It's Raining Men (Hallelujah!)

 

Humidity's rising, barometer's getting low
According to all sources, the street's the place to go.
Cause tonight for the first time, just about half past ten
For the first time in history, it's gonna start raining men

"It's Raining Men" was written in 1979, by gay composer Paul Jabara ("Disco Queen," "Last Dance"), and Paul Shaffer, then a member of the house band of Saturday Night Live.  They offered it to many vocalists, including Barbra Streisand, Cher, and Donna Summer, but they all refused.  Even Two Tons O'Fun (Izora Armstead and Martha Walsh), then performing as backup singers for pop star Sylvester, balked, thinking the song too weird to chart.

 Finally they agreed and released "It's Raining Men" on their third album, Success, in 1982.  They also released it as a single, and performed in the music video as the Weather Girls.

In October 1982, "It's Raining Men" hit #1 on the U.S. Dance Club Chart.  It also charted well in Europe.

There have been covers from everyone from RuPaul to Geri Halliwell to the Vamps to Miss Piggy.

In 2014, after a British politician blamed the UK's recent floods on gay marriage, a Facebook campaign was launched to get the song on the British charts again.  It hit #21.

Why is this a gay anthem?  It has nothing to do with liberation, and it's strictly heteronormative.  The men are raining down upon women.

God bless Mother Nature -- she's a single woman too
She took over heaven, and she did what she had to do
She taught every angel to rearrange the sky
So that each and every woman could find the perfect guy

Maybe because it's fun for gay men to think of being deluged by men, especially after growing up in a desert where gay romance was assumed not to exist.

It's raining men, hallelujah!

It's raining men, amen! 
I'm gonna go out, I'm I'm gonna let myself get
Absolutely...soaking....

See also: Ocho Rios

Jimmy Olsen's Secret Life, Part 2: Keefe singing, Jimmy (censored), and Gideon (censored)

How "I'm Coming Out" Became a Gay Anthem

"Let's Hear it for the Boy"

The Shards: Rich kid in 1980s L.A., a Primal Urge Boy, two downlow boyfriends, a serial killer, and Tom Blythe's d*ck. Plus Wes Bentley when he was cute

 

Link to the n*de dudes

When I was researching my profile of soap opera kid Redding Munsell, I discovered that nihilistic author Brett Easton Ellis is gay!  I did a conference presentation on some of his novels awhile ago, when I was at USC, and had him pegged as heterosexual -- and homophobic.  Now I'm interested in The Shards on Hulu, a tv series about Brett's years as an alienated, nihilistic teenager facing a serial killer.  Plus it's set in Los Angeles in the early 1980s, so maybe it has nostalgia value. 

Warning: It's produced by Ryan Murphy, who usually presents his gay characters as amoral monsters.

Scene 1: Brett (Igby Rigney, left) tells us that The Shining opened on May 23rd, 1980, and he wanted to see it as soon as possible, because the original novel made him want to become a writer. In fact, he had already started Less than Zero.  So he had to go without the gang.  

Igby is nearly n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

Smoking a cigarette, he drives his dad's Mercedes down the streets of Westwood (near UCLA). He parks right outside the theater (tv cliche), buys his Junior Mints, and sits down to see a tall, tan "stunningly handsome" boy who aroused "some primal urge."  After some lingering glances, the boy walks out.  Wrong screen, buddy?

After the movie, Brett can't find the boy. That's because he left the theater.  "His name was Robert Mallory (Homer Gere, left the son of Richard Gere. n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends), and his arrival at my high school will coincide with a season of horror and murder that will destroy us all."  Don't give away the story!

Scene 2: Brett tells us that kids today have it easy, with no problems (except for global warming, fascism, racism, homophobia, transphobia...) His generation fought serial killers, including the most sadistic of them all.  Brett, stop giving away the story!  It's annoying!   

A girl arrives at her gigantic palace, and can't find her dog, the fish tank is half empty, and everything in the medicine chest is turned upside-down.  

Later, she goes to the supermarket to put her lost dog flier up amid the dozens of others, and sees the one for her dog, up already!  As she gets into her car, she is grabbed, knocked out, and shoved in a van.

Scene 3: Brett and his girlfriend zoom down the Pacific Coast Highway, exuberant about being sixteen and able to drive, so they have infinite freedom!   Cut to the group having patty melts at the Hamburger Habit (I remember that place): a guy, a boy-girl couple, and a girl on each side of Brett moving in to kiss him.  Geez. at least let him finish his burger.

The group shrinks to four as they have dinner at the Galleria before playing at the video arcade, browsing at Tower Records or buying books at "any of the large bookstores that dotted the streets" in those days before Amazon took over.   I'm all for nostalgia, but this is getting egregious.  Tell me more about how everything was perfect in the Good Old Days, Grandpa.  Besides, I was there, and he's exaggerating the number of bookstores. 

I think the flashbacks have stopped.  They're at Girlfriend Debbie's place, and she's warning them not to spook her $1,000,000 Arabian horse.  Girl of His Dreams Susan and her boyfriend Thom (Graham Campbell) start making out.  Brett looks on longingly.  Adult Brett explains that Susan was the most beautiful girl in the world, and he still considers her the Love of His Life, although they never dated.  Debbie just started making out with him one day, so what are you going to do?  Are you sure you're gay, buddy?

Cut to a montage of Brett diving into his pool, getting dinner from the housekeeper, working on his writing, and doing under-the-covers stuff. 

Scene 4: Brett asks Girl of His Dreams Susan and her boyfriend if  they're coming to the last party of the summer at Debbie's house.  Thom says they'll be there, but Debbie's dad makes him uncomfortable: "He's so goddam gay!"  Got a problem with gay people, Thom?  Good thing your buddy Brett is straight.

"Yeah, he's pretty gay," Brett agrees, "But he's won two Oscars. Maybe he can help get my book made into a movie.  Ok, I checked the producers of "Less Than Zero."  Google AI insists that they're all "not gay" and make "family films."  

More after the break

Revisiting Brideshead Revisited: Does the groundbreaking portrayal of (temporary) gay love hold up after 40 years? WIth bonus d*cks

January 18th, 1982, a Monday night.  I'm lying on the bed in the attic room my brother and I share, reading a book for my Advanced Spanish class.  Significantly it's Ciro Alegria's El mundo es ancho y ajeno: Broad and Alien is the World.  

Link to NSFW version

I always watch tv while studying.  Tonight the only options are two boring movies, MASH (doctors during the Korean War), and something called Brideshead Revisited on PBS.  It turns out to be an adaption of the Evelyn Waugh novel about 1920s Oxford undergrad Charles Ryder (Jeremy Irons) falling in love with the flamboyant, decadent, teddy bear-toting, alcoholic Sebastian Flyte (Anthony Andrews).

 

They run away to Venice together. They go slumming in Soho, along with Sebastian's sister Julia.  Then Ryder begins a romantic entanglement with Julia, and the outraged Sebastian dumps him and runs off to Morocco. 

 Later Sebastian hooks up with a sleazy German guy named Kurt, and later still he dies.  Ryder can't marry Julia because she's Catholic and he's an atheist, so they just live together.  Later he becomes Catholic.

I'm mesmerized.  In 1982, surrounded by the hetero-horniness of workplace sitcoms, my parents demanding "What girl do you like?", and the preacher at church bellowing about homa-sekshuls, just seeing two men involved in a romance is a revelation.  Sure, no one says "gay," Ryder turns straight, and Sebastian dies, but they walk arm in arm, cuddle, even go nude sunbathing!  And everyone around knows! Even Sebastian's mother.  Even Julia, who tells Ryder that "all our loves are hints and signals," leading us to God.  A same-sex romance leads us to God?  Hear that, Preacher?

40 years have passed.  I've studied a lot of LGBT history and literature, and watched a lot of gay movies, published a lot of books and articles on queering fictional texts, and recently I decided to revisit Brideshead Revisted.

You can't go home again.  Rewatching today,  I strongly dislike Brideshead.  Sebastian is a decadent, flamboyant stereotype who ends up dead.  Ryder may fall in love with him, but then he moves on to Julia.  Evelyn Waugh, like Freud, believed that gayness is a phase -- adolescents, newly potent but forbidden access to the opposite sex, turn to each other.  Their brief period of quasi-romance ends when they move on to "mature" heterosexual love.


In 2008, the BBC aired a new version of Brideshead, with Matthew Goode as Charles Ryder and Ben Whishaw as Sebastian.  This time there's no subtext: Sebastian is gay.  But there's also no romance: Ryder is heterosexual but pretending to be interested in Sebastian to gain access to his vast wealth.

 

It's more honest -- and there's a lot more nudity -- but nothing can match the joy of seeing same-sex romance on screen for the very first time.

See also: Angus De Kirkby: Posh femme boy with long legs, a boyfriend, and a lot of furs. But is he a royal, a model, a fashionista, or just rich?

"Saltburn": Brideshead Revisted for the post-gay generation, with kink and p*nises

 Matt Smith: Who doesn't want to see the p*nis of Doctor Who, Christopher Isherwood, Charles Manson, Superworm, and Prince Philip?

"I'm Not Afraid": A gay subtext romance between Miguel and the boy his parents have kidnapped. With dicks, the Nahuatl language, and a shirtless Short Guy.

Link to the n*de photos

In 2003 I saw Non ho pauro ("I'm Not Scared"), the film version of the novel by Niccolò Ammaniti: Nine-year old Michele (Giuseppe Cristiano) befriends a kidnapped boy, and discovers that everyone in his village is responsible.  

Left: Recent photo of Giuseppe.  He may not be the Non ho pauro one.

So I wasn't planning to watch the 2026 Spanish version, No tengo miedo , on Netflix.  How could they expand it into a tv series without a lot of padding?  Besides, I already know the twist ending.  So do you.

Then Yago Sandoval (who plays the kidnapped boy) posts that he and Aldo Navarro (the Michele character) have "Amistad como portal amoroso."  Portal amoroso is used to convey the transcendence, stability, and peace that comes from romantic love.  Is he referring to their own relationshp, or the characters?  There was no significant gay subtext in the 2003 movie, but just in case there is here, let's check out Episode 1.1, "Brujas" (Witches).  

Scene 1: Miguel lies amid dead leaves on the ground.  He has wet his pants.  He asks "Am I dead?"

No, his friends are calling for him.  As he walks through the ruins of an old convent, he stumbles upon a deep pit, and at the bottom a boy, chained up. 

Cut to four kids playing soccer, pretending that they're Mexico vs. Denmark in the 1986 World Cup.  A Bully hits Miguel in the crotch with the ball, then kicks it out into the jungle.  He orders  the Nerd Chuy to retrieve it, "Or I'll kill you."  

Left: The Bully is played by Mauro Guzman, who is quick to point out that he and Bruno Strauss (Chuy) are actually friends.

The Teenage Felix arrives and tells them not to go into the jungle, because a witch lives there who eats children.  Then he grabs his brother, the Bully, and drives him home.

The others ride their bicycles home, discussing why the Bully is so mean and if there really is a kid-eating witch.

Scene 2: Teenage Felix (Cosmo Elio Gonzalez) and the Bully arrive at their run-down, trash-strewn house to see Dad keeled over due to drunkenness and the debilitating disease that they can't afford medication for.  They discuss how horrible their lives are.  Dad would like to hurt himself, but he can't afford a gun, darn.  

As the Bully goes off to fetch some rotten platanos for dinner, Dad asks, "Why don't we have a mansion yet?  You said you have a deal going on that would make us the wealthiest family in the world?"

"I'm working on it!" Felix exclaims.  He must be the kidnapper!

Scene 3:  The kids arrive at Nerd Chuy's house to see his parents arguing with Pino (Luis Alberti, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).  "You can't back out now!" "But I'm scared." "Have faith!"  They're in on the kidnapping, too.

Nerd Chuy stays behind to have dinner, and the two remaining kids, Miguel and his Sister, go home with Pino, their Dad.  I thought he was a single father, but his wife is there, being depressed.  They do Sister's medical treatments, which she hates, and have rice and beans for dinner for the 3,000th time.   Dad Pino promises that soon they'll be able to afford real food, and 20 tv sets so they can watch the game from anywhere in their mansion. 

The kids retreat to their bedroom, where Sister calls him Luis.  Richster Chava appears at the window to invite Miguel/Luis to watch the game in his mansion.

"But you can't go in there without permission!" Sister exclaims.

"Richster Chava can, and his parents are asleep, so they won't know I'm there."  Can't he invite a friend over?  Or are the bourgeoisie not supposed to associate with the proletariat?

Cut to Richster Chava and Miguel/Luis watching the game and being affectionate.  I'd call it a gay-subtext buddy-bond.

Scene 4: In the morning Miguel/Luis is awakened to the poor people arguing with a rich guy.  "Something must have happened!" "We had nothing to with it!" The Nerd  Chuy and his parents have vanished, and his house has been ransacked!  

Richster Chava, Miguel/Luis, and his Sister decide to investigate.  At the house, they find that Nerd Chuy's bicycle is gone.  If he was kidnapped, it would still be there. They conclude that he went to the witch's house to fetch the soccer ball, and got eaten. Then his parents went looking for him, and the witch got them, too.

They run to the jungle to investigate.  Shouldn't you take your bikes?  It was miles away yesterday. 

More after the break

Peter Berlin: "That Boy" uses his physique and d*ck to show us the wonders 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

.

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.  

A Roland for an Oliver: Gay Medieval Lovers

"A Roland for an Oliver" is apparently a common expression, although I've only seen it in British fiction.  It means that you're equally matched (for instance, these brothers can both bench press exactly 320 pounds each).

It's derived from the Medieval gay lovers that I first read about in The Young Folks' Shelf of Books during my early childhood.

I heard about them again in college, when my French Literature class was assigned a modern version of the 12th century Chanson de Roland, the national epic of France.





During the siege of Viana, Emperor Charlemagne agreed to let the outcome rest on single combat between two champions.  He sent his nephew, the bold, heavily-muscled Roland, the Prince Valiant of France.  Count Gerard of Viana sent his grandson, the handsome, quick-witted Oliver (or Olivier).  Their talents were complementary; they were perfectly matched.

As they fought, an angel appeared, separated them, and bade them become friends (the same thing happened to Simon and Milo a few generations later).

They spent the rest of their lives together, fighting side by side, and their love, with its divine mandate, was acclaimed in every corner of Charlemagne's Empire.

Then the Saracens began wending their way through Basque country,  In 778, the approached the pass at Roncevaux, Spain, in the Pyrenees.  If they entered France, they would take all of Europe.  Charlemagne and his troops tried to stop them.  In the heat of battle, Oliver was killed, and the distraught Roland cried:

So many days and years gone by
We lived together.
Since thou art dead, to live is pain.

Then he died as well.

Actually, the battle had nothing to do with the Moorish caliphate; Basque guerillas ambushed Charlemagne's troops, in retribution for his destructiion of their capital, to rob them.   Roland really existed, the leader of the Franks' invasion of Brittany, but there's no historical evidence for the existence of Oliver.  The Chanson de Roland  created him to be Roland's true love.

I didn't bother to point out the homoromance to my French professor, who no doubt would have insisted that Roland, like Aschenbach in Death in Venice,  wasn't Wearing a Sign.  He was betrothed to Oliver's sister, after all, and in the Italian epic Orlando Furioso, he falls in love with a woman (and flies to the moon).  

More after the break

Katts and Dog

The Canadian kid-oriented series that aired in the U.S. during the late 1980s came in all varieties. You Can't Do That on Television was sketch-comedy, Degrassi Junior High teen angst, and Katts and Dog (1988-93) teen adventure.

It aired as Rin Tin Tin, K-9 Cop in the United States and Rin Tin Tin Junior in France.  The owner of the original dog actor (1918-32) never trademarked his name, so his descendants continue to appear at animal events, and unrelated dogs have appeared in radio programs, movies, and two tv shows.  The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin (1954-59), starred Lee Aaker as a 19th century orphan being raised by the U.S. Calvary at Fort Apache.  It was trying unsuccessfully to compete with Lassie (1954-73), with the female collie owned by several boys, including Jon Provost (left, during his hippie years).  But most people remember Tommy Rettig, whose tv mom June Lockhart moved on to become the mom on the original Lost in Space.

By the 1980s, Rin Tin Tin was a distant memory.  His connection to the Katts and Dog dog, called Rudy or Rinty, is only mentioned once. 

The premise: Hank Katts (Jesse Collins) and his dog Rudy/Rinty go to work together in the K-9 division, where they rescue kidnapped boys and heiresses, keep drugs out of school, are held hostage, shoot suspects, and so on in adventures that are not always kid-friendly.  He begins dating widowed mother Maggie and mentoring her son, s Officer Hank Katts, who worked with a German shepherd named Rudy or Rinty (Rudolph Von Holstein III).  He lived with Maggie, the widow of his late brother, and her son, slim blond Stevie (12-year old Andrew Bednarski).

Homophobic televangelist Pat Robertson, whose Christian Broadcasting Network provided most of the funding for the show, disapproved of an unrelated man and woman living in the same house, so Maggie was killed, and Hank adopted Stevie.    His job was to ignore orders like "stay here where it's safe," snoop around on his own, get captured by the bad guys, and require a nick of time rescue.

He required nick of time rescues in most episodes.  Sometimes he and Hank required rescue together.

Hank and Stevie behaved nothing like foster father and adopted son.  Instead, their relationship reflected the superhero-sidekicks of the 1940s.  The two were inseparable, and engaged in activities that elsewhere would be reserved for romantic partners: going to dinners and movies, going on vacations.  They shared an emotional intimacy and an easy physicality that was rare in the cop-kid bond. 

More after the break

Raising Arizona: Nicolas Cage bulges, John Goodman is nearly gay, and there's screaming, screeching, and heterosexism

 

Last night for movie night we saw Raising Arizona (1987).  I never saw it before, assuming that it was some smarm about a guy helping his girlfriend raise her daughter (named Arizona).  No, the title is a misdirection: no one is raised, and Arizona is, for some reason, the last name of the family and the state they live in (although they speak with Deep South accents).

The plot: Small-time robber H.I. McDonnough (Nicolas Cage) keeps getting arrested and sent to prison, but there are no bullets in his gun, so his sentences are only a few months long.  He falls in love with Ed, the cop who keeps taking his mug shots (don't get excited, it's a lady, played by Holly Hunter).  After his latest release, he finds a regular job, she quits the police force,  and they get married and move into his horrible house trailer in the desert outside Tempe, Arizona.  

He's achieved the heterosexist trajectory of job, house, wife, and...uh-oh, he still needs kids, and Ed is "barren."

Idea: Wealthy furniture store owner Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson) and his wife have just had five babies, the Arizona Quints.  No one can handle that many, so why couldn't Hi and Ed take one off their hands?  It would be doing them a favor.

They kidnap "the best" of the group, Nathan Jr. (played by TJ Kuhn, who didn't want to be an actor.  He's now a real estate agent.)

Meanwhile, brothers Gale and Evelle (John Goodman, William Forsythe) break out of prison and impose upon HI and Ed.  They kidnap the baby for a reason I don't remember (either to return him to his parents for the reward,  or to force HI to join them in a bank robbery).  But they grow attached, and decide to raise Nathan Jr. on their own.

Hi has a vision of a a scary, motorcycle-riding bounty hunter (Randall Cobb), who throws hand grenades at squirrels.  He turns out to be real, and offers to find the boy for the reward money. Nathan Senior rejects him, but he tracks Hi/Ed and Gale/Evelle down anyway.

After many chases, robberies, gun fights, and "leaving the baby behind", everything works out: the bounty hunter is exploded, Gale and Evelle return to prison, and Hi/Ed return the baby.  Nathan Senior doesn't press charges, because "there was no harm done."  Except putting him and his wife through several days of worry?

Beefcake:  Nicolas Cage is shirtless a lot, with a hairy chest that I haven't seen in his other movies, and there's a lot of attention paid to his bulge.

There are some cute cops and FBI agents in the background.

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

Bob Paris: The World's First Out Gay Bodybuilder

 I started working for Joe Weider's Muscle and Fitness in  July 1985.   Bob Paris was on the cover.

We had a lot in common: he was one year older than me, grew up in Columbus, Indiana (near where my parents live today), attended Indiana University, and escaped to the gay haven of West Hollywood.  Originally he intended to become an actor, but he soon found his way into the world of competitive bodybuilding.

He won many competitions, including Mr. Southern California in 1981, and both Mr. America and Mr. Universe in 1983.

I met him sometime in 1986 -- we never dated, but I learned that he was gay.

He came out publicly in July 1989, in an interview in Iron Man, by mentioning his lover, fellow bodybuilder (and Playgirl model) Rod Jackson, whom he had just married in a Unitarian service.

No professional bodybuilder had ever come out before.  Actually, no professional athlete in any sport had ever come out during his career.

His friends advised him to stay closeted, but he was optimistic that, with all of the gay people working in bodybuilding and all of the gay fans, there would be no problem.

But there were lots of problems. His career didn't exactly end -- he continued to compete through 1991 -- but he lost a huge amount of business, including advertising tie-ins, and extensive homophobic harassment, including death threats.

But many fellow bodybuilders and fans applauded Bob's decision to come out.  Even the rather homophobic Joe Weider put him on the cover of Muscle and Fitness three times in 1990 -- the "Sexual Response" tag near Bob's crotch wasn't an accident.

In 1991 Bob and Rod retired from bodybuilding to concentrate on being the most famous gay couple in the world.  Eventually the stress of having to be perfect all the time put a strain on their relationship, and they broke up.

Rod has been busily acting, writing, and advocating for gay rights, especially gay marriage.   He has published several books on fitness, plus fiction, poetry, and two autobiographies: Straight from the Heart: A Love Story (with Rod) and Gorilla Suit: My Adventures in Bodybuilding.

He has appeared frequently in theatrical productions in Los Angeles and elsewhere, including the Broadway musical Jubilee.

Today Bob lives on an island near Vancouver, British Columbia, with his second spouse, Brian LeFurgey.

He continues to act, write, and inspire a new generation of bodybuilders.

See also: Joe Weider: My Bodybuilder Boss

"Muscle & Fitness": Searching for the Kelvin cover, with Weatherford butt and Lesnar dick

My Date with Michael J. Fox. Plus Marcus and the Scary Bulgarian Bodybuilder.

My 16 teen idol fave raves, from Rock Island to West Hollywood, with David's d*ck and Adam's super-d*ck

  

Link to the n*de photos

This is a list of my favorite teen stars from 1975-2000, when I was growing up in Rock Island and a young adult in West Hollywood (with three years in New York at the end). The profiles are posted for nostalgia, for fun, and for aesthetic appeal -- when I investigated these guys as adults, a surprising number turned out to be gay, or have n*de photos posted online, or both.

1.Michael Cade.  The only reason to watch California Dreams (1992-97),  Saved by the Bell-light.

2. David Naughton.  The cutest guy of the Disco Era taught us how to "be a Pepper," and showed his stuff as an American werewolf (in London).

3. Glen Scarpelli.  The femme boy who valiantly pretended to be straight on One Day at a Time grew up, came out, and moved to Taos.  

4. Jeff East. The Disney teen graduated to play a n*ked fratboy.

5. Zach Galligan.  The Gremlins guy ruined my childhood, sort of, but showed his d*ck as an adult.

6. Mat Botuchis.  The chest that launched a thousand fantasies.

7. Andrew Keegan The original Teenage Caveman played a gay guy in The Broken Hearts Club, and kissed Superman himself, Dean Cain.

8.Chad Allen.  The heartthrob who made Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman a must-see.  He came out and started playing gay detectives with n*de scenes.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.