Wing Man to a Muscle God

In the summer of 1998, just after I returned from visiting Jaan in Estonia (and cruising the Swedish bodybuilder in Tallinn), it was time to travel to Montreal, to the annual conference of the International Sociological Society, where I read a paper on queer theory (and investigated the mystery of Formosan men's endowment).

But I also had plenty of time for sightseeing: the Basilique Notre-Dame, the Musee des Beaux-Arts, the Centre d'histoire de Montréal ( full of people getting all excited over caricatures of local celebrities that I had never heard of).

And the Gay Village, an amazingly vibrant neighborhood cluttered with gay bars, restaurants, shops, and saunas.

At the Oasis, a gay sauna on the rue Ste. Catherine, I hung around the spa (a pool-sized hot tub) and started a conversation with an older guy named James, probably in his mid-60s, a member of the English-speaking minority of Montreal.  He didn't learn Québécois French until high school, and he still couldn't parse a sentence in Parisian French.

What was the difference?

Tu as...vouz avons
C'est de valeur...quel domage 
Chatons la pomme...nous flirtons

We were so busy discussing languages that I forgot gay sauna etiquette: casual conversations must be restricted to a few sentences, or the other guy will think you are interested.  And James was definitely cruising me!

He reminded me of John Fiedler, who starred in The Bob Newhart Show in the 1970s: short enough, but rather too old for me, and lacking the other characteristics that I find attractive: he was pale-skinned, scrawny, and unimpressive beneath the belt (James, not John Fiedler).,

But, I figured, we were having a nice conversation, so why not? So when James put his hand on my knee and asked "Do you want to come to our room?" I consented.

Wait...our room?

"Do you mind if my friend joins us?"

Two pale-skinned, scrawny, under-endowed 60-year olds?  But I was in this far...  "No, I don't mind at all.  The more, the merrier."

He turned and addressed someone on the other side of the spa.  "J'ai trouvé un garz!  Eu, Jérôme!" I found a guy!  Hey, Jerome!

Wait -- there weren't any pale-skinned, scrawny 60 year olds around...

But there was a massively-built bodybuilder.  In his 30s,  dark-skinned, rock-hard chest and abs, massive biceps, and more than adequate beneath the belt (see top photo).

He had been giving everyone in the sauna attitude -- including us. But now he raised up on one arm and grinned and said, "Ok, passons-nous à la cabine,"  Let's go to our room.

I was stunned.

When two friends cruised together, the most attractive always acted as the bait, piquing the target's interest so much that he was willing to accept the less attractive one as part of the bargain.

Why did James and Jérôme reverse the pattern?  Surely Jérôme could get any guy he wanted.

It would have been gauche to inquire, so I didn't, but later I surmised: because there was such a blatant difference in attractiveness, some targets in the past had agreed to Jérôme but fled upon seeing James.

The strategy of using James as the bait resulted in fewer hurt feelings.

They both turned out to be nice guys.  Later they took me on a tour of the Gay Village, where we had dinner at Cafe Saigon and finished up the evening watching the show at Le Stud.

Not a Chris Demetral Hookup Story

In West Hollywood in the 1990s, gay men of certain level of affluence watched Dream On (1990-1996) on the premium cable channel HBO.  It was a quirky comedy-drama about an affluent New Yorker (Brian Benben) juggling his job, love life, and teenage son (Chris Demetral).

I couldn't see the attraction: sure, there were a couple of gay-themed episodes, and shots of Brian Benben's butt and bulge, but you had to endure endless ladies' breasts and hetero-maniacal dialogue.

As Chris Demetral grew from 14 to 19, he got more and more plotlines, and gushing articles in teen magazines.  He was fey, foppish, artistic.   In one episode, his character is tied up by a woman into "rough trade."  And gay men of a certain level of affluence concluded that he was "one of us."

I never heard any dating or hookup stories about him, but he was still a teenager when I left California.  There wasn't time.

After conducting some research, I conclude that it is unlikely that Chris Demetral is "one of us."

1. He didn't like Hollywood, and for a time commuted from his home in Royal Oak, Michigan.  What gay man doesn't like Hollywood?

2. He's a Lakers fan.  That's a L.A. basketball team.  I knew a few sports fans in California, but none who were basketball fans.  Football players have more muscular physiques.

3. He's a disciple of the Orange Goblin.

4. His twitter feed states states that he is "a Christian," which usually means "I hate gay people.  Leviticus, you know."

5. And a "devoted husband and father," which usually means "See!  Proof that I'm heterosexual!  If you publish any horrifying gay accusations about me, I will sue!

Therefore this is most definitely not a gay hookup story about Chris Demetral.

Montreal, Summer 1999

Call me René.  I grew up in the tiny town of Saint-Maurice, but moved to Montreal for college, and stayed. I had a flat on the Rue de Champlain in the Gay Village and jobs at the Musée d'art contemporain and a men's boutique.

I worked out every day, cruised at the bars twice a week, and went to a lot of parties like those you describe in West Hollywood: sex games, nudity, discussions of gigantic penises and dates from hell.

Not many celebrity hookup stories, though one of my friends claimed to have gone down on William Shatner.

In the summer of 1999, I was 25 years old, a buffed gym rat with a smooth chest and 14" biceps.  Dirty-blond hair, blue eyes.  20 cm, in case you're interested.

 One night I was out cruising at a bar on the rue Ste. Catherine,  when I saw Michel Courtemache, a Quebecois comedian, sitting at a table with two other guys.

Not at all attractive, but celebrity sightings are rare in Montreal, so I went over to say hello and gush a bit, "I was your biggest fan," that sort of thing.

Obviously flattered by the attention, he asked me to join them, and introduced me to his friends.  Another Michel, and Chris.

Suddenly I recognized Chris -- Chris Demetral, Jeremy Tupper from Dream On!  One of my big childhood crushes!  Now around 23 or 24,  strikingly handsome, with a strong jaw, piercing eyes, and a presentable physique.  I couldn't see a basket.

I shook his hand and kept holding it, the standard cruising gesture in Montreal.  He looked alarmed and jerked it away.

"He's never been to a gay bar before," Michel said in French.  "Go easy on him."

Um...ok.  "Would you like to dance?"  I asked.

"I don't think so," Chris said.  "I'm a little tired."

"It wouldn't hurt for our baby Chris to dance with an admirer," the other Michel said.

"Go on -- who knows, you might get lucky."

I took Chris by the hand and led him to the dance floor.  "Living La Vida Loca" was playing, not really a slow dance, but I put my hands on his waist anyway.  He followed my lead.

"What brings you to Montreal?"  I asked.  The music was very loud, so I had to yell.

"We're working on a tv series.  It's science fiction -- I play a young Jules Verne who fights vampires and cyborgs."  [The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, 2000.  Michel Courtemache played Verne's companion, Passepartout]

"Quite a big change from your earlier work."

"Not really.  I've done Star Trek and Lois and Clark (about Superman)."

I drew him closer with the pretense of trying to hear him.  Our crotches pressed together.  I definitely felt a bulge -- the guy was definitely into me!

"You must let me show you the city.  I know the out-of-the-way places."

"Sure, that would be great."

"I'll give you my number."  I leaned in for a kiss -- closed-mouth, nothing exciting.  Then Chris broke away and returned to the table.  I followed and sat next to him and put my arm around him.

"You see, that was painless!" Michel exclaimed.  "Gay men won't bite you -- unless you ask nicely."

"Would you like to...."  I began.

Chris turned to me.  "I'm really tired, and we have to be up early, so..."

Tabarnak!  No hookup!  "Me, too, I said reluctantly."  I scribbled my phone number on a scrap of paper and put it in his pocket, then leaned in for another kiss.  He turned his head away.

A few moments later, Chris and the other Michel left.  Michel Courtemache stayed behind.

"Sorry that he beat you cold," Michel said.  "He is very shy.  Not like me -- I'm not shy at all."  He pulled me close and kissed me.  

I never saw Chris Demetral again, but in the end I went down on Michel Courtemache.  Very big penis, uncut.  And no, he didn't make any of his crazy noises.

See also: Nate Richert's Kielbasa

Summer 1970: Roadside Beefcake

Minnesota, Summer 1970

Every year during Dad's vacation, we spent a week in a cabin on a lake somewhere in the northwoods, usually Minnesota, occasionally Wisconsin or Michigan, once Manitoba.  It was awful -- no tv, no movies, no museums or art galleries, just a lot of swimming, boating, and fishing (though once we visited Alexandria, Minnesota, site of the Kensington Runestone).  I might as well have stayed in the cub scouts.

But if you knew where to look, you could find beefcake anywhere, and not just in the shirtless man-mountains wandering the country roads, who could sometimes be persuaded to flex for you.












Many of the small towns we passed featured statues honoring local Native Americans, like Big Chief Germain in St. Germain, Wisconsin. There actually wasn't such a person; the bulging biceps came from the sculptor's imagination.

The descendants of Scandinavian immigrants have erected many statues that celebrate their Viking heritage (or to promote the theory that Vikings explored the region during the 13th century).  This one in Gimli, Manitoba, near Winnipeg, was constructed by George Barone in 1967. At the time I thought the Viking was bare-chested, but maybe he's just really, really muscular.

State and provincial capitol buildings were always good for beefcake based on Greek or Roman mythology.  When I was a kid, the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul was capped with this statue, "The Progress of the State," by Daniel Chester French and Edward Clark Potter.  The muscleman represents prosperity.  In 1995 it was moved to the southern entrance.

But the Holy Grail of Roadside Beefcake was the Golden Boy (real name: Eternal Youth), sculpted by Georges Gardet and perched atop the Manitoba Legislative Building in Winnipeg: amazingly muscular, golden, and naked.

I couldn't get close enough to see him this clearly, but as a symbol of Manitoba, his image adorned decorative plates, spoons, key chains, pin-backs, postcards, and toys.  When I spent my allowance on a few, Mom and Dad seemed happy that I was taking such an interest in my Canadian heritage.

See also: The Top 10 Public Penises of Minnesota; the Big Men of American Tall Tales.

The Truth about the Formosan Penis

Montreal, July 1998

My doctoral program in New York (1997-2001) was not only about studying sexuality.  I spent a lot of time seeking out ethnic groups with legendary penises:

The Basque, reputedly the largest in the world.

The Bushman, reputedly always in a tumescent state.

And the Formosan of Taiwan.

When I first moved to New York in 1997, I had to live in a grad student apartment, where I was assigned 3 roommates: Max, the most obnoxious guy on the planet; a beefy Turkish guy who mostly kept to himself; and a Taiwanese guy named Huang, who also happened to be a fellow grad student in the Sociology Department.

Huang was not nearly as muscular as Max, but also not as obnoxious.  His only faults: he occasionally had a girl over to giggle in his bedroom, and he called his family back home every Saturday at 4:00 am.

In each case I could hear him quite clearly through the wall.

My Mandarin was limited to Wǒ xǐhuān zhōngguó rén, "I like Chinese men,"  but at least I could recognize the language.  And when Huang spoke to his family, he wasn't speaking Mandarin.

Turns out that he was fluent in Mandarin (and Hokkien, French, and English), but his native language was Paiwan, from the Formosan family, related the Tagalog of the Philippines and the Javanese of Indonesia.

There are about 400,000 Formosan aboriginals in Taiwan, about 2% of the population, mostly living in the mountainous south.

"We get discrimination," Huang told me.  "The Chinese think yuánzhùmín are uncivilized, barbarians.  Like the Indians in America."

There are statues of muscular, half naked Formosans all over Taiwan, like the statues of Native Americans in the U.S.

The Formosan Aboriginal Cultural Park in Yuchi, about 150 miles south of Taipei, invites Chinese tourists to see aboriginals performing traditional arts and native dances, like the pow wows in the U.S.

"But the Chinese woman like us," Huang added with a grin.

"Oh, why is that?"

"Yuánzhùmín men are bigger than Chinese men." He pointed to his crotch.  "Dá jībā!"  Apparently that meant big penis.  

I reddened, shocked that a straight guy would be comfortable enough to discuss his penis size with me.   Or maybe he was bisexual, and expressing interest.  "Well -- I'm sure some of the Chinese men like Formosan dá jībā, too."

"No, they are jealous."

Not bisexual!

"When you tell a woman you are yuánzhùmín," Huang continued, "She always ask if the stories are true, and she want to see it."

"Well - are the stories true?"  I asked.  "Can I see it?"

"No, no, not for gays." He giggled. "Just for women."

I'm not usually deterred so easily, but after Huang's startling display of confidence, I felt guilty about plotting any complex schemes to get a glimpse of his jībā.  

Maybe I could see it by accident?

No -- he didn't go to the gym, and he didn't strut around the apartment in a towel.

When I moved out of graduate student housing to a place in Manhattan, I lost hope of ever finding out if the stories about Formosan men are true.

But my hope was restored in July, shortly after I returned from my trip to Estonia with Yuri and Jaan.  Some of the sociology students drove up to Montreal for the International Sociological Association World Congress, and Huang and I shared a hotel room.

Surely he would change clothes in front of me, or sleep in revealing briefs.

No -- he changed clothes in the bathroom, and slept in pajama bottoms.  Not even a bulge was visible!

One night I was planning to go to the Keynote Speech, then "out" (actually to the Oasis, where I met the Muscle God and his Wingman).  I told Huang I would not be back until after midnight.

But after the Keynote Speech, I realized that I had left my jacket in the hotel room -- it was rather chilly in Montreal -- and rushed back upstairs.

I slid the key card through the slot and pulled the door open.

The first thing I noticed was cheesy 1970s music.

The second was the heterosexual porn playing on the tv.

The third was Huang lying on his bed, naked, doing what heterosexual men do when they watch porn.

He yelled and pulled the covers over himself.  But he was still tenting.

"I forgot my jacket," I said, stepping forward to grab it from the coat rack.

"I'm sorry...I'm sorry....I thought you are not coming back until very late."

"Don't worry about it.  By the way, you're right -- it really is a dá jībā."

I'm certainly not going to make a joke about Huang and hung, but he was.

See also: The Secret Identity of the Elevator Hookup

Jeremie Saunders: The Funny Side of Sickness

Our bodies are fragile.  They get injured, they get sick.  We like to think that we will have 80 or more years on Earth, but really, our lives could end at any moment.

And even if we reach those 80 years, the time will slip by at lighting speed, so it seems like only a few moments have passed.

Isn't that sort of funny?

Our bodies wear out over time.  Our faces wrinkle, our muscles sag, our penises no longer perform.

And the younger people insult us for it, call us "grandpa" and "geezer," shun us on social media sites, act as if getting older is our fault.

Isn't that sort of funny?

Jeremie Saunders has dedicated his life to finding the funny side to sickness and death.

He's a Canadian actor who starred in Artzooka (2010-12), a children's series about how to turn everyday objects into art.   He also had roles in the docudrama Storming Juno (2010), the horror movie V/H/S/2.   He teaches yoga on the side.

He has cystic fibrosis.  When he was a kid, his parents were told that he wouldn't see his 12th birthday.  He takes about 40 pills per day and spends 45 minutes, morning and evening, in an atomizer to keep his lungs working. But it's a losing battle.  Every day his lungs deteriorate a little more, and one day they will simply shut down.

One day soon.  Jeremie knows his expiration date.




People don't talk about serious illness.  It makes them uncomfortable.  Like the elderly, the chronically ill are treated as pariahs, as if they have committed some sort of crime.

So Jeremie and his friends, Taylor MacGillvray and Brian Stever, and his wife Bridie MacLean, teamed together to make a podcast making fun of our hangups about sickness and death. 

Over 100 episodes have been broadcast to date, covering everything from cancer to chronic depression.  A documentary, Sickboy, appeared in 2017.

By the way, Jeremie and Bridie have an open relationship.  She figures, he's not going to live long, so why not have sex with other people?

Other people?  Does that include men?