"Of an Age": In a 24-hour Garden of Forking Paths, a Serbian teen hooks up with his girlfriend's brother. With some Serbian d*cks

Link to the n*de dudes

 It's Sunday morning, and I have no tv series or movies waiting to review, so I'm going to click on my Netflix recommendation Of an Age, with a shirtless guy on the icon.  There may not be any gay characters, but at least there will be some beefcake. 

Scene 1: 1999. A scantily clad woman awakens on a deserted beach.  Her bag is gone, so she borrows some coins from a lady exiting a pastie shop and runs to a payphone and calls someone, but gets a busy signal.  This must be Britain or Australia.

Cut to close-ups of the chest, biceps, and face of a sleazy-looking dude as he dances around to "Bandido," a 2003 song by Ana Barbara.  He appears to be working on choreography in his garage, moving too fast to get a good screen shot.  

Knock on the door.  He yells in Serbian, "Don't come in!", then goes out to yell at his little brother (Peter Rayias), but Bro is in his room.  It must have been his  creepy Mom: "I forgot to wash your clothes again, my handsome man, leer, leer."

Finally The Girl gets through: "What the f*ck, Kol!" 

"Sorry, my brother was using the computer."  

She starts stammering.  This guy was going to take her to his boat in Saint Basil (no such town), and she took some speed.  It's very important to know that he was a little older, but not some rando. The next thing she knew, she was waking up on a beach, with no money, her bag gone, no idea what happened, and no idea where she is. And they have the Big Community Center Thing in two hours.  She has obviously been roofied, s*xually assaulted, and robbed, but nothing more is said about it. 

 They use a street sign to deduce that she's in Altoona, an hour's drive away. She wants Kol to go to her friend Tori's house, pick up her dress for the Big Civic Center Thing, then come get her.  

"But I don't have a car."

"Borrow your mom's."

"I can't.  She's being creepy. Can you call someone else with a car to come get you?"

"But if they have a car, they probably have a life, so they won't be home."  Wouldn't people who have lives be out late the night before, so still asleep at 7:00 am on a Saturday morning?  "Wait -- I know a complete loser who everybody hates because he's so lame.  He has no life, so he'll be home at 7:00 am on a Saturday morning -- my brother Adam!"  Har-har.

Scene 2: Kol runs through the neighborhood to his Girlfriend's friend, now named Jaya: "You have to call this complete loser who everybody hates.  I can't do it because if his Mom answers, she'll recognize my voice and ask where The Girl is."

By the way, the Girl is named Ebony, although she's not black.  Another off-kilter directorial choice.

Tori/Jaya calls Brother Adam: "This sleazy gay guy burst in and insisted that I call you."  Wait -- your girlfriend's best friend doesn't know you?  And her brother doesn't, either?  How long have you been dating?

"I'm not gay, but..."  He grabs the phone.  "Adam, you have to drive me to pick up your sister Ebony, an hour away, and then drive us to the Civic Center, another hour, and we have to be there in an hour and a half."  

He grabs the dress, and while waiting, hears more about Brother Adam: "Loser.  Voted most likely to bomb the school.  Some girls tried to f*ck him, but were unsuccessful."

Scene 3: Adam arrives (Thom Green, left, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).  He doesn't think they can make it to Altoona and back in time for "your emergency dance class."  The camera moves around too much to get a good screenshot.

"It's the Dance Finals dude!  Super-important!"  Not that important.  The movie is not about Kol's dancing career.

Kol asks him to stop the car so he can throw up.   This illness is not mentioned again.

"Maybe you could go to the finals next year?"

"My Girlfriend Ebony applied to NIDA in Sydney, so she won't be around."  The National Institute of Dramatic Arts.

He laughs.  "You think she's going to NIDA?  She's a terrible actor."  He ridicules her performance as Lady Macbeth.

Their conversation last for 21 minutes.  I can't cover everything they discuss, but the most interesting topics are:

1. Jorge Luis Borges -- one of my favorite writers. 

"The Library of Babel," containing every possible combination of letters in a book. 

 "The Circular Ruins," where a man dreams a world that is dreaming him.  

"The Garden of Forking Paths," a labyrinth where every decision results  in infinite parallel worlds. .   

2. Tomorrow Kol is flying back to Serbia for his birthday, January 1st, 2000,  the day of Y2K fears.  Y2K is never mentioned again.

3. Kol mentions how much he hates his "psycho uncle."    Adam suggests that he could murder the uncle for Kol, as in the Alfred Hitchcock classic Strangers on a Train.  This is never mentioned again.

4. Adam mentions that he's gay. Kol says he doesn't have a problem with gay people, a standard straight guy response in the 1990s.

More after the break

Gemstones Episode 2.1: Junior likes d*cks, Kelvin likes pecs, and f*k yeah, we got both!

 

Link to NSFW review

Righteous Gemstones Season 2 is my favorite.  Season 1 muddled the Gideon-Scotty plotline, Season 3 had some infuriating queerbaiting, and Season 4 was rushed and muddled, but Season 2 did the Kelvin/Keefe and Junior/Eli romances exactly right.    

Memphis Soul Stew: Memphis, 1968. Teenage Eli Gemstone, the Maniac Kid (Jake Kelley), is playing a heel, a pro wrestling villain: "from the wrong side of the tracks, a newcomer to the League, all muscle, all attitude."  He fights dirty, pretending to reconcile with opponent Kyle Hawk, then throwing him out of the ring.  

As he fights, his manager Glendon Marsh (Wayne Duvall) cheers. Glendon's teenage son Junior (Tommy Nelson) watches, sometimes happy but usually disturbed.  Is he jealous of the attention Eli is getting?  Is he a rebellious teenager during the era of the Generation Gap?.

Junior is gay: In the locker room, Glendon offers Eli "some bonus pay on the South Side," while Junior looks on, smoking a cigarette, still either jealous or angry. As they leave, they pass a n*de guy.  Junior is so busy looking that he trips, and then looks back again.  The boy is definitely into men.

Jim Crow Must Go:  As they drive through a black neighborhood on the South Side of Memphis, near where Martin Luther King, Jr. will be assassinated on April 4th.  Junior looks out at the townsfolk in disgust. 

Suddenly they are surrounded civil rights protestors: "Jim Crow must go!" "We protest injustice."  Junior calls them "bums," which was usually applied to hippies, not African-Americans, leading me to believe that something changed between writing the script and hiring the background actors.  Glendon punches him: "they just want what everybody wants, a piece of the fucking pie."

Ok, Junior is racist, and Glendon is abusive, but why this scene? Hiring background players, costume, and staging must have been very time-consuming, with no payoff: civil rights are never mentioned again.  

The Loan Enforcer: Glendon is a loan shark as well as a wrestling manager: the job involves beating up a deadbeat.  Eli and Junior both go, squabbling over who's the boss.  

"Kill 'em!" we hear.  Psych!  It's the tv.  We meet a slovenly, drunken, foul-mouthed, abusive jackass of a husband.  While Junor subdues his wife and baby, Eli punches him a few times and asks for the money, and when he doesn't have it, breaks his thumbs. Junior laughs "derangedly" (according to the subtitles).

Afterwards Glendon drops Eli off, hands him some money, and tells him, "Buy yourself something nice." This is a feminizing statement. 

As Eli drives off on his motorcycle, we hear Buck Owens' "Tall Dark Stranger":

 They say a tall dark stranger is a demon, and  that a devil rides closely by his side.

 So if Junior is the demon, Eli must be the devil riding beside him.  How long will they ride together?

Abusive Daddies all the way down:  Eli drives to the Gemstone residence (it's not a stage name, apparently), where his abusive dad chastises him for being late for dinner. So they're eating after Eli's wrestling match?  Like at 11 or 12 pm?   There's also a mousy, skittish mom and a little sister, May-May (important in Season 3). 

Ordered to say grace, Eli jokes: "Good food, good meat, good God, let's eat," which makes May-May laugh.  Dad slaps him.  End of flashback.

We're fine with the f*ggots:  In 2022, elderly Eli Gemstone is a megachurch pastor and televangelist.  He and the satellite church ministers are discussing the case of Pastor Butterfield (Victor Williams), caught with his wife and another woman in a dance club restroom, while they were all high on Molly ("we thought they were Sweetarts").  The story made the front page of The New York Times, thanks to reporter Thaniel Block (Jason Schwartzman), who has made a career of publicizing ministerial  scandals.  Eli wants to be lenient, but the others object. 

A Spanish speaking pastor explains: "My church is ok with the maricones, but we're not ready for swinging and tropus."     Pastor Diane translates: "His church is really cool with the gays and the queers, but not so much about the swingers and the thruples."  They fire Pastor Butterfield; he tries to commit suicide.

Left: God Squad pecs

Gideon returns from a job as a stuntman to assist with the Gemstone ministry.  He's going to move into the house that Eli built for his abusive dad.

In other news, Gideon's younger brother Abraham has been leaving "secretions" all over the house, like in the freezer next to the Dreamsicles.  

We cut to a church service with Eli Gemstone and his children, Jesse, Judy, and Kelvin, announcing the start of their streaming service, GODD.  We see Jesse's wife Amber, their kids, and Judy's husband BJ in the audience.  No partner for Kelvin. He must be single

F*ck, yeah:  After the service, the family drives in a caravan to Jason's Steak House.  They get out of their cars in slow motion and walk past the al fresco area, heterosexual couples reveling in their nuclear family conformity, the "job, house, wife, kids" litany of my youth made visible. The background song brags about their heteronormative success:

Turn your head when I walk by -- I got the world at my feet.
All I want out of every day, is to wake up every morning
Sun is shining, smiling, and we've covered every room 

 Wait -- where's Kelvin?

Suddenly the record scratches off. Two vans pull up with a flexing muscle Christ and the logo "Strength above All Else." Twelve muscle men emerge, wearing identical canvas gis: the God Squad! Biceps and pecs, abs, bulging flexing intruding on the smug primness of the nuclear families. Wait -- where are the bulges.  They wear cargo pants that don't show anything.

There is no romance here.  There is no heterosexual desire.  It is raw homoerotic power. The song changes to:

F*ck, yeah!  F*ck, yeah!  F*ck, yeah!

We see their leader from the back of his tiger-splashed leather jacket.  Who is this Messiah of Muscle,  this Pope of the Phallus, demolishing the iron cage of heteronormativity, leading us to homoerotic Eden of masculine power?

He turns around for the big reveal.  

 Kelvin!  The prissy little femme boy from church earlier?  I thought it would be Junior.

 He has changed his jacket: more shiny buttons, a gold bracelet.  And his pants: a porn-star bulge and a bright gold zipper to help guide us to his....   Obviously gay, but hardly closeted.  His life, career, and religion all center on masculine beauty.

A man we haven't met before stands beside him, identified as Keefe.  His relationship to Kelvin is unclear.  Assistant or boyfriend?  Acolyte or lover?   

Kelvin gives his God Squad some micromanaging instructions about "eating light," and starts to walk toward the steakhouse.  Keefe stops him. "Excuse me, sir. Will you be dining with the men and I?"  Sir? Assistant. 

Kelvin says no, he'll be dining "above you" with the family.

Keefe: "Shall I join you?"  Boyfriend.

Kelvin: No. "Upstairs church lunch is only for family...and Daddy's closest work associates." 

This upsets Keefe.  He looks like he's about to cry.  Apparently they have enjoyed intimacy before, so he thinks he should be treated as a boyfriend. Never hook up with your boss, Dude: it only leads to trouble.

Kelvin: "Do not take this personal.  No matter how many disciples we gather, you're still my Number One."  So Kelvin is Jesus, and Keefe is the Beloved Disciple.  Assistant

Keefe still looks upset, so Kelvin says "Let me tickle them meats" and reaches out to squeeze his nipple through his shirt.  Hey, that's inappropriate with an employee. Boyfriend..  

Then he swishes off with a jaunty over-the-shoulder smile, pushing up the gay stereotypic behavior  Boyfriend.

Now we see Kelvin's central conflict: he is closeted after all.  He imagines that being gay is incompatible with the cozy families sitting upstairs in Jason's Steakhouse, so if he wants a career and a family, he must deny Keefe like Peter denied Christ: "Him?  Oh, he's my...um...assistant."  During this season, Keefe will be pushing for a place at the table, recognition as a romantic partner. Will Kelvin find a way to admit him?  

 More after the break

Jake Connelly: Delightful Derek from "Stranger Things" hugs Steve, dates Young Will. With a footballer and some ginger chub d*cks

  

Link to the n*de photos

Luke Kokotec, who I profiled earlier, notes that his date at the Stranger Things premiere in December 2025 was Jake Connelly, who played Derek. I thought I'd check to see if it was an actual date, or just two buddies who attended on-set school together. 

Maybe it depends on who you ask.

Jake was born in Arlington Heights, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, and appeared in commercials like "Two for one windows at Feldco!" and "Don't let your roof ruin your summer!", and a short, Between the Silence, about two elderly ladies becoming friends.

 Showrunner Matt Duffer saw him in a furniture commercial and cast him as one of the next generation of kids who fight the evil Vecna in Stranger Things, Season 5.

He starts out as Dipsh*t Derek, a bully who harasses Holly Wheeler (younger sister of the first generation's Mike, played by Finn Wolfhard).  He trips people, yells at his mother, and tells various kids and adults to "suck my (censored)." 

Left: Finn Wolfhard, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

That was supposed to be the end of his character, but the Duffers were so impressed that they gave him a plot arc: he is being groomed by a mysterious being called Mr. Whatsit.

Mike and his friends discover that Mr. Whatsit is actually Vecna in disguise, and recruit him into the battle.  He becomes a hero and rescues Holly, earning the new name Delightful Derek.  Rescuing a girl is a hetero cliche.

When Vecna is finally defeated, Derek hugs Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) and waves excitedly at Mike, whom he calls his "best friend."  Two queer codes.

In the epilogue, he attends Will and Mike's high school graduation (sitting with Holly), then plays Dungeons and Dragons with the new generation (a boy and two girls). Two hetero codes.

A fan favorite, Delightful Derek  goes to a lot of conventions, and is interviewed on a lot of podcasts. He was a guest on The Tonight Show.  His home town decreed February 17th "Stranger Things Day."  In May 2026, he got to throw out the first pitch at a Cubs game.

 

 

With fitness trainer Chase Bandolik. I thought they were pretending to be a romantic couple, but apparently Chase does the "I got invited," "I didn't" stuff with many people.  I don't know what it means.

More after the break

Not the Marrying Kind: Gay Burns and Allen

Television was introduced in 1949, just in time for the formative years of the first Boomers (the generation officially started in 1945). Radio performers scrambled to make the transition. Some made it, most didn't.  Burns and Allen, a "married couple" sitcom starring comedians George Burns and Gracie Allen, made it. After 20 years on radio, they transitioned to television in 1950 and stayed on until 1958, stopped only by Gracie's passing.

They're shown here with guest star Steve Reeves.

I recently listened to an episode from the end of the radio run, in 1949.

The homophobic silence of Dark Age America was starting to break -- very, very slightly -- as radio sought to compete with television by introducing "racy" content -- hints and innuendos about s*x, and about same-s*x desire. 

The plot: George and Gracie, playing themselves, are trying to find a wife for painfully shy next door neighbor, musician Meredith Willson (who penned The Music Man).

 They recruit singer Eddie Cantor, who was subject to some gay rumors because he and his wife only had daughters. Maybe he could donate one?

So Gracie invites Eddie Canter over, and announces to Meredith, "We've found someone for you to marry!"

Thinking that they mean Eddie, Meredith says:  "Gee, I had my heart set on a woman."

Later Eddie explains to his potential son-in-law how a wedding works:

"The minister says 'I now pronounce you man and wife, and then you kiss."

"Even if you've just met?" Meredith asks, thinking that he means kissing the minister.

Meredith (or at least the character he is playing) is too shy to talk to women, let alone marry one.  He complains: "I can't get married if a woman is [at the wedding]."

Again and again, joke after joke brings up the idea that Meredith is considering marrying a man.

What's going on?

If being gay is really beyond the boundaries of what can be known, then the characters are playing with an absurdity, a play on words like Abbott & Costello's "Who's on First" routine.

But people knew about being gay, even in 1949. The Kinsey Report (1948) revealed its existence to millions.  George Burns and Gracie Allen worked with gay people in Hollywood.

Their television series often implied that teenage son Ronnie Burns (or at least the character he played) preferred the company of men.

Maybe that's why Meredith Wilson's character trips easily over the boundary between "confirmed bachelor" and "gay."

At the end of the episode, everyone agrees that he "should never get married." At least not to a woman.

Even in the darkest of the Dark Ages, there were still hints and innuendos.

In real life, Meredith Wilson was married to women three times.  But there are some queer codes in The Music Man.

See also: Ronnie Burns: Gay Teen of the 1950s

Robert Ellis: Gay Best Friend of the 1950s

Ben Pajak plays the gay kids of Wolverine and Paul Blart, Harvey Milk, Max von Essen's buddy, and a gay Corey Haim.  He was also in The Music Man.

Justin Ellings: Kyle from the awful clown episode of "Modern Family" plays Corey Haim and Sean Giambrone, shows his physique and his d*ck