A Ginger Boy for Christmas

Wednesday, December 24, 1986:

I'm 26 years old. living in West Hollywood, but back in Rock Island for the holidays, staying in my old room.  At 6:00 pm my brother and his family and my sister's boyfriend arrive for our traditional Christmas Eve pizza and present unwrapping.

At 9:00 Fred picks me up.  He's 34, tall, athletic, with a stern, rugged face, a smooth chest, and impressive beneath-the-belt gifts.

When we met, he was student clergy.  When he got a church assignment, he talked me into moving to Omaha with him.  I lasted for a miserable month.  Now he's working as a mental health counselor in Kansas City. He's  home for the holidays, staying in his old room at his parents' farmhouse, about 30 miles south of Rock Island.

We're going to spend the night together, and then have the traditional Christmas morning breakfast and present-unwrapping at his house.

"I told my parents you might have a friend with you," Fred tells me.  "I didn't know if you were bringing Raul home from West Hollywood."

"We broke up a couple of weeks ago, so I'm single again.  I just met [My Celebrity Boyfriend], but we haven't arranged a date yet."

"Who knows?  You might make a friend tonight!"

"I'd rather have you to myself.  We haven't seen each other since last Christmas."  We may be broken up, but Fred is enormously attractive, and I'm feeling especially vulnerable after my breakup.

"So we'll share.  That's all the rage in West Hollywood, right?"

The rest of the story contains nude photos and explicit sexual situations.  You can read it on Tales of West Hollywood

10 Gay Things You Didn't Know about "White Christmas"

1. White Christmas is not about Christmas.  It's a backstage musical that just happens to end at Christmastime.  Backstage movies were well-known for gay subtexts.

2. The songs are by Irving Berlin, who looked good in a swimsuit.
















3. It's about two showbiz partners, Bob and Phil (Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye), who find their relationship threatened by women.

4. The women, Judy and Betty (Vera-Ellen, Rosemary Clooney), are sisters.  At least, they perform as sisters, although their numbers would work well in a drag act.

God help the mister, who comes between me and my sister
And God help the sister who comes between me and my man!

5. Bob and Phil perform as "sisters," too.

6. Rosemary Clooney was a gay icon and reputedly bisexual.

7. Early in his career, Bing Crosby was the roommate of gay jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke.

8. Danny Kaye was bisexual.  He had a long term romance with Sir Laurence Olivier.

9. He played gay fairy-tale writer Hans Christian Anderson, whose psychiatrist coined the word "homosexual."

10. John Brascia was in the cast as a "special dancer."  You can see his physique, and his bulge, in several numbers.  As far as I can determine, he didn't have any gay rumors.

Tales of Boys and Men: Robert Louis Stevenson

Strangely, I always associate Christmas Day with boredom.  Opening and playing with your presents takes about an hour, Christmas dinner takes another hour, leaving fourteen hours to sit around the house, with no school, friends incommunicado, bad weather outside, and nothing on tv.

Time to break out your stash of Robert Louis Stevenson books. 

The Scottish novelist (1850-1894) is  relegated to the junior high classroom nowadays, probably because his works aren't usually heterosexist.

His two main subtext novels both involve bonds between teenage boys and adult men:

Treasure Island (1883), an adventure with pirates and buried treasure in the South Seas, originally serialized in the magazine Young Folks, deliberately written with "no women in it."  No heterosexual imaginings, but young Jim Hawkins develops a grudging friendship with Long John Silver.

My favorite version was full of beefcake illustrations by N.C. Wyeth.

 In every generation, the current Hollywood It-boy seems to get a chance to play Jim Hawkins: Jackie Cooper (1934), Bobby Driscoll (1950, left), Kim Burfield (1972), Christian Bale (1990, above), and Kevin Zegers (1999).

Kidnapped (1886): David Balfour, tricked out of his inheritance by a villainous uncle, travels the rough Scottish Highlands, where he is rescued by and buddy-bonds with the rogueish Alan Breck. Again, "no women in it." 

David has been played by Freddie Bartholomew (1938), James MacArthur (1960), Lawrence Douglas (1971), Brian McCardie (1995), and Anthony Pearson (2005).  Some versions give him a girlfriend.

This photo is actually from The Light in the Forest, but I couldn't resist including a shirtless shot of James MacArthur.

A statue commemorating David and Alan Breck has been erected in Edinburgh.

Some scholars also find a subtext in The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), but I didn't see one.

The Black Arrow (1888) was a heterosexual romance, but The Master of Ballantrae (1889) is about two brothers, James Durie and his brother Harry, on opposite sites of the Jacobite Rebellion.  There's some heterosexual romance, but the emphasis is on the enmity between the two brothers melting into love. They die the same hour, and are buried under the same stone.

Bisexual Errol Flynn (left) starred in a famous 1953 version.

So, was Robert Louis Stevenson gay? According to his biography, Myself and the Other Fellow, by Claire Harmon, no, but he appreciated homoerotic desire, and he enjoyed the attention of the many gay men who were drawn to him.    

Gay Connections of the "Christmas Story" Kids

A Christmas Story (1983) is not just about Ralphie (Peter Billingsley) lusting after a rifle and a lady-leg lamp.  There are other plots and gag bits, other actors who are forever known as for their parts in this long-ago movie, no matter what else they've done.  Many have a gay connection.


1. Zack Ward (the bully Farkus) has become an accomplished actor and beefcake hunk, with many credits on tv and in movies, including Just for Fun (1993), "a story of homophobia and gay-bashing," according to the IMDB.

Look for him as Dave, brother of the titular Titus (2000-2002) and slacker college student Murray in The Pink House (2003).

2. Yano Anaya (his crony, Grover) is, according to Linkedin, a personal trainer at the Atlanta School of Massage.

3. R.D. Robb (Schwartz, Ralphie's buddy) continued his acting career into adulthood (including a role in The Brady Bunch Movie as a nerd who kisses Marcia).  He is also involved in directing.  Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire agreed to star in his Don's Plum (2001), which includes a gay teenager, only on the condition that it not be shown in the U.S.













4. Ian Petrilla (Randy, Ralphie's kid brother) continued acting as a teen and later studied the art of puppeteering. He has worked with the Henson Company, and currently owns an animation company in L.A.

5. Scott Schwartz (Flick, who got his tongue stuck to a flag pole) later starred as The Toy, and then used his Flick notoriety to land roles in some heterosexual porn films (mostly in non-sexual roles).  Now he still does some non-porn acting, and runs a baseball card and nostalgia shop in California.  He's heterosexual.

Nutcracker Beefcake

Heterosexist plotline aside, every year The Nutcracker gives us the opportunity to see traditional, family-friendly, school-sanctioned, Christmastime ballet written by a gay man.

And loaded to the brim with hot guys in tights.

Not only the Nutcracker-turned-Prince who woos Clara, but the Mouse King, the Cavalier, party guests, soldiers, sentinels, Arabian dancers, Russian dancers -- the list goes on.



















And on.

















Not a lot of shirtless dancers -- it's set in a Russian winter, after all.  But wander backstage before or after the performance, and you can get a glimpse of Christmas perfection.















More after the break.

Danny Kaye was Gay

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, one of our traditions was watching White Christmas (1954), actually a backstage comedy about rival singing acts, with nothing to do with Christmas except the final scene.  It was my first backstage comedy, my introduction to Bing Crosby, and the only thing I've ever seen Danny Kaye in.

But when my parents were young, Danny Kaye was everywhere.  Born in New York in 1911, he was a Borscht belt and Vaudeville comedian before moving to Hollywood at the start of World War II.  He played fast-talking, mugging Russians (The Inspector General, 1949), wistful dreamers (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, 1947; Hans Christian Andersen, 1952), and, of course, dopey sidekicks (White Christmas).

Plus he had his own radio program (1945-46) and cut many records with both sentimental and novelty songs: "The Woody Woodpecker Song," "I've Got a Lovely Box of Coconuts," "Tchaikovsky" (which involves saying the names of Russian composers at breakneck speed).

He had his own tv show from 1963 to 1967 (I never saw it), and appeared as himself on Laugh-In, The Tonight Show, Dick Cavett, Ed Sullivan, The CBS Festival of Lively Arts for Young People, and The Muppet Show.

His last role was on an episode of The Cosby Show.  He died in 1987.





Comedic actors need a great deal of upper-body strength to do their pratfalls.  As this photo from Baby Jane Collectibles reveals, Danny Kaye had a respectable physique for his era.

But I understand that his stage presence was feminine, even swishy, nearly as gay-coded as Jack Benny, and he played a string of "sissies" who use their wit to triumph over muscle-men. Was he gay?

Yep.  Well, he liked ladies.  He was married to Sylvia Fine from 1940 to his death, and he had various other hetero-affairs with women ranging from Eve Arden to Shirley MacLaine,  But he was also open to same-sex activity and even romance. 

Sir Laurence Olivier is mentioned most often as his partner: they met in 1940, and saw each other off and on for the next twenty years, in plain sight of their wives and everyone in Hollywood.  The rule in those days was to pretend not to notice.

The 12 Most Homophobic, Heterosexist, and Horrible Songs

Heterosexism is commonplace in the "girl! girl! girl!' banter of popular music.  But some songs are so heterosexist, homophobic, or otherwise horrible that I literally can't stand to hear them.  If they come on tv, I click the channel, and if I can't find the remote, I run from the room.  If they're playing in a store, I leave. And heaven help the friend who starts singing one of them!

1. "It's a Man's World" (James Brown, 1966)

It's a man's world, but you're nothing...nothing at all, without a woman!

(See: Homophobic Moments in Music)

2. "She Bangs" (Ricky Martin, 2000).

A gay guy singing about how much he likes the way a girl moves, and then a pun on "shebang" and a dirty phrase for sex.  Can't get any more Uncle Tom than that.

3. "Stand Tall" (Burton Cummings, 1976)

December 1976: I was home sick, looking for a gay comic book, and thinking "No way am I a swish!"  And I heard on the radio:

Stand tall, don't you fall, don't go and do something foolish
All you're feeling right now is silly human pride.

Right, not gay, don't do anything foolish.

4. "Lady" (Kenny Rogers, 1980).

October 1980. I was cruising at the levee, looking for love, negotiating the incessant "what girl do you like?" chants of my family and friends.  And I heard:

Lady, I'm your knight in shining armor, and I love you.
Let me hold you in my arms forever more....

5. "When Doves Cry" (Prince and the Revolution, 1984).

June 1984: I'm on my way to Hell-fer-Sartain State University for the worst year of my life, and this ultra-feminine, super-gay coded guy starts singing about a heterosexual breakup:

How can you just leave me standing, alone in a world so cold?
Maybe I'm just too demanding
Maybe I'm just like my father, too bold

(See Looking for Beefcake in Nashville.)

6. "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (Judy Garland, 1944).

Once I was sick and stayed home on Christmas day, and the drag queen next door was playing this horror by gay icon Judy Garland over and over and over. It's still the main cause of the spike in suicides every Christmas.

More (gulp!) after the break.

Josh Zuckerman: No Gay Men Exist

Josh Zuckerman spend his adolescence in buddy-bonding roles, mostly with other men.  For instance, in the Disney Channel movie Twas the Night (2001), irresponsible Nick Wrigley (Bryan Cranston of Malcolm in the Middle), fleeing from gansters, takes refuge at his brother's house.  While delivering presents, Santa gets clocked on the head, and the gangsters steal the time-dilation device that allows him to visit 1.3 billion households in a single night.

So Nick and his mischievous 14-year old nephew Danny (Josh Zuckerman) must deliver all of the presents and subdue the gangsters.

It differs from the standard "saving Christmas" plot in the real peril, and in Nick and Danny, who move from stereotyped uncle and nephew to classic 1930s Adventure Boy and adult companion.

So far, so good.  But that same year, Josh starred in "Four Eyes," an episode of Nightmare Room about a boy who discovers that alien monsters are trying to take over the world, and rushes to save his girlfriend.

Then he landed a star vehicle, I was a Teenage Faust (2002), about a 15-year old boy (Josh) who sells his soul to the devil in order to win The Girl of His Dreams.  Heterosexist tripe.

I didn't have the stomach to see him in anything else for a few years, but evidently he starred with Ben Affleck in Surviving Christmas (2004) and Balthazar Getty in Feast (2005), and had recurring roles in Kyle XY (2008-09) and Desperate Housewives (2009-2010).

But the sex comedy Sex Drive (2008) is all shot through with homophobia and gay stereotypes. It's got Seth Green in it, so you know there's going to be trouble.  Ian (Josh) goes on a road trip in search of the Girl of His Dreams, Ms. Tasty (her stage name), who lives in Chattanooga. He borrows the car from his "fag" and "homo"-spouting brother Rex (James Marsden): "All guys have fantasies about guys, but this is America!"

When he gets to Chattanooga, Rex appears and refuses to let him seal the deal, so he pretends to be gay so Rex will relent -- maybe having sex with a girl will "change him back."  In the end, Ian marries The Girl, and Rex is revealed to be gay (but he doesn't get a boyfriend). There's also a subplot about the Amish.

At least there's plenty of nudity.

Josh's next project: Acid Girls (2013).  According to the imdb:
"Every man's dream becomes every man's nightmare when a recently-single 20-something picks up three cam girls in a bar and welcomes them into his home."

EVERY man's dream?  Are we still so utterly, utterly certain that there is not a single gay man alive anywhere on the face of the Earth?

My Uncle's Queer: Joel's Transformation from Choir Boy to Punk Rocker

Rock Island, December 1999

I am in grad school in New York, visiting Rock Island and Indianapolis for the holidays, staying with my brother Kenny in his rundown, rambling house downtown.  The house is crowded with Kenny's four kids, his new wife, and her three kids, plus a huge assortment of dogs, cats, hamsters, and parrots.

It's easy to miss Joel, Ken's youngest son, in the crowd: he's thirteen years old, short, slim, a quiet, polite Johnny Nazarene.  But a talented singer: he's toured in Iowa, Minnesota, and Sweden with the Moline Boys' Choir.  We go to their Christmas concert and hear his solo in "Come, O Come Emmanuel."

December 2000

Yuri and I are visiting Rock Island for the holidays. My family practices a "don't ask, don't tell" policy, so they don't know if we're friends or boyfriends or lovers.  Most of them probably don't even know that we are gay.  But Joel figures it out.  Although he claims to be straight, he asked us to teach him and his friend Max "how gay guys have sex."

Yuri and I teach him about gay kissing.





August 2001

I've completed my Ph.D., and I'm visiting Rock Island for a few days just before moving to Florida.  Joel is a cute 15 year old with short black hair, pale skin, and nicely rounded biceps.  Nazarenes aren't allowed to listen to "the devil's music," basically anything with guitars, but he likes Weezer, Nickelback, and other groups that I never heard of, but sound loud.

Oddly, Ken doesn't forbid it.  "It's his life," my brother says.  "If he likes the devil's music, that's on him."

Joel asks why I didn't bring Yuri.  "You guys are, like, hot together, aren't you?"

Ken glares at me, accusing me of outing myself to his son.  "Boomer has a lot of friends, all kinds," he explains.  "Black, white, Jewish, Muslim, gay, straight.  He's so liberal, it hurts."



December 2001

Joel is a surly 15-year old, dressed all in black, who protests the "capitalist spending frenzy" of Christmas.  He spends most of his time in the room he shares with his brothers, listening to metal music.  He emerges to eat a bowl of Lucky Charms instead of Christmas dinner, and to ask "So, Uncle Gizmo, are the beach boys hot down in Florida?  I bet you get tons of action."

In front of the whole family, including relatives I wasn't out to!

"Um...well, I do ok," I stammer.

Later I ask Kenny if Joel is gay.

"Nope, nope, nope!" Kenny exclaims.  "He's totally hot for girls.  He's got a little gay friend, but that doesn't mean a thing."


June 2003

Maybe Kenny is angry about my accidental outing, or maybe he's just busy, but he doesn't invite me to Christmas in Rock Island in 2002. I don't visit again until June 2003.

Joel has just turned 17.  He has long green hair, earrings,  and a pierced lip.  He gives me a hug and calls me "Beach Boy,"

He just got back from Hardcore Fest, where he heard Walls Of Jericho, Suicide Note, Saved By Grace, As We Speak, Provoke, How It Ends, Devastator, Preacher Gone To Texas, Blood In Blood Out, Too Pure To Die, For Death or Glory, Wings Of Scarlet, Uphold, Begin Again, King of Clubz, Pound for Pound, Undo Tomorrow, Haunted Life and Butt Lynt.

"Sounds like a great lineup," I tell him.

And naturally he's the lead vocalist in his own punk band, The Dead Eunuchs.


June 2004

Joel has a bright red mohawk, and his group, The Dead Eunuchs, have been performing all over the Quad Cities.  Tonight they have a gig at the Rusty Nail in Davenport.

"You should come," Joel says.  "We play a great set."

Well -- I'm not much for punk music in noisy heterosexual bars. "I don't think..."

 "You'll like one of our songs.  It's called 'My Uncle is Queer.'"

The full story, with nude photos and explicit sexual language, is on Tales of West Hollywood.

The Surprising Gay Origin of Pogo's "Deck Us All"

Every Christmas from 1949 to 1975, and then again in the 1980s and 1990s, the comic strip Pogo had the hayseed denizens of Okefenokee Swamp singing a mangled version of "Deck the Halls":

Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., and Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower Alleygaroo!

Don't we know archaic barrel,
 Lullaby, Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou.
Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
Boola Boola Pensacoola Hullabaloo!

Cartoonist Walt Kelly said that he chose that particular song because it was easily recognizable but not religious.  His Pogo version became extremely popular, with a life outside the comic strip, broadcast on the radio, recorded by pop artists during the Golden Age of Novelty Songs.

But what about the lyrics?  Fans clamored to know what they meant.

At first Kelly claimed that they were pure nonsense.  But fans persevered, and in 1963 Kelly published a book listing several possible explanations.

None of them the right one.







Ten years after his death, his close friend, CIA Agent Wilbur Crane Eveland, was interviewed in a Pogo-phile fan magazine, and revealed the secret:

Prison slang.

Deck us all with Boston Charlie

Hang the prison guards up on the wall, so they won't bother us.

Walla Walla, Wash, and Kalamazoo

Names of prisons

Nora's freezin' on the trolley

Nora, the subordinate partner in a same-sex prison romance, is "freezin'", in solitary confinement, according to "the trolley," the prison grapevine.

Swaller dollar cauliflower, Alleygaroo!
???

Don't we know archaic barrel

Homemade prison booze

Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou.

Has facilitated the romance between Lilla Boy (another subordinate partner) and Louisville Lou.

Trolley Molly don't love Harold

But not Molly, according to the prison grapevine.

Boola, Boola, Pensacola, Hullaballoo!

???

I wonder how mild-mannered cartoonist Walt Kelly, who was never even arrested, knew all of this prison slang.  He was a language aficionado, so maybe he had reference books.

But why load-up his mangled Christmas carol with prison slang, including references to three same-sex prison romance?

In the 1940s, many prisoners were "prisoners of conscience," war objectors, political dissidents, gay men.  According to Eveland, this was the liberal, gay-positive Kelly's shout-out to them.

Kelly included same-sex desire all the time in Pogo.  Since his players were animals, it always slipped below the censorship radar.

In a long 1955 continuity, a male flea falls in love with Beauregard Hound Dog, and proposes marriage.  Five years later, in a commentary, Kelly wrote "I guess it would have to be a female flea.  That never occurred to me until now."

Way to cover your tracks!  But Kelly kept making the same "mistake" over and over until the day he died.

See also: Pogo, the Gay Possum of Okefenokee Swamp

The First Bad Kid: Barry Gordon

In 1954, the six-year old Barry Gordon made the scene with a hit single, "I'm Getting Nuttin' for Christmas (because I've been nuttin' but bad)":

I broke my bat on Johnny's head;
I hid a frog in sister's bed;
I spilled some ink on Mommy's rug;
Bought some gum with a penny slug;
Somebody snitched on me.

Far more mischievous than Dennis the Menace or Peck's Bad Boy of the 1920s, he was a humorous precursor to the threatened and threatening kids whom the adults would fear through the 1960s.

You couldn't have a kid miss out on Christmas forever, so they made him record "I Like Christmas" in 1955.  He recorded several other singles and albums, with songs like "Rock Around Mother Goose" and "I Can't Whistle."



In the 1960s he made the rounds of tv guest spots: Leave It to Beaver, Davis the Menace, Make Room for Daddy, Jack Benny, and Love American Style (in the episode "Love and the High School Flop-Out").  Why is he sitting with his hands like that?










He made many movies, including Hands of a Stranger, Pressure Point, The Spirit is Willing, and Out of It (1969), in which a high school brain (Barry) buddy-bonds with a jock (John Voight).

He was nominated for a Tony for his performance in the Broadway play A Thousand Clowns (adapted for film in 1965), as a gay-vague teenager crushed when his free-spirit guardian (Jason Robards) caves to the establishment.

Barry never got to play romantic leads, but he played a lot of nebbishes, homoromantic best friends, and next-door neighbors in comedy and sci-fi. In voice work, he played Donatello in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Nestles Quick Bunny, and the Honeynut Cheerios Bee.

More recently he has played an impressive line of lawyers, doctors, rabbis, and sundry authority figures.

After serving as the longest-running president of the Screen Actors Guild in history and running for Congress twice, Barry settled down as a radio commentator (From Left Field,  Left Talk with Barry Gordon) where he gives his progressive viewpoint on everything from healthcare reform to gay marriage.

The Kid from "A Christmas Story"

Even  though 30 years have passed, Peter Billingsley is still know as the kid from A Christmas Story (1983).  You know -- the bespectacled 9-year old whose only Christmas wish is "a Red Ryder BB gun with a compass and this thing that tells time."  Hardly anyone saw it in theaters in 1983, but it has become a TV tradition -- TBS usually mounts a 24-hour marathon -- so you've probably seen A Christmas Story as often as the much gayer White Christmas or It's a Wonderful Life.

I don't like it.  There's a creepy lamp shaped like a lady's leg (that turns Ralphie on), a nasty bully, a borderline-abusive Dad, a gun as a major plot point, and no cute guys or discernible homoerotic subplots (although some of the cast has gay connections).

And Peter Billingsley has made up for it since.

In The Dirt Bike Kid (1985), a modern retelling of "Jack and the Beanstalk," the 14-year old Jack (Peter) is sent to buy groceries, but gets a magic dirtbike instead.  He uses it to clean up the corrupt town, save a struggling hot dog stand, and become a town hero. He expresses no heterosexual interest; his main emotional bond is with Mike (Patrick Collins), the owner of the hot dog stand, though it falls short of homoromance.

 In Russkies (1987), it's the heart of the Cold War, Danny (Joaquin Phoenix) and his friends Adam (Peter) and Jason (Stefan DeSalle) find a a Russian sailor, Mischa (Whip Hubley), washed up on the shore. Adam  is obviously entranced by the beefy, bulge-laden Mischa, especially after he takes off his shirt at the doctor's office.

 But it is Danny who acts as his friend and protector.  He hatches a scheme to smuggle Mischa to Cuba, whence he could get back home.  When the baddies shoot Danny down over the water, Mischa rushes to the rescue. Later, Danny rescues Mischa.  Though the movie ends with Mischa going  home, the experience changes Danny forever; it is his Summer of '42.

An anti-gay slur (this was the 1980s, after all), but no girls thought of or spoken of.

In Beverly Hills Brats (1989), Scooter (18-year old Peter) is ignored by his rich father (Martin Sheen) and bullied by his siblings, so he fakes his own kidnapping, hiring the bumbling thugs Clive (Burt Young) and Elmo (George Kirby).  The thugs are hostile at first, but soon come to feel sympathy for the lonely Scooter.  Again, an anti-gay slur, but no expressed interest in girls.  Instead, Scooter tries to reach out to the thugs for emotional support.

By this point, Peter was starting to muscle up; in fact, he later played a high school athlete abusing steroids on an Afterschool Special.
 

Peter's characters didn't start ogling girls until Arcade (1993).  By that time, his acting roles were becoming scarcer as he moved into production.  He hasn't been involved in many gay-friendly projects, but he received a special thanks in the credits of the gay-angst Mysterious Skin (2004). For what, I don't know.

The Nutcracker: Men in Tights

When I was a kid, our church forbade movies, theater, carnivals, circuses -- basically anything that had a plot.  And my working-class parents disapproved of anything "long hair."  So ballet and opera were completely alien.

Except at Christmastime, when we would go to see "The Nutcracker" at Centennial Hall on the Augustana College campus, or at Rock Island High School, or both.  One year the Youth Symphony participated, so I got to be in the orchestra pit for eight full performances.

The plot is heterosexist -- Elsa receives a nutcracker shaped like a toy soldier for Christmas.  He comes to life, fights an army of mice, and reveals that he is actually a prince.  They return to his kingdom, the Land of Sweets, where he makes Elsa his queen.

But who pays attention to the plot?  No matter what people tell you, they go to ballets for one reason, and one reason only: to celebrate male or female beauty.  Dances in form-fitting tights, swaying and twisting, making every curve and muscle visible.

No other art, not even bodybuilding, displays the male physique so openly and extensively.  You don't just get a glimpse or a hint -- everything is out there, through the entire performance.

No wonder every gay kid in town, even those who were otherwise obsessed with sports, couldn't wait for Christmas.

 The only ballet dancer I knew by name was Rudolf Nureyev (1938-1993), who danced in a tv version of The Nutcracker in 1968.  I also saw him on The Muppet Show in 1977, and in Romeo and Juliet in 1982 (which also has a heterosexist plot, but who cares?)

I didn't know at the time that he was gay in real life, and dated a number of celebrities, including Raymundo de Larrain and Tab Hunter (left), plus his long-time lover Erik Bruhn.  I responded to his passion, his obvious joy at being an object of desire, and his superlative physique.

He was even able to invest The Nutcracker with gay symbolism, transforming the Prince into an outcast, a wooden soldier who longs to be a "real boy."

I discovered Mikhail Baryshnikov (1948-) in a 1977 tv version of The Nutcracker, and later in Carmen (1980) and Don Quixote (1984).  He was more muscular than Nureyev, and an accomplished actor, but his aggressively heterosexual stance bothered me, as if he wanted to "redeem" ballet from its gay reputation.

Good luck.  Vaslav Nijinsky (1890-1950), the first ballet superstar, was gay, and caused a scandal with his erotic movements (the audience rioted at the premiere of The Rites of Spring).

So was Tchaikovsky, who scored The Nutcracker and Swan Lake.

See also: Erik Bruhn, Closeted Ballet Great.; Ten Nutcracker Beefcake Boys