One Singular Confusion

There's something very odd about being photographed with and receiving an autograph from a person one is told is a celebrity when one in fact has no idea who the alleged celebrity is.

I would have preferred a photo with the dancer boy with the amazingly tight ... um ... technique.

Nick gets extra props from me for having iPhone wallpaper of himself available for download from his website. That's hawt. And this is just plain off the hook.

Fashions by Duane Reade Drug Store

Gee, Thanks

Lost, ABC's fantasy suckfest full of hotties, intrigue and sex now has a gay character. He's the psychotic, evil, sorta-sea-captain-looking guy.

Now, I'd get my panties in a bunch about the gay character being psychotic and evil except everyone on that loony island is one or the other. The interesting ones are both. So fine.

He's a total eyesore but he has a taste for the finer things in life. He enjoys Manhattan hotel suites, room service and super-hot, foreign boys. This is a man I can respect.

So what hot, man-on-man action does Lost have to offer?

"Arturo, we have some business to conduct. Could you leave us alone for a minute?"

Stage direction: Kiss on the cheek. Arturo exits.

What?!?!

That's it. No hot hotel action. No showering. No lingering bedroom shots. No running around in very little clothing like ... say ... all the straight characters.

Nope. None of that for the queers.

Gay = Get off screen as fast as possible before you make anyone nervous.

Go fuck yourself, Lost.

They Grow Up So Fast

Look closely. Do you even recognize who this is?



/snicker

Is Everyone Moist Now?

We need more bathtub technologists.

Strippers for World Peace

I have discovered something as bad, laughable and ludicrous as lesbian folk music to save the environment. It's gay disco against racism. Yes, there is actually a disco music video of gay, multi-ethnic strippers lip-syncing lyrics like "We all belong together."



I guess Jesse Jackson will be out of a job now that these go-go boys' rock-hard abs have solved the issue of race relations.

Mmmmm! Coke and Velveta! My favorite.

Barbershop Beauties

I was getting my usual buzz cut and shave at my usual Dominican barbershop here in The Heights and this book caught my eye. As I flipped through the pages I had a clash of emotions.



Is it just me, or are these mens' haircut books really, really gay? For starters the title just screams gay porn, "Men in Action VII". Booyah! And don't forget the thrilling sequel, "Men in Action VIII - Latin Fever!"

Almost nowhere else in pop imagery do you find men depicted solely as objects of beauty. Sure, exercise magazines offer pretty men with the thin pretext of athletics. But the pretext is there and it's key.

Men can't just be beautiful in America. They can only be accidentally or incidentally attractive as a function of something else ... sports, war, leadership, etc.

Romance novel covers offer pretty men, but the text is all about strength and heroism. Men presented as attractive without pretext ... gay. Anyone who looks at them, also gay.

But barbershop books break this pattern ... pretty men, presented as and because they are pretty, doing nothing.

Barbershop books were probably the first images of pretty men being pretty that were ever available to me as a boy. I've always found these books erotic. And since I have 30+ years of history with these books, I'm hard wired pretty deep when it comes to them. I never really cared about the haircuts, just the pretty men. There's something clandestine, exciting and yet skeezy about having erotic thoughts at a non-erotic venue like a barbershop. So flipping through the pages I felt just a bit self conscious. "I may as well stand on this chair and proclaim to the whole shop, 'I'm a fag and I wanna fuck all these guys!'" I thought to myself.

I "read" the book as long as I dared and put it back down. Odd that of all the sorts of outrageous things I'm prone to doing in public, this fairly innocent act would be the one to make me uncomfortable.

So I closed my eyes and went back to being shaved by another man (not gay at all) and pondering these deep matters of great importance. By the time my haircut was done I had mentally composed this blog post and wanted a photo of the book to go with it.

Again, quite out of character for me, it took some psyching myself up to do it. "If lusting over the book didn't scream 'I'm gay' surely composing a photo with the book will," I thought. Rather than asking permission I decided to just grab the book, place it in context, snap a photo and make a quick get away.

But instead of the shop owner skreeching, "My God! There's been a fag in our midst lo these many minutes! Get the torches and pitchforks!" to my surprise exactly the opposite occurred.

My impromptu photo session created a sudden flurry of interest. The Dominican barbers all came over to look at the image on my iPhone. My own, previously almost entirely expressionless barber smiled. "Look, barbershop art," I said.

He asked if I worked at a magazine. He actually seemed to beam with pride.

I think he felt that I'd captured the essence of his professional life with this image. It seemed to bring him some pleasure that I'd shown him the art in his daily life. I emailed him a copy of the image.

We all have art in our daily lives, of course. Sometimes we just need a little help seeing it.

As I walked away it occurred to me that barbershop books are one of the few instances in public where it's accepted that men may look at pretty men without the automatic assumption of it being gay as a pejorative. Oh sure, it's plenty homoerotic. But it's homoerotic with deniability, like pro wrestling and bodybuilding exhibitions.

We need more of that.

Or maybe just less of a societal need for deniability.

Or how about more books full of pretty men?

Yeah. That sounds about right.