity.  Neither did pulp magazines.  Bodybuilding was in its infancy.

But in Britain, you could always go to a boxing match, and see biceps and bulges as muscular guys punched, pounded, grabbed, hugged.  It was a quasi-homoerotic ritual that millions of men watched every week.

Boxers became superstars, both for their prowess and their physique.

I like guys who are short, and British featherweight Dick Corbett (1908-1943) was only 5'4".

Nipper Pat Daily (1913-1988), the world's youngest professional boxer, was a flyweight contender ate age 15.  He won 99 of his 119 fights before retiring at age 17 to become a trainer and run a gym. He never married.

Actually, many of the early 20th century boxers never married.  They were most comfortable in a masculine world of boxing rings and gyms.

Scottish light heavyweight Bert Gilroy (1918-1998) won 88 of 121 fights in a long career that lasted for 13 years, then retired to be a manager and trainer, spending the rest of his life near the ring.

Welsh boxer Johnny Basham (1890-1947), known as the Happy Wanderer, became the European welterweight champion.

Welterweight Brian Curvis (1937-2012) fought in the 1950s and 1960s, when awareness of gay identity made immersion in a male-only world suspect.  He got married.

See also: Jerry Quarry, Boxer with Something Extra.