Imposters: Gay Subtexts in a Long Con

The first episode of Imposters is nightmarishly heterosexist, but hang in there -- it gets better.

The awkward, shy, but somehow extremely wealthy Ezra (Rob Heaps) works for his father's shoe company, where water-cooler banter involves mostly boobs and how much you are getting. 

Somehow Ezra grew up less sexist, and married the "the woman of his dreams," the French-accented Ava (Inbar Lavi),  even though he has to negotiate his Neanderthal brother (Adam Korson) and boorish father (Mark Harelik), with their "does she like it when you have sex with her?" leering.

It's no wonder that she vanishes a month after the wedding, draining his bank account and leaving a very nice "it's not you, it's me" video.

Then Ezra meets dumb but formerly extremely wealthy jock Richard
(Parker Young, top photo), who married the same woman, only she called herself "Alice."  One month, bank account drained, vanished.

 And lesbian artist Jules (Marianne Rendon), who married Cece.  One month, bank account drained, vanished.

The trio vow to track down the elusive scammer, to get their money back, or at least say "how could you treat me like that?  I thought our love was real." (Their only cue is a story about her pet dog, which she told to each of them).  They are brok, so they indulge in some cons and identity-theft tricks to raise money, and become quite proficient at it.

Eventually they track down the scammer -- real name Maddie -- in Seattle, where she is working on her new mark, a disagreeable, violent-tempered banker (Aaron Douglas).

She has two older associates with the ridiculously 1940s names Max and Sal (Brian Benben, Katherine LaNasa), and a big boss, the ridiculously malevolent Doctor.  If ever she tries to get out of the game or shirk her duties by getting a boyfriend on the side, the Doctor will send in his cool-as-ice fixer (Uma Thurman).

 Things get complicated when Maddie falls in love for real with the extremely wealthy Patrick (Stephen Bishop).

And even more complicated when her banker mark ends up murdered.


And even more complicated when Patrick turns out to have a game-changing secret of his own.

And even more well, you get the idea... when the Bumblers (Ezra, Richard, and Jules) show up in Seattle, and agree to work with Maddie and her associates to bring the Doctor down.

Gay characters:  Jules, who starts dating Patrick's "sister" Gina, even though they're both working on cons against the other.

Maddie is bisexual, I suppose, but it's never referred to.

Gay subtext:  Richard strikes me as gay but not out (Jules even refers to this or that hot guy as his new "boyfriend" or "man-crush").  He has a gay-subtext bromance with Ezra, and then switches to Maddie's associate Max.  Side note: Silver Daddy Brian Benben was last seen as a bare-butt Dad on Dream On?

Beefcake: Occasional shirts off. The cast is surprisingly top-heavy with hot guys.  For example, Samuel Patrick Chu plays a nebbish working at the bank, not part of any scams, with only a few lines.  And here's his physique.

I've only seen one season of The Imposters.  My grade: B

There are nude photos of Mark Harelik on Tales of West Hollywood.

See also: Chris Demetral

The Beefcake Desert of Seattle

I don't get Seattle.  It has rain, coffee, grunge rock, green spaces, the Space Needle, Frasier, 720,000 people, a gay neighborhood, and the University of Washington.  So why doesn't it have any beefcake?

Searching for  "Seattle swim team" reveals pictures of fully clothed swimmers from Portland.

"Seattle boys swim"? Girls in swimsuits.

"Seattle wrestling"?  The Salvation Army and a homeless shelter.

"Seattle boys' wrestling team."  A transgender wrestler from Texas.

"Seattle bodybuilding."  Female bodybuilders.

Ok, enough nonsense. "Seattle shirtless men."  Zac Efron.




What about The University of Washington?  Undergraduate enrollment 30,000.  There must be at least 1,000 athletes.

No swim team.

A search for "wrestling" reveals only a rowing team of yesteryear.  

A search for "rowing" reveals the same rowing team of yesteryear.  

A search for "weightlifting" reveals an Icelandic powerlifter with no connection to the University of Washington."

Desperation time: "University of Washington Shirtless Men.":  A bikini-clad woman trying out for cheerleading, and a Seattle Times article on the effects of minimum wage.

Oy.

There are 14 high schools in Seattle.  I tried every single one of them.

1. Ballard High.  A swim team long shot.

2. Center High.  Sioux Center, Iowa.

3. Grover Cleveland High.  Some guys who learned how to swim in New York.

4. Franklin High.  The outside of the building and two t-shirts for sale.

5. Garfield High. T-shirts for sale.

6. Nathan Hale High.  Little boys from Bainbridge.

7. Ingraham High.  University of Virginia.

8. Middle College High School.  Chaminade College Preparatory School in St.  Louis.

9. Nova High.  A profile of an undocumented Muslim transgender teen who does not go to Nova High.

10. Rainier Beach. A wrestler from Thurston County, south of Seattle.

11. Roosevelt.  A girl powerlifter.

12. Chief Sealth.  A swimmer who may or may not attend Chief Sealth.

13. South Lake High.  Halloween-themed jello wrestling with lady wrestlers, an article on "Where to Swim in Seattle."

14. West Seattle.  Searching for "West Seattle High School Wrestling" yielded two members of the West Seattle Rowing Team.  Better than nothing.

The Kensington Runestone

Every summer from kindergarten to college (when I decided to stay home), my parents dragged me on a week's camping trip somewhere up north, to Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, or Canada.  Other than the roadside beefcake, it was usually pretty dismal, with no tv, no museums, no historic sites, nothing to do but hunt, fish, swim, and mess around in boats.

But during the summer after eighth grade, we went camping in Alexandria, Minnesota, site of the Kensington Runestone.

Young Swedish immigrant Olof Ohlman discovered the 200-pound slab of sandstone covered with Medieval runes in 1898.  It tells about a group of 30 Vikings who left Vinland "on an exploration journy" in 1362, and somehow made it to Minnesota.  One day some of them went fishing, and returned to find the men they left behind "red with blood and death," probably attacked by Skraelings (Indians).

My junior high history textbook stated categorically that no Europeans made it to the New World before Columbus, so this was a startling discovery, and immediately controversial.  The academic establishment decreed the runestone to be a fake, carved by Ohlman for financial gain.

In 1907, a young historian named Hjalmar Holand bought the runestone, and spent the rest of his life trying to prove it genuine, describing how Vikings could well have made it to Minnesota in books like Westward from Vinland (1940) and A Pre-Columbian Crusade to America (1962). 

The jury is still out on whether the runestone is authentic, but Alexandria loves its claim to fame.  There's a runestone museum and gift shop, and a 28-foot statue of a Viking, Big Ole.

Today, regardless of whether they believe that the Vikings got as far as Minnesota, all historians recognize that they reached the New World before Columbus, and established a permanent settlement in L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland.

What's the gay connection?

1. The Vikings who explored Minnesota were all male.

2. Olof Ohlmann was rather cute.

3. My junior high history textbook was wrong.  The adults either didn't know about the Viking exploration of America, or they were lying about it.  What else were they hiding? Maybe the upcoming "discovery of girls" that everyone at Washington Junior HIgh was always evoking was a lie, too.

See also: The Top 12 Public Penises of Minnesota

10 Things I Hate about Pasco, Washington

My least favorite state is Texas, followed by South Carolina, and now Washington is a strong third, with Pasco my least favorite city in the annoying state.

I've never actually been there, but I'm still angry with it, for these 10 excellent reasons.

1. This is a photo of the "Chiawana Fantastic Four."  I wanted to know where Chiawana was, and why these guys were so fantastic.

The article from the Tri-City Herald in February 2017 names them as Rey, Riley, Robbie, and Tyson.  They attended different grade schools, but met in middle school, and trained together in one of their parents' garages.

Thus they called themselves the Garage Boyz.

If they were so great, surely there'd be other photos of them.  But no.

All I found was Tyson in action.













2. Onward to look for other sports.  No swimming.  Surely sometime, someone in Chiawana, who was male and aged 15 to 95, put on a swimsuit.  But if he did, no one photographed him doing it.

3. This is a picture of the track team.  But the gigantic picture on Google Images turned into a .jfif when I downloaded it, and when I converted it to a .jpg, it turned out tiny.  I found another copy elsewhere on the internet, but it was really a lot of work to go through.  That's why it's extra-large, out of spite.

4. The page views have been going down on this blog consistently since I started the small town beefcake series, from 4000 per day to about 2000 per day.   I guess no one is interested in hearing about the beefcake of small-town America.  But I've covered literally every tv series, movie, and fictional book that I have ever seen or read with the slightest gay subtext, so unless you want another post on Green Acres, there's not much left.

Besides, I like researching small towns.  It's interesting.  Why would anybody NOT want to know about Shepaug, cute guys or not?

That's not really Pasco's fault,but I came to the conclusion while researching the Pasco post.

5. When I tried to look up the city of Chiawana, I discovered that it was a high school in Pasco, Washington, named after the "Native American" word for "big river" or "father of waters."

Racist much?  There is no single Native American language.  There were hundreds of languages in several different phyla.  Trying to find out which language it was, I found a website that tried to sell me Native American jewelry before telling me about the forced removal of Native Americans from the eastern United States.

I'm guessing Yakama.  Here's a boy from the Yakama tribal high school playing basketball against Pomeroy.

6. The Chiawana High School motto is "See Blue in All You Do," with "blue" meaning "have a strong moral code."  Which sounds homophobic.  When people talk about "morality," they usually mean "being heterosexual."

7. Pasco, Washington is in the southern part of the state, near Walla Walla. It has two high schools and a college.  I could find no sights at all, except for some outdoorsy things.

8. This bridge is sort of scenic, but like everything in Washington, it started as a .jfif, so I had to convert it before posting.








9. I did find this winner of the Pasco All-County Swim Meet, but after I posted it, I discovered that he is actually from Pasco, Florida, on the other side of the country.

Who knew that there were two of the darn things?

10.  I gave up -- Washington, Florida, who cares? So I searched for  "Pasco Bodybuilders," and this popped up (originally much larger, but it had to be converted from an annoying .jfif, naturally).  It actually comes from an old photo archive from 2009.  The guy's name is Papanek.

Surely someone in Pasco, Washington or Florida, has lifted weights.

My 3 Mistakes in North Thurston Beefcake

"North Thurston Boys' Swim Team Led By Talented Coach." 

I made three mistakes in analyzing this photo.

1. I thought these guys were alumni.  They look well past high school age.  I'd guess the one on the left as mid-30s.

The article was actually from 2013.  They were all high school seniors (except for the coach). Tyler, on the right, went on to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, where he played baseball.

They grow them mature in North Thurston.  Here are two more high school swimmers who look like college graduates, from 2015.  The one on the right also participated in the shot put and javelin.

From 2016, two swimmers whose older brothers participated years ago.  Justin, on the right, is the younger brother of Tyler from Annapolis.

Cropping the photo halfway up the chest was not my idea.

Here's a swimmer from 2018 flashing a 1960s peace sign. He could pass for 18.

2. I figured that North Thurston was a town in Massachusetts, where there are lots of norths and souths in city names.

No, it's actually a school district "providing educational services for Lacey and parts of unincorporated Thurston County, Washington, including the Nisqually Tribe Reservation."

The Nisqually Tribe, numbering 588, speak a language in the Salishan family.  A tribal website said that these were Nisqually youth performing, but I think they're Maori.

3. Ok, so Lacy, Washington must be in a remote, windswept, heavily forested region.

I imagined the North Thurston swimmers growing up on farms, driving down dirt roads to get to school.

Lacey is actually only five miles from Olympia, in a county with 242,000 people. North Thurston High School is an eight-minute drive from the State Capitol.

Lacey is the home of MMA fighter Brad "Bad" Blackburn and a lot of pro football players. 

Spring 1973: My Date Must Be a Boy

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, heterosexual desire was assumed a constant, a universal of human experience.  Same-sex desire was not only never mentioned, it could not be mentioned.

It not only didn't exist, it could not be conceived of.

It wasn't just a certainty that no boy on Earth had ever longed for the touch of another boy, not once in the history of the world.

We were unable to even imagine the possibility.

Boys who obviously longed for boys?

They were looking for a buddy or a role model.

Boys who obviously didn't care for girls?

They were shy, or immature, or hadn't found the right girl yet.

Boys who were derided as "fairies" and "fags"?

Their interest in art and ballet, their inability to catch a ball, obviously represented deficient masculinity, but they desired girls as heartily as every other boy.

Desire for the same sex was simply beyond the boundaries of our imagination.

It was easier to conceive of hobbits.









But there were hints, mysteries to mull over, to contemplate like zen koans, to puzzle out like cryptograms.

Men on tv or in movies who cared for each other, fought for each other, and walked side by side into the future.

Men who didn't marry, who lived alone or with other men.

Men who hugged.

Who smiled at me, or touched me on the shoulder.

The sight of a muscular frame that filled me with inexplicable joy.

Small subtle signs.

Through the looking glass.
Take the red pill.
With a bit of a mind flip, you're into the time slip.
It's not raining upstairs.







Sometime in junior high, I read an one-page story in an Archie comic book.  Big Ethel's friends criticize her for being indiscriminate, accuse her of accepting dates with anyone, anytime, anywhere.

On the contrary, Ethel says, she has very exacting standards.
1. Her date must be a boy.
2. He must be breathing.
3. He must be a slow runner (so she can catch him as he's fleeing in terror).

It was just a throwaway joke with the punch line of "slow runner."  But I was mesmerized.  There was something -- a logical fallacy -- a paradox -- a hint.

Slowly it dawned on me: Ethel has a rule about dating only boys.

Such a rule is necessary only if there are other groups of people whom she could date.

Does she only date teenage boys, and not adult men?
Or only date boys, and not girls?

Could a girl date a girl?
Could a boy date a boy?

It's not raining upstairs.

How to Survive Gym Class

During the six years of Junior High and High School, I was in gym class every day -- that's about a thousand days.  And I still have no idea what it was for.

It was technically called "physical education, but it wasn't about how your body works, or how to stay in good physical condition.  It was about team sports.

But we never received any instruction in team sports: the various positions, how to keep score, strategies and game plans.  We were just trotted onto the field and told to divide into teams and play football (fall), basketball (winter) or baseball (spring).

The jocks who were already playing those sports liked the extra practice.  No one else did.  I have yet to meet a single non-jock who enjoyed gym class.  Some found it mind-numbingly dull; but most found it excruciating, a painful trauma that soured them on physical activity forever.

My friends and I soon discovered that getting through gym class alive required strategizing, cooperation, and a lot of luck.  Maybe that's what the class was meant to teach us.

1. How to avoid being called a "girl."

Jocks hate anything feminine; the worst possible insult is to "be a girl" or "be like a girl."

Pointing out that many girls are excellent athletes won't work.  So just turn it back on them.

 Suggest that their movements are similar to those a girl might make. They'll be so busy scrutinizing each other that they'll have no time for you.

2. How to avoid being called a "fairy."

The second worst possible insult is to "be a fairy," which in junior high meant any boy with feminine traits. So be a fairy!  Wiggle those hips, sashay out onto that field, and throw the ball with that downward limp-wrist motion.  After all that, pointing out that "You throw like a fairy" loses all of its power.

3. How to avoid a woeful ignorance of sports.

Claim expertise in a sport you'll play far in the future.  So, during football season, claim "Sure, I play football like a fairy, but wait until basketball season!"  Then, during basketball season, "Sure, I play basketball like a girl, but wait until baseball season!"

4. How to avoid being obliterated by a flying projectile

Stand far enough away so that no ball will be aimed at you, except through chance.  And if a ball does start careening toward you, run fast in the other direction.

This doesn't work with baseball, when you're supposed to actually hit the ball with your bat.

5. How to avoied being forced to play on a team.

This happened when the coach had two jocks decide who they wanted to play on their team -- your goal is not to be chosen. So your best bet is to pretend you can't tell one team from another.  If someone carrying a ball runs toward you, run fast in the other direction.  If someone hands you a ball, immediately hand it to the nearest person regardless of whether he's a shirt or a skin.

6. How to avoid being bellowed at by the coach.

Coaches like to pretend that you're a military recruits in boot camp, so they yell, bellow, humiliate, and force you to "Drop and give me twenty!"  But they are supposed to be teachers -- they have degrees in education.  They learned how to write lesson plans, lead classes, and give exams.  So remind the coach of his roots.  Ask, "Can you help me learn this move?" and "What books do you recommend on the game?"

But be careful -- he may snap "Don't get smart!  You know all about this sport, just like every other boy on Earth."






7. How to avoid the soul-destroying boredom that is sports. 

Just look around.   The beefcake will give you enough erotic fantasies to easily fill the hour.

Of course, participants in the big three sports don't dress this way on the playing field, but just wait a little while, and it will be time for the showers.  The opportunity to watch hot jocks stripping down in the locker room almost makes gym class worthwhile.

See also: What is Gym Class For?

Carl Sandburg's Two Gay References

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) was from Galesburg, 60 miles south of Rock Island, so my teachers loved him.

I didn't.

Although he does look nice naked.

It seems that every English, language arts, writing, and history teacher from third grade through college foisted Sandburg upon us.

Chicago Poems!  Cornhuskers!  Smoke and Steel!  Slabs of the Sunburned West! The People, Yes! 

He was a two-bit Walt Whitman wannabe, with none of Whitman's homoeroticism.

When Sandburg mentions a man, it's only to pair him with a woman.

A Polish boy is out with his best girl; they marry next month; to-night they are throwing you kisses.

But mostly he's desperate to tell you how much he likes women.  Over and over and over and over.

Each morning as I move through this river of young-     woman life I feel a wonder about where it is all going, so many with a peach bloom of young years on them and laughter of red lips and memories in their eyes of dances the night before and plays and walks.


This wouldn't be so bad, except that he expects his intended audience to agree.  All beauty is feminine beauty, the Eternal Feminine is everybody's goal in life.

In high school we had to read Always the Young Strangers, maybe because it mentioned Rock Island and Augustana College.  But it's not, as you might suspect, about cruising for late-night pickups.

It's about Sandburg growing up in Galesburg,with no interest in male friendship, just devotion to family, the thrill of the feminine, and heterosexual sex.

He liked to imagine heterosexual sex.  Even when it was between his mother and father:

They were a couple and their coupling was both earthy and sacramental to them. There were at times smiles exchanged between them that at the moment I didn't understand but later read as having the secret meanings of lovers who had pleasured each other last night.

Do heterosexuals usually spend a lot of time imagining their parents having sex?

But the very worst was Rootabaga Stories, American fairy tales with an Edward Lear twist that were foisted on us in 3rd grade.

The titles didn't make sense:
"The Story of Blixie Bimber and the Power of the Gold Buckskin Whincher"
"How the Hat Ashes Shovel Helped Snoo Foo"
"Only the Fire-Born Understand Blue."

And once you got past the title, you got endless hetero-romance between men and women, boys and girls, and gender-polarized inanimate objects.

Except for one weird story about two skyscrapers who decide to have a child together.  Their genders aren't specified, but since they're phallic symbols, I'm going to assume both male.  Sandburg doesn't explain how their child comes about.  Maybe they adopt.

The only gay potential anywhere in Sandburg's work is in his 4-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln.  In The War Years (1926), he writes that Lincoln's relationship with Joshua Speed had "a streak of lavender, and spots soft as May violets."

And maybe in the poem "Planked Whitefish," in which a "demon driver" named Horace Wild tells Sandburg about an experience in World War I in Ypres (site of a major battle): a Canadian soldier nailed to a wall with bayonets, his sex organs cut off and shoved into his mouth.  The sight made him a pacifist.

Not exactly a gay-positive image.

See also: Gather the Faces of Men

Once Upon a Mattress

December 12, 1972.  I'm in seventh grade at Washington Junior High.  After our usual Tuesday night dinner of tuna casserole, we gather in the living room and light up the Christmas tree-- we just set it up last night -- to watch tv.  But Maude and Hawaii Five-O are pre-empted by a musical called Once Upon a Mattress.  

A musical!  Gross!  "Can I be excused?" I ask.

"Don't be antisocial!" my father exclaims.  "Whatever you got to do, you can do it in here with the family."

I'm used to playing, reading, and doing homework in front of the tv  -- when I try to spend some time alone in my room, my father always yells at me to "Don't be antisocial!" and "Get out here with the family!"

What do they think I'm doing down there, anyway?

 But I have to get out of this stupid musical somehow!

"Um...I have to practice my violin."  I just joined the orchestra.

"Hey, if Boomer doesn't have to watch this junk, then I don't either!" my brother Ken complains.

So we get permission to hide in our  basement room.  But eventually I have to go to the bathroom, which means passing right in front of the tv set where that...ugh!...musical is playing.  I brace myself to rush through quickly, but I can't help glancing at the tv set.

It's Ken Berry from The Carol Burnett Show, who has nice muscles and a rackish smile.  He's singing "I'm in love with a girl named Fred."

Wait -- Fred is a boy's name.  Could he be...in love with a boy?

No, "Fred" is played by Carol Burnett.  But Ken goes on to explain why he loves her:


She is very strong.
She can fight.
She can wrestle.

These are the reasons that boys like boys!

I sit down to watch the last half.  It's a version of the "Princess and the Pea" fairy tale, about Queen Agrivain, who doesn't want her sissy son, Prince Dauntless, to get married, so she forces every potential bride to take impossible tests.

 But Winnifred, nicknamed Fred, is so tough and strong that she passes every test, so the wedding can take place.

(In 2005, Carol Burnett returned to the production as Queen Agrivain, with gay actor Denis O'Hare, below with his husband Hugo Redwood.)

I don't realize that,  when the original musical appeared in 1959, "clinging mothers" were assumed the cause of gay identity, so Prince Dauntless would be assumed gay.   I don't catch the sexual symbolism of the mute King who suddenly finds his voice.  And of course I have no idea  that director Ron Field is gay in real life.

But I know all about liking people who are tough and strong,  liking biceps and pecs instead of the soft curves that boys are supposed to long for.

And I know all about doing things on mattresses.

See also: Looking for Muscles on The Carol Burnett Show