Charlton Heston Turned Me Gay
Y’know, there’s nothing quite as uninteresting as a coming-out story, so, in honour of the upcoming borefest known as “Pride Day”, here’s my bid to give Charlton Heston a stroke…
Many, many inverts can name for you the moment at which they “knew” they were gay. Not just different-gay but oh, yeah, got-to-get-me-some-of-that-mansex-gay.
I can name for you the precise moment that I became gay.
It was not when my father forced me to shower with the other men at Charleswood Golf Club after a rousing eighteen holes with him and his buddies — “don’t dawdle, we’re all men here!” he’d goad, amid the clouds of baby powder created by the wrinkled geezers who padded naked around the locker room — and it was not when my grandmother allowed me to bake those brownies at the cottage and it was not at the sight of my Tom Selleck-esque junior high school gym teacher in his sweaty y-fronts after volleyball practice.
It was Chuck Heston. In the summer of 1970. Charlton Heston totally turned me gay.
Yes, he of the impenetrably wooden acting, he who would have his Constitutionally-protected gun pried from his cold, dead fingers, he who denied aggressively and publicly that Judah Ben-Hur’s best friend Messala was ever more than “just” a friend, he who discovered what soylent green was, he who is no friend to damn, dirty apes.
And it was that ape movie that started the process. I mean, for god’s sake, how is someone genetically-predisposed to homosexualism supposed to resist the awesome, ubermasculine tastiness of this:
…only bare-ass naked, shot from the rear, his lean, proud, hard-muscled butt diving into the lake with his other, equally-naked astronaut “buddies” at the start of 1968’s Planet of the Apes? Fercryinoutloud, come on! Like a lighting bolt to the nads, baby.
How many thousands of times did I fantasize about spending, oh, eternity, marooned on that planet with Chuck, swimming naked all day long and lazing around, drying our matted chest hair on the rocks in the late afternoon sun? Eleventy-thousand times, is how many.
And, to make matters worse, the dad whose kids I was babysitting in the early 70s just happened to have a stack of Playboys in his home office, including the March 1970 issue, which featured a photo of Chuck on the set of Julius Caesar. Clad only in what appeared to be a buckskin pouch!
It was at that exact moment, when I was entering the most fervently onanistic period of my early-adult existence, with two years of ape-planet-naked-swimming percolating in my genes jeans genes, that I turned homo. Poring over that photo of Charlton Heston, over and over and over. Hairy, tall, lean-muscled, decidedly masculine. Hot.
Sure, I found out later he’s a total dick, but, hey, at that time I thought all movie stars were smart and cultured and politically-aware, too, so I can’t really be blamed for my extreme naïveté. Also, I lived in Winnipeg, and, I mean, geez. Anyway, to deny that every man who’s held a particularly close, emotio-sexual place in my life bears at least some tiny resemblance to Chuck would be foolish.
Charlton Heston, you made me the bad wolf that I am today, and I am so your bitch. You damn, dirty Republican.
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what an influential guy. turned me into a lesbian. bless him, he’s done so much good in the world.
This is awesome
Okay, that was hilarious. I vividly remember seeing Heston’s ass on our old black-and-white TV some Saturday afternoon back in the 70s and sensing some far off call. For years I watched the movie when it was on TV just WAITING for the ass scene, and either missing it altogether by tuning in too late, seeing an edited for TV version that eliminated it, or generally believing I had dreamed the whole thing. I have not seen Chuck Heston’s ass since that languid afternoon and I am so happy to learn that I am not mad.
However. I definitely grooved to showering with my dad and eyeing other dads at the gym before Heston mooned me. I usually say that reruns of Ba Ba Blacksheep (or Wild Wild West, for that matter) with the often shirtless Robert Conrad made me gay, but it might as well have been Heston’s ass. Thank you for this though-provoking post.
Dude, Robert Conrad definitely had it going on. The shots at Brian's Drive-In Theatre are wildly erotic, especially given the mantastic, soldiery and surfery context. And, by all means, check out the second page. The man could really rock the Speedos, for serious.
Are you kidding! I used to cut school to watch planet of the apes and masturbate. I had the house and Charlton all to myself. Not only did he firmly assure me I was gay, he made my grades go down in the process. I still fondle myself and get nothing done on occasion when a good heston shirtless flick is on. And here I am using just a few more moments to tell you, oy vey………………
I am in love with you. I feel like I have dated you, and have fallen in love with you and am living with you in some alternative universe. Oh my god, what a great post. I had a somewhat similar experience with “Chuck” when I was 13 and saw “Planet.” I somehow talked two women into taking me to see the movie, because I knew I couldn’t get in because I was too young and the movie had a “rating” to prevent sex-crazed about-to-become homo-ettes from viewing anything that might pique their interest.
At any rate… I got in and saw Chuck in his buck-naked glory and I was turning into an orgasmic being at the sight. What a day! Burned into my memory as sharply as the burn on my pinafore dress after I baked an apple brown betty the other… oh, I’m sorry. I’m getting carried away.
Anyway… you are a hot man! I love your picture! I will probably never meet you, but, I loved your story and I can’t wait to read everything else you’ve written, and if I ever stumble into that parallel universe, I hope you’ll be waiting there for me with open arms.
Yours,
Dee
Yea…Yea…Yea. Fuck Chuck!!!!
When it comes to “knowing” but not quite knowing what to call it…there are 2 men that comes to mind. Clint Walker (Cheyenne Bodie) and Chuck Connors (The Rifleman).
Being born in the 50’s had it advantages…especially young boys and Westerns.
Clint Walker did it for me…and I wasn’t even cummin yet. I would dream about this beautiful…big…strong man with the dark skin and blue eyes…and a voice that dripped of testosterone. No wonder they used his voice as the voice of God in The Ten Commandments. When I knew he really did it for me was in “The Night of the Grizzly”.
Seeing him for the first time without a shirt gave me a serious attack of the vapors.
I thought Men were born like that and I was mesmerized.
Chuck Connors was another one. I never missed an episode of “The Rifleman”. Chuck’s
serious dick always hung to “the left”. Boy, was I jealous of Mark. As an adult, I found a photo of Chuck fucking some guy in his early Pre-Rifleman days. Blue-Steel boner all over again…this time with some juice.
Between this two Men…I didn’t have a snowballs chance in hell in subscribing to the boring life of “heterosexuality”.
I still get a hard-on thinking about these Men in their prime and my youth…
When I heard that Chuck Heston died this week, rest assured that my first thought was of you, and when you related this little story waaaaay back in the day on Ye Olde Hissyfit boards.
It’s a story I’ll be telling my grandchildren, to be sure, Malle Babbe. Or something.
When I heard he’d croaked, I had a micropanic attack, thinking “uh-oh, did my gay die, too?” But, whew, it’s still there. Alive and well. Big time.
1. Mark McIntire Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
April 10th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
- Remembering Charlton Heston: The Man In The Arena
by Mark McIntire
April 9, 2008 11:42 AM
Charlton Heston kept his promises. He was good to his friends. He believed in a merciful God, and he loved his country. As though that was not enough to separate him from today’s Hollywood elite, he was married, too, and lived with the same woman for over 60 years.
Chuck well may be the last iconic gentleman of his era about whom all of the preceding statements were true.
Many will recall Chuck’s epic stage, movie and TV triumphs, and think he actually was Moses or Ben Hur or Will Penny or Mark Antony. That would amuse as much as bemuse him. “My dad pretends to be other people for a living,” his only son, Fraser Heston, would tell his classmates.
Chuck was an actor’s actor whose only complaint was: “I never got it right. I always thought I could have done that role better.”
Some will recall meeting Chuck at a premiere, posh party, political convention, or just on the street. They’d be struck to find he had the same commanding presence and honest grit, and the same gentlemanly manners, on screen and off.
He was a gentleman’s gentleman. “Daddy lives by his principles, not by the costumes he wears in movies,” his only daughter, Holly, would tell all who asked what he was really like as a person.
Once a liberal Democrat who campaigned with Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy, Chuck later became identified with the conservatism of his friend Ronald Reagan. “I didn’t change . . . my party did,” he’d explain to those who asked about his transformation.
Of all the things that will be written and said of Chuck now that he is dead, a most important key to his character will be overlooked. Charlton Heston derived his moral and political values from ethical principles that did not change over the course of his spectacular life. His detractors argued this only proves he was a fool. But when we look at what his detractors have accomplished in their lives by comparison, we are left with the suspicion that Chuck was no fool. He was a centered man, comfortable in his own skin.
At their 50th wedding anniversary dinner, some upstart (that would be me) had the impertinence to ask his beloved wife, Lydia: “How did you manage to stay married to that man for so many years?” In her typical serenity and graciousness, she replied: “Through Chuck, I learned to keep a center of my being to myself . . . else there would be no one there for him to love.”
The Holy Bible and the complete works of William Shakespeare were never far from Chuck’s fingertips in his study. It’s hard to think of my friend Chuck now without remembering these lines from “Romeo and Juliet,” Act 3, Scene 2:
“And when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars. And he shall make the face of heaven so fine, that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.”
Mark McIntire, a Santa Barbara resident, knew
Charlton Heston for 27 years.
http://markmcintire.com
Also? He totally turned me gay. And I had seriously hot, gay sex shortly after hearing he croaked, which was, I suppose, my own, special form of acknowledging his legacy.
What, was that some sort “gay diagnostic program” you ran to make sure your gay was still in place? Kind of like checking one’s hard drive for disk errors?
The number of potential double-entendres in that comment has me utterly flummoxed. Brava!