Roadside Beefcake

Every year during Dad's vacation, we spent a week in a cabin on a lake somewhere in the northwoods, usually Minnesota, occasionally Wisconsin or Michigan, once Manitoba.  It was awful -- no tv, no movies, no museums or art galleries, just a lot of swimming, boating, and fishing (though once we visited Alexandria, Minnesota, site of the Kensington Runestone).  I might as well have stayed in the cub scouts.

But if you knew where to look, you could find beefcake anywhere, and not just in the shirtless man-mountains wandering the country roads, who could sometimes be persuaded to flex for you.












Many of the small towns we passed featured statues honoring local Native Americans, like Big Chief Germain in St. Germain, Wisconsin. There actually wasn't such a person; the bulging biceps came from the sculptor's imagination.

The descendants of Scandinavian immigrants have erected many statues that celebrate their Viking heritage (or to promote the theory that Vikings explored the region during the 13th century).  This one in Gimli, Manitoba, near Winnipeg, was constructed by George Barone in 1967. At the time I thought the Viking was bare-chested, but maybe he's just really, really muscular.

State and provincial capitol buildings were always good for beefcake based on Greek or Roman mythology.  When I was a kid, the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul was capped with this statue, "The Progress of the State," by Daniel Chester French and Edward Clark Potter.  The muscleman represents prosperity.  In 1995 it was moved to the southern entrance.

But the Holy Grail of Roadside Beefcake was the Golden Boy (real name: Eternal Youth), sculpted by Georges Gardet and perched atop the Manitoba Legislative Building in Winnipeg: amazingly muscular, golden, and naked.

I couldn't get close enough to see him this clearly, but as a symbol of Manitoba, his image adorned decorative plates, spoons, key chains, pin-backs, postcards, and toys.  When I spent my allowance on a few, Mom and Dad seemed happy that I was taking such an interest in my Canadian heritage.

See: The Biggest Beefcake Draw of Winnipeg

The Skinny Swimmers of Satsuma

Satsuma, Alabama, population 6,100, is a well-to-do suburb of Mobile, with little crime, a median household income nearly twice that of the state as a whole, and, like most well-to-do suburbs, not much to do.  You have to drive town to Mobile for the Museum of Art or the gay bars.

But Satsuma is a relatively healthy place to eat, for a state that invented biscuits and gravy.   The local grocery store, Rouse's, offers "handmade sushi."  There's a Burger King, a McDonald's, and a Godfathers Pizza, but also a Fresh Seafood and a Rock and Roll Sushi (sushi is apparently big).

Maybe for that reason, Satsuma has lower rates of obesity, diabetes, and cancer than almost every city in Alabama.














Or maybe it's from the town's namesake,  the Satsuma orange, the size of a tangerine but with thicker skin and no seeds.  The first trees were imported in 1878 as a gift from Emperor Meiji of Japan.   Most of them died during frosts in 1934 and 1940, ending national distribution, but you can still get them in the region during "Satsuma Season," from Halloween to Christmas.

Regardless, the result is obvious.  Take a look at the Satsuma High School Swim Team (top photo).  Notice anything?

The rest of the post is on Small Town Beefcake

Jesse Bradford

Born in 1979, Jesse Bradford made his acting debut at the age of 8 months, in a Q-Tips commercial (it was a non-speaking role).  He was busy as a child, playing the son of a screenwriter with lung cancer in The Boys (1991) and brother of a psychotic gay kid (Harley Cross) in The Boy Who Cried Bitch (1991).

But he first made an impression on gay teens with Far from Home: The Adventures of Yellow Dog (1995), where his Angus is lost in the Canadian wilderness with a dog named Yellow, fights for survival, and takes his shirt off, revealing a hard, firm but not muscular chest.

Unfortunately, his teenage projects involved a lot of girls.  In Hackers (1995), teenage computer whizzes Joey (Jesse) and The Girl try to save the world from a dangerous computer virus, and in Clockstoppers (2002), Zack (Jesse) and The Girl find a device that allows them to move super-fast, in effect stopping time.

But his darkly handsome teen idol face was sure to elicit swoons from gay and straight teens, and he became more muscular every year.

The thriller Swimfan (2002) is about a psychotic girl who stalks Ben (Jesse), a high school swimmer.  Though he is heterosexual, the disdain he feels as the girl becomes more and more insistent in her desire to be with him can be read as a gay subtext.  And  fans got to see Jesse in a revealing swimsuit.

Some buddy bonding: his character likes Romeo (Leonardo DiCaprio) in Romeo+Juliet (1996), and bonds with the gay male cheerleader Wes (Huntley Ritter) in Bring it On (2000).  In Flags of Our Fathers (2006), his Rene Gagnon storms the beach at Iwo Jima while mooning over Doc Bradley (Ryan Philippe).

After playing a gay hustler in Speedway Junky (1999), with Jonathan Taylor Thomas as his bisexual colleague, Jesse turned down a gay role in The Rule of Attraction (2002), fearing that he would be typecast.

But he played gay again in The Heights (2005), a young actor whom the engaged Jonathan (James Marsden) meets, falls for, and kisses.

Jesse's most recent roles have involved young adult heterosexuals negotiating relationships: a driven young attorney in Outlaw (2010),  a guy in love with a single mom in Other People's Kids (2011), a single dad in Guys with Kids (2012).  But he remains a gay ally.

The Van Patten Brothers

Speaking of show biz dynasties, Dick Van Patten's three sons and his younger brother all began appearing on screen at the same time in the late 1970s and early 1980s, producing a quadruple-threat of sandy-haired hunks.

Jimmy Van Patten, born in 1956, played a surfer in the beefcake-heavy Lifeguard (1976), and had guest spots on Gunsmoke, Three for the Road with his brother Vince, Happy Days, and Eight is Enough with his Dad.

Here he is displaying his assets in Roller Boogie (1979), standing next to androgynous romantic lead, Jim Bray.

 Jimmy also starred in the buddy-bonding Lunch Wagon (1981) with his brother Nels, and the actioner High Powder (1982) with Dick, Tim, Nels, and Ralph Macchio. Today he is a writer, director, and producer.

Vince Van Patten, born in 1957, began acting as a kid in 1970, and starred in the warm family comedy Apple's Way (1974-75), Three for the Road (1975) with up-and-coming teen idol Leif Garrett, and Rock and Roll High School (1979).

He hung out in his underwear in the homoerotic horror movie Hell Night (1981), and posed for Playgirl before becoming a professional tennis player and a semi-pro poker player. More recently, he produced and starred in The Break (1995), about a washed-up tennis pro who coaches a rookie (Ben Jorgensen).

Eldest brother Nels (born in 1955) starred mostly in his brothers' vehicles, but he can also be seen in Summer School (1987) with Mark Harmon and Grotesque (1988) with Tab Hunter.  And he appears as Farrah Fawcett's tennis instructor in the reality series Chasing Farrah (2005).

The youngest of the group, Tim Van Patten (born in 1959) is Dick's younger brother, so technically the uncle to Jimmy, Vince, and Nels.  He starred as a high school basketball player named Salami in The White Shadow (1978-81) and the actioner High Powder (1982). More recently he's had roles on St. Elsewhere and True Blue, and he's directed episodes of Sex and the City, The Sopranos, and Boardwalk Empire.

See also: Timothy Van Patten, Tony Danza, and Robert Wagner on a Cold Winter Night; Duke Van Patten

Fall 1982: Prince Charles is Gay, And Other Things I Learned in College

In the fall of 1982,  I moved to Indiana University to work on my M.A. in English.  One night -- Saturday, September 25th, to be exact -- I bolstered my courage enough to walk the mile or so into downtown Bloomington and go into adult bookstore.  The clerk, an obese man in a dirty t-shirt, was watching Love Boat on a small black-and-white tv set.  I asked "Do you have anything gay?" and without looking up he jerked his thumb toward a rack near the bathroom.  It contained straight softcore porn like Playboy and Penthouse, but also the gay news magazines The Advocate, Christopher Street, and In Touch -- plus, on a bottom shelf, the directory, The Gayellow Pages.

I bought them all, along with a Playboy for cover, and rushed back to my dorm room, and read them all that night.  One of the articles listed 10 reasons why Prince Charles was...you know. (They didn't say "gay" for fear of a lawsuit): he was musical and artistic, enjoyed the theater, and often wore the color pink.   He was a hunk, with a tight, muscular physique.  And more importantly, he was never seen with women, but often seen with attractive men, some of whom worked as his "butlers" or "valets," where they had intimate access to his bedchamber.

But: Prince Charles' fairytale wedding to Lady Diana Spencer last year, in July 1981, was a major event, televised worldwide.  Their romance was the subject of two tv movies, both coincidentally airing a few days ago: Charles and Diana: A Royal Love Story on September 17th, and The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana on September 20th.   He had a son, Prince William, born July 1982.  (Prince Harry, bottom photo) would be born in 1984). How could he be gay?

 But he was well over 30 when he married, the article stated, and he picked Diana seemingly at random.  His mother, Queen Elizabeth, no doubt pressured him into it.  It was a screen.

At the time, I thought that gay people were physically, emotionally, and spiritually unable to engage in heterosexual relations, even as a screen, so I was astonished.

Thirty years later, Prince Charles is still the subject of gay rumors.  They may or may not be true.  But he was essential to my first realization that the gay world was more vast and complex than anything I had ever imagined.

See also: My First Visit to an Adult Bookstore

Duke Kahanamoku: A Life Devoted to Surfing and Men

Born in 1890, Duke Kahanamoku was "the fastest swimmer alive," who popularized the sport of surfing, and to a great extent popularized Hawaii.  He won gold medals for swimming at the Olympics in 1912 and 1920, and a silver in 1924 (Johnny Weissmuller won the gold).

In 1925, he won even more international fame when he rescued eight drowning men from a sinking ship off Newport Beach, California, using only his surfboard.

He divided his time between Honolulu and Hollywood, where he appeared in 14 movies, playing a lifeguard, an Indian chief, an Arab, a pirate, and a "devil-ape," most notably as a Pacific Island chief in Mister Roberts (1955).  Later in life he appeared in the surfing documentaries Free and Easy (1967) and Surfari (1967).  He died in 1968.

He married Nadine Alexander rather late in life, at age 50. Although they apparently enjoyed ballroom dancing together, he spent most of his time with men, and surrounded himself with both Hollywood hunks and Speedo-clad beach boys.

He knew all of the athletes and beefcake stars of the day, including Buster Crabbe (top center), Wallace Beery, and Tyrone Power.  He was a particularly close friend of fellow Olympian and 1930s Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller (left, the one with the bulge).

The punk group The Queers has a song about him:

It ain't the waves you catch
It ain't the drugs you do
You'll never be as cool as Duke Kahanamoku

More conventionally, he has been honored with a statue in Waikiki (where the Oahu Gay Surfing Club meets) and a postage stamp.

See also: Jack London and the Gay Surfers.

Gather the Faces of Men: Homophobia in American Literature Class

When I was a junior in college, I took courses in "The Modern British Novel", "The American Renaissance," and  "Modern American Literature," plus German, French, and Spanish Literature.  And I forever afterwards restricted my literature consumption to the pre-modern (I should have known from my freshman-year class in Fiction Writing).  The professor of the Amer Lit class chose the texts that most jubilantly proclaimed the absence of gay people from the world.

1. John Updike, "A and P." A teenage boy is working in small-town supermarket: “In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits.” He goes on to describe their bodies in detail. Why do men never walk in with their shirts off?

2. Alan Dugan, "Tribute to Kafka for Someone Taken." He is at a party, when the police arrive. “I take one last drink,” he writes, “A last puff on a cigarette, a last kiss at a girl. . . .”   Why is there never a last kiss at a boy?

3. Carl Sandburg, "Stars, Songs, Faces": "Gather the faces of women" through our lives, and then, as we prepare to die, “Loosen your hands, let go and say goodbye.” Why are men's faces not worth gathering, or letting go?

Was there no glimpse of same-sex desire or love in these authors?

Not much. Carl Sandburg  evokes "the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of youth, half-naked, sweating," but his world is overwhelmingly that of “slender supple girls with shapely legs."

Men are described only in their connection to women: the Shovel-Man, who dreamed of by “a dark-eyed woman in the old country,” or Jack, who “married a tough woman and they had eight children,” or a Polish boy, “out with his best girl” on a Saturday night. Men only and always long for women.

John Updike writes endlessly about men noticing women, kissing women, and marrying women.   “We are all Solomons lusting for Sheba’s salvation,” says the narrator of “Lifeguard.”

There is a drag queen in "A Bar in Charlotte Amelie," but he is a lonely, pathetic creature, and he never expresses any same-sex interest.

In Updike's magnum opus about alienated suburban heterosexuals, Rabbit Run (1960),  Rabbit (played by James Caan in the movie version) wonders why his friend Tothero likes to watch him undress.  Could he be queer?  He wonders in horror.  No -- it's a nostalgic pleasure, a memory of all the times he used to watch boys undress in the locker room when he was young.

Um...so that means Tothero isn't gay?

Alan Dugan was “the poet of masturbation,” endlessly describing his straight desires and exploits, with no mention of men except for barroom cronies.

His “Night Song for a Boy” is not about a boy, but about his depression over his failure to get enough women.

In old age, Dugan has a homoerotic dream about a dead friend, but in perhaps the most homophobic line in any poem since Catullus, he is horrified at the thought that his dream self might be “an impotent homosexual necrophiliac,” and longs for the “right” sort of dreams, dreams about women, again.

Every selection on the syllabus of that long-ago class came from an author who obsessed over heterosexual passion and erased nearly every trace of same-sex love from the world.  Their descriptions of men are bare and lifeless, as if too trivial to mention amid the endless paragraphs devoted to girls’ legs.

There were gay writers in mid-20th century America to choose from: Truman Capote, John Cheever, Robert Duncan, Thom Gunn, Allen Ginsburg, Amiri Baraka, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal. But I never heard of any of them in Modern American Literature class.

See also: Carl Sandburg's Two Gay References

Smalltown Boy: Subtext Songs of the 1980s

After the demise of the drag-queen ABBA and the faux-gay Village People, I started listening to popular music more aggressively, looking for "real" gay-friendly songs. Or at least songs with subtexts.  I found no depictions of same-sex romance, anywhere -- the most you could hope for was a dropped pronoun.  But a few Top 40 Hits -- one or two per year -- were about the search for a Good Place, or celebrations of male beauty (with beefcake-heavy music videos), and or just about being proud of your identity.

1. "Physical" (Olivia Newton-John, 1981).

2. "I'm Coming Out" (Diana Ross, 1981).  Ms. Ross claimed that it was about teenage girls "coming out" into high society, but gay teens knew what it was really about:
I'm coming out -- I want the world to know, got to let it show.

3. "It's Raining Men" (The Weather Girls, 1982).  The catchy beat made it easy to appropriate.  I didn't even mind the heterosexism:
God bless Mother Nature, she's a single woman too
She took off to heaven, and she did what she had to do
She taught every angel to rearrange the sky,
So that each and every woman could find a perfect guy.

4. "Self-Control" (Laura Branigan, 1982).  She goes to a mostly heterosexual orgy, screams when hands reach out to grab her, and ends up sleeping with a mysterious man in a white mask and red gloves, but in a era where gay teens had to live in masks, a celebration of the night resonated:
Oh the night is my world. City lights, painted girls.
I must believe in something, so I guess I'll just believe that this night will never go. 

5. "Holiday" (Madonna, 1983). No gay people mentioned, but coming out often required forgetting about years of pain: it's time for the good times -- forget about the bad times.

6. "So Many Men, So Little Time" (Miquel Brown, 1983).  A woman praises heterosexual one-night stands, but you could also use it to praise the joy of boy-watching.
Each new one I meet makes my heart beat faster, when I see them so strong and tall.
So many men, so little time. How can I lose?  
So many men, so little time.  How can I choose?

7. "Relax" (Frankie Goes to Hollywood, 1983).

8. "I Am What I Am" (Gloria Gaynor, 1983) could be read as a response to the bigots (and there were a lot of bigots) who kept screaming that gays were worthless, subhuman, monsters out to destroy the world.
I am good, I am strong, I am somebody, I do belong.
I am useful, I am true, I am worthy, I am as good as you.

9. "Smalltown Boy" (Bronski Beat, 1984).  I didn't realize at the time that the boy was leaving town to escape homophobic harassment --but it could easily be applied to anyone searching for a "good place." (and I liked the music video with the smalltown boy swimmer in tight speedos).

The answers you seek will never be found at home.
The love that you need will never be found at home.

10. "Let's Hear it for the Boy" (Deniece Williams, 1984).

Not much after.  AIDS, conservative retrenchment, and the re-demonization of gay people eliminated even those few songs that could be appropriated.  In 1985, Madonna was singing "Like a Virgin" (about sex, not pride), Wham started making their previously androgynous songs gender specific (I said you were the perfect girl for me), and the vigorously homophobic Eddie Murphy was inviting heterosexuals to "Party All the Time."

See also: Ocho Rios: Tracking Down a Jamaican Bodybuilder; and Culture Club

The Mysterious Time Traveler of Grand Haven

Remember Sesame Street?  

One of these things is not like the others.  One of these things just doesn't belong.

A foot shorter than the others, shoulder length hair amid short haircuts, and a red Speedo amid black.  

Here's a closeup. That mysterious X over his head just interferes with the guy behind, so it's not in the background.  It's over his head.

Maybe he's a ghost, or a time traveler from the future, someone or something that showed up on the film,  but no one saw at the time.

To add to the mystery, the photo is captioned "Grand Haven, Montana."  No such place exists.

There's a Grand Haven in Michigan, population10,000, known for its Atlantic City-style boardwalk and annual Musical Fountain Show.  The high school, home of the Buccaneers, has a wrestling team, but not a swim team.

Wait -- the Grand Haven newspaper discusses more than Grand Haven itself.  

Spring Lake is long, narrow a peninsula on the other side of the river from Grand Haven.The top photo is of the Spring Lake High swim team, March 2016.  The short guy in the front center is Noah (last name spelled two different ways), a freshman doing the 1-meter race.  

Here he is in 2015 with his brother (also a swimmer) and brother's prom date or something.

He's in articles about the swim team often in 2015 and 206.

But by his junior year, he has abandoned swimming for lacrosse and wrestling.

And gotten a haircut.  And traded in his Speedo for boxers.

Tres pedestrian.  I liked him better when he was a ghost

Research Me Obsessively: The Mysterious Jack of LHS

This prime piece of real estate comes from an article stating "Meet the 2018 LHS Pioneers."  Unfortunately, it doesn't say what LHS is.

Just the sort of beefcake mystery that cries out to be solved.

The article gives the guy's name as Jack ____, but unfortunately, it is the same name as a famous inspirational speaker, who clogs up google with his over-white teeth and skinny Ironman outfits.

It's also the name of an athlete at Middlebury College in Vermont.

Someone who graduated from Boston Technical High School in 1948.

This member (far right) of the Vienna Woods Tennis and Swim Club, Vienna, Virginia.

A regional director of the Boy Scouts of America.

The far left member of this trio from Downlands College, Towoomba, Australia in 2013.  Sort of looks like my Jack, except I doubt you could go from college in Australia to a senior at LHS.

A podiatrisf from Westwood, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.  He has a friend who is a swimmer at Lynnfield High.

Lynnfield is a suburb on the other side of Boston.












Lynnfield High, LHS?

Its team name is indeed the Pioneers.

So I have finally located the home town the bulgeworthy Jack (apparently his Westwood namesake is an uncle.).  This should allow a search for some more beefcake.

Unfortunately, Jack turns out to be internet cypher.  He's not on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, and his Hudl and MaxPreps accounts don't have photos.

His mother is on Facebook, but mothers don't typically post beefcake photos of their grown-up sons.  So here's a nice family photo for the road.

What are Gonzaga Swimmers Hiding?

This post has been moved to Small Town Beefcake