The Bisexual Fairy Godfather of the Summer of 1984

Between 1982 and 1984, I was studying for my M.A. in English at Indiana University.  I did not do well.  I couldn't focus on any one topic, or any one department -- I rushed around in the 3,000+ courses taught every semester, grabbing onto things like Mandarin Chinese and Russian Folklore, and ignoring my actual English classes

Besides, who had time to study?  I had just discovered bar pickups.  My friend Viju and I were out at Bullwinkel's, or a a gay bar in Indianapolis, two or three times a week, and we never came home alone.

Sometimes I brought a guy home, had sex with him, then went back to the bar to pick up someone else.

Meanwhile my classes faltered, and I squeaked by with B's and an occasional C+. But who cared?   I was going to become a book editor, not a literature scholar.

In the spring of 1984, I sent out resumes:130 publishing companies, 48 newspapers,  34 television stations, and 16 translation agencies.   No openings, no openings, no openings, no openings.

Classes ended. I received my M.A..  No job. I spent ten days visiting India with Viju, then a week in Rock Island, then returned to Bloomington.

I couldn't afford our apartment any more, so I got a room in Eigenmann Hall, and went back to my old job in the snack bar.

It was fun when I was a student.  But as my life's work?.  I imagined myself at age 50, still living in that coffin-sized room with the bathroom down the hall, still selling burgers and fries to undergrads.

All of my friends had graduated and moved away.  And any new friends I made would graduate and move away, again and again, an every-changing blur of faces and cocks for the rest of my life.

That summer was an endless cold, dark night.

The lunatic in the White House (not as bad as the Orange Goblin, but still a lunatic) almost ended the world by "joking" that the U.S. had launched nuclear missiles at the Soviet Union.

The AIDS crisis was making national news for the first time, and dubbed "a gay disease."  Fundamentalist churches latched onto it to decry the "clinically insane, disease-ridden homosexuals" coming for your children.

All four of the factories in Rock Island closed, doubling the unemployment rate.  My father and brother were both laid off.  I couldn't even fall back on a factory job.

The movies I saw (by myself) are now hailed as classics, but I found them depressing: Ghostbusters, Gremlins, The Karate Kid, The Neverending Story, Revenge of the Nerds, Bachelor Party, Conan the Destroyer

Laura Branigan's "Self Control" was playing on the radio:

I live among the creatures of the night.

I haven't got the will to try and fight.

I must believe in something, so I guess I'll just believe that this night will never go.


Then came my fairy godfather, aka Ben, who worked in the bank downtown.  He was my teller when I withdrew some money (this was before ATMs), and two nights later I saw him at Bullwinkle's.

About ten years older than me, a chunky redhead with a long face, a smooth chest, and no biceps to speak of.  Not at all my type.

And bisexual -- he mentioned watching Family Ties, not for the hot teen idol Michael J. Fox, but for Meredith Baxter Birney, who played his mother!

I couldn't help imagining Ben screwing the lady.  His butt bouncing up and down, squeezing her breasts, kissing her.  Gross!  Complete turn-off.

But I was depressed, and I would have gone home with Boy George just to avoid going back to my coffin-sized room in Eigenmann Hall.

Ben had a house in Unionville, about 10 miles of dark, scary country roads from campus. An old-fashioned wood-and-plaster living room, a four-poster bed with black sheets, a drawer-ful of porn magazines, both gay and straight.  Very cold for July.

[Sex scene is censored]

Afterwards, it was too early to sleep, and I didn't want leave, so we sat up and turned on Saturday Night Live. I told Ben about my master's degree, my dismal job prospects, and my future at the Eigenmann Hall snack bar.  He said that he was working on a Ph.D. in sociology --- very slowly.  This was his seventh year in the program, and he wasn't nearly ready to start his dissertation.  The job at the bank took up most of his time.  But he still planned to finish, and get a job as a college professor.

"I love being in front of a class -- it's an amazing rush.  Hey, why don't you go to work at a college?  They always need teachers."

"Yuck!" I exclaimed.  "I taught during my first year.  Ssurly students who didn't read their assignments, didn't know even the basics about...well, anything, and made homophobic comments."

"It beats making hamburgers, I bet.  Besides, just think of the beefcake!"

"But it's July.  Won't they have all the teachers they need for the fall?"

"Let's find out."  Ben walked naked into the next room and came back with The Chronicle of Higher Education.  5 English teaching jobs available in the fall that required just a M.A.

A month later, I was heading for Hell-fer-Sartain, Texas, an English instructor. It would be horrible, but later, I would teach as an adjunct, then get my Ph.D. (not in English), and spend the next twenty years standing in the front of classrooms.

It definitely beats making hamburgers

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

Grown-Ish: Black-ish Goes to College, and Meets Bisexuals

The sitcom Grown-ish (2018-) a spinoff of Black-ish, sends Zoe (Yara Shahidi) off to the mostly black-ish Cal University (shades of A Different World), where she makes an ethnically diverse group of friends, or as she calls them, "six losers who I normally never would have even spoke to."

1. The "woke" Aaron Jackson (Trevor Jackson)

2. The bisexual Jewish Nomi.

3. The Gujarati drug-dealing hunk-ish Vivek (Jordan Buhat)

4. The femme-ish stoner Luca (Luka Sabbat).

5-6. Sky and Jazz, twin track stars.


Zoe also bonds with her roommate, a conservative-ish Republican Catholic (but not homophobic) who feels harassed on the liberal campus and wants a "safe space" like the gays get.

There are plenty of other hunks around, like Diggy Simmons as Jazz's boyfriend.

And Deon Cole (left) as a business-ish professor of drones.

Episodes involve the standard classes, career aspirations, and romantic entanglements of the main characters, and of course especially Zoey, who juggles several guys before finally trying to decide between Aaron and Luca.

No gay characters, but an interesting story arc deals with biphobia, Nomi is with a female date when Big Dave (Barrett Carnahan) approaches to act flirt-ish with her.  She rebuffs him, but tells her date that she is bisexual, whereupon the woman becomes angry-ish, says she is not interested in being an "experiment," and tells her to call when she is over her "bisexual phase."

Nomi points out that it's not a phase, but the date still storms off in anger.

Cut to the righteous indignation. Nomi and her friends decide to hang out with Big Dave after all.

He states it's no big deal.  He's fooled around with guys, but that doesn't make him gay, right?

Um..double-takes.  Shock.

"I'm bi," he concludes.  Shock.  Everyone is uncomfortable-ish.  Even Nomi.

They get that bisexuality is not a phase -- with women.  But bisexual men?  Aren't they just fooling themselves?  Aren't they really just...gay?

Nomi starts to date him anyway, but by the next episode they've broken up.  She couldn't take it.  "I can't help feel it's different for guys and girls."

Even bisexuals can be biphobic-ish.

The Top 10 Hunks of "Madam Secretary"

I'm not much for political dramas.  You can get more than enough politics by watching the news.   But Madam Secretary (2014-2018), starring Tea Leoni as Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord, also had drama of the who's-dating-who sort, with lots of powerful men taking their clothes off.

Warning: These are powerful men.  That generally means that, although they were on the Harvard rowing team 30 years ago, they haven't been to a gym lately.

1. Tim Daly as Henry McCord, Elizabeth's husband, a theologian who teaches military ethics.

2. Nadine Tolliver,  her Chief of Staff, dates Glenn (John Pankow, left), head of NASA, and political consultant Mike Barnow (Kevin Rahm), who jeopardized his political career by getting divorced.

3. Sebastian Arcelus (left) as Jay Whitman, Elizabeth's new Chief of Staff.  He's married.

4. Zeljko Ivanek as Russell Jackson, White House Chief of Staff (it's Chiefs of Staff all the way down).  He has a wife and an ex-wife.

5. Press Coordinator Daisy Grant dates speechwriter Matt Mahoney (Geoffrey Arend).












6. Then Kevin (Justin Baldoni), who turns out to be working undercover for the CIA.

5. Stevie, Elizabeth's daughter, dated Arthur Gilroy (Josh Hamilton).

6.  And got engaged to Jareth Glover (Christopher O'Shea).

7. She also is having an affair with Harrison (Jason Ralph).the President's son,

8. Plus she is dating undercover agent Dmitri Petrov (Chris Petrovski).

9. Evan Roe as Jason, Elizabeth's teenage son, who has a long-term girlfriend.

10. The only LGBT person in the cast is Blake (Erich Bergen), Elizabeth's secretary.  He is bisexual, which apparently means "fruity but talks about liking women."

And only dates women.

Insatiable Homophobia on "Insatiable"

I thought the Netflix series Insatiable (2018), starring former Disney teen Debbie Ryan, was a porno about a girl with an insatiable sexual appetite.  Turns out she has an insatiable appetite for revenge.

It has gotten considerable criticism for demeaning the overweight. I didn't care about that so much -- fatophobia is endemic in gay communities -- but I wanted to see if there were gay characters.

I didn't realize that it was set in the South, or I wouldn't have bothered.

Shows set in the South are always time warps to the 1950s.  Even if they talk about cell phones and streaming videos, they dress, look, and act like it's a hot July day in 1956, and William Holden has just come to town on a Greyhound bus and ordered peach pie from Carol Jean at the Hidey Ho Cafe before heading out to the 4th of July picnic.

For the less literary, imagine Thela and Iola planning how to seize control of the Church Lady League on Mama's Family.

(Side note: who sits at the dinner table with their chair pulled out and their legs spread?  Unless their director said "Make sure your bulge is visible."}

So you know it's going to time-warp 1950s homophobia, and pretend that that's what life is like for gay people now.






In Insatiable,  Patty Bladell, a high school girl bullied and harassed for her weight, goes on a crash diet and loses like 70 pounds  Then, with the help of Bob Armstrong (Dallas Roberts) , a civil rights lawyer and former beauty pageant coach, she enters beauty contests:

Miss Bareback Buckaroo - I guess there was no one gay around to tell them what bareback means;

Miss Magic Jesus -- um, that's the term nonbelievers use to make fun of Christianity, and this is a Bible Belt fundamentalist community, except for all of them being Catholic (TV Trope #101: All Christianity is Catholic).

Patty  also manages to seduce her crush, Brick (Michael Provost, top photo), who happens to be Bob's son.

There are also other soap opera things going on, lots of people suspected of infidelity, scheming to break each other up, finding sex tapes, getting pregnant, with jokes about rape, pedophilia, and other unsavory topics, but I fast-forwarded through all that to get to the gay stuff.

Bob wears pinks and purples, and flutters and sashays and talks about fashion with that studied flamboyance of a straight actor going for a gay vibe, so it comes as no surprise when his best enemy, Bob Barnard (Christopher Gorham), seduces him. 

 Bob #1 is horrified, disgusted, confused, and so on, and so on, all the things that happened when you were struggling to come out 50 years ago.   Plus he is still in love with his wife, Coralee (Alyssa Milano).  Bob #2 explains that he is in love with his wife, too, but they can be together on the downlow.

So they're bisexual, right?  No --  they're gay, Bob #2 explains.  They're drawn to men emotionally and romantically, although they happen to be sexually attracted to women: "They're like soft pillows filled with marshmallows."

Um...I'm pretty sure women don't feel like that.

And I'm pretty sure that gay men aren't interested in sex with marshmallow-filled pillows.

When Bob #1 is outed, the whole town rejects him in homophobic contempt.  Especially Coralee: "Our whole relationship was a lie!  Don't ever talk to me again!"  His son Brick says "It's not the gay thing.  Be whatever you want.  It's the lying."

Yeah, right.  It's the gay thing.

They both get divorced and move in together.  I hear that they eventually bring in a lady so they can enjoy emotional intimacy with each other while fondling her pillows, but I didn't see the episode.   I was busy checking the premiere date.

August 10, 1956, right?

This is a remarkably homophobic show.

See also: Southern Baptist Sissies

The Gay Rat Pack

Between 1960 and 1965, when all-American beefcake was giving way to suave, sophisticated, and cool, The Rat Pack ruled Las Vegas.  They were five actors and singers, performing regularly at casinos like the Sands.  They were famous for living the Cool Life, drinking, gambling, sporting, chasing dames, and having fun. They were famous for their connections to the mob and the Kennedys.  But mostly they were famous for being friends. When one appeared, he was asked about the others.  Their spats and reconciliations made front page news.

The homoerotic subtext of the Rat Pack bond is obvious -- today, anyhow.  They were all about male bonding, with the intensity and physicality of romance.  And audiences cheered them for it.

Some of them were bisexual in real life.  Others were homophobic -- even more than what one expects in the homophobic 1960s.  In order, from least to most gay-friendly, they were:





5. Frank Sinatra, age 45 in 1960 (top photo), The Chairman of the Board, a teen sensation of the 1940s, still releasing old standbys and finding a whole new generation of fans. Although he starred in the gay symbolism-heavy On the Town, he also starred in one of the more homophobic movies of the 1960s, The Detective (1968), and was reputedly so homophobic in real life that he threatened reputedly-gay Johnny Mathis.

4.Joey Bishop, 42-year old comedian, sitcom star, later talk show host. Married during the days of the Rat Pack womanizing, kept to himself a lot.  Bff of future talk show host Regis Philbin.

3. Dean Martin (left), age 43, whose comedy act with Jerry Lewis in the 1950s had distinctive, perhaps intended homoerotic undertones.  In the 1960s he released some popular songs, had a comedy-variety show and starred in the detective-spoof Matt Helm series. His son, Dean Paul Martin, was bisexual.

2. Peter Lawford, 37 year old former child actor, later a tv star (he was on The Doris Day Show).  Everyone thought he was gay; Louis B. Mayer went as far as to order testosterone injections as a "cure." Got married to Pat Kennedy, the future President's sister, over the objections of her father -- he didn't want his daughter married to a gay guy. Reputedly had relationships with Tarzan Gordon Scott, Rock Hudson, and Merv Griffith.

1. Sammy Davis Jr., age 35, "Mr. Show Business," dancer, singer, actor.  Converted to Judaism.  Kissed Archie Bunker on a famous episode of All in the Family.  Bisexual, tended toward men, preferred clean-cut all-American types.  Closeted to the other Brat Packers (except maybe Peter Lawford), but opened up to teen idol Paul Anka, whom he thought was gay (everyone did at the time).  Mentioned being bisexual in print as early as 1978. Died in 1990.

See also: Dean Paul Martin

Walk, Don't Run: Cary Grant's Last Gay Pickup

Walk, Don't Run (1966) is set during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, where there is a severe shortage of hotel rooms.  Important businessman Sir William Rutland (bisexual actor Cary Grant) arrives with nothing available, so he answers a "roommate wanted" ad.  The only problem: the apartment is owned by a woman, Christine Easton (Samantha Eggar).

He assures her that he has no amorous intentions -- he has a wife back in England -- but then he spends the next day bragging about the "beautiful woman" he's living with, hoping that someone gets the wrong idea.

Having demonstrated that he is heterosexual, sort of, Rutland goes cruising.  He spies American architect and Olympic competitor Steve Davis (Jim Hutton), and rather obviously tries to pick him up.  After some seductive conversations, he drags Steve into a bathhouse, apparently hoping for a glimpse of his goods.  The American complains about women scrubbing his body -- women, gross!  -- before jumping nude into the bath.

Thus softened up, Steve agrees to share Rutland's room.  Christine is not happy with the idea of two men living in her apartment, but they assure her that they have no amorous intentions -- toward her, anyway.

Then, Rutland begins matchmaking, cleverly deflecting his attraction to Steve onto Christine.  At first Steve will have none of it -- he's not interested in women, thank you very much -- he prefers his hot boyfriend, Russian athlete Yuri Andreyovitch (Ted Hartley).

But a visa malfunction requires Christine to marry right away, so Steve acts the Good Samaritan.  And the marriage sticks.

His job done, Rutland heads home.  Just in case you thought he might really be gay, the cab driver suggests that he take a fertility god with him -- he and his wife have four children, but there's always room for more!

You'll find fewer obvious examples of overt same-sex desire deflected onto the feminine.  Aside from a few obligatory "My wife back home" statements, Cary Grant plays Rutland as gay.  And except for his deus-ex-machina falling in love, Jim Hutton does likewise.

This was Cary Grant's last movie role, though he continued to perform on stage (seen her in the 1930s with long-term partner Randolph Scott).  He remained active in the Hollywood community until his death in 1986.

Born in 1938, Jim Hutton had a "golly-gee" openness that was good for light romantic comedies, and he made a dozen of them in the 1960s: Where the Boys Are, Bachelor in Paradise, You're Only Young Once, Looking for Love, Sunday in New York, Who's Minding the Mint?  He died in 1979.

His son, Timothy Hutton (born 1960), was a Brat Pack hanger-on who played in a number of memorable buddy-bonding dramas, such as Taps (1981) and The Falcon and the Snowman (1986).

The Top 10 Hunks of "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend"

The second and third seasons of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend are up on Netflix, continuing the saga of Rebecca Bunch (Rachel Bloom), who runs into her grade-school crush Josh Chan (Vincent Rodriguez III) one day on the street, and drops everything to move to West Covina and stalk him.

It turns out that Rebecca really is crazy; she has Borderline Personality Disorder, characterized by extreme mood swings, impulsivity, obsessions, and relationship problems.  She moves too fast and overreacts violently to rejection or just "let's slow down."  People who suffer from BPD in real life have praised the show for its realistic portrayal, finally "getting mental illness right."

In addition to Rebecca's ongoing pursuit of Josh Chan and other guys whom she believes will make her life perfect, the palette of the show expands to include subplots.  Josh and his posse don't have perfect lives, after all.  Nearly everyone is involved in a toxic parent-child relationship.

It's one of the most diverse casts I've ever seen, and one of the most beefcake-heavy.

1. Josh (above) is riddled with insecurities, indecisive, and rather dimwitted (not quite Joey Tribbiani, but close).  He still lives with his mother, in spite of her entreaties for  him to move out.

2. He works for an over-accommodating boss (Johnny Ray Meeks and seeks advice from an over-accommodating priest (Rene Gube, left).

3. White Josh (David Hull), who is gay, has a major inferiority complex.  He can't understand why someone as great as David Whitefeather (Pete Gardner) would be interested in him (um...have you looked in a mirror lately?).


By the way, Vincent Rodriguez III is gay in real life, and David Hull is straight.

3. Hector (Erick Lopez) has an unhealthy dependency on his mother.  He's dating Heather (Vella Lovell), a perpetual college student, taking every class, sometimes twice, afraid to graduate and move to the next stage of her life.




















4. Greg (Santino Fontana) dates Rebecca for awhile, then realizes that he's an alcoholic, and goes away to get help.

5. Nathan Plimpton (Scott Michael Foster), Rebecca's boss after Darryl sells the company, is an amoral schemer constantly trying to win his dad's love.

More after the break

Pasolini's Canterbury Tales: Gay Characters and Nudity

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 class in the summer of 1981, 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, whom the Internet Movie Database identifies as a 61-year old American actor.  Must be someebody else -- that guy is around 30.

Pasolini includes adaptions of 8 stories:

1. The Merchant's Tale: An old man gets a young wife, who is unfaithful, 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 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), channeling Charlie Chaplin, invades a wedding, hangs out with the guys, and has a three-way relationship with a man and his wife.

4.The Miller's Tale: A woman finds a way to meet her boyfriend without her husband finding out.  Meanwhile another suitor hangs around with his shirtless, buffed boyfriend (left).

5. A new tale, based on the Wife of Bath: A woman marries her fifth husband, but gets mad when he won't have sex with her.

6. The Reeve's Tale : Two students, who appear to be lovers, visit a miller, and have sex with his wife and daughter without him finding out.

7.The Pardoner's Tale: Three friends (including Robin Askwith, left, the star of many British sex comedies) visit a brothel, and then kill each other over a treasure.

8. The Summoner's Tale: A greedy friar goes to hell.

Notice that there's a lot more same-sex romance than in The Arabian Nights, and for that matter the original Canterbury Tales, although most men have sex with women too.   The result is more gay-positive and not nearly as morose as the rest of the Trilogy of Life

The Bisexual M&M

I really dislike advertising mascots who belong to the group that is being eaten.  There's something grotesque and ghoulish about sentient beings proclaiming how good they taste after being killed and cooked.

The scariest of the bunch are the M&Ms, sentient, three-foot tall versions of the candy, three male (red, yellow, blue), two female (green, brown).

They are eager to participate in human society.  But every time they make friends, get jobs, get invited to parties, or in this case, go on a date with William Levy (top photo), they discover that their human "friends" actually want to eat them.

The M&Ms follow stereotypic gender roles, with females distinguished from males by their eyelashes and lipstick.  And there are occasional homophobic jokes, as in this commercial when the Orange M&M (Eric Kirchberger) discovers that a pretzel person will be going inside him.

But there has been at least one M&M commercial with a bisexual text.  The Brown M&M (Vanessa Williams) is at a party, when her friend warns that she should stay away from the cruising Kristen: "She'll devour you!"

The savvy Brown M&M hooks Kristen up with the Red M&M (Billy West), who is shown being dragged off to what he hopes is a night of sex.

So the Brown M&M is into both men and women.  So is Kristen.  Or maybe she just has a fetish for pieces of sentient candy.

I don't know if Rob Pruitt, who plays the Blue M&M, is the same Rob Pruitt as the artist, but the artist (the naked one with the panda on his penis) is gay.

See also: Scary, Heterosexist Ads of the 1960s.