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

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

"Shardlake": Murder in Tudor England, with a limb-different Sherlock Holmes and a lot of queerbaiting

There are three reasons that Shardlake, a four-episode tv series on Hulu, gives me bad vibes.

1. It is set during the reign of Henry VIII.  Maybe in British schools you get lectured on this every year, but all I know about Henry VIII is that he broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, married a lot -- I'm related to Ann Bolyn -- and was played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. I'm not sure I'll be able to keep Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer, William Cecil, and William Paulet straight.

2. Do you know what a "shard" is in America?

3. It stars Sean Bean, who I thought was Mr. Bean, the annoying Borat-like character. Turns out that Sean Bean has no connection to Mr. Bean. He played Boromir in The Lord of the Rings and Ned Stark in Game of Thrones.  Might as well give it a try.

Prologue: Crows cawing at a gloomy looking monastery.  Sinister looking guy goes down the stairs, crosses the courtyard, unlocks a door, and heads down to the basement -- where a knight slices off his head!

Scene 1: Hunky guy with a upper-body limb difference washes, shows a little chest, gets dressed.  He tells an off-camera Matthew, no doubt his boyfriend, that he's "ready for whatever the day brings."

No boyfriend: he's Matthew Shardlake, talking to himself.

Shardlake is played by Arthur Hughes, left, who is limb-different in real life. He has appeared in a lot of Doctor Who movies, starred in the soap The Archers, and played Richard III.

Meanwhile, a young guy gallops across the countryside for five minutes.  You assume that he's going to be a main character, but he delivers a letter and vanishes from the story.  

It's for Lord Cromwell.  Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540, when he was beheaded.   

Bad news: "My representative!  My voice!  This cannot go unpunished!"  They must have murdered his representative in the monastery.

Scene 2:  Shardlake snarls through town.  People jump out of his way and cross themselves in fear. He stops to watch a magical parrot say "God save King Harry," but condemns it as a trick.  Harry is Henry VIII. 

A guy tries to pick him up.  After substantial flirtation, he admits that he's actually summoning him to see Lord Cromwell.  He seems to like-like Shardlake.  Maybe a gay-subtext is brewing.

He's Jack Barak, played by Anthony Boyle, left.

 There's been a murder, "a friend of yours. Poor Lord Singleton." Robin Singleton, fictional, sent by Lord Cromwell to investigate the Monastery of St. Donatus, also fictional.  

Scene 3: Their meeting.  Lord Cromwell is in a mood. Back story: Ann Bolyn was executed a few months ago.  This is the fall of 1536.   He shows Shardlake two skulls of Saint Barbara confiscated from monasteries to demonstrate how monks lie about everything, and has him read the letter revealing the murder.

His assignment: They're going to start closing monasteries, confiscating their wealth, and passing it out to the nobility.  But you can only close them if you can prove that the monks are "papists, thieves, or sodomites."  Aren't monks all Roman Catholics, so papists by definition?  That's what Robin Singleton was researching.  So Shardlake must discover who killed him, hopefully a monk, and get on with the investigation of monastic evil.

Jack is assigned to accompany Shardlake.  Being a misanthrope, he doesn't want any traveling companions, but it's an order from Lord Cromwell. Maybe they'll fall in love.

Scene 6: While snarling through town, Shardlake encounters a tough, who tells him to go into that house and up the stairs, then disappears from the story.  Grr.

He meets with Lord Norfolk, Thomas Howard, the uncle of Ann Bolyn. He's my great-great-great, etc. grandfather!  

An opponent of Lord Cromwell, Norfolk wants to know why Shardlake was cozying up to him.  "I'm to investigate a murder at St. Donatus, and then close the monastery so Lord Cromwell can confiscate its wealth." Norfolk disapproves: "It is theft in the name of God."

Norfolk is played by Peter Firth, left, who showed us his equipment in Equus, but is now 70 and a bit crotchety.

More crotchety guys after the break

David and Goliath: From King James Bible to Gay Men's Bedrooms

The Philistine warrior Goliath was BIG: nine feet nine inches (enough about the nine feet, let's hear about the six inches).  His suit of armor weighted 125 pounds.  He challenged King Saul and the Israelites, but they were too scared to approach him.

The shepherd David agreed to fight him, but the sword and armor was too bulky, so he took his clothes off and fought with just a slingshot.  He immobilized the giant, then rushed up with a sword and decapitated him.

Don't read too far, though, since in 2 Samuel we discover that David didn't do the job at all; it was Elhanan the Bethlehemite.

The story of David and Goliath in 1 Samuel was a mainstay of Sunday school classes, probably because it showed a little guy triumphing over a big guy.  And because it's rather fun to imagine a nude, muscular shepherd boy striding across the battlefield, his penis swinging, the warriors all gazing in awe at his beauty.

The Biblical writers probably intended for David to be well into adulthood, in his late twenties, but artistic depictions generally make him 14-15.  And leave his pants on, as in this painting by French artist Gabriel Ferrier (1847-1914)

Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) made him the right age, but upped the clothing, giving him a tunic and pants.

This Italian engraving by Marcantoni Raimondi (1480-1534) gives David a massive body and a penis, with a cloak flapping behind him.







More Davids after the break

Workaholics Episode 1.9: Adam kisses a cougar, gets frisky with Ders, and raps as a bodybuilding fairy wizard. WIth a Michael O'Hearn bonus

 

After the gloomfest of The Mick, I needed something a little more upbeat.

 So Workaholics Episode 1.9, which was heavily criticized on the Gender/Sex/Media blog as homophobic: the guys think of "homosexuality" as weird and wrong  -- and something you can catch.  Plus Adam uses a homophobic slur!  We'll see. 

Link to NSFW version

Scene 1: The guys dressed as wizards in long beards and conical caps, rehearsing a rap number for the Renaissance Faire. Ders asks why Adam has ripped his shirt off: "We're trying to get people excited, right?  The world needs to see the madness that is my upper torso."  Can't disagree with that.  

Next Ders objects to "whoring out" the art of rap, but the guys remind him that ladies with big boobs will be watching their performance, so ok.

Scene 2: At work, the guys are watching through the window as Adam lifts weights on the patio. Geez, don't you gawk at his bod enough at home?  Sorry, of course there's no such thing as "enough."  

Suddenly a middle-aged lady comes onto the patio to smoke: Sharon, the owner of the whole building!  The guys, watching, don't understand..  "Why is that lady talking to Adam? Wait -- why are they kissing?"  Well, Billy, some boys like to kiss boys, and some like to kiss girls.  

Scene 3: Blake wonders where Adam has been for three days; he's missing the Wizard Rap rehearsals. He comes in to announce that he's moving in with Sharon!  They're in love, they're having sex, and besides, she's helping him with his bodybuilding career.  She got him a gig at the Tri-County Amateur Bodybuilding Competition.  Um..buddy, anyone can sign up for those things.  Blake and Ders disapprove: she's a cougar (middle aged lady who's into young guys.)  Nonsense, she's the same age as Adam's mom, who has sex a lot.  

He zooms away on the back of Sharon's motorcycle.  The guys feel betrayed, and decide that they will break up the lovebirds. Their plan: Ders will seduce her. Won't work -- I'm sure Sharon is fine with three-ways.

Scene 4: The guys arrive at Sharon's mansion. While Adam shows Blake around, Ders asks to check out the pool (we've already established that he's a former swimming champ).

The grand tour, consisting of the various places where Adam has made "the magic happen": their bedroom, the staircase, her son's bedroom, the kitchen. Have they ever actually had sex?  I think a big reveal is coming. 

Meanwhile Ders goes out to the pool in a very tight Speedo and flirts with Sharon.  She can't swim, so he offers to teach her.  

Scene 5:  Adam shows Blake the gym, where he's preparing for the bodybuilding competition.  Blake wants to stall him, to give Ders enough time to complete the seduction, so he asks for a demonstration of the bicep curl.  Adam likes to keep the window open during his workouts, so when he screams, people outside think he's having sex.  But aren't you having sex a lot anyway?  

Meanwhile, in the pool, Sharon asks Ders "Are you trying to seduce me?"   She is totally open to the idea.

Scene 6: Adam looks out the window, sees Sharon and Ders flirting, and runs down in a jealous snit. "We're going to fight!"  

Upset at being interrupted in the midst of a seduction, Ders cries "You are frickin' dead, boy!" But when he climbs out of the pool, he is aroused!  

They can't fight that way, so he has to lie down until he gets soft.  But the minute the two start grabbing at each other, they both get aroused! "Your boner is contagious!" Adam exclaims.  He orders Ders to put on a shirt to hide his hunkinest.  What about you, Mr. Sexiest Man on the Planet?  It can't be a fair fight with your gorgeousness  distracting your opponent.  "Wait, am I supposed to hit you or kiss you? I'll compromise with a blow job."  

Ders agrees -- they're too attracted to each other for a physical fight.  Maybe if they just hurl insults?  Nope -- it turns into an "are you as turned on as I am?" tirade that stops just short of the kiss.  And they're aroused again! 

Bodybuilding after the break

"American Princess": My New Favorite TV Show

Entitled, detached-from-reality Jewish American Princess Amanda (Georgia Flood, who looks exactly like Kristen Ritter of Don't Trust the B__ in Apartment 23) is planning a "fairy tale wedding" in the wilds of upstate New York.  Minutes before she is scheduled to walk down the aisle, she stumbles upon her fiancé, Brett (Max Ehrich), having sex with last night's hookup.  Still in her wedding dress, she rushes away.

Isn't that how Friends started?

 Amanda runs into the wilderness and stumbles upon a Renaissance Faire, one of those summertime celebrations of all things Elizabethan -- well, the fun things anyway.  There's boozing, dancing, craft booths, jousts, swordplay.  Workers and many of the guests wear Elizabethan costumes and stay strictly in character.  There are classes in how to speak, wave, bow, and pretend not to be aware of modern technology.

At first Amanda is dismissive of the daffy, reality deprived weirdos, but soon she realizes that her world is equally reality deprived.  Besides, she was an English major, and likes this Renaissance stuff.  When her mother and sister show up to take her home, she refuses.  She gets a job at the Faire, and immerses herselves in the lives and problems of other "rennies" (faire professionals).

I'm surprised that there are so many of them, considering that they work only on weekends during the summer.  It can't be a full time gig.  But:

David (Lucas Neff, left,  unrecognizable from Raising Hope) has an act involving getting splattered with mud and pretending to pee on people.  A German and art history major, he wonders if this is what he wants to do for the rest of his life.

Delilah (Mary Hollis Inboden) has an act involving doing laundry and making sexual innuendos.

Maggie (Seanna Kofoed) has been playing Queen Elizabeth for over 20 years, and is worried about aging and losing her power.

Brian (Rory O'Malley), who plays William Shakespeare, has been her gay bff for many years, but he longs to be accepted by the other performers.  After some false starts, he begins dating Juan Andres (Juan Alfonso), who runs a craft booth.

Leaf (Brock Harris, left) is a jouster, and spends his off time flirting with guests of all genders.

The female sexual empowerment stuff gets a little distasteful at times. I fast-forwarded through some discussions of vaginas.  Did you know that they come in different sizes and shapes?  I do, now.

But the colorful interactions among the characters, both in the Faire and back home on the Upper East Side, are worth sitting through some "boob and bush" discussions.

Besides, just about everyone on the show is gay, bisexual, or pansexual.  There's even a three-way relationship between Natasha (Sophie von Hasselberg), Stephen (Ross Bryant), and Phil (Edgar Blackmon).

And there's a lot of beefcake.  Most of the shirtless actors are playing scruffy, unwashed Elizabethan underlings (not that there's anything wrong with that), but there are also some buffed physiques about.

The first and only season is up on Vudu and Amazon Prime.  I watched slowly, an episode every few days.   I didn't wnat it to end.

See also:  Matt Crabtree: Shy, quiet, stuttering Southern boy grows up to "Modern Family," "Will and Grace," one-man shows, and dicks

Jak and Kelton visit the Citadel: Beach Day, Dick Day, wrestling, modeling, and a tour of the campus

King of the Golden River: Boy Meets Dwarf

Shortly after I was born, my parents bought a set of Colliers Encyclopedia and The Junior Classics, an anthology of mostly Victorian-era stories like Alice in Wonderland and Jackanapes. During my earliest childhood I often took them from the shelves and leafed through them, marveling at the odd illustrations.  I first tried reading them at age 8 or 9, but the antiquated language and obscure references made it well-nigh impossible.  Still, their very impenetrability was attractive, suggesting hidden codes and secrets, so over the years I tried again and again, finally encountering some amazing gay subtexts.

The King of the Golden River (1841) begins with a blustery, round person, "The North Wind," visiting an extremely girlish young man named Gluck.   From there, things get even more bizarre.  Gluck battles his older, bullying brothers, Hans and Schwartz, for a golden mug, which turns out to contain the imprisoned spirit of the dwafish King of the Golden River.  

Someone must travel to the source of the river and sprinkle it with "holy water."  The evil brothers try, but fail, and are turned into black stones.  Gluck tries, but gives the water away in acts of kindness, and is rewarded when the river turns into a river of gold.

There is no same-sex romance, but Gluck (played by Thor Bautz, left, in a gender-transgressive 2009 stage version) is quiet, sensitive, feminine, gay-coded.

And,  bucking the tradition of fairy tales ending with "they were married and lived happily ever after," he never meets a girl.  At the end of the story, he is old, wealthy, well-respected by the community, with no wife.  

That was, in itself, a revelation.

The author of King of the Golden River was John Ruskin (played by Tom Hollander, top center, in the 2009 tv series Desperate Romantics).  He was apparently heterosexual; like Lewis Carroll, he liked young girls.  But there is no evidence that he had a physical relationship with anyone.

His marriage to Effie Gray was annulled after six years, not consummated because "there were certain circumstances in her person which completely checked passion."  There have been many theories about what those circumstances were, but probably not the nude female form itself. (Effie later married his friend, pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais).

He was a scholar of the Renaissance, who became aware of the practice of "the bestial vice."  Although he was quite homophobic, revealing that same-sex practices occurred at all helped to create the image of the "queer Renaissance," where gay people didn't have to hide.  Oscar Wilde said that studying under him at Oxford was one of the turning points of his career.

Which of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was Gay?

I'll bet you never thought you'd be reading about the ancient Greek drama Alcestis and The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the same blog, on the same day.  But my search for beefcake and bonding takes me everywhere.

During the late 1980s, pundits often pointed to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when they needed a quick, easy example of tv being a "vast wasteland" responsible for turning kids into brain-dead zombies.  They probably never watched the cartoon series or read the comic books: the title was enough for them.

TMNT began as a comic book in 1984, and moved into cartoons and extensive marketing tie-ins by 1987.  By 1990, everyone, even pundits, had heard of the four slacker-talking, pizza-obsessed ninja turtles named after Renaissance artists (two of whom, by the way, were gay in real life).
1. Leonardo, the leader.
2. Michelangelo, the fun-loving trickster whose catchphrase is "Cowabunga!"
3. Donatello, the technological genius and computer whiz.
4. The brooding Raphael, who has a Brooklyn accident.

They live in the sewers of New York with their beset-upon sensei, the mutant rat Splinter, emerging only to pick up the pizzas they ordered and to fight crime.  They have two human allies, tv reporter April O'Neil and hockey-mask wearing vigilante Casey Jones.


The cartoon series lasted for 10 years, and new versions are in the works.  A series of films began in 1990, with sequels in 1991, 1993, and 2007.  I've seen the first two.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) gives us the turtles' origin story, and introduces them to April (Judith Hoag), Casey (Elias Koteas), and their arch-nemesis, Shredder, an evil Darth Vader clone who heads the evil Foot gang, comprised entirely of teenage boys.





April's boss happens to have a sullen teenage son, Danny (Michael Turney), who is secretly working for the Foot gang, and eventually gets big-brothered and rehabilitated by the turtles.

Surprisingly for a movie about turtles, there is significant beefcake, in the older members of the Foot gang, and in Casey Jones, who displays biceps and a prominent bulge.

Casey and April embark on a bickering "I hate you!" hetero-romance, like that of Sam and Diane on Cheers, David and Maddie on Moonlighting, and practically everybody else in the 1980s.  But otherwise hetero-romance is limited.  Of the turtles, only Michelangelo expresses heterosexual interest.  The others enjoy surprisingly open physicality, touching, hugging, grabbing each other at will, and Raphael obviously prefers the company of men: he spends most of the movie buddy-bonding with Casey.




Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze (1991) casts a new April, and eliminates Danny, Casey, and every hint of hetero-romance.  There is none.

Instead, the turtles face a restored Foot gang and discover the secret of their origin, with the help of a befuddled scientist (David Warner, who had a romance with Gregory Peck in The Omen).  This time Raphael buddy bonds with and rescues a new teenager, pizza delivery boy/martial arts expert Keno (Ernie Reyes Jr., who played another hardbodied martial artist in Surf Ninjas).

What are we to make of this pleasant lack of hetero-horniness?  The fact that the dudes are turtles in a human world is irrelevant; anthropomorphic animals from Bugs Bunny to Howard the Duck have often been portrayed as overwhelmed with desire for human women.
The intended audience of preteens is also irrelevant: movies during the 1990s often promoted gushing prepubescent hetero-romances.

For whatever reason, the Turtles were spared.  Cowabunga, dudes.

See also: The Omen; Surf Ninjas

Codpieces: the Renaissance Bulge

Men often try to draw attention to the size of their sex organs.  Athletic supporters -- ostensibly to keep them from flopping around, but also serving the function of creating an eye-catching bulge.

Football players' cups -- for protection, and to enhance their erotic appeal?

During the Renaissance, they wore codpieces ("cod" is the Old English word for scrotum).

Originally the codpiece was simply a triangular piece of cloth placed over the sex organs.  By the 1520s, it was getting cotton enhancments to better accentuate the basket.

During the codpiece craze of the mid-16th century, men tried to outdo each other with the biggest, boldest, most elaborate designs.

This is Don Carlos, Prince of Asturias (1545-1568), painted by Alonzo Coello.  Did he really walk around like that?

Guidobaldo II, Duke of Urbino (1514-1574), painted by Agnolo Bronzino, wears a huge ball-shaped codpiece.  I don't think his sex organs would really fit in there.

The codpiece was out of fashion by the time of Shakespeare, but fortunately, most modern directors don't know that, and push their actors into them anyway.

Today you can sometimes see codpieces at Renaissance Faires.    But not often. Modern men feel too exposed wearing them.

Summer Beefcake at the Renaissance Faire

In 1963, Los Angeles teacher Phyllis Patterson and her husband hosted a week-long "Renaissance Pleasure Faire" in Irwindale, California, modeled after the "Living History" exhibits then popular in historic sites.  People walked around pretending to actually be living in the Renaissance, wearing the costumes, performing the crafts,  talking the lingo.

The practice gained momentum during the Medieval mania of the 1960s and 1970s, when thousands of hippies, organic food devotees, and Tolkien-philes longed for a cleaner, simpler, more colorful world.

Where gym-toned guys took their shirts off.

I'm not sure where in Renaissance Europe these dancers came from.

When I dated a guy from the Society for Creative Anachronism, they told me that their character could be anyone who could have been in Europe from 500 to 1500 AD.  So no Native Americans or Pacific Islanders, but East Asians and sub-Saharan Africans were ok.

Maybe these guys are from Renaissance India.

Renaissance Faires are not popular in Europe: when there's a castle on every hillside, and your house dates from the 16th century, you don't really need to evoke the Renaissance.  It's already there.

But there are hundreds in the United States.  Some draw as many as 500,000 visitors per year.

I studied the Renaissance.  They had lice and fleas, bathing was infrequent, dinner consisted mostly of bread, and the homicide rate was ten times what it is today.  You were likely to be burnt at the stake for being Jewish, Catholic, a gypsy, or a sodomite.

And without modern nutrition and bodybuilding techniques, there were few physiques like this around.

But the Renaissance Faires are about the Renaissance we wish existed.

They tend to be a bit on the heterosexist side, all about men and women gazing into each other's eyes (heterosexuals never believe that gay people existed in the past).  But they're worth it for the beefcake, the food, and the costumes.

See also: Codpieces

Shakespeare: The Original Gay Poet

Throughout high school and college, my English, Spanish, French, and German teachers carefully steered us away from gay writers, if they could help it, and when they had no choice, tried hard make us believe they weren't. Oscar Wilde's career ended when he was arrested on "scandalous charges." What did he do?  Oh. . .um. . .er. . .he corrupted Lord Alfred Douglas, introducing him to gambling and loose women.

They steered us away from all gay content, and when they had no choice, tried their best to make us think it wasn't.  Why did Whitman mean by "We two boys together clinging, one the other never leaving"?  Oh. . .um. . .er. . .he's talking about his brother, and anyway you're not supposed to read that part.

So I grew up thinking that no novelist, poet, playwright, or artist in all the history of the world had ever been gay.  Except one: William Shakespeare.

You could hardly miss the subtexts in practically every play:
1. Romeo and Juliet: Benvolio is in love with Romeo.
2.  Merchant of Venice: Antonio is in love with Bassanio.
3. Richard II is gay.
4. Henry IV: Hotspur is gay.
5. Othello: Iago is in love with Othello.
6. A Midsummer Night's Dream: Oberon likes boys, and Puck likes everybody.

Plus his wife, Anne Hathaway, whom he leaves back home in Stratford while he hangs out with guys in London for 20 years

And the Sonnets, addressed to the mysterious "Mr. W. H." and full of complaints about Shakespeare's boyfriend, a fickle youth who is hot one moment, cold another, who spends all his money with no emotional return, and who dates other people -- even women.

How could you miss it?

Mrs. Johnson, who taught my senior-year Shakespeare class, tried to miss it.  Desperately.  In nearly every class session, she came up with a new bit of evidence that Shakespeare wasn't. . .um, you know, that way (no one ever actually Said the Word).

Her evidence:
1. None of his characters are Wearing Signs.
2. It was an Elizabethan convention to write romantic-sounding poetry about platonic friendship.
3. The "fair youth" was an apprentice who was learning the acting craft.
4. Anne Hathaway was pregnant when they got married.
5. No one who is a writer can ever be. . .um, you know, that way.
6. Especially a great writer.

See also: The 7 Ages of Man