Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2012 17:17:57 -0700 (PDT) From: Vincent Salerno <v_salerno@yahoo.com> Subject: Bulging Posing Straps and Bare Asses THE DORMANT YEARS The Late Teens Bulging Posing Straps and Bare Asses By the mid 1950s my homosexuality had become quiescent. Many months passed without an overt sexcapade after Joe and I had drifted apart. I wasn't sure if I was gay, bi or what. I knew that I had an attraction to men, but wondered if this wasn't just a phase that most guys go through. I had heard or read something like that. Since I wasn't having any heterosexual sex due to lack of opportunity, or lack of aggressiveness in seeking it out, or both, it was hard to tell if I liked it or not. I got turned on by certain straight thoughts and fantasies and could get excited looking at straight pornography, but it seemed that my interest in gay sex was stronger. Was that only because of the affair with Joe and the greater access to male nakedness and horniness? Maybe. A product of my times, I perhaps placed females on a pedestal to a degree, and would experience guilty feelings when thinking of them in a raunchy way. But guys were clearly pigs, as the locker room jokes and constant sextalk proved, and so I had no trouble getting turned on by fantasizing about some of my male classmates. The late teen years were an unsure and sexually inactive time for me. I would give in to gay fantasies now and then, purchasing "physique books" which were available at larger newsstands and candy/stationery stores. There was no frontal nudity or sex stories in these publications. They were generally small pocket sized magazines filled with pictures of good looking young men posing in "arty" positions. Their bodies were often oiled and shiny, sometimes body hair had been removed, and they were often partially dressed in period clothing. These might be Roman helmets and boots, or a nude pose with a bow and arrow, or with a western hat and lasso. If the model was completely nude, a leg would be strategically placed to cover the genitals, or the photo might be from the rear. Rear shots were popular and often consisted of a young man in a shower, looking over a shoulder. Frontal poses were made decent with a tight brief posing strap. Some of the more daring magazines would have the models rub up their dicks to erection, or partial erection, and the phallic outline would be clearly visible in the brief posing brief. If the brief was a small g string type affair, pubic hair could be seen peeking out the top. This was regarded as a hot pic, and was daring for a publisher since it could be challenged by postal authorities as indecent. The early physique mags had pubic hair airbrushed out of photos but as magazines competed with each other, publishers became bolder and a fringe of pubic hair became common. Also, faux wrestling shots became popular, and were an opportunity to pose two boys together touching. Duos also became commonplace as the buying public ate them up. Also enormously popular were innocuous short black and white films of these same types of scenes--classical posing, wrestling, shower scenes, and some skits that told simple and improbable stories. Although I had never had an opportunity to see any of the films produced by companies like the Athletic Model Guild until years later when nostalgia re-releases became available for rent in video stores, I was an avid purchaser of the magazines. At first it took long minutes of preparation and great courage to step up to a newsstand dealer or a bookstore manager and point to the naughty purchase. I sometimes bought one or two other innocuous magazines and sandwiched the prize in between, thereby, I imagined, distracting from the purchase. (Ho hum, yes here is a Daily Mirror, and a TV Guide, and oh yes, I think I'll just take this issue of Modern Man Works Out with the pair of greek gods on the front grinning in jock straps, just in case I decide to do some exercises later on this evening.) Some of the most popular magazines of the genre were AMG, Tomorrow's Man, and Vim. They were all essentially a series of photos with little text. There was sometimes an attempt to tell a bit about the model, or give some fitness tips. Later, a new type of magazine for gays was published, called One. It was the first periodical directed to the gay market that contained more than beefcake. There were serious articles, a Q&A column and features of interest to homosexuals, in addition to photos. I bought scores of all of these mags, read them avidly and then carefully disposed of them in trash cans far from my home, so that they could not be traced to me. Today a store in Manhattan sells these old physique magazines. They have become collectors' items. Although of some curiosity to today's gay young men, it might be difficult for them to imagine how exciting they were for a previous generation.