The Olympics made me gay. At least they gave me my earliest appreciation for the athletic male form. I have vague memories (more impressions, really) of the 1976 Olympics (dating myself, I know). I remember more of the post-Olympic marketing of Bruce Jenner than I actually remember seeing him compete (back when he could still move his face, poor man).
There are many Olympians and Olympic moments, specifically, that hold highly charged homoerotic memories for me. For today, I’ll just stick to just one in order to give him the full credit he deserves for enflaming (and engorging) the wrestling homo-imaginings of an awed gay teenage boy.
Alexander Karelin first wrestled in the Olympics in the ’88 games in Seoul. Karelin was basically the Rocky IV character, Ivan Drago, come to life. And even more menacing than Dolph Lundgren, Karelin was not pretty, and he was actually a cold war warrior Russian Soviet (unlike the dreamboat Swede, Lundgren). He was 6’3″ tall and weighed in around 285 pounds of solid beef.
He was a wood chipper/steam roller of a Greco-Roman wrestler. Watching him was like watching a force of nature. His poor opponents, wide-eyed and clearly in fear (super-heavyweights, mind you) were always destined to be tossed around like rag dolls. It was no secret that many of his victims simply rolled over on their backs rather than be slammed to the mat (talk about submission and domination!).
The Sports Illustrated story on Karelin in 1991 connects all the muscleman/body worship dots in my mind. “Karelin is so strong that the muscles in his legs and arms bulge to slightly obscene proportions when they are driving a man to his back.” One man’s “obscene” is this gayboy’s wet dream, I say. This guy is literally so much bigger than life that they simply had to make a comic book hero out of him, which, by the way, is also hot!
He pioneered a move of muscling his opponent entirely off the mat and flinging him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He was more heel than any pro-wrestler dreamed of being. He was fierce and superhuman and frightening… and this teenage gay boy worshipped him. He was a mind boggling instructor in the homoerotic joys of muscle domination, and I was his eager pupil in awe of his power, his body (that ass!!!), his “I’ll break you in half and serve you on toast” persona.
I read that he’s an elected Russian politician these days, hand-picked by Putin’s party for a seat in parliament. Oh, how I would love to see Karelin bearhug a bare-chested Putin (really, that’s Russian for sexy-macho?), and powerslam him. I don’t know what it would do to the geopolitical balance in the world, but I’d be playing that scene over and over in my sexual fantasies for years to come!
Sidelineland 