Nicolas Hau and the mystery of the glowing cattle. With his d*ck tree-trunking, a n*de man in my room, and unrelenting gloom

 

Link to the n*de photos 

I started watching Half-Man (2026), starring Jamie Bell as a sort-of gay guy who has a sort-of homoerotic relationship with his violence-crazy "half brother" (Richard Gadd of Baby Reindeer),  but I had forgotten the intensity of Mr. Gadd's internalized homophobia -- until the depiction of gay desire as unrelentingly dark and destructive began.  So I dropped it. What's so horrible about liking guys?  

Next, in search of light entertainment, I checked the n*de celebrity subreddit: a morose white-haired young man sitting on his bed while tree-trunking.  In another shot, he's manipulating.  

I was fascinated.  What was the context?  How could anyone be morose while doing that?

 The caption said that he was Nicolas Hau, from the French movie  Like Cattle Towards Glow (2015).   You can't move toward "glow."  It would have to be a glowing object. 

A mystery to solve!  Was it a bad translation, or an old folk saying changed to gibberish with the passage of time?

According to his IMDB biography, written by himself,  Nicolas Hau "has collaborated with international directors and continues to develop a diverse body of work across film and artistic projects, with a strong interest in character-driven and visually distinctive storytelling."

This extremely pretentious bio is matched by two acting credits on the IMDB: the glowing cattle movie and The Aspern Papers (2018), based on the novel by Henry James: An American novelist wants to get the letters that Romantic poet Jeffrey Aspern sent to his mistress, but she has them sequestered in her decaying Venetian mansion. 

Jonathan Rhys Meyers (n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) stars. Nicolas plays the bi poet Lord Byron.

It grossed $9,700 in the U.S, and got reviews like "Awful!" "Pretentious drivel!" "Boring!"

Well, it's Henry James.  What do you expect?

Nicolas' resume also lists three theatrical credits:

Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream

Benjamin in The Graduate, the part originally played by Dustin Hoffman.

And Einar Wegener in Danish Girl.  In 1920s Copenhagen, Einar develops a female persona named Lili, and with the support of his wife, gradually acknowledges a female gender identity.  Lili was a pioneer in transgender history as the first person to undergo gender reassignment surgery.  In the 2015 movie, she was played by Eddie Redmayne (n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

Nowadays Nicolas is mostly a model.  His credits on Models.com include Vogue, the covers of Stylist and Beauty magazines, walking for Ferderico Curradi and Peuteray, "Bizarre Love Triangle" (behind a paywall), and whatever this is.

The samples he uploads to his Instagram mostly show him looking bored and pretentious while hugging a semi-n*de lady.  This is one of the few where he's alone, putting on a Gaucho outfit for a shoot.

The glowing cattle and the tree-trunking photo that sent me down this internet rabbit hole after the break

Turns out that Like Cattle Toward Glow (2015)  is not French.  It's a five-part independent film with an incomprehensible title, the vision of the American author Dennis Cooper.

Dennis, born in 1953, is best known for the George Milles Cycle, five semi-autobiographical novels abouot his fantasies of doing "nasty" things with/sliding around on the disembowled guts of a real-life friend named George Milles.   He has published many other novels, as well as poetry and nonfiction, about the dangerous extremes of reality, the gore beneath the skin, and the interconnection of erotic desire and the death wish. 

He and fellow gore enthusiast Zac Farley (maybe his boyfriend) have collaborated on three films, all with dark, disturbed gay characters:

Permanent Green Light (2018), about a young man who wants to explode in public, to see people's reaction to his guts spewed about

Room Temperature (2025), where a family's annual Halloween haunted house is overcome by the father's obsession with s*xual violence.  

Like Cattle Toward Glow consists of five short films about gay teenagers who are drawn into  "bizarre fetish play or sinister self expression," probably an interconnection of the desire for s*x and the desire to eviscerate.

The movie itself is behind a paywall, but the trailer shows Nicolas crying as he gets dressed, puts on eye shadow, and goes to visit his equally distraught hookup.  If it makes you that upset, why do it?

They kiss, look horrified at each other, have a bedroom encounter that neither likes, and break up.

(Note: The illustrations are too "sensitive" to post here.  They are on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

Nicolas moves on to engage in self-help while depressed.

Next singer E.D. Yang starts crying in agony as he performs.  He collapses onto the stage and shows his butt as a sinister young man approaches.

A depressed Valentin Putin engages in "nasty" stuff with a dude, then walks away from some abandoned suitcases on the beach.

Luca Gabriel leads his depressed boyfriend into the woods, where some people dressed as hairy monsters force them to strip and do "nasty" stuff.

There are some other miscellaneous body parts on display, with everyone looking horribly depresseed. 

The inevitable conclusion: it's not the bedroom activity itself that leads to darkness and despair, it's the desire to do it with dudes.

Can't being gay, just once, be portrayed as positive and joyful?   

Gay guys get to wake up to this every morning.  What could be better? 

See also:  "Baby Reindeer": Comedian is turned gay by a s*xual predator, but manages to turn straight again. No baby reindeer.

Howard Cruse: Gay comics at their most depressing

George MacKay: The time-traveler's buddy chooses movies about endless pain, misery, and despair. Just because he has a small d*k?

Stefanos Kakavoulis: Bizarre, cerebral gay movies and n*de performance pieces, plus a video and a kooky documentry