Category: Playing for the Other Team

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“In Which We Decode”

From mrpeenee:

Grandpa still got it goin on.

Is there anything more ephemeral than advertising? You know what they say, mass mind control today, gone tomorrow. And yet some ads live on, almost always because some homo gay has either a) fetishized it like the Brawny papertowel guy or b) decided there is gay relevance in there hidden by code.

Code was the way queers were able to find each other and to express themselves during the years of repression we had to tolerate. Making eye contact with some stranger and then following him into a toilet is all well and good for sex, but for communicating in various media, we needed a way to hide in plain view. And thus, code.

The most perfect example of this, I think, are these weird ads from Schlitz beer from the 1950s. They all appeared as three illustrated panels followed by the internal monologue of one of the heroes.

I love how this one evolves from a three way to a more simple queer-with-daddy-issues thingie.

They all start off with the same pronouncement: “I was curious.” Of course, “curious” nowadays is understood to mean “looking for hot dick, but I want to maintain plausible deniability.” In the Eisenhower America these ads appeared in, the word would not have had those lurid overtones, but the illustrations make it clear that what he’s actually curious about is what’s in the other guy’s pants.

The rest of the text is bland advertising naff, but that’s where the artwork takes over and really spins these beauties into the love that dares not speak its name, but really likes to hint around about it.

“Eyes up here, buddy.”

Every one of the ads has the second panel with the ladies dropping out to leave the boys alone and with one of them (usually the more experienced one, ready to lead the other down the primrose path of butt sex) sporting a knowing look on his face. A look that says “I’ve got the cure for that itchy prostate.”

From Mr. Peenee:
There is a lot of intergenerational shenanigans going on in these. The wise, old shaman introducing the naive younger one to the insights of same sex bonding. Also, anal.

The final panel is my favorite, with our two lads now closing in for the clinch and both of them bright eyed, leering at each other and probably popping a stiffy. If there had been a fourth panel, can there be any doubt sodomy would have been involved?

I’m also very impressed with this one’s daring butt shot opener and then the romantic closer with Eugene and Dave admitting they each find the other dreamy.
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Dear Baby Gay…

Golden Eras are a myth. Don’t believe the party was better 15 minutes before you arrived. Your dance floors can survive the apocalypse but your spaces are always in danger. Love your bars and backup your pictures often. You
come from poets but lack the vocabulary for shame and addiction. Don’t drink on an angry stomach. If an older man offers you meth knowing it’s your first time, he is not your friend. You may be what a loved one loses on their way to
rock bottom. Queerness is not an immunity to white and not be told enough how beautiful your femininity is. You don’t need to slave at a gym to be loved. If your body is all you have to offer, you’ll always come up short. Everyone thinks everyone is having more sex. Hookup apps are just one tool in an arsenal, so learn the art of the cruise. Sex work is work. You can love it, but if you hate it, it can steal your soul. Covid-19 is your second pandemic. The AIDS crisis was not a punishment, it was neglect. Homophobia is rooted in jealousy. Yes, it gets better, but also impossible in ways you cannot imagine, because this world lacks the imagination for people like you. Entire religions have called you their end and drained you of deities, but there will always be enough Sundays for your Queer divinity.

(Found on the internet)

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I Have No Reason to Doubt This Story

The Levi people said they’d like to make me an outfit- a denim kilt, and a whole denim Nightcrawler blue thing for the [X-Men] premiere, and then they said,“Wouldn’t it be great if you had a big black leather belt which had Nightcrawler studded on it?”

So we go to this leather shop in San Francisco and we’re buying the belts and there’s all these metal cock rings on the wall, millions of them. And I was like “How do you know how big a cockring is? Because you can’t tie it or anything, it’s just a metal thing.” And the guy at the shop heard me and went “Would you like to try one on, sir?” and I was like “oh….ok!” so he gets one down off the wall and goes “You look like a medium” and I’m like “Oh, fuck you.”

…so then the premiere comes, and then you know when you go to those things there’s endless television crews you’ve got to do little sound bytes for…and I’m wearing a kilt, so they say “So Alan, are you being a true Scotsman? What are you wearing under your kilt?” and after a while I couldn’t resist it any longer- “I’m wearing just a cockring.” and they’re like “No, really….” and I’m like “Yes, really.”

And then I got so brazen about it that by the end of the party, people didn’t believe me and I was like “Feel it!” So I would get people’s fingers, like the head of the studio and everything, and I would put their fingers so they could feel like, the metal at the top bit. Not near anything dangerous, just above the thing. And then eventually word got around and there was like, a line of people waiting to feel the metal of my cockring. So yeah, that’s my cockring story!

~ Alan Cumming