6000 Ways to Say "Penis"

As an undergrad Modern Languages major, I studied Spanish, French, German, and Greek.  In grad school in Comparative Literature, I studied Italian, Russian, and Turkish.  Since then, I've studied several other languages.  Of course, I didn't get far in most, and they fade away over time; today, about all I can get by in are the original Spanish, French, and German.

But I'm still interested in languages, particularly isolates, the remnants of ancient language families that have somehow managed to avoid the encroachment of economically-superior English, Spanish, Urdu, Chinese, or Arabic.

Actually, after my execrable dating experience with Ari the Linguist, I don't really want to learn the languages; I just want to meet men who speak a language unlike any other in the world, and maybe learn a few new words for penis or My hotel is nearby.

1. Burushaski: 87,000 speakers in mountains of far northern Pakistan, near the borders of China and Tajikstan.

Their valley, Hunza, was the source of the Shangri-La legend.  Travelers said that they had no wars or disputes, and eternal youth.  So this Burushaski gym rat could be over 100.  He's had a shipen since he was about 20; before that, it was a sushun.

Tash chom means pull, sex appeal, and to find someone to spend the night with.



2. Tarascan (Purepecha), the remnants of an empire that threatened the Aztecs in precolonial Mexico, now has 240,000 speakers in Michioacan.

Kuini in Purepecha means penis, bird, and prison term.  I'm wondering about the prison term.

3. Mapuche: 250,000 speakers in southern Ecuador.  Their leader Capulican is memoralized in a beefcake statue.

The slogan of the Mapuche civil rights movement is Newen penis, "Power to Mapuche Brothers."

The Mapuche word for penis is punun, which, sounds like punum, and happens to be the same as the Quechua word for bed. 

They specialize in a novelty carving called an Indio Picaro, a smiling Mapuche Indian who, when you raise him up, displays an erect penis.

4. Basque, with 720,000 speakers in the Pyrenees of northern Spain. 

Penis in Basque is zakil.

5. But the biggest of the language isolates is Korean, with 78 million speakers.

The average Korean penis length is 3.8", the smallest in the world (the U.S.is 5.0").

There's a blog that attempts to answer this unjust accusation, offering proof that the Korean eumgyeong is just as big as anybody else's.

Jose Orozco:The Beefcake Murals of Mexico and New Hampshire

After the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), a number of artists tried to restore the Mexican national identity through muralismo, distilling their anxieties over modernism, industrialization, human suffering, and war into huge murals.

Jose Orozco (1883-1949) was the most prolific of the muralistas, painting murals primarily in schools all over Mexico and the United States. He was also the adept at beefcake,  using muscular men to signify what is important and valuable in the human spirit.

Many of his works criticize the Mexican Revolution, and are regularly censored or dismissed by the Mexican government.

Others use more universal themes, such as "Prometheus," the Greek god who brought wisdom to humanity (in the Frary Dining Hall at Dartmouth College).

He often used arcane, mystical symbolism, tying him into the Western hermetic tradition where homoerotic activity was a conduit to godhood. For instance, "Omnisciencia," ("Omniscience," 1925), in the the Casa de los Azulejos  in Mexico City, shows an ecstatic male figure, rays of power shooting from his torso, flanked by nude male and female figures who are being manipulated by half-hidden gods.

"Civilization The Coming of Quetzalcoatl" (at the Hood Museum) is a homoerotic masterpiece, combining Western esoteric and traditional Mesoamerican motifs.  It shows five ancient Mesoamerican priests holding down a naked, muscular sacrificial victim, the knife posed like a phallus, with the Aztec god approaching as if he intends a sexual assault.

No indication if Orozco was gay.  He was married, with three children, but during his era, many gay people married.

The best place to see his murals is in the Orozco Room at the Hood Museum, on the campus of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire (about 2 hours north of Boston).

The Feathered Serpent: Gay British Aztecs

During the "British tv invasion" of the late 1970s, I discovered The Prisoner, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Upstairs Downstairs, and The Tomorrow People, but I missed The Feathered Serpent (1976-78).  It was never broadcast in the U.S., maybe because it's not set in Britain.  It's set in a mythic pre-Columbian kingdom that mixes Maya and Aztec (and a little Inca), stage-bound -- no exteriors, but with some nicely decorated sets.

The Emperor Kulkulkhan (Tony Steedman) wants to ensure peace with the neighboring Toltecs by having his daughter, Chimalma (Diane Keen), marry the young Toltec prince Heumac (27-year old Brian Deacon).  Meanwhile the evil priest Nasca (Patrick Troughton) tries to sabotage the wedding and generally make trouble, sometimes with supernatural assistance.

Although their wedding is an overarching goal of the series, Heumac and Chimalma do not behave at all like lovers; they are diplomatic allies about to create an alliance.  They become friends -- especially when they must work together to fight Nasca -- but there is no tenderness or  longing between them.

Instead, Heumac devotes all of his attention to his young servant, Tozo (19-year old Richard Willis, right).  Twice Tozo is captured by the bad guys and tortured, prompting Heumac to attempt a daring rescue.  They also go on a perilous quest together.  As the series ends, Heumac, Tozo, and Chimalma sit on the royal platform together, as if they will be co-rulers.

There is also significant beefcake.  In the first season, Tozo's long hair and two-piece servant costume make him somewhat too much like a girl to be of interest, but in the second season he drops the suit, often wearing only a revealing Mayan pouch.

Heumac usually wears a sleeveless robe, but during the perilous quest he strips down to another revealing Mayan pouch.

And other characters often display muscular physiques, or at least revealing pouches.

Brian Deacon was very busy on British tv before and after Feathered Serpent, with roles in Love and Mr. Levisham, Good Girls,The Emigrant, and Jesus.  The movie Zed and Two Noughts (1986), about twin brothers (played by Brian and his brother Eric) involved in a three-way relationship, features frontal nudity.

Richard Sheridan Willis, who was born on Stratford-on-Avon and named after the famous playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, is mostly active in theater in Britain, Canada, and the U.S., though he occasionally performs on television and in movies.  Here he encounters pirate Peter Sellers in Ghost in the Noonday Sun (1973).

Kon-Tiki: 6 Guys on a Boat

Boys growing up in the 1960s were encouraged to read High Adventure, tales of exploration and conquest: Robert Peary's expedition to the North Pole; Roald Amundsen's expedition to the South Pole; Edmund Hilary's ascent of Mount Everest; Stanley Livingston's trek into Darkest Africa.  

All of this was somehow supposed to prepare us for a future confined to small square offices by day and small square houses by night.

The only tale of High Adventure that I actually liked was Kon-Tiki, about Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl's quest to prove that Polynesia was settled by the early Incas -- or could have been.

So he and five companions built a raft of balsa wood, the only material available to the native peoples, and set out from Callao, Peru on April 28, 1947.  Four months and 4,000 miles later, they ran aground on Raroia, near Tahiti.  To international acclaim.

Who cares that contemporary anthropology disputed his theory?  He had been on a High Adventure.  Every boy I knew read the book, named his toy boat Kon-Tiki, and planned extravagant sailing adventures.  Mine started down the Mississippi, across the Gulf of Mexico to Florida, and then followed the Gulf Stream to Europe.

I especially liked reading about six guys together on a small raft, their bodies nude and bronze in the sun, helping each other, rescuing each other, learning to care for each other.

Many more recent expeditions have attempted to recreate the journey, such as the Tangaroa in 2006, with Heyerdahl's grandson Olaf in the crew.

Naturally the 2012 movie ruined it!  What is this obsession for making every movie scream "Gay people don not exist!"   I know heterosexuals hate us, but still, can't they leave one moment of our childhood alone? 

Thor Heyerdahl was married to women three times, but he wasn't married in 1947, and there was no mooning over half-naked babes.  This was a gay men's adventure, like Donald Duck and his nephews seeking out the Seven Cities of Cibola.

See also: Donald Duck's Double Life.

Papa soltero: Telemundo Teens on the Beach

When cable became common in the 1980s, the number of stations available increased from 3-4 to hundreds,  and Boomer kids from small towns in the Midwest got Telemundo, and heard Spanish spoken for the first time (outside of the classroom and the PBS series Que Pasa, USA?)

I didn't like the telenovelas and Sabado Gigante, which looked like a circus sideshow, but I liked some of the movies (Santo the Vampire Fighter, La gran aventura), and Papa Soltero (1987-1993), a sitcom starring Cesar Costa as "Cesar," a single Dad who works as a tv producer and lives an upscale Mexico City apartment.



In Spanish class, all you ever heard about Mexico was adobe pueblos full of people wearing sombreros and sarapes, and maybe the Mexican Revolution of Los de Abajo, so just the premise was exciting.

It was like a Spanish version of Hey, Dad...! Cesar was divorced, and saw his kids only during the summer.  Then his ex-wife died, and Cesar got saddled with them full-time: college-aged Alejandra (Edith Marquez), teenage Miguel (21-year old Gerardo Quiroz), and precocious preteen Cesarin (his real-life brother, 13-year old Luis Mario Quiroz).  By the way, that's not a flower in his hair, it's the station logo.

What was the gay connection?

1. A ton of beefcake.  The family appeared for breakfast wearing bathrobes; they slept in their underwear; they bathed, hung out in locker rooms, went to the beach in speedos.  They had muscular friends who were allergic to shirts. By the time the series ended, even "little" Cesarin was a 19 year old hunk, with biceps and a penchant for speedos.

2. A minimum of heterosexual hijinks.  American sitcoms are obsessed with making their teenage boys as girl-crazy as possible, but Cesar spent far more time dating and romancing than either Miguel or Cesarin.

3.After Papa Soltero, Luis Quiroz played gay roles on telenovelas and is reputedly gay in real life.

See also: Que Pasa, USA?

The Gay Connection of Julio Iglesias and Sons

Julio Iglesias is a famous singer in Spain and Latin America, with dozens of gold and platinum albums.

I knew him primarily from a series of duets performed in the 1980s with an eclectic assortment of American stars:

"All of You" with Diana Ross
"The Air that I Breathe" with the Beach Boys
"To All the Girls I've Loved Before" with Willie Nelson
"My Love" with Stevie Wonder

They were all very heterosexist, but what did you expect of popular music in the 1980s?

Not much gay connection, although he was a guest star on an episode of The Golden Girls, and once he said: "If I was gay, I would be the best gay in history."  I wonder what his criteria for gay excellence would be?

Well, maybe there's a gay connection in his sons.

The older, Julio Iglesias Jr. (born in 1973), got his start as a model, and now is an actor and singer.  He appeared as Luis on the tv series Hacienda Heights, a bilingual telenovela about a Los Angeles family.

The younger, Enrique (born in 1975), has followed in his father's footsteps to become one of the biggest stars in Latin America.

He has been the subject of gay rumors, so he responded with a post on Facebook:

"I try to make good songs and that are fun. Either way, what is the problem with there being many gay singers? There are many gay people that must be respected … the truth is that most people are good and human."

It's nice to know that most people are good and human, gay or not, but not a lot of gay connection there.

Wait -- Julio Sr. is married to a cousin of famed actor Steve McQueen, making Julio Jr. and Enrique second cousins of his grandson, gay actor and model Steven R. McQueen.

There's always a gay cousin or uncle somewhere in the family tree.

See also: Steve McQueen's Hunky Family Tree.

Aliados: Argentine Teenagers Save the World

Lots of UFO contactees tell us that this is the final era of humanity.  We have only a short time to prove to the Galactic Overlords that we can do the right thing: end war, stop environmental degradation, switch to solar energy.  If we succeed, we will be invited to join the Federation.  If not, our planet will be "cleansed."

The Argentine sci-fi series Aliados (Allies) draws on that plot.  Six teenagers are chosen by the Feminine Energy Creator to save "the human project."  They have only 105 days.

Unfortunately, they have problems of their own, each with its own catch phrase.

1. Noah (Peter Lanzani, left), a hedonistic millionaire's son: "Self Satisfaction at Any Cost."

2. Anorexic pop star Azul (Oriana Sabatini): "Brilliance and Pop Destruction"

3. Maia (Mariel Percossi), a violent bully: "The Pleasure of Hurting."

4. Manuel (Agustin Bernasconi): a shy, insecure bullying victim: "The Voice of Suffering"

5. Homeless juvenile delinquent Franco (Julian Serrano, left): "Alienation in a Pure State"

6. Valentin (Joaquin Ochoa), an orphaned victim of child labor: "Prisoner of His Loneliness"

Seven "Beings of Light" have agreed to help them.  They have catch phrases, too:

Ian (Pablo Martinez, left), the leader, from a place beyond time and space: "Secrets of the Soul"

The others are connected to the teenagers:
1. Noah gets his "soul mate" Venecia (Jenny Marinez) from the Astral Plane: "Love in Action."

2. Azul is inhabited by Luz (Oriana Sabatini), from the Causal World: "The New Message'

3. Maia gets Ambar (Lola Moran), from the planet Sirius: "Peace Disguised in War"

4. Manuel gets Inti (Nicolas Francella), from the planet Upsilon Andromeda B: "Fire that Heals"

5. Franco gets Devi (Caroline Domenech), an enlightened human: "Between Heaven and Earth"

6. Valentin gets Gopal (Maximo Espindola), from the Land Beyond the Mirror: "Reflections of Friendship"

Complex stuff, full of New Age jargon, with some Hinduism thrown in, and the plotlines are even more complex, full of alliances, betrayals, hidden agendas, and people who aren't what they seem.

It's a major hit in Latin America.  There are both broadcast episodes and online webisodes, plus a music soundtrack, two video games, a theatrical performance, and a Club Aliados that countless thousands of kids and teens have joined.

Notice that some of the human-Light Being pairings are same-sex.  The episode I saw seemed to have a gay subtext between Valentin and Gopal (left), and others have found links between Noah and Ian.

However, there aren't any specifically gay characters.  Producer Cris Morena has been criticized for erasing gay people from the Cosmos.

You can see the episodes through the official website.

Violetta: 10 Teen Hunks on 1 Disney Channel Soap

The telenovela is a Latin American genre, an evening soap opera about wealthy, attractive people who fall in love a lot while scheming to take control of empires.  Teen telenovelas are especially popular among the junior high set, so the Disney Channel has jumped on the bandwagon with Violetta (2012-).   

Violetta (Martina Stoessel) is a teenage girl who wants to become a singer like her dead mother, against the wishes of her father.   She has a series of female friends who support her and enemies who try to destroy her as she tries to decide whether the Rich Boy or the Poor Boy is really The One.

As in most Disney Channel teen series, the amount of beefcake is staggering.

1. German (Diego Ramos, left), Violetta's hunky dad, and the ruler of a construction empire.

2. Matias (Joaquin Berthold), who is scheming to destroy him.

3. Tomas (Pablo Espinosa), The Poor Boy: quiet, artistic, and passionate.

4. Leon (Jorge Blanco), The Rich Boy: arrogant, and self-assured.

5. Andres (Nicholas Garnier), Leon's gay-subtext best friend.

6. Maxi, the gay-vague fashion plate.

7. Facundo (Maximiliano Ponte) and 8. Beto (Roberto Sultani), professors at the music academy.

9. Federico (Ruggero Pasquarelli), the new kid (top photo).

10. Diego (Diego Dominguez), his best buddy.

Runner for the King: A Dream of Hispanic Freedom

When I was little, I loved Runner for the King (Rowena Bennett 1944), about a boy named Roca who is part of a relay of runners in the Inca Empire of South America.  They deliver messages to and from the king in the form of knotted cords, or quipu.

But as Roca tries to deliver the latest message, things go wrong.  A relay station is abandoned, a rope bridge is cut; he must go through the jungle, where he is attacked by a jaguar.  He rescues his friend Cachi from the savages who are planning an attack, and they run together to deliver the message personally to the Inca.  

Cachi and Roca's perilous run entered my dreams.  My friend Bill and I were racing across a vast sandy desert beneath a midnight sky. In the distance I saw a city of sharp jagged towers, brightly lit with green lights. We ran for countless hours, for all our lives, never tiring, never stopping to rest.  The landscape never changed, the sun never rose, the city grew no closer. Yet we were content.


Sometimes as we ran, I glanced over, caught Bill's eye, and he smiled. It was the same smile that Chekhov and Sulu shared in their room on the Enterprise, and Rich and Sean at the inn in rural Ireland. It was the most important sight in the world

Later I read Temple of the Sun (Evelyn Sibley Lampman, 1964), about a 12-year old boy named Chimal, whose quiet life with his best friend in the ancient Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan is disrupted by the arrival of Cortez and his conquistadores.
















And I saw Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969), with the Conquistador Pizarro (Robert Shaw) capturing the extraordinarily muscular, semi-nude Atahualpa of the Incas (Christopher Plummer) and holding him for ransom.  But the plan becomes complicated as he develops feelings of respect, affection, and finally love for the god-king.

All I knew about Latin America at the time was Pre-Conquest, about vast empires rising from the jungles, Aztecs, Incas, and Mayas, who wore loincloths and built step-pyramids and worshipped the Feathered Serpent and validated same-sex love.

In the fifth grade, we had a choice of Spanish or French.  I took Spanish, and soon learned about Maximilian, Bolivar, Juarez, Santa Ana, and Zapata.  I soon read Los de Abajo, Don Segundo Sombra, the Ficciones of Jorge Luis Borges. I watched Santo, El Blue Demonio, La Gran Aventura, Papa soltero.  I dated Hispanic men. Eventually I learned about gay Latin American writers, like Arenas and Puig.

And I ran. Track in high school, cross-country in college, 5-Ks, 10-Ks, fun runs.  I've been running ever since.

Ricardo Montalban: What Happened to the Hispanic Beefcake

One of the most iconic beefcake images of the Boomer generation appeared on February 16, 1967, in the Star Trek episode "Space Seed": The Enterprise picks up the frozen survivors of a long-ago eugenics experiment, including the world's most perfectly developed man, former dictator Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban).  As he strutted around Sick Bay, his hospital gown robe falling off his massive, smooth chest, Boomers believed it.

Khan returned fifteen years later, in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982), to take vengeance on the Enterprise crew that stranded him on a barren planet.  He was gray-haired and craggy, but he still couldn't find a shirt that could cover his massive chest.  His crew, including male model Cristian Letelier, was buffed, too.  And he had a gay-vague sidekick played by Judson Scott.  Gay favorites  Ike Eisenmann and Merrit Butrick costarred.

In between, Ricardo Montalban played the mysterious, probably supernatural Mr. Roarke, who managed the wish-fulfillment Fantasy Island (1977-84) that our parents or, more likely, our grandparents watched.  Most wishes were about finding heterosexual loves.

But those parts are only two of the highlights of a 60 year career.

Born in Mexico in 1920, Montalban became a film star in his home country before moving to the U.S. in the late 1940s.  He insisted on remaining true to his heritage, and became one of the few Hispanic actors who was regularly cast as Hispanic, even though it meant many suave, sophisticated, gay-vague villains in B-movies.  He also played many hetero-romantic roles, reviving the Rudolph Valentino "fiery Latin lover" image in the postwar world.

And, during the craze for Biblical and ancient Roman epics, he got to take off his shirt a lot.

I haven't seen many of Montalban's 160+ movies and tv shows, but I did note the buddy-bonding Joe Panther (1976), in which Turtle George (Montalban) mentors a young Seminole Indian (Ray Tracey).

In Captains Courageous (1977), he played the noble Portuguese fisherman Manuel, who mentors rich kid Harvey (Jonathan Kan).

He played gay villain Victor Ludwig in The Naked Gun (1988), who doesn't hit on his secretary because he "likes German boys," whatever that means.

More recently, he was playing parodies of himself, such as Senor Senor Senior on Kim Possible and a Hispanic cow on Family Guy.

Although he was married to Georgiana Young from 1944 until her death in 2007, he is the subject of several gay rumors, linking him to Zulu on Hawaii Five-O, Cesar Romero, and teen heartthrob Scott Baio.

Toran Caudell, Boy Wizard

Born in 1982, Toran Caudell followed in his father Lane Caudell's footsteps with the gay subtext Max is Missing (1995). On vacation in Peru, Max (Toran) encounters a dying man, who gives him an ancient Incan mask.  It doesn't have magic powers, but  does send him on a wild flight through the wilderness,  chased by the bad guys, accompanied by the Quechua boy Juanito (Victor Rojas).

Nick of time rescues and physical buddy-bonding moments ensue.

Toran's shoulder-length blond hair and feminine pretty-boy features got him cast as a as shy, sensitive, gay-vague boy in Johnny Mysto: Boy Wizard (1997): he finds a magic ring that transports him to King Arthur's Camelot (where he fails to get a girlfriend).

Between 1997 and 2001, he had a recurring role on Seventh Heaven, the preachy, heterosexist "family" drama about a minister with a large brood of hetero-horny kids. Goth kid Rod (Toran) enters the series by dating daughter Lucy, naturally, but he ends up running away from home and butting heads with his mother's psychotic boyfriend.

Otherwise Toran did mostly voice work on Nickelodeon cartoons: Recess, Hey Arnold, Rocket Power. 

Today he is a song writer and music producer. He composed music for The Osbournes and My Super Sweet Sixteen.  Still androgynous though no longer blond, he has made no public statements about his sexual identity.