Fall 1977: A Gay Romance on "Barnaby Jones"

October 27, 1977, the cold, windy Thursday night four days before Halloween, during my senior year in high school.

The family has gathered in front of the tv set, as usual: the tv is on every night from dinnertime to bedtime, a backdrop to all of our other activities.

7:00: Welcome Back, Kotter.  I look up briefly to see Horshak (Ron Pallilo) explain, yet again, that his name means "The cattle are dying."

7:30: What's Happening!. I look up briefly to check out Haywood Nelson's butt and bulge.

At 8:00, my parents want to watch Barney Miller, but I'm anxious to see James at Fifteen, starring teen idol Lance Kerwin.  So I watch on my small portable set upstairs.

At 9:00, I turn off the tv and start doing homework.  A few moments later, my brother Ken comes clomping up the stairs.  "You'll never guess what they're watching down there!" he exclaims.  "Barnaby Jones!"

"You're kidding -- Jed Clampett as a private eye?"  The oldster detective is played by the star of the Beverly Hillbillies.

"And Catwoman is his secretary!"  Lee Meriwether, who plays Barnaby's daughter-in-law, was Catwoman on Batman.

"Gross!  Next they'll have Scooby-Doo!"

Ken laughs.  "Don't take my word for it -- you have to watch to see how terrible it is."

"Come on!" I complain.  "Old people tv?"  My friends would rib me unmercifully if they found out I had watched something as lame as Barnaby Jones!

Ignoring me, he flips the tv on, and clicks the dial to CBS.

No Jed Clampett, no Catwoman.  Two cute young guys, one in a muscle shirt that displays baseball-sized biceps, the other in skin-tight jeans that reveal an enormous bulge.  They are standing so close together that they seem about to kiss.

"You're the man for me!" Muscle Shirt says.

"Let's not get carried away!" Tight-Jeans protests.

"This looks good...I mean, awful."  I stammer.

Looking back, I'm surprised that I didn't come out at that moment.  But no, I absolutely did not connect I want to see those guys kiss!  with gay.

"What did I tell you?"  Ken flips the tv set off, flops down on his bed, and opens a math textbook.

The next week I pretend to be immersed in a book in order to watch Barnaby Jones with my parents.  Tight-Jeans is Mark Shera, playing Barnaby's nephew, a law school student.  But he definitely likes girls.

What about Muscle Shirt, with his baseball-sized biceps and the romantic plaint of "You're the man for me?"  He must have been a guest star.

Before the days of the internet, there is no way to track down the episode.  I'll have to wait for summer reruns.

But during the summer, I am working at the mall on Thursday nights.  The scene of gay romance is lost forever.

Until a few days ago, when I found a photo of the scene on ebay, which led to the entire episode on youtube: "Gang War," starring 31-year old Asher Brauner.  My memory changed the dialogue a bit: he's not in love with Mark Shera, he's about to kidnap him.

Asher Brauner has been in a few movies of gay interest: he  played "Buddy" in Alexander: the Other Side of Dawn (1977), about a teenage runaway who becomes a hustler, and "Ted," in the gay-themed Making Love.  

He played the hero in the Indiana Jones spoof Treasure of the Moon Goddess (1987), and a man-mountain who takes out entire countries in American Eagle (1989) and Merchants of War (1989).

And he was the hero of a gay romance that I misread 30 years ago on Barnaby Jones.

Billions: Hedge Funds, Hard Decks, Bang-Bang Plays, Bondage, and a Nonbinary CEO.

 Amazon Prime has a new category, "Celebrate Pride!", with a lot of movies and tv shows, some obvious (RuPaul's Drag Race), some not so obvious.  What about Billions?  All I know for sure is that there's a nonbinary character, and I surmise that it's about extremely rich people. So maybe some nice scenery.  

I check out Season 1, Episode 1:

Scene 1: Chuck (Paul Giamatti), a chubby, bearded guy, is shirtless, bound and gagged.  Sounds like my usual Saturday night.  No, a dominatrix enters and puts out her cigarette on his chest, then urinates on him.  I guess not.  A little advanced for me, and no ladies, please.  

Cut to New York, the U.S. Attorney General's Office.  Lots of desks and people running around.   A lady is reprimanding an underling: "This is a no f*-up zone.  No Tinder at the f* office."   She and another guy, Bryan (Toby Leonard Moore), are called into the Attorney General's Office: Surprise: the BDSM bottom! 

(According to AusCaps, this is Toby Leonard Moore, so don't complain to me if they are wrong.)  

Suddenly a third guy bursts in with a big case: "One of my grunts riding the Midas spotted a days-long buying spike."  What does any of that mean?  I looked it up: inside trading, which I've never understood.  And the guy responsible is Bobby F** Axelrod.

Scene 2: Bobby Axelrod (Damien Lewis) in a sweatshirt, eating pizza.  A blond lady asks him why he's so happy.  He explains that the pizza here is "f*** good."  But the pizza place is about to close due to financial difficulties, so Bobby offers to partner-up with the Italian stereotype owner.  Nope: he yells "I don't want no f* charity."  Why is it necessary to use that f*** word in every f*** sentence?

But Bobby insists: "Twenty year lease, and I'll cover the overage." I have no idea what overage is, and I don't really care.

Scene 4: Bobby at work: Axe Capital.  His assistants, Ben and Mick (Daniel K. Isaac, left, Nathan Darrow) give him some boring, incomprehensible intel: "Electric Sun is controlled by Kazawitz, who also owns 19.3% of LumeTherme, backdoored through his stake in Southern Wind.  You see that Block Trade last Thursday? That was Fortress cashing out their shorts." Huh?  I was an English and Modern Languages major. Could we talk about Chaucer?

Heck with this.  I'm fast forwarding, looking for beefcake or LGBT+ characters.

Minute 15: Bobby briefly in the pool.

Minute 23: Scenes of Bobby and Chuck with their heterosexual nuclear families: wives and cute preteen kids saying things like "Hey, Dad, do you want to throw the baseball around?"

And that's all.  No major beefcake, no gay or nonbinary character.  

Maybe they are introduced later.  I'll check on Season 3, Episode 1.

Scene 1: The new Attorney General, a southern-fried good old boy, talking to Chuck (the chubby former Attorney General from Season 1).  He recounts, that, when you're breeding horses, you send in a "teaser" to get the mare ready, then the "stud" to actually do the job.  "You're the teaser with Dake prosecuting Axelrod.  You're doing all the work, he's getting all the credit."  Chuck says he doesn't care "as long as justice is served."

He switches to baseball metaphors: "If it's a bang-bang play, don't call out a man on a whim."  I don't know what that means, so I look it up: a bang-bang play is a close call, in which a runner is barely thrown out.  I don't know what that means, either, so I look it up: you've hit the ball and are running around the bases, but someone catches the ball, so you're out.  I guess he wants Chuck to work on important cases and skip over the trivial ones.  They exit into a room crowded with hundreds of suits.

Scene 2: Downtown.  The nonbinary character, Taylor Mason (Asia Kate Dillon), enters the snazzy offices of Axe Capital. Everyone is pissed that they called a meeting without Axe.  A muscle guy not mentioned on Amazon X-Ray is especially pissed, yelling that "I f*** humped my f*** ass for one and a half f** hours into this f*** city, and we can't even do any f*** work, because the f*** assets are still f*** frozen." Well, that's one way to do an exposition dump.  "And where the f**** is f*** Axe?"

Cut to Bobby Axelrod in a glassy upscale apartment the size of an airport terminal.  A woman approaches. "Guys like you head to the City when their marriages fall apart.  Are you planning to do any f*** work today?  Because this is a f*** disaster."  Geez, if I had a dollar for every f***...

Back to the meeting.  Taylor tries to quiet the mob: "I get it. Every day you're on the sidelines, it's harder to make your numbers.  But I guarantee that you won't fall below the hard deck."  I don't know what that means, so I look it up: in flight training, the hard deck represents the ground level, so if you go below it, you've "crashed." How on Earth does Taylor expect audiences who haven't gone to flight school to understand that?

They give the group today's assignment: a Platinum Idea Dinner tonight, where hedge fund managers from across the City will be ready for...whatever it is these people do.  I don't know what a hedge fund is, so I look it up:  investors who specialize in high-risk deals in the hopes of getting huge payoffs.  

If you have a choice of watching hedge fund managers or zombies, which will you choose?   After all, economics is called "the dismal science" for a reason. I'm fast forwarding through this episode, too, see if there's any beefcake or same-sex romance.

Minute 35: The Russian and Turkish Baths (since 1892).  Taylor and  I think Todd (Danny Strong) getting slapped with willow branches.  Todd asks: "Are you shopping offers on the Street?"  I don't think this is a hookup. 

Nope: cut to an apartment balcony, where Todd serves Taylor tea and says he needs someone to steward his firm while he's at the Treasury Department.  Interested?

Cut back to the bathhouse, where a fat guy, cast on IMDB as Russian Bully (Damian Muziani), complains about Taylor sitting with their "tits" hanging out."  Todd comes to the rescue, pretending that Fat Guy was talking to him, and suggesting "Maybe they turn you on." Fat Guy retreats.

Minute 52: Chuck from Scene 1 shirtless in a dungeon, being whipped by a dominatrix.

Holy f*, this was f*ing unwatchable. The endless boring conversations about finance laced with baseball and poker metaphors.  The utter lack of same-sex desire or practice (being nonbinary is cool, but how about if they date someone?).  

And the f**ing profanity! Are they keeping a tally?  The one who says it most often in an episode gets a bonus?

Andy Warhol: Gay without Pride

I've been reading the Diaries of Andy Warhol, where the famous pop artist spends about a thousand pages recording how much he spent on cabs during the last ten years of his life (1977-87).  It's tough going.  He knows everybody, and lists them by their first names, so it's hard to figure out who's who.  He spends a lot of time on boring things ("had lunch") and gives promising events a line ("Got a death threat").  He goes to church every day.  He takes a lot of phone calls.

If I didn't know already, I'd have no idea that Warhol was gay.  He mentions attractive men and women both, but he doesn't seem to like gay people.  He complains that a first-name celebrity took him to a benefit, and it turned out to be for fags and lesbians.  He complains about bars being full of fags.  In a restaurant, he discovers that a gay chef made his dinner, and refuses to eat it for fear of contracting AIDS.  He thinks Gay Pride Day is ridiculous (although he doesn't mind photographing the parade).

With all that homophobia going on, what's gay about Andy Warhol?

Homoerotic art, especially early in his career, and films like Blow Job (1964) and Trash (1970).

A homoerotic painting by Jamie Wyeth.

The Factory, where he made his pop art in the 1960s, was a gathering place for bohemians, including drag queens, transgender folk of various types, and rent boys.  That was a lot of visibility for the pre-Stonewall era.

But after Stonewall, Warhol seems to have mostly ran Interview magazine, had lunch with Liza Minelli and Paul Getty Jr., photographed attractive men in their underwear, and complained about fags.

Makes you wonder what the Factory was all about.

Maybe he stopped caring about gays when they stopped think of themselves as sexual outsiders and started fighting for full human dignity?

Gay men and lesbians who think they're just as good as heterosexuals!  How boring!

All accounts state that he was attracted primarily or exclusively to men, but never had a boyfriend, or even a sexual partner.  He preferred to watch rather than touch.

"Panic": "Dawson's Creek" Meets "The Hunger Games," with Gay Characters

"In the forgotten town of Carp, Texas, Panic is the only way out. Every summer graduating seniors risk their lives competing in a series of challenges for the chance to win life-changing money."  

A scripted series about a reality-tv show based on The Hunger Games?  You have got to be kidding.  And I know that being desperate to escape small towns has been a standard trope for generations, but why not just get on a bus?  Is there like a wall around the town?  Who decided to subject their kids to life-threatening challenges instead of just funding a scholarship?  Why do the parents go along with it?  Why do the kids?  

The wikipedia page mentions heterosexual love interests and a boy who "gets the girl."  The icon shows a boy and a girl about to kiss; the trailer shows another boy-girl couple kissing."  Looks very, very heterosexist.  But just in case they sneaked a gay character in without telling us, I went through Episode 4 on fast-forward. 

Minute 8: Tyler (Jordan Elsass), who has been injured, is sitting in a pickup truck with Ray (Ray Nicholson, top photo, shown with his father, legendary actor Jack Nicholson).  Ray is wearing pink sunglasses.  Tyler reveals that he got into some trouble with his drug suppliers down in Galveston, and they beat him up.  But he wants back in the Panic Game.

Ray: "You're in a lot of trouble.  Lucky for you, I know you so well.  I sent in your proof."  He shows him a picture on his cell phone.

Tyler: "Looks like a dick."

Maybe they are a gay couple?

Minute 14: At the lake.  Bad Boy Ray grabs and hugs a cute guy...his boyfriend?  Nope, his brother, Luke Hall (Walker Babbington).

Luke: Did you miss me? 

Ray: No.   I missed borrowing your car, though.

Luke: The only way your dumb ass could get laid.  (Only straight people say "get laid," ergo Ray is straight.).

Minute 30: The "Players' Ball."  All the teens in town are there, dancing, smoking crack (or something out of clay pipes), and pouring beer on each other.  I don't see any couples dancing together.

A fat guy, Drew (Cosme Flores), is playing cards with two girls and a long-haired boy (Troy, played by Stephen Dieh, left).  Could they be LGBTQ?  They don't say anything specific.

Dodge (Mike Faist) in the hot tub.  The girl on the other side of the tub asks "How come you never laugh?"  Constantly depressed is a gay trope, so maybe...

She says: "I think you're afraid."  Afraid to come out, maybe?

Nope, they start grabbing at each other.

Tyler, the drug dealer from Minute 8, is sitting with between two guys. Could they be the gay crew?  Nope, they double-take at a passing babe.

Troy, the long-haired guy from the card game, grabs Bad Boy Ray from behind.  They start dancing together.  Ok, these two have to be gay.  Wait -- is that Ray kissing a girl?  I'm confused.

Drew the Fat Guy gives central character Heather boyfriend advice.  Ok, he's gay.

Heather and Ray spend five minutes chatting and smooching.  The end.

Beefcake:  Just Dodge in the hot tub.  There are some buffed cast members, including Enrique Murciano (left) as the sheriff and David W. Thompson as a rich kid (wait -- why would a rich kid compete for prize money to escape from his small town?).

Gay Characters:  I'm guessing Drew and Troy, with his dance partner Bad Boy Ray as just nonchalant: "A gay guy flirting with me?  That's cool."  

Racial Diversity:  I saw black, Hispanic, Asian, and South Asian teens.

Cliches: Lots of pickup trucks, cowboy hats, small-town diners, and dusty streets.

The Game: I was fast forwarding, but I didn't really see anything life-threatening going on.  This seems to be mostly a teen angst soap opera.

Will I Keep Watching: Maybe on fast-forward, to see if Troy or Drew get boyfriends.