Tag: What Turned Me Gay

What Turned Me Gay (again, not really)

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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!

What Turned Me Gay (again, not really)

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Saturday afternoons were frequently gay-indoctrination times for me. TV networks used to run old movies on Saturday afternoons, I assume because they could buy the rights for cheap. That’s how I was introduced to Tarzan and Hercules. That’s also how I was introduced to A Kid for Two Farthings.

I must have been around 13 years old when I saw it first. It was pre-porn featuring actual wrestler-turned-actor Joe Robinson as a complete narcissist bodybuilder. Women threw themselves at Joe’s character, but he was too busy pinning up photos of beautiful hardbody boys clipped from bodybuilding magazines , and then taping them up to his walls (hey! I did that!).
The movie takes a quick turn from bodybuilding to bodybuilder wrestling (excellent!). Despite Joe’s reluctance to get into the pro-wrestling ring (“Nothing doing! Wrestling’s the worst thing in the world you can do for muscle development.”), he’s lured into the ring to defend the challenge to his manhood by the actual boxer-turned-pro-wrestler Primo Carnera (also seen throwing down with Steve Reeves in Hercules Unchained).

At one point in A Kid Joe’s character learns he’s become the coverboy for the magazine “Body Beautiful” (hey! I secretly bought muscle mags like that to lust after the beef!).
There are only a couple of actual wrestling matches, and most of the camera angles are from miles away, but from what I got to see of Joe Robinson in his impressively stuffed tight green trunks and floppy blond hair, he instantly became my hero-wrestler dreamboat. Of course he’s so cocky that he thinks his sheer brawn will make him victorious, despite his lack of skills. He’s impetuous and, well, pretty dense. He has to suffer because of his hard body, his blond hair, his cocky overconfidence, his simpleminded goodness. And he suffers nicely, particularly in a long, crushing bodyscissors in the middle of the ring.
He breaks a sweat, which you know how much I love! He even sits low into a pretty convincing boston crab, giving us a glimpse of his decent, muscle ass in action.

Joe Robinson in A Kid for Two Farthings taught me the notion of the chick-block, particularly that closet-strategy of throwing yourself into some esoteric obsession as an excuse to keep out of the clutches of horny women. He taught me that the bodybuilder/wrestler crossover is smoking hot! He taught me that pretty, blond muscle boys are always cocky, and they always must suffer terribly in the ring. And he taught me that, just like all those women in the movie, the only appropriate way to treat a hardbody narcissist is with awed, lustful, body worship.
Yep, all that I learned by the age of 13, thanks to A Kid for Two Farthings. As an adult, I purchased the film for nostalgia’s sake, but it can now be downloaded in chunks on YouTube, in case you’d like to review any of these important lessons.

What Turned Me Gay (again, not really)

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Jon-Erik Hexum made me gay. Well, not personally. I never met him. And, frankly, I was already consciously attracted to guys by the time I first saw him on television. But he’s got to take some of the credit for sparking the sexual imaginations of many of us gay boys at that time.

I was just about the age of young Meeno Peluce when he starred opposite Hexum in the very short-run television show Voyagers. So I was the target audience (in more than one way, I’m sure). Peluce’s character was the nerdy kid who Jon-Erik’s character came to rely on as he traveled through time, getting the both of them into all sorts of adventures. Jon-Erik didn’t really know how to use that little pocket-watch/time traveling device, so Meeno had to operate it for him. Meeno was the brains and Jon-Erik was the brawn (and I mean brawn!).

Jon-Erik protected the kid and clearly grew to love him. A notorious womanizer, Jon-Erik’s character had to forgo his sexual conquests to hang out with his dependent ward. He ALWAYS had his shirt open, showing his beautifully hairy chest, and not infrequently he appeared shirtless and sweaty (mmmm….). Those eyes… that smile… that BODY! Oh, how I wanted a hunky time-traveler to stumble into my bedroom and carry me off to accompany him on his shirtless adventures!

After Voyagers went off the air, I kept my eyes peeled for more of Jon-Erik. When he landed a new series, Cover Up, I was tuned in eagerly anticipating more of his thrilling hotness. I remember when I heard the news that he had died in a freak accident on the set of Cover Up. I actively grieved. It was like someone I knew and loved had died. My family had no idea what I was experiencing, but I had so identified with the kid from Voyagers, so pictured myself with Jon-Erik as my companion, protector, and I his loving ward – I was devastated.

There are a lot of fan sites devoted to Jon-Erik, with more than a few of us gay boys testifying to our adoration of the magnetic hunk. The tribute group to Jon-Erik Hexum has a stunningly large catalogue of images of him. His life was tragically cut far too short, but he remains always and lovingly in my memory as the gorgeous, sexy, bright blue-eyed, 27 year old hunk that made me very happy to be a gay boy.

What Turned Me Gay (again, not really)

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It was a couple of years after Tarzan the Ape Man came out that I finally saw it. I was a teenager, and I almost couldn’t quite believe that Miles O’Keeffe was real. I thought his face wasn’t well suited to Tarzan. He looked more like a fashion model than the king of the jungle. But that body… the loin cloth… and the scene where he gets bearhugged by the African warrior… what a source of ecstasy! Seeing his nearly naked body getting tossed around like a ragdoll still makes me light-headed. Those incredibly long, muscled legs were entrancing, with the peek-a-boo loin cloth offering an occasional glimpse of bare, beautiful butt cheeks.

It wasn’t until much later I saw the Ator movies, but I was all over the Sword of the Valiant as soon as it came out. What a disappointment… the pageboy haircut and the dumbfounded look on his face throughout the movie was pretty much the opposite of sexy. However, the scene of Miles shirtless, tortured on the rack, surely sowed the seeds of my recessive S&M traits. His acting career never really took off, but those skin shots of Miles O’Keeffe from my early adolescence taught me the vivid lesson of what joy there was to be found in seeing such a strikingly beautiful male form.

What Turned Me Gay (again, not really)

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I clearly remember seeing the episode of Hart to Hart, guest starring Mr. Universe Frank Zane. I was a pre-adolescent in a motel room on a family vacation. My family was in the room, and I desperately wanted some alone time with just me, the TV, and Frank Zane flexing. The premise of the “charity muscle show” was contrived to justify intense and deliberate body worship. The YouTube clip is heavily edited, but you get the idea of the body worship theme. Frank Zane is in his posing trunks, oiled up, with dozens of people in formal wear watching and applauding each flex. All eyes are riveted on him, as a muzak version of the Village People’s “Macho Man” plays in the background. The camera zooms in, lingering on each of Zane’s bulging muscle groups, one at a time. A woman leans over and says to Stefanie Powers, breathlessly, “My goodness! This never happens in Pasadena! All we have is a parade.” Just like that exuberant woman, my little gay heart was fluttering, too. There was something particularly erotic about the wealthy audience in tuxedos and formal dresses being entertained by the mostly naked hard body. It smacks of the voyeur or perhaps the power of dominance and submission, as Robert Wagner applauds, restrained but appreciative, as Zane flashes a side chest pose and the camera zooms in on his contracting pec and his bouncing brown nipple. For just an instant, Zane flashes a cocky grin, letting us know that he knows that he’s worship-worthy, that he’s earned our adoration, that although he’s the one almost naked, he’s in command of the moment. That is, of course, the essential plot to every bodybuilding competition, isn’t it? So perhaps this didn’t teach me to be gay, but it certainly gave me an early lesson in the erotic art of worshipping the male form, of the exchange of power between watching and being watched, of the breathless thrill of watching biceps bulge and pecs pump.

What Turned Me Gay (again, not really)

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It hardly needs mentioning that Steve Reeves must bear some of the responsibility for turning me and at least a couple generations of us gay. In my childhood, Hercules movies ran and re-ran on television on Saturday afternoons (often alternating with the aforementioned Tarzan flicks). Of course Hercules was also portrayed by actors other than Reeves, such as the very memorable Three Stooges Meets Hercules.

But it was Reeves’ ridiculously handsome face and dizzyingly, perfectly muscled body that fueled some of my earliest sexual fantasies. His torso was almost always bare and oiled up. By definition, he was perpetually engaged in grunting tests of strength. And, the coup de gras, he almost invariably wrestled in every movie. Watching Hercules grappling, dominating, and possessing his opponents must get a great deal of the credit for my lifelong obsession with wrestling body-beautifuls. In Hercules Unchained, Reeves fights an extended battle with the pro-wrestler Primo Carnera. Hercules is such a dismissively cocky heel in this scene! Bearhugs, full nelsons, cocky carries… all seeds planted in the fertile imagination of a gay boy.
In addition to cementing the homoerotic images of wrestling, Reeves’ Hercules also taught me the joys of body worship. In the 1959 Hercules, beautiful but lesser young men literally throw themselves at Hercules in adoration. As Hercules watches perched on a rock above, soldiers in training spar and exhibit their feats of strength and athletic prowess (9:14) in an effort to catch Hercules’ eye. One elder observes that the young men “have all become fanatics since Hercules arrived” (9:41) . The one eager young man who pole vaults up to Hercules’ perch (0:06) is clearly in love, desperate to worship at the feet of the bodybuilder demigod. “I wanted you to notice me!” he says passionately (0:20), despite his father’s disapproval. Like the good muscle Daddy, Hercules both disciplines and encourages the young cub who offers himself to the son of Zeus. In the sequel Hercules Unchained, as Ulysses tries to convince the amnesiac Hercules who he is, Hercules strips his torso bare and stretches across a table for an oil massage. Lustful body worship, infatuation with the cocky muscle stud, the eager bottom offering himself to the dominant top, the passion of sweaty, body-to-body wrestling… all the wonderful lessons that Hercules taught me as a gay boy.

What Turned Me Gay (again, not really)

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If I wasn’t gay before I saw my first Tarzan movie (I was), surely that would have put me over the top. As a kid, the old Tarzan movies ran on Saturday afternoons. It was another genre within my pre-porn collection. I always hoped for the house to be empty when I could sit in front of the TV and enjoy a private moment with the Edgard Rice Burroughs‘ character. I became somewhat of the connoisseur of Tarzans by the time I was an adolescent. Buster Crabbeplayed the part around the same time as the more popular Johnny Weissmuller, but for my money, Crabbe’s Tarzan was far sexier and more entertaining. Denny Miller’s sole project as the “ape man” was memorable… well, Miller in a loincloth was memorable. When I first saw a Mike Henry portrayal of Tarzan, I was instantly in love. Henry played a more “intellectual” jungle man, but his loin cloth was astonishingly brief, his muscled legs were stunningly long, and his hairy torso was incredibly hot. But I believe my favorite and most lusted-after Tarzan had to be Gordon Scott. He didn’t have quite the hard body that Henry had, but there were more than occasional bare-ass shots as Scott’s loin cloth rode up his crack. He perhaps wasn’t quite as handsome as Crabbe, in my book, but he was totally adorable. Although bondage and wrestling seem to have been regularly occurring themes in many of the Tarzan movies, the image of Scott captured and bound is seared in my memory and cherished in my mental collection of homoerotic images. Of course much later portrayals of Tarzan featured gorgeous boys. O’Keefe’s wrestling scene in the 1981 Bo Derek movie can still inspire a hands-free orgasm for me most days.
Two things I have to mention looking back on my early education in homoeroticism worshiping at the feet of Tarzan. First, the whole concept of the man raised as an animal without the inhibitions of “civilized” propriety was all one HUGE metaphor for male sexuality. So who could be surprised that a gay kid like me would be instantly aroused. He was the totally sexualized man, perfectly matched to the hormone-saturated, pre-adolescent gay boy. Second, as a white, gay kid, I marvel today at the (terrible) lessons that those movies taught me about race. Although the villains were often also white (poachers, usually), there were almost always “primitive,” cannibalistic, violent, terrifying black African characters who Tarzan, the great white champion, had to conquer. White women were invariably threatened by horrific (and actually quite hot) dark-skinned menaces who might be about to eat them, rape them, or enslave them. Decades later, I think I’m still trying to live down those early racist lessons.

What Turned Me Gay (again, not really)

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I was a young adolescent when I first stumbled across the local wrestling show on television. Before there were nationally televised wrestling corporations, before cable television offered endless access to wrestling, I began watching the local wrestling show that came on at 11 p.m. every Saturday night. Just seeing scantily clad men grabbing one another would have likely been enough to cement wrestling in my homoerotic fantasies, but it was, without doubt, the appearance of a young Billy Jack Haynes that filled me with homoerotic awe. Billy Jack was huge, with hairy muscles, a slender waist, and an incredible round ass. Watching a physique like that move around the ring was a thrilling moment of discovery for me. This was the hottest thing I’d ever seen. His story lines worked on multiple levels. He was the perpetual jobber: younger, fitter, clearly more athletic than any of his doughy, bleach-blond opponents, but he typically lost as a result of his opponents’ cheating. The plot always worked for me, in that it made me root for Billy Jack all the more passionately. It cemented in me an investment in seeing the classic good vs. evil battle play itself out every Saturday evening, with Billy Jack as my champion. Of course, on a whole different level, it planted within me the seeds of a wrestling fetishist. I was aroused watching him flex and overpower his physically inferior opponents. His signature move was a standing full-nelson, with Billy Jack thrusting his hips into his opponents’ asses and lifting them off their feet. I was even more aroused witnessing this hairy, sweaty, muscle-bound god being picked apart, dominated, and destroyed, as he usually ended up. Eventually, more hot heroes (and anti-heroes) made their way through the local circuit and into my fantasies, notably including Tommy Zenk, the Dynamite Kid, and Lance Von Erich. Billy Jack did a stint in the WWF, of course, and returned to local productions as a heel, getting older, fatter, uglier. But I credit the image of him as a fierce young jobber as the start of my homoerotic wrestling fantasies.

What Turned Me Gay (not really)

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I distinctly remember being on a trip as a pre-teen, browsing magazine covers at the airport while the rest of my family amused themselves elsewhere, when I came across an issue of Muscle & Fitness with Bob Paris on the cover. I think this photo, above, may have been the exact photo I remember. I’d never seen anything more beautiful before in my life. It was before Bob came out, so he was mostly known for being a bodybuilder devoted to the aesthetics of the sport rather than the race for brute size. I guiltily bought muscle mags for several years after that (my pre-porn), and was so inspired to follow his coming out story. I assume it was hell for him, and he seemed to drop out of competitive bodybuilding soon after that. But seeing a world class athlete who was openly gay, not to mention drop-dead gorgeous, did my little gay heart good. Glad to see he’s still telling his story and looking beautiful.