Fred with Tires: The Iconic West Hollywood Photograph

This is one of the iconic photos of West Hollywood.  Nearly everyone I knew had a print in their living room or bedroom.  It was a fixture in our homes, like the family photos that heterosexuals keep on their mantles:

A buffed young man carrying tires through an auto shop, his male-model face and expensive hairstyle contrasting with his working-class surroundings, a sweaty, macho, implicitly heterosexual grease monkey emerging from his closet, transformed into an object of homoerotic desire.

He represented all of small-town joys that we left behind in the Straight World, and the much greater joys we found with our friends and lovers in our new home.

I didn't know where it came from until yesterday: it's "Fred with Tires" by fashion photographer Herb Ritts (1952-2002).

He grew up in a wealthy household in Los Angeles (his next door neighbor was Steve McQueen), and attended Bard College.  His photography career began in 1978, when he and buddy Richard Gere had car trouble on a road trip, and he began photographing the future star in front of their jalopy -- not shirtless but sultry, bulging, a canny evocation of working class machismo combined with pretty boy sensitivity.

The next year, a photo of John Voight made it to Newsweek.

Pleased with the critical reaction, Ritts began photographing other celebrities, such as Brooke Shields and Olivia Newton-John.  He specialized in female supermodels like Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford.  He published a number of books on fashion photography, and became a renowned expert in the field.

He was also a well-known commercial photographer, with work for Levis, Revlon, Brut, Chanel, Maybelline.

Although he was gay, out since college, in a committed relationship with partner Erik Hyman, his artistic emphasis was always on the feminine.  There are only a few male celebrities in his archive, and those few are rarely shirtless, displaying a sensuality but not overt eroticism.  This color photo of Justin Timberlake is an exception.

So how did we get "Fred, with Tires"?  In 1984, Herb hired a UCLA undergrad named Fred for a raincoat ad in the Italian magazine Per Lui.

 He hated the raincoats, so he had Fred pose in jeans instead.  The editor hated the photos -- too sultry, too erotic, too gay -- but ran them anyway.  And the last, taken when Fred was tired, sweaty, and little annoyed, anxious to finish up and go home -- perfectly captured the West Hollywood moment.

The original hangs in the Getty Museum, and prints became fixtures in our apartments, emblematic of home.

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. in 1984, was the free tuition for faculty.  There wasn't a lot at that I wanted to take, but the 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 a boy and a girl?  No men in Italy?

I never thought of Italy as a "good place."  The only fiction about Italian boys 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), Avanti (1972).  Pasolini was entirely heterosexist. I had never seen Ernesto (1979).

I knew about Thomas Mann's gay obsession in Death in Venice, and about Wilhelm Van Gloeden's homoerotic photographs of Sicilian youth, but they were German.

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 got a girlfriend on Rocky and Bullwinkle.

2. Michelangelo.  As portrayed by Charleton Heston in The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), he got a girlfriend.

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.  But not a word in class.

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 she turns out to be a man.

7. Ariosto.  I bought his Orlando Furioso in a Ballantine Adult Fantasy edition, but had no idea.

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

9. Dante.  Ok, he was probably heterosexual, and from the Middle Ages, but he wrote the beefcake and bonding classic, The Inferno.

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

11. Giovanni, the foreign exchange student I had a crush on at Rocky High.

The Top 12 Public Penises of East Asia

I visited Japan and Thailand many years ago, and took some classes in Mandarin Chinese, but otherwise East Asia is an undiscovered country.   I'm not even sure what sights I want to see, except for the Great Wall and the Forbidden City.

And a lot of East Asian bodybuilders wearing only towels.

I know there won't be much beefcake art on my list.  A combination of Confucian prudishness, Communist prudishness, and the decentralization of the human figure in traditional art has made public penises scarce.

But, for the intrepid, here are 12 respectable examples.

China

1. Olympic Forest Park in Beijing features some statues of naked runners, mostly women, but with some men about.

2. Also in Beijing, the monument to the Tiananmen Square Massacre contains a shirtless hunk trying to stop a tank.

3.Shanghai, the largest city in China and probably the world (14 million) is rather lacking in beefcake art, but the suburb of Suzhou features this rather well endowed individual.  I don't know what the chains are for. 

4. Jiu Lu, the biggest shopping area in Guangzhou, near Hong Kong,  has many bronze statues, but most are fully clothed.  This boy has a penis peeking out of his pants. 

5. Surprisingly, there is a Sex Museum in nearby Tongli.  Only heterosexual acts are depicted, but at least there's a few gigantic phalluses around. 

6. In Hong Kong, there's a statue of Bruce Lane, still a major star and folk hero there. He's posing shirtless.

More after the break.

Taiwan

7. On to Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, where basketball player Kobe Bryant is fighting a giant mamba snake, which is sinking its fangs into his Achilles tendon.  It's in a Basketball Art Exhibition.  I'm pretty sure basketball players don't really fight giant snakes. 

Japan

8. Japan hasn't been subjected to the twin puritanical influences of Confucianism and Communism, as evident in its many nude festivals.  But there still isn't a lot of beefcake art.  If you're lucky, you'll run across this beefy, naked jazz player in Tokyo. 

9. And a sumo wrestler.

10. Momotaro, "Peach Boy," is a popular hero of Japanese folklore, with many statues all over the country.  This one is in Inuyama, near Nagoya.  

Korea

11.  Korea is also lacking in beefcake art, but in Seoul, you can find a neoclassical statue of two semi-nude horsemen. 

12. On Jeju Island, off the southern cost, there are many dol hareubangs, phallus-shaped statues of fertility gods leftover from an earlier culture.  This one is not only phallus shaped, he has a penis of his own.

Maybe you'd be better off looking for the real thing at the Naked Man Festival of Japan.

Top 10 Public Penises of the South

Many people in the northern states of the U.S. are afraid of the South, that vast territory that extends from Washington DC, 1200 miles to Miami Beach, and west 1000 miles to Kansas City.  It's full of screaming homophobes, racists, Confederate wannabes, guys wearing overalls and feed store caps who drive pick-up trucks down dusty roads yelling "Git 'er done!"

It has all of that, but it also has top research universities, a world renowned opera company, three gay meccas (Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, Miami), some gay-friendly resorts, the best Chinese food I've ever had, and lots of beefcake.

It's hot, so guys take their shirts off a lot.

Here are the top 10 public penises of the South:

1. The capital of Missouri isn't Kansas City or St. Louis, but Boomererson City, population 40,000.  Its manageable size makes sightseeing easier.  Look for this beautiful neoclassical Mercury outside the State Capitol.

2. This African-American boy is too young to be proper beefcake, but he's certainly an unexpected find, sitting shirtless at the George Washington Carver National Monument in Diamond, Missouri, near Joplin.

3. I've been to Kentucky several times to visit my mother's kinfolk, but I didn't know that there was a 30-foot tall fiberglass replica of Michelangelo's David, penis and all, in downtown Louisville (on the corner of Main and 7th).  Of course, it has some residents in an uproar, yelling "Think of the children!"

4. Speaking of uproars, right in the heart of downtown Nashville, Tennessee, on Music Row (Division and 16th Avenue North), traffic stops as drivers gawk at Musica, a group of nine 10-foot tall naked men and women holding the Goddess of Music aloft.  They're not usually carrying guitars.

 It wasn't there when I spent a semester in Nashville; it was unveiled in 2003, the controversial work of sculptor Alan LeQuire.

5. The War Memorial Auditorium, across from the State Capitol, features this hunky slab of marble holding a sword and a goddess, his penis coyly covered.

6. Memphis, Tennessee is named after the ancient Egyptian city, so there's a  25-foot fiberglass replica of the famous statue of Ramses II on the campus of the University of Memphis (on Central Avenue).









More after the break

I stopped in Oxford, Mississippi in 1984, on my way to Hell-fer-Sartain State University.  No good public art, but a lot of cruising.

7. Birmingham is an island of (relative) sophistication in the heart of red-state Alabama.  It has an opera company, a nice used bookstore, and a very good Chinese restaurant, Mr. Chen's.  Also this 56-foot tall statue of Vulcan, the smith of the gods, to symbolize the city's iron-mine origins (in the Vulcan Park, on Red Mountain).  He's got a semi-bare chest and a bare butt.

8. If you have any particular reason to go to Lafayette, Alabama, about 20 miles from Auburn, look for this life-sized statue of boxer Joe Louis outside the Chambers County Museum.

9. The Seafarer Memorial in Mobile, Alabama

10.New Orleans, Louisiana really deserves a separate entry, but just to whet your appetite, check out these naked men in the City Park

I only made it as far as New Orleans.  The whole Southeast, is left, from Virginia to Georgia to the Carolinas to Florida.

See also: Dating a country-western star; and Ten More Public Penises of the South

The Penises of Fine Art

Heterosexuals, especially heterosexual men, have an intense fear of the penis.  They don't want to see it, they don't want to think about it.  They design costumes that hide it as much as possible, and when that's impossible, they pretend desperately not to notice it.


So frontal nudity in a tv program or movie gets it a "mature audiences only" rating, and public nudity will get you registered as a sex offender for life.











There is an exception, however, for artistic depictions, paintings, drawings, and statues.  Some blue noses still complain, but in general a depiction of a nude male is fine.

T.S. Eliot used one for the cover of one of his books.

And Maurice Sendak, for his illustration of Melville.  This guy looks like a grown-up version of Max from Where the Wild Things Are.

"The Source of Power," by German sculptor Arthur Lange, about naked men holding hands.

Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen displayed full frontal nudity in many of his statues, such as Adonis.

Even Thomas Hart Benton, the great muralist of the Jazz Age, presented an outline of a penis.

If your art is too naturalistic, so it looks like a photograph, you'd still be wise to throw in a fig leaf.

And arousal is strictly forbidden.

The Beefcake Bust of Burk's Falls

I was interested in this photo of two boys jumping off a high dive into the Magnetewan River at Burk's Falls.

Here's why.  A very scary high dive.

I figured there must be hundreds of other photos of guys jumping off that monster, a perfect beefcake opportunity (we find people more attractive in scary situations).

So I looked up Burk's Falls.

It's a village of 1,000, in a region advertised as "the Great Canadian Wilderness" although it's only 273 km north of Toronto.  A lot of vacation cottages.

Other than outdoor stuff, its major attraction is Midlothian Castle, with a 20-foot tall screaming skull atop.

Retired art teacher Peter Camani has spent 25 years building the castle and filling the grounds with hundreds of screaming head sculptures.

I assume he's gay. Why not?

 
Visitors are welcome to roam the grounds, but the castle is off limits except for one day a year, when Camani hosts an arts festival.

Burk's Falls was the setting for Running Mates (2011), n independent film about two "best mates" from childhood now running against each other for village mayor (Thomas Michael, Paolo Mancini).

I assume they're gay, too. 

I couldn't find that particular high dive -- it must be long gone -- or any photos of people swimming or diving anywhere near Burk's Falls. Except for this long shot.

Even the two nearby high schools had no photos of a swim team, or a wrestling team.  All I cold find was the track team, not in uniform, flashing signs identifying them as members of the Crips.

I highly doubt that they really belong to the Crips, an African-American gang from south central L.A. known for its drug trafficking and violence. 

But apparently the youth of the great Canadian wilderness like to pretend. 

Nothing else to do, now that the high dive is gone.

My search for Burk's Falls beefcake was a bust.  So here's a random panel from a Daffy Duck comic book.

Top 12 Public Penises of Finland

That's right, Finland, the conservative outsider of Scandinavia, somewhat isolated from the usual tourist circuit (but you can fly from London in about 3 hours), cold and cloudy, with a non-Indo-European language that's a problem for most Europeans to learn.  When I  visited in the spring of 1999 with Jaan and Yuri, I found out something very important:

On enemmän julkisia penis kuin Prahassa tai Pariisissa.
There are more public penises than in Prague or Paris.

1. Start with Helsinki, where there are about 400 monuments, statues, and works of public art.  The most famous is The Three Smiths, by Felix Nylund, a statue of three naked smiths hammering on an anvil, in Three Smiths Square in the heart of Helsinki.  It's customary  to tell people, "Meet me at the three naked guys."

2.-3. Then the statues of long-distance runners Paavo Nurmi and Lasse Viren outside the Olympic Stadium.  They didn't really run naked.

4. Drop by the Central Railroad Station to see two muscular guys holding lamps.

5. This statue is called Haaksirikkoiset, "Shipwreck," by Robert Stigell.  It's facing east, toward Russia, so it's often interpreted in patriotic terms as the Finnish people overcoming adversity.

6. After that, you can just wander around.  There are nude men on every corner.  Like this monument to the Battle of Pellinki, by Gunnar Finne.

More after the break