"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

"In the Hand of Dante": Film noir about an original Dante manuscript, set in a 1950s-era 2001. And it gets more confusing. And homophobic.

 Link to the n*de dudes

I love the Divine Comedy, at least the Inferno, where Virgil guides Dante through the stages of hell.  He puts the sodomites in the Seventh Circle, where fire rains down on those who "do violence against nature," but at least it permitted me to mention LGBT people in an Italian class in the 1980s, when otherwise the rule was "Don't mention them, they don't exist."  

So I'm going to watch the new movie In the Hands of Dante, about the discovery of an original Divine Comedy manuscript.  Maybe there will be gay characters, probably not, but I'll still get to hear that beginning phrase again: Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, mi ritrovai per una selva oscura (at the midpoint of life's journey, I found myself lost in a dark forest).

We've all been there.

Scene 1: Dante climbs a rocky cliff.  Meanwhile, sometime in the 1940s or 1950s, an obnoxious novelist (Oscar Isaacs) complains to his friend that his books are too brilliant to be edited. "I'd rather the stableboy f*ck my wife than see my work edited." Heterosexual identity established immediately after his obnoxiousness.

Oscar Isaacs' backside is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

"So, what's your book about?"

"It's a translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. I've been working on it for ten years." 

Friend squeezes his shoulder.  "You're still hot after ten years."  Wait -- are you flirting with him?

" By the way, who is Dante?"  Say what?  Who doesn't know Dante?

"An old dead guy.  But he got trapped in the cage of rhyme and meter.  I'm breaking out, so my translation will be far superior to the original."  The greatest work in Italian literature?  You planning to improve on "Hamlet" next?

Scene 2:  Newark, 1969.  A young boy enters a middle-class house and tells his Uncle, "I just killed some kid."  He explains that the boy (Gavin Weingarten) had a big knife, and asked if he wanted to die.  He tried to defend himself, they struggled, and he managed to stab Knife Boy.  

Since he doesn't know who the boy was, and no one saw them, Uncle says that he should forget about it.  But don't make "malarkey" a habit in the future.  Are you going to grow up to be Our Hero? But you're way too young. That would make the "I'm a better writer than Dante" conversation sometime in the 2000s, and it was obviously in the 1950s.  Maybe Uncle is Our Hero?

Scene 3: Bora Bora, seaside, 2001. Our Hero on a hammock, writing in his notebook about "creamy white gardenia blossoms" and "faded petroglyphs."  So you must be the Boy who killed someone, now middle aged, but it's a parallel world with the look and feel of the 1950s: no computers or cell phones, men wear hats and smoke constantly, writers use pencils. 

Our Hero tells us that the Nine Heavens of the Paradiso is a bad translation; It's really Nine Skies.  The last and rarest of them is the Sky of Illimitibleness.  Or you could say "Endless," if you weren't a pretentious jerk.

Cut to the Young Dante sitting under a tree, looking at the Illimitible Sky.  

Scene 4:  New York, 2001, "That time when the daylight sky was an oppressive, low-lying glare of white, and the dark of night was..."  So, summer.  Is this one of your stories, or really happening in-universe?    A greasy-haired guy named Louie (Gerard Butler, but blond and greasy) saunters into a closed bar and orders a Dewars and water.  He criticizes the bartender's moustache: "You see a guy with a moustache, he's either a cop or a (homophobic slur)."

I expected L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle, the love that moves the sun and the stars, and I'm getting Charles Bukowski, homophobia, and a parallel world where the 1950s never ended. 

"By the way, you ever take it up the *ss?" Louie asks.  "Might make a man out of you."  But then he calls him a c*cksucker.  Twice.  Are you homophobic or not, buddy?  

He criticizes the Bartender and his wife for being excessively ugly, and threatens his nine-year old daughter.

Next topic of conversation: the Bartender's Uncle, "a real fuckup," who opened the bar, but pissed his money away gambling.  Wait, is that the Uncle from 1969?  So the Bartender is Our Hero?  But he's supposed to be in Bora Bora, writing pretentious crap.  And the Uncle was elderly in 1969. No way he's alive in 2001.  

Unc owes the gang a lot of money, so his nephew the Bartender is going to provide it.  Louie takes tonight's proceeds, $1,200, then orders the Bartender to go downtown.  But he shoots him as soon as he gets on his knees.

What does this have to do with Dante?

Scene 4: Our Hero crying as he looks at the picture of a little girl.  Is this the Bartender's daughter, who was just threatened?

 He tells us that a young adult lady called him Nick, and then "Daddy."  So you were dating the Bartender's daughter -- but she was nine years old in 2001.  Have we jumped ahead to 2026?  Or is she a different person, and you were looking at a photo of the bartender's daughter to confuse viewers?  He kisses her goodbye as she is crying.  I'm crying, too, in  frustration over this nonsensical plot.

 Cut to the EMTs taking her body away. 

Cut to Our Hero, drunk and injured (a bloody bandage on his leg), climbing the rocks of Bora Bora.  He falls into the water, delighted: "I feel nothing of these open rocks."

More after the break.  Caution: It gets even more confusing, but there are d*cks

Male Nudity in Italian Class

The only good thing about Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, where I taught at a horrible state college after getting my M.A., was the free tuition for faculty.  There wasn't a lot at that I wanted to take, but they did offer Italian.

It didn't start out well:
Roger e un ragazzo americano. Maria e una ragazza italiana. Roger e Maria sono amici. . .

Roger is an American boy visiting Italy. He goes to a café and tries to pick up a local girl. In the first lesson we learned “What is your name?”, "Your country is beautiful," and "How old are you."

Roger learns the time so he won’t be late for the cinema, learns the names of food so he can order in the restaurant, gets an overview of national history as they tour the museums.  In Chapter 10, we learn the Italian word for "kiss" (bacio).

Why do even language-learning dialogues have to be about  boys and girls gazing at each other?  

I never thought of Italy as a "good place."  The only fiction I read about Italian men  in love was The Little World of Don Camillo, and movies set in Italy seemed to involve mostly horny heterosexuals: Roman Holiday (1953), La Dolce Vita (1960),  Island of Love (1963).  Pasolini was gay in real life, but his moves were entirely heterosexist.  I had never seen Ernesto (1979).

But one weekend I drove two hours into Houston, to the Wilde-and-Stein Bookstore, and bought Ganymede in the Renaissance, about how Renaissance artists used the myth of Ganymede, a mortal boy swept up by Zeus to become his catamite.

And I discovered a whole gay world in Renaissance Italy, artists, writers, statesmen.

1. Leonardo Da Vinci. He gets a girlfriend in modern straightwashing biopics, but he was gay.

2. Michelangelo.  He gets straightwashed a lot, too. 

3. Donatello, who sculpted the famously effeminate David, a counterpart to Michelangelo's more macho version.

4. Benvenuto Cellini.  His Autobiography was on the list of recommended readings in my class in Renaissance History in college.  I didn't read it, and the professor never said a word.

5. Caravaggio, played by Dexter Fletcher and Nigel Terry in the 1986 movie.

6. Aretino, who wrote Il Marescalco, about a gay man forced to marry a woman, but fortunately she turns out to be a man.

7. Ariosto.  I bought his Orlando Furioso in a Ballantine Adult Fantasy edition, but it was about winning The Girl.

8. Matteo Bandello, who wrote 12 Novelle, one about a gay man.

9. The painter Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, nicknamed "Il Sodoma"



See also:  "Da Vinci's Demons": An absurdly heterosexual Da Vinci, a bi guy who only likes ladies, two monstrous gay predators

Pasolini's "Arabian Nights": The less well-known tales told with pe* nises and homophobia

"Caravaggio's Shadow": As time goes by, the gay Baroque painter becomes more and more straight. With n*de Italian men

Beefcake and Bonding in the Green Library

When I was studying French in high school,  if I ever tired of Tintin, Alix and Enak, Corentin, and Spirou and Fantasio, I could move on to the small square children's books published by the Librairie Hachette, the Bibliotheque Rose (pink) for humor and the Bibliotheque Verte (green) for action/adventure.

I preferred the green, especially Georges Bayard's Michel series, about a 15-year old and his older brother who sleuthed like the Hardy Boys (Michel a Rome, Michel en plongee, Michel et Monsieur X, etc.)  Except there were more kidnappings and last-minute rescues than the Hardy Boys faced, more stories set on boats and at the beach, and  unlike the American adventure boy series of the 1940s and 1950s  Hachette was not skimpy on the beefcake.  He was as physique-intensive as the British boys annuals.  Apparently being a teen sleuth gives you a magnificent physique.

I also liked the Italian street urchin of David Daniell's "By Jiminy" books in his French translation, Cricketto (Cricketto de Napoli, Cricketto et le petite prince, Cricketto dans la foret vierge, and so on).  He became a lean, muscular teenager, who adventured and buddy-bonded with his older friend and benefactor, Tom Trevor.  The illustrations favored black speedos for Tom and red for Cricketto.

Willis Lindquist's Haji of the Elephants is about a young Indian mahout and his Western boyfriend, in the tradition of Sabu, Jonny and Hadji, and Terry and Raji.  But in the French translation, they both became teenagers in dhotis with beautifully drawn chests and shoulders.

Rene Guillot wrote many juvenile adventure stories about massive Tarzans raised in the wilderness, such as Le Chef au masque d'or. 

And I can't even begin to count the homoerotic subtexts in Philippe Ebly's "Conquerants de l'Impossible" series, about three buffed, eternally shirtless teenagers from different time periods: Serge (modern France), Xolotl (Aztec Mexico), and Thibault (Medieval France).  They band together in a complex plot arc that decides the fate of worlds, while never so much as looking at a girl.

Ebly also wrote the "Evades du temps" series (Time Runaways), about two  teenagers, Thierry and Didier, who are hiking through a mysterious woods when they become unstuck in time, like Paul in Spellbinder.  They meet the prehistoric teenager Kouroun, who doesn't own a shirt, and band together to fight supernatural enemies and look for a way home.

They even had gay-themed novels, such as Pierre Loti's Iceland Fisherman.

I wonder if my French teacher noticed that I only borrowed the books with the beefcake covers.

In college I discovered a whole new collection, the Signe de Piste.

Male Nudity in English Class: The Canterbury Tales

During my junior year in college, I heard The Word in my college class for the first time.  My Culture and Civilization of Modern Germany class was devoted to proving that no German ever wrote about homosexualitat, but the professor in my Chaucer class, a big, hoarse-voiced woman named Dr. Dorothy, thought that The Canterbury Tales was all about how terrible "homosexuality" was.

Ok, but the Pasolini adaption of The Canterbury Tales had the most impressive male nudity I had ever seen at that point.  I can't show a picture here, but those guys were huge.


















The Pardoner, one of the pilgrims who tell stories on the road to Canterbury, was thin and willowy, beardless, with long yellow hair and a high pitched voice.

"An effeminate homosexual!" Dr. Dorothy cried, obviously delighted to say a forbidden word.  "How grotesque!"

Ok, but look at the Squire: a powerfully built young man of about twenty.  But instead of jousting and fighting dragons, he spends his time dancing, singing, and embroidering, quite feminine pursuits. He is a "lover and a lusty bachelor," so busy having sex that he doesn't sleep much at night.  Yet who does he have sex with?  Chaucer leaves this vague, but traditionally squires were devoted to the knights they served.






In The Miller's Tale, a parish clerk named Absolon is infatuated with the Miller's wife, and asks her for a kiss through a peep-hole.  Instead, the Miller shoves his bare butt through and farts in Absolon's face.  But Absolon gets revenge by shoving a red-hot poker into the Miller's butt.

"Symbolic homosexuality!" Dr. Dorothy cried, enjoying the shocked expressions on the students' faces. "How humiliating for the Miller!"

Ok, but look at The Knight's Tale, about two bosom buddies, Arcite and Palamon, who are both in love with Emily.  A classic triangulation, with the quarrel over the girl an impediment to their love, which is described in lushly romantic terms:

Sworn as we are, and each unto the other,
That never, though for death in any pain,
Never, indeed, till death shall part us twain.

Medieval literature was filled with men in love, like Roland and Oliver.  Shakespeare and John Fletcher used the same story as the basis for The Two Noble Kinsmen (1634), here performed by Tyler Neale and Tim Elliott.

A Knight's Tale (2001), starring Heath Ledger, tells a different story, but it does feature a nude Geoffrey Chaucer (Paul Bettany), plus a gay couple, the Knight's humorous sidekicks, Roland and Wat (Mark Addy, Alan Tudyk).

As I discovered in my classes in Modern British and American Literature, you can't always believe what you hear from a college professor.

See also: Pasolini's Canterbury Tales: More gay characters and cocks than Chaucer imagined

"Superman" (2025): You'll believe a man can queerbait

Bill Cable: 1980s gay model and video performer, boyfriend of Elvira and Pee-Wee Herman, the rock star in "Basic Instinct."

  Link to the N*de Dudes

If you grew up in a heteronormative desert, like most gay boys in the 1970s, with n*de and even shirtless guys vanishingly rare in magazines, movies, and tv, West Hollywood in the 1980s was a Paradise.  You could buy a dozen glossy, full-color magazines aimed at gay men with every conceivable taste and interest:

Drummer for leather

Blueboy for dating advice

Mandate for muscle

In Touch for humor 

Inches for...well, you get the idea.

All of them were illustrated by full-page and centerfold photos of men, artistic or not, always n*de, sometimes more.

You saw this guy everywhere, but probably didn't realize that Cable, Stoner, and Bigg John were all the same model.  Now we know.

He was Bill Cable, born William  Laurence Cumpanas in northern Indiana in 1946. His grandparents were from Dalmatia (now part of Croatia), and he grew up with a strong sense of his Croatian identity,   

His family moved to Los Angeles in 1950.  He played football at North Hollywood High School and the University of Nevada, but a  massive head injury forced him to quit.  In 1970, he returned Los Angeles to pursue a new career as a model.

Bill modeled in all of the famous gay magazines of the 1970s and 1980s, plus gay pictorials for Colt Studios and The Athletic Model Guild.  

He also appeared in straight pictorials, mainstream fashion ads, and the influential After Dark magazine.  And in gay postcards, which you bought with no intention of actually mailing.

He posed for Playgirl three times, for:

"Long Cool Summer" (July 1973)

Victoriana (November 1974)

"Beauty and the Beast" (May 1975)

Bill's movie career began with a non-speaking role as a leatherman in the gay  Bijou (1972).  Next came some collaborations with straight director Carlos Tobalina: Last Tango in Acapulco (1973), Jungle Blue (1978), and Flesh and Bullets (1985).

Sometime in the early 1970s, Bill and Carlos wrote, directed, and starred in  What's Love (restored in 1987), "which deals with the themes of romantic obsession and Christian blasphemy."  From what I can tell from the various plot synopses, Carlos plays a cop who gets in touch with a magical self.  Bill as Jesus sleeps with him and his wife. 

More after the break

Viva Las Vegas: Elvis and Cesare Danova Find Each Other

Viva Las Vegas (1964) is a comedy-drama produced during the height of early-1960s cool, when Vegas still meant gambling, booze, and the Rat Pack.  And at the height of the 1960s Italian craze.  How could it go wrong?

Two racing enthusiasts, working-class country boy Lucky (Elvis Presley) and elite Italian Count Elmo Mancini (Cesare Danova) accidentally encounter each other at an auto garage.  They know each other by reputation, but have never met before.  Mancini offers Lucky a job driving his car in upcoming Las Vegas Grand Prix, and Lucky refuses.  He will drive his own car.  They will be competitors.

The association would usually end there, but not in Lucky Las Vegas. Both guys have fallen in love at first sight with a girl named Rusty (Ann-Margret), but they don't know much about her.  They decide to join forces to try to track her down.

They spend the next several days together, hitting the Vegas nightspots, ostensibly looking for Rusty, but obviously having a wonderful time without her.

Then they find her.  They are in Mancini's hotel room, getting dressed -- wait, have they been sleeping together?  -- and Elvis says it's time to say goodbye.

Only he doesn't leave.

The two "competitors" spend the rest of the movie vaguely competing over the race and the girl, but it's obvious that they don't care much who wins, as long as they can cling together like long-lost brothers.

The final scene involves a wedding, but Mancini, Lucky, and Rusty are so tightly enclinched that one is not entirely certain who is marrying whom.

The gay subtext is blatant, yet so dependent upon intonation and gesture, that one wonders if Elvis and Cesare Danova were really into each other.  Elvis has long been rumored to be bisexual.  I haven't heard a lot of gay rumors about Cesare Danova, only that he became a born-again Christian in the 1970s, and had his tombstone inscribed with "Praise the Lord."

The music is energetic, and the dance numbers are great. Ann-Margret steals the show.  Highly recommended.

Da Vinci's Demons: An absurdly heterosexual Da VInci, a bi guy who only likes ladies, two monstrous gay predators, and a lot of p*enises

  

Link to the p*enises

The problem with Peacock is, they don't tell you the date of any tv series. So when we clicked on Da Vinci's Demons last night, we didn't realize that it was from 2013.  

Of course it would turn gay artist and inventor Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) straight: every historical figure from Shakespeare to Cole Porter gets straightened in contemporary media.  But when I was studying comparative literature, one of my fields was Renaissance Italy.  Plus there were hints of the paranormal, secret societies and such.  So why not?

Big mistake.  It was disgusting.  I can't even bring myself to do a scene-by-scene, but I'll post some of the nude photos.

1. They straightened Da Vinci (Tom Riley) in the most offensive, slap-in-the-face way possible.  He starts out painting a n*aked woman of "exceptional beauty," then discuss the incredible beauty of the Woman of His Dreams, Lucrezia Donati, over and over and over.  Finally he manages to schtup her for ten minutes of her boobs.  .  

2. His apprentice Nico (Eros Vlastos), who grows up to be Niccolo Machiavelli, gazes longingly at the bare boobs, too.  It is absolutely imperative to demonstrate that every man on Earth is heterosexual.  

At least Machiavelli was straight in real life.

3. DaVinci's buddy Zoroaster (Greg Chillan) mentions that he's been with men in an offhand comment, then goes into detail about the exceptional beauty of the hundreds of women he's had s*ex with.  He likes ugly women, too, because they're better in bed.  

4. There are two gay guys.  I know, every man on Earth longs for women's boobs, but these people are not men, they are odious, slimy monsters who have nonconsensual sex with teenage boys.  The first, the Duke of Milan (Hugh Bonneville), is killed immediately after he kicks the boy (Matthew David) out of his bed.  Serves him right for being gay.

Hugh and David's bums on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

More homophobia and p*enises after the break

Pasolini's Arabian Nights: The less well-known tales told with penises and homophobia

Link to the penises

Between 1971 and 1974, Italian filmmaker Piers Paolo Pasolini produced and directed three adaptions of famous Medieval stories.  The Arabian Nights (Il fiore delle Mille et una Notte) was the last, and the most ambitious, with filming locations in Yemen, Iran, and Nepal.  

If you've seen the other two (The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales), this one will be familiar; most of the same actors, especially Pasolini's lover Ninetto Davoli (left) and his protege Franco Merli, whom he discovered working at a gas station in Sicily.

Some of the same annoying bits as in the previous movies: dozens of people sitting around singing for no reason; lengthy closeups of random people with bad teeth grinning idiotically at the camera; stories that merge into other stories, so you're never sure what you're watching.

Pasolini eschews the more familiar stories, like Aladdin and Ali Baba, to concentrate on Nur Ed Din (Franco Merli, left) who loses his favorite slave girl, and wanders around, crying and having erotic adventures while searching for her.

Inside that story is another, about Aziz (Ninetto Davoli), who depends on his girlfriend for advice on how to win The Girl of His Dreams.  It ends badly.

And a few others.  Prince Tagi (Francesco Paolo Governale) falls in love with a girl through hearing a story about her, but she doesn't like men. So he makes a tapestry in the garden that convinces her to give heterosexual love a try.

A man, Alberto Argentino, tries to save a woman from a demon, but ends up being turned into an ape.

More after the break

Pasolini's Canterbury Tales: more gay characters and cocks than Chaucer imagined

Link to the cocks

The Canterbury Tales (I Racconti di Canterbury, 1972) is my favorite of Piers Paulo Pasolini's Trilogy of Life (others include The Decameron and The Arabian Nights), maybe because the set-up and many of the stories are familiar from my college claasses, so I don't get lost in the abrupt sedgeways.

And because I saw it last of the three, so some of the cast was familiar: Pasolini's lover Ninetto Davoli as a comic-relief buffoon, Franco Citti as someone morose and frightening,  Although I'm still annoyed by the closeups of random people with bad teeth grinning at the camera for no apparent reason, and the groups of people sitting around singing for no reason.

There is less full-frontal nudity than in the others, but for some reason the penises on display are much more impressive. The biggest of the lot -- probably the biggest portrayed in any film anywhere -- belongs to John McLaren.

Pasolini includes adaptions of 8 stories:

1. The Merchant's Tale: An old man gets a young wife, who is having an affair with Damian,  Oscar Fochetti, so two naked teenage gods (left) decide to have a little fun with them. While a naked boy plays the flute.

2. A new tale: A professional blackmailer, who has just turned a man (Philip Davis) over to the authorities for a same-sex relationship, meets the devil.  The execution of the sodomite is uncomfortable to watch, especially when one considers that similar atrocities are still happening in the world today, but at least the blackmailer gets his comeuppance.

3. The Cook's Tale: The foolish Perkin (top photo), channeling Charlie Chaplin, invades a wedding, hangs out with the guys, and has a three-way relationship with a man and his wife.

More after the break

"Diaries": Junior High Hassles on the Island of Capri. But Which of the Kids is Gay?

 Diaries -- but you'd better stylize it as Di4ries to avoid getting your keyword search bogged down in The Vampire Diaries and The Andy Warhol Diaries -- is an Italian series on Netflix about a boy who records dirt, scandal, and secrets into his diary.   No doubt there will be some gay scandals and secrets.

Prologue: Pietro (Andrea Arru), a dreamy Italian teenager,  "almost 13" although the actor is obviously old enough to get drunk and sign contracts, addresses the camera as he goes about his day.  First he gets annoyed by Mom and Dad's constant battling, so he puts salt in the sugar to sabotage their morning coffee.

Then he rides through town -- Marina Piccola, on the island of Capri.  "the best part of my day -- everything tastes like freedom."

Opening Credits: Shots of Pietro's two friends, Livia and Giulio.  I wonder which he has a crush on?  Whoops, we're not done: Ariana, Isabel, Monica, Daniel, Grimo, Mirko...a lot of choices!

Scene 1: At school.  Pietro hates it there: too many rules, no freedom, and his classmates are all jerks.  He criticizes them as he passes:  It-Girl Ariana. Miss Perfect Livia.  Dumb-Ox Bully Grimo.  

But Pietro isn't all snark: he rescues the long-haired, feminine Michele (maybe gay?) from Dumb-Ox Bully, and gets a hanger-on for life.  Next BFF Giulio asks him to cast his vote for the hottest girl in school.  Everyone else has voted except for Good Kid Daniel (Biagio Venditti, left), who doesn't want to get into trouble with the teachers. All these character names will be on the test.

Scene 2: In class, the boys argue over tabulating the "hottest girl" votes.  Whoops, the girls grab the scorecard, and are horrified by the sexism.  Especially It-Girl Ariana's Fat Friend, who got no votes!  The boys gaslight: "You're overreacting! Learn to take a joke!" and so on.  

Scene 3: After school.  Bff Giulio wants to know who Pietro voted for. "Who cares?  I don't like any of these girls."  Do you like girls at all?  Maybe you're gay?  But Giulio persists, so he says "It-Girl Ariana."  Giulio scoffs: "Dude, you don't have a chance with her!  She's got a crush on me, like every other girl in school!"

"You wish!" Pietro counters.  "Every girl in the school has a crush on me!  I'll prove it by kissing  It-Girl Arianna and Miss Perfect Livia both!"  Giulio turns it into a bet.

More after the break

DH Lawrence and the Naked Cornish Farmer

D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) was the darling of the grad English students when I was at Bloomington, maybe because he was more accessible than James Joyce or T.S. Elliot, but still Great Literature, and he wrote about sex.

A lot.

The heterosexual girls seemed to gravitate toward Lady Chatterley's Lover (1926), a Harlequin Romance with bad words.

The heterosexual boys liked Sons and Lovers (1913), about a boy who is in love with his mother.

No one ever mentioned Women in Love (1920), and I hadn't yet seen the 1969 movie starring Oliver Reed and Alan Bates (top photo).

Turns out it's about two sisters who become involved with a gay couple.  Actually they're all bisexual.  One of the men dies, and the other is told, "There can't be two kinds of love."

Aaron's Rod (1922) is about a flutist who leaves his wife and kids to go to Florence with his boyfriend and show his "rod" to men and women.

Lawrence was rather critical of heterosexual romance, Instead spinning wild fantasies of all-male Arcadias.

But he also created horribly homophobic characters, and criticized Walt Whitman for his gay subtexts in Studies in Classic American Literature. 

D.H. Lawrence had several same-sex relationships, notably with a farmer named William Henry Hocking, whom he apparently encountered naked on the beach in Cornwall.  He spent the rest of life searching for someone as perfect, just as Ernst Josephson spent his life searching for the "beautiful boy with a violin" he met in Norway.

But he also warned writer David Garnett against pursuing his "homosexual tendencies," and he hated the gay men he met in the Bloomsbury Group, such as Duncan Grant and John Maynard Keynes; they made him "mad with misery and hostility and rage."

Do you get the impression that this guy was a little nuts?

He tried his hand at painting, and exhibited 25 works at the Warren Gallery in London in 1929.  But they were mostly of nude Italian men with their penises flapping around, including his lover Piero Pini.

The police raided the gallery and seized 13 paintings. They were later returned, on the condition that Lawrence never again show them in England.   When his wife, Freda Lawrence, died in 1956, she willed them to her friend Saki, who willed them to Taos art collector George Sahd.  They're in Taos, New Mexico today.

Priest of Love (1982) stars gay actor Ian McKellen as D.H. Lawrence, Graham Faulkner in a five-second flashback as a nameless Cornish farmer, and Massimo Ranieri (left) as Piero Pini.  It displays his bisexuality in a couple of "you have to be looking for it" scenes.