Why Orangeburg?

Manish Dayal, the Indian-American actor who has appeared in White Frog, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., 90210, and The Resident, was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina in 1983.

So, when his parents or grandparents immigrated from India, they could settle in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, or San Francisco, but out of all of the great cities in the U.S., they thought they would be happiest in Orangeburg, South Carolina?

Ok, let's see what that city has to offer that beats the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Loop, West Hollywood, or Castro Street.

Location: in the middle of nowhere, about halfway between Columbia and Charleston.

Demographics: Population 14,000, 75% African-American, median household income $30,000.

Violent and property crime rates: Among the highest per capita in the nation.

Bodybuilders: Darius "Buff" Milton.

Politics: 67% voted for Clinton in the 2016 Presidential Election

Sights:
The National Fish Hatchery
Edisto Memorial Garden, with 4000 varieties of roses
I.P. Stanback Museum and Planetarium
The Pink Palace (the old Orangeburg jail)

Bookstores:
Only Christian ones.

Restaurants:
Thai Lotus

Gyms:
Orangeburg Athletic Club
Orangeburg New City Gym

High schools:
Orangeburg-Wilkinson Senior High.  No gay club, but a Gentlemen's Club and a Les Charmes.  Sports: volleyball, wrestling, track.

Orangeburg Christian Academy

Orangeburg Preparatory Academy

Colleges:
Claflin College (historically black, the top liberal arts college in the state)

South Carolina State University (historically bl
ack)

Churches:
Church of God Which He Hath Purchased with His Own Blood
Four Holes Baptist Church
Orangeburg Baptist Tabernacle (Tim Tebow is apparently a member)
Gospel Temple of Deliverance
Holy Trinity Catholic Church

Mosques:
Masjid al Taqwa

Hinduism:
Hindu Temple and Cultural Center

Shri Swaminarayan Mandir. A temple devoted to a sect of Hinduism that reveres Swaminarayan (1781-1830) as an emanation of the Divine.

I'm beginning to think that maybe Orangeburg has a lot of emanations of the Divine.

My Surprising Post-Gay Halloween in Charleston, South Carolina

Remember my distant non-cousin Trevor from Monck's Corner, South Carolina, who my mother was pressuring me into visiting? Turns out that I didn't need to visit him.  He came to my Uncle George's funeral in October.

George was 7 years older than my father, 12 years old when the Davises adopted them.  He chose to keep the last name Jackson. He graduated from high school in 1943, served in World War II, and then moved to Walterboro, South Carolina, about 50 miles from Charleston.  I never learned why.  He and Aunt Suzie had four children, three girls and my Cousin George, who is gay.

I visited twice when I was a kid, and again in 2005.  Uncle George and Aunt Suzie and two of my cousins were still in town, the whole lot of them Bible-believing Nazarenes, Bush-believing Republican, un-selfconsciously racist and "we don't talk about that" homophobic.  I was so uncomfortable that I didn't even come out to them.

And I didn't see any point in going to the funeral of someone I had seen three times in my life, but my mother insisted.  She's too old to travel, my brother "had to work," and my younger sister never met him, so I had to go as a representative of the family.

I flew in to Charleston on Tuesday, October 30th, stayed in a hotel instead of with my Cousin Polly's daughter (who I have never met), and arrived at the Glass Onion for a family brunch at 9:00 am on the 31st.

Who holds a funeral on Halloween?

Then we went on to the Nazarene church for the funeral, and a burial at Live Oak Memorial Gardens.

Cousin George did not attend -- apparently he and his father never reconciled.  But I saw my three girl cousins, all in their 60s, and their husbands, their children and grandchildren, an assortment of Aunt Suzie's South Carolina relatives, and a scattering of Davises, like my Cousin Phil, his daughter, and her husband and kids.  And, of course, my non-cousin Trevor from Monck's Corner and his girlfriend.

Not a lot of cruising goes on at a funeral, but I didn't even see any particularly attractive physiques among my second and third cousins and their various hangers-on.   My twink magnet powers were not working.

Then, after the funeral, non-cousin Trevor and his girlfriend Tracy came up to me.

"Do you have plans for tonight?"  he asked.

"Back to my hotel room with take-out Chinese, and an early flight tomorrow, I suppose."

"We can do better than that," Tracy said.  "Are you a beer drinker?"

"Um...not really."

"Well, tonight you are.  We'll pick you up at 5:00."

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

The Beefcake of My Cousin's Cousin's Home Town

I have to fly to South Carolina for a funeral, and my mother wants me to look up some sort of distant non-relative, the son of my cousin George's cousin on his mother's side.  I checked him out on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram: 28 years old, nice physique, but there are 20,000 photos of him with guns and fishing poles.

Plus he has a girlfriend, of whom he posts "If you have an amazing woman like i do go out your way to let her know that no-ones got shit on her."

Gee, how poetic.

Then I read that he graduated from Berkeley.

Say what?

Turns out that it's not the University of California, Berkeley, the bastion of the New Left, the ultra liberal, ultra intellectual Harvard of the West.  It's Berkeley High School in Moncks Corner, South Carolina (that's how they spell it, one of the weirdest, most Gothic towns in all the Truman Capote-Flannery O'Connor-Tennessee Williams South.

Its main tourist draw are the scary Cypress Gardens

It was originally a Huguenot settlement (French Protestants fleeing Catholic oppression).

There's a Trappist Monastery that got in trouble for unethical treatment of the chickens they used for egg farming.

It's the home of Charlamagne tha God (that's how he spells it), an actor and talk show host who got in trouble for defending transphobic violence.

There are restaurant called Little Pappy's, Tail Race, and Gilligan's, after the tv show Gilligan's Island.

There are Baptist, Primitive Baptist, Missionary Baptist, Church of God, Christianity Holiness (that's how they spell it), Assemblies of God, AME, and Nazarene churches.

The high school offers basketball, baseball, football, wrestling, and girls-only cheerleading.  It has no Gay-Straight Alliance.  The principal graduated from the ultra-fundamentalst Grand Canyon University.  The coach tells us about his wife and kids.  Apparently girls' tennis is big, but I only found one good photo of a wrestler.

These two are not actually from Moncks Corner, but they wrestled there.


















And one presentable photo of a swimmer.

So, what do you think?  Should I take an extra day and drive 50 miles to visit my cousin's cousin from Moncks Corners?

Turns out that I didn't need to bother visiting him.  He visited me.  See: The Surprising Post-Gay Halloween of Charleston, South Carolina.

The Beefcake of Bob Jones

You've probably heard of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, the most achingly fundamentalist college in the U.S. before Jerry Falwell opened Homophobia U.  It was founded in 1927 by fundamentalist preacher Bob Jones, whose grandson is still chancellor.  The rules are even stricter than at Nazarene colleges.

Like Nazarene colleges, there's no dancing, movies, secular music, card-playing, no teaching of evolution, and a curfew for all students.

In addition, BJU doesn't even offer courses in geology, it requires the King James Bible in all classes and services,  it has a strict dress code, and it doesn't admit non-fundamentalist students.  It did not enroll black students until 1975, and forbade interracial dating until 2014.

At both Nazarene colleges and BJU, coming out means being instantly expelled, but the chancellor of BJU has gone a little further, recommending that gay people be stoned to death (he has since apologized for his remarks, after receive a petition with 2,000 signatures).

But you've probably never heard of Bob Jones High School in Madison, Alabama, a suburb of Huntsville.  It's named after another Bob Jones (a state senator), and not affiliated with the fundamentalist bastion in any way.  In fact, it has a Gay-Straight Alliance.AND Young Democrats Club.

Can you tell which of these beefcake photos depicts the son of a progressive space scientist and which a fundamentalist training for a "hate the gays" ministry?  (Answers after the break)

1.  The swim team.














2. The swim team.

3. A powerlifter

4. A powerlifter















5. A high-GPA student





















6. A runner


















7. A high-GPA student

8.  A golfer

9. A wrestler





















10. A runner.

Answers:

The Beefcake and Gay Pride of Myrtle Beach

My sister and her husband go to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina almost every year, and this year they invited me and Bob.

But I declined; I've already been to South Carolina once this summer, and Myrtle Beach is not exactly on my bucket list.

It's full of tacky amusements, like a pre-War Coney Island:

1. A wax museum
2. Ripley's Believe it or Not
3. A Medieval-themed dinner theater
4. A Hard Rock Cafe.
5. A tacky boardwalk

6. A Ferris wheel.

This gets 14 million visitors annually?

Harbinger of the end of civilization: the Metropolitan Museum of Art only gets 7 million.

Besides, it's surrounded by South Carolina.






Of course, it's a beach, and beaches have men in swimsuits.

But they'll probably be surrounded by a woman and children.














Or a lot of women

Or a lot of children.

There are about a dozen high schools and colleges in the vicinity, including Carolina Forest, Myrtle Beach (with its motto "We go hard at Myrtle Beach"), Socastee, two Catholic, one Jewish, and the Calvary Christian School for the fundamentalists.

The Christian School seems to take them a little younger than high school age, though.













There's some attention to diversity in town.  Max Wolff, who has Down's Syndrome, was on the swim team at St. James High School.  He graduated in 2017.  In July 2018 he won two silver medals in swimming at the Special Olympics (missing the gold on a technicality).

And Myrtle Beach is the gayest city in South Carolina, if that's a draw, with gay rights protections and 12 gay couples per 1000 households, or 1% of the population, not counting the singles.

In June 2018 Myrtle Beach held its annual LGBTQ Pride Festival, featuring a series of expensive parties entitled "What happens on the beach, stays on the beach."

Sounds closeted.

If this is LGBTQ Pride, I'll take vanilla.

See also: The Beefcake of Myrtle Beach

Beefcake and Buddhism in Clover, South Carolina

My least favorite state is obviously Texas, but South Carolina comes in at a close second.  It's a weird combination of super-fundamentalist churches and hetero sex shops, so hot and humid that you want to spend all your time at the beach, and a lot of the people are unabashedly racist.  I was on a job interview there once, and a professor at the top university in the state told me that African-Americans were not as smart as white people.

But I like Clover, South Carolina.  It's so close to the border that it might as well be in North Carolina, it's in the mountains, so not too humid, and it was named the #4 gayest city in the state by RoadSnack.

There's the Vien Quang Buddhist Monastery, a beautiful spot for quiet contemplation. 

A historic downtown with quirky shops, antiques, and a Thai restaurant, so you don't have to settle for Pop Pop's Diner.

And the Crowders Mountain State Park, with some challenging hiking trails.

The Blue Eagle Academy is an alternative high school for students with academic or other difficulties.  It teaching the Buddhist philosophy of mindfulness.  There are therapy dogs and a peace resolution table.










The Clover High School Swim Team in Clover, South Carolina arranges its photos by class.  There aren't a lot of boys.  These are the freshmen.

Sophomores.

The single junior and senior.

But there are boys on the wrestling team.

The main gym in town is Mc2 Athletics, which offers fitness and self defense training.