Richard Thomas: Falling in Love with a Photograph

When I was in junior high and high school, this was one of the most recognizable faces in America: Richard Thomas, who played Depression-era teenager John-Boy on The Waltons (1971-77).

I never saw a single episode, just snippets as I walked through the living room on my way upstairs to watch hip sitcoms like Welcome Back Kotter, Barney Miller or What's Happening!!!  Who wanted to watch a boring drama set a thousand years ago, when my parents were kids?

But I saw the parodies on Saturday Night Live and in Mad Magazine, I heard all the jokes, and I had a big crush on Richard Thomas.

Ok, not much of a physique, but that hair, those eyes, those  lips! Tell me you can look at that face without wanting to kiss him.

He wasn't a big teen idol, with no shirtless centerfolds in the teen magazines, barely a mention as they poured out articles about Donny Osmond, Leif Garrett, and Shaun Cassidy.  Maybe he was too old, in his 20s (born in 1951).  Maybe he was too married.  Or maybe he just wasn't androgynous.

But I didn't know he was married, and nine years older was the perfect age for me.  And the pictures in TV Guide, Parade, and other general-interest magazines were enough to spark my romantic interest.

In an interview, Richard stated that he was studying Mandarin Chinese for fun.  I was into languages!  Maybe we would meet and study Arabic together.

I like your smile.
Ana uhibu aibtisamatak

May I kiss you?
Hal li 'an 'aqbalak?

The first erotic dream I remember, around 1975 (ninth or tenth grade), involves kissing Richard Thomas.  I replayed that dream in my head a thousand times.

 I hadn't even figured "it" out yet, and I was fantasizing about kissing Richard Thomas!

During high school and college, I saw him in 3 movies:

1. Roots: The Next Generation (1979).  He played a boy involved in an interracial romance.

2. No Other Love (1979).  He played a mentally handicapped boy who wants to get married.

Both roles about forbidden love.  Could Richard be gay, and trying to "come out" in a roundabout fashion?

3. The 1980 Star Wars rip-off Battle Beyond the Stars (he played Luke Skywalker to George Peppard's Han Solo and Sybill Danning's Princess Leia).

For some reason I missed his role as a gay wheelchair-bound Vietnam vet in Fifth of July.  It aired on March 9, 1982, during my senior year in college.  Most likely I just didn't know about it.

I haven't seen Richard Thomas in anything since.  He generally appears in movies and tv series that I would have absolutely no interest in, religious (The Easter Story, Touched by a Angel), hetero-romantic (Linda, Time after Time), or sad (To Save the Children, Anna's Dream).  No more gay roles, that I know of.

Besides, he has not aged well.  His eyes have narrowed, his lips have shrunken, his face has panned out.  Kissing him would not be out of the question, but it's certainly not the first thing you think of when you see this photograph.

And his photograph was what I fell in love with.

See also: The Waltons: The Gay Connection

King of the Golden River: Boy Meets Dwarf

Shortly after I was born, my parents bought a set of Colliers Encyclopedia and The Junior Classics, an anthology of mostly Victorian-era stories like Alice in Wonderland and Jackanapes. During my earliest childhood I often took them from the shelves and leafed through them, marveling at the odd illustrations.  I first tried reading them at age 8 or 9, but the antiquated language and obscure references made it well-nigh impossible.  Still, their very impenetrability was attractive, suggesting hidden codes and secrets, so over the years I tried again and again, finally encountering some amazing gay subtexts.

The King of the Golden River (1841) begins with a blustery, round person, "The North Wind," visiting an extremely girlish young man named Gluck.   From there, things get even more bizarre.  Gluck battles his older, bullying brothers, Hans and Schwartz, for a golden mug, which turns out to contain the imprisoned spirit of the dwafish King of the Golden River.  

Someone must travel to the source of the river and sprinkle it with "holy water."  The evil brothers try, but fail, and are turned into black stones.  Gluck tries, but gives the water away in acts of kindness, and is rewarded when the river turns into a river of gold.

There is no same-sex romance, but Gluck (played by Thor Bautz, left, in a gender-transgressive 2009 stage version) is quiet, sensitive, feminine, gay-coded.

And,  bucking the tradition of fairy tales ending with "they were married and lived happily ever after," he never meets a girl.  At the end of the story, he is old, wealthy, well-respected by the community, with no wife.  

That was, in itself, a revelation.

The author of King of the Golden River was John Ruskin (played by Tom Hollander, top center, in the 2009 tv series Desperate Romantics).  He was apparently heterosexual; like Lewis Carroll, he liked young girls.  But there is no evidence that he had a physical relationship with anyone.

His marriage to Effie Gray was annulled after six years, not consummated because "there were certain circumstances in her person which completely checked passion."  There have been many theories about what those circumstances were, but probably not the nude female form itself. (Effie later married his friend, pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais).

He was a scholar of the Renaissance, who became aware of the practice of "the bestial vice."  Although he was quite homophobic, revealing that same-sex practices occurred at all helped to create the image of the "queer Renaissance," where gay people didn't have to hide.  Oscar Wilde said that studying under him at Oxford was one of the turning points of his career.

"The Pale Blue Eye": A Murder Mystery with Edgar Allan Poe and a Cadre of West Point Cadet Hunks

 

The Pale Blue Eye, on Netflix, is a murder mystery set at West Point Military Academy  in 1830, with Edgar Allan Poe as one of the players!  Poe was obviously a devotee of the feminine, but queer studies scholars have found homoerotic subtexts in his works, and the original novel by Louis Bayard was placed on a list of must-reads by The Advocate in 2016, so it must have queer content.  

Scene 1: A snowy, dark winter in the Hudson Valley, New York, 1830.  Augustus Landor washes his hands in a creek, and returns to his cabin to mourn his Dead Wife.  Captain Hitchcock of the controversial West Point military training school is waiting for him. 

Scene 2: While they ride, Captain Hitchcock tells Landor his own back story: famous detective, solved many important cases in New York, dead wife, runaway daughter.

Scene 3: The Headmaster tells him that a cadet named Fry (Steven Maier) hanged himself last night -- a big problem for West Point, as it indicates that the harsh treatment of cadets isn't working out, and will give some senators in Washington their chance to shut them down.  

But to make matters worse, someone came into the hospital later and cut Fry's heart out!  The job would take considerable strength and some knowledge of anatomy, but no medical training.  It could have been one of the cadets.

Next Landor interviews Cadet Huntoon (Brennan Keel Cook), who found Fry,  and examines the body, both in the morgue and in a baththub, and concludes that he was struggling when he died: he was murdered. Also, he was clutching a scrap of paper with printed words on it.  

Captain Hitchcock warns Landor to not engage in his usual out-of-the-box shenanigans among the cadets.  Do tell...does he like twinks?  Later, as Landor examines the crime scene, a cadet approaches and tells him that the heart-carver must be a poet, because the heart is a symbol, and who trafficks in symbols? 

Scene 4: Landor interviews Cadet Cochrane (Gideon Glick), who was guarding the body at the hospital until 2:30 am, when he was relieved by an officer.  It was dark, so Cochrane didn't see his face.  He knew that it was an officer because he had bars on his uniform -- right side only.  Those on the left side were missing!

Scene 5: Landor at a inn: realistically lit by candlelight, that is, very dark.  He drinks with the bartender ("fuck the rules!")  and sees the shy, stuttering, over-eager cadet who had the poet idea, a Mr. Edgar Allen Poe (Harry Melling)! 21 years old, with two books of poetry published, and hating the academy.  In real life, he only lasted a few months.

They discuss the use of the heart as a symbol in great poetry and the Bible.  When Landor gets up to leave, Poe grabs his arm: "Investigate Cadet Loughborough.  He was Fry's roommate until they had a lover's quarrel...um, I mean argument/"

Scene 6: Cadet Loughborough (Charlie Tahan, top photo), Fry's roommate, denies that they had an argument..just "diverging paths. He'd fallen in with a bad bunch."  

Next Landor interviews an unnamed cadet, maybe Cadet Ballnger (Fred Hechinger), the last person to see Fry alive: they passed in the quad, and Fry asked if there were any officers about.  He said he was off on "necessary business."

Uh-oh, a cow and a sheep have been butchered, and their hearts cut out!  Someone is making a collection!

Scene 7:  Landon offers Poe a job gathering intel, "but keep our relationship a secret."  Have they been dating?   First task: decode the paper fragment found on the body.  Then Landor he goes home to look at a picture of his dead wife and wonder if it's ok to meet someone new.  She wouldn't mind, dude. 

Poe knocks on the door: he's decoded the last two lines of the message: "Come soon. Don't be late."  Landor decodes the others: "I'll be at the cove by the landing." But why would you meet a fellow cadet by the cove, when you can meet him anywhere?  The sender must be a woman, not allowed on the campus.  Darn, I thought for sure that Fry was gay.  In 1830, they didn't have a term for exclusive same-sex interest, but they certainly knew what same-sex interest was.

"I saw a woman!" Poe exclaims.  "Outside the mess hall the morning after the murder.  The most beautiful creature I've ever seen!"  I thought Poe was going to be gay-ish.. 

Scene 8:  Landor in bed with a woman. He asks for some intel on Poe.  I thought Landor was going to be gay, too.

I'm out of space, so I'll stop the scene-by-scene, but two more hunky cadets are yet to appear:

Cadet Marquis (Harry Lawtey) and his sister are prime suspects.  He doesn't express any heterosexual interest.

Cadet Stoddard (Joey Brooks) disappears after the second cadet is murderd (and his genitals cut out), presumably because he knows he's next in line,

There's a really silly plot twist, a WTF ending, and every indication that Poe is romantically interested in Landor, in spite of his interest in women.