Nick Roux: Underwear Model Turned Disney Boyfriend

Nick Roux is a  22-year old California-born actor-model.  Here he's posing with an American flag for a French underwear ad,.  The Franglish caption: "I want to be a super-heroes."

Here he models Superman underwear.

But he also has some Disney Channel credentials.

He appeared in The Suite Life on Deck (as Jean Luc, whom Bailey dates after breaking up with Cody) and Wizards of Waverly Place (as Chase Riprock, who has a crush on Alex).

In the Disney Channel movie Lemonade Mouth (2011), he played Scott Pickett, a jock who heads the rival band.  He has both a girlfriend and a best buddy (played by Chris Brochu), so there may be some triangulation going on.  I didn't see it; the title "Lemonade Mouth" was too much of a turn off.

The ABC Family series Jane by Design (2012) was about a 16-year old girl who gets a job in the fashion industry.  He played her boyfriend.

Not a lot of gay content in his onscreen work, but one wonders why the Disney Channel so often grabs up young hunks who specialize in homoerotic advertisements, and gives them girlfriends.

Worst Travel Day Ever

Worst travel day ever.

Lunch
1. We stopped for lunch, and couldn't get out of the parking lot, because a lady in the car ahead of us just sat there, while cars behind us zoomed around her to turn left and right.
2. We finally turned the wrong way (impossible to turn the right way), and ran into about 100 people all leaving a Burger King at the same time, darting across the street in different directions, raising their hands to stop traffic as they ran.
3. We finally got on the freeway going the wrong direction, and had to turn around.

Hotel
1. No restaurant on site
2. No fitness center

Dinner
1. Restaurant was half empty,but they seated everyone together, so you were sitting in each other's laps.



Club
1. The club was deserted.
2. On a Friday night
3. Two hours later, it was still deserted.

Getting Back to the Hotel
1. The interstate was closed, so we were struggling with the GPS and the cell phone while driving through downtown Cleveland in utter darkness.  By the way, you can't work a GPS in the dark.
2. After a few wrong u-turns, we finally found the highway exit with our hotel.  But our hotel wasn't there.  We drove up and down Broadway for a mile in each direction, but it wasn't there.
3. Turns out there are 2 Exit 23s, identical in every way, except one is right next to the hotel, and the other is 5 miles away, through a neighborhood of very slow speed limits and hundreds of stop lights.

Spring 1974: They Called Him the Streak

In the spring of 1974, when I was in the eighth grade, streaking was all the rage: in high schools and colleges, at sporting events, on Main Street, young men would doff their clothes and run naked past a shocked and titilated public.

On April 2nd, a streaker named Robert Opel ran across the stage during the live broadcast of the Academy Awards, causing presenter David Niven to comment on his "shortcomings."  A novelty song called "The Streak," by Ray Stevens, hit the top of the pop charts with humorous lyrics about a hick constantly exhorting his wife "Don't look!" as the streaker ran past.

They call him the streak -- he likes to show off his physique.
If there's an audience to be found, he'll be streaking around,
Inviting public critique.

Who could refuse to participate in such an iconic 1970s moment, and plus get to see a lot of naked guys?

My friends Darry and Dan positively refused to do it, remembering the fallout from our protest of evil-lution two months before.  But Craig, who you remember from the Swim Team post and the graduation party -- he had a last name close to mine and therefore sat next to me in every class from third grade to high school -- agreed.

Plus a tall, husky Asian guy appropriately named Peter, who went swimming with us at Longview Park Pool, and a ninth grade Viking whose name I don't remember, but who turned out to not have any "shortcomings."  I don't think any of them were gay.

We waited for the last day of school, where you could sneak out without causing much attention.  Just as the principal called a final assembly, we found a deserted art room, left our clothes with a confederate, and, flushed with joy and fear, ran down the hallway.

To our disappointment, it was deserted.

Peter led us to a side door, and onto the stage, where the principal, vice-principal, and guidance counselor were sitting on folding chairs.  The band was playing the theme of "The Entertainer."

And we ran.

Laughter and applause filled the room as we dashed across the stage, pausing only to give peace signs.  I got a glimpse of the principal.  He was grinning.

We ran down the hallway again, ducked into the art room, threw our clothes on, and hid until we could make our way out of the school in the crowd of students.

We weren't punished.  The administration, heavily embarrassed, acted as if nothing had happened at all.

We didn't even make it into the yearbook.  To this day, alumni argue whether the streaking incident happened at all.

My friends often asked how a conservative fundamentalist boy, who carried a Bible around and couldn't even go to movies, managed to pull off such a stunt.

I did it to see naked guys.

We've gotten much more conservative in the U.S. since.  Today streakers are arrested and charged as sex offenders.

See also: The Naked Pumpkin Runs.

Gay Characters with Girlfriends

Why are so many gay male characters attracted to women?  And even state that they find women far more attractive than men?

Of course, a few gay men are attracted to women, and a few straight men are attracted to men.  They are technically bisexual.  For the overwhelming majority of gay men, women can be friends, period, just as, for the overwhelming majority of straight men, men can be friends, period.

In Party Monster (2003), homicidal club kid Michael Alig (Macaulay Culkin) is identified as “gay,” not heterosexual, not bisexual.  But gay producers Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey found it necessary to give him a girlfriend.  With her help, he almost escapes from his destructive “homosexual lifestyle.” 

 In Transamerica (2005), Kevin Zegers plays a teenage hustler named Toby, who again is “gay” but never glances at a boy. Instead, like “all” gay teenage boys, he spends a lot of time kissing girls and putting the moves on older women. 

 

On the Logo series Noah’s Arc, aspiring filmmaker Noah (Darryl Stephens) falls for the “straight” Chance Counter (Doug Spearman), who tells him that they can be together only if there is a woman involved. At first Noah is horrified, but then he reconsiders. He goes to the rendezvous, and begins kissing the woman enthusiastically until Chance calls things off.

On Shameless, Ian (Cameron Monaghan) is "gay," but has frequent romances with women.

The Chelsea Boys comic strip, which appears in many gay weeklies, not only proclaims that gay men are attracted to women, it criticizes those gay men who refuse to recognize this "law of nature."  In one continuity, the gang returns from the New York Gay Pride Parade to stumble upon the muscular naïve gay male Sky with a woman.  They are outraged: Sky  has obviously been brainwashed into believing that only heterosexual romance is valid.  But Sky argues that this is what Gay Pride is about in the first place, the freedom to have sex with whomever you want, male or female.

Although I agree that adults of any gender should be free to engage in consensual sexual relations, that's certainly not what Gay Pride is about.  
  

Sheer heterosexism again, proclaiming that all men, gay or straight, are interested in women. 

Jeffrey Hunter

 I don't feel like saying anything about him.

Colette's Cheri: A Male Prostitute Finds Love

The French novelist Colette (1873-1954) was a sexual libertine. Early in her career, while performing in a pantomime, she caused a scandal by kissing another woman on stage.  She was married to men three times, but was open about her numerous lesbian affairs.

Her most famous novel, Gigi (1944), is about a girl being trained to become a prostitute who falls in love with her intended client.  It was made into a Broadway play and movie musical by deleting the prostitution angle and adding lots of heterosexism, such as the line "Thank heaven for little girls -- without them, what would little boys do?"

But the novella Cheri (1920) and its sequel The Last of Cheri (1926) are LGBT classics.  Cheri is a beautiful, indolent male prostitute with many gender-atypical traits, such as a fondness for pearl necklaces.  He and his coworkers are used to high-class clients and the finer things of life, and they often fall into bed with each other, but never fall in love.

Except he does fall in love -- with Lea, an older female prostitute.  He gets married to Edmee and has a long term gay affair with the wealthy Vicomte Desmond, but in the end returns to Lea, or tries to.

Meanwhile a lesbian prostitute named Pal, who runs an opium den, is also in love with Lea.

The fluidity of desire and practice was quite shocking in the 1920s, and perhaps it still is today.

Cheri has been filmed several times, omitting the same-sex relationships, and often the characters of Desmond and Pal.

In 1950, with Jean DeSailly.
In 1962, with Jean-Claude Brialy (top photo)
In 1973, with Scott Antony
In 2009, with Rupert Friend (left)

It has also been a play (1959) with Horst Buchholz and a ballet (1980) with choreography by Peter Darrell.

Running Scared: A Hint of Emotional Connection

Running Scared (2006) is a mess.  It stars Paul Walker (left) as Joey Gazelle, a Mafia thug entrusted with getting rid of some guns.  He takes them home, where his son Nicky (Alex Neuberger) and best friend Oleg (Cameron Bright) find them.  Oleg uses one to kill his abusive, racist, homophobic stepfather. Distraught, his mom kills herself by blowing up the meth lab in the basement.

Oleg goes on the run, pursued by Nicky and Joey and the mob.  He meets prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers, and so on.  He is grabbed by a pair of ridiculous fairytale bogeymen (I'm not kidding).  There's some sort of confrontation at an ice hockey rink, but I'm not paying attention anymore.  Then Joey dies, but he doesn't really, and the movie ends happily with him retired from the mob and moving to a farm with his wife, Nicky, and Oleg.

There are way too many monsters;  one thinks, "Who's Oleg going to run into next, Freddie Krueger?"  And even the "positive" characters, Joey and his wife, are grim, mean, homophobic, and say f*** every third word: "The f*** gun is on the street. This whole f*** g*** thing is about to f*** blow up."

But there's a gay connection: a homoerotic buddy bond between Nicky and Oleg.

Or maybe it's just a regular friendship, but with all the ridiculously over-the-top nastiness going on, you latch onto any hint of emotional connection.

Paul Walker is, of course, a superstar. Cameron Bright has been in a few gay-subtext movies, notably The X-Men: The Last Stand (2006).  Alex Neuberger (left) retired from acting after the horrible boy-meets-girl Underdog (2007).