Saturday, October 24, 2015

October 25




 





Olympic Skier Gus Kenworthy
Announces that He Is Gay

Olympic champion freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy (b. 1991) revealed earlier this week that he is gay. He became the first action sports figure to come out as gay (see video at end of post). The British-born American, who now lives in Colorado and competes in slopestyle and halfpipe, won the silver medal in Men's freestyle skiing at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

“I feel just amazing to have it out there,” Kenworthy said in an interview. “It feels like a huge weight’s been taken off of my shoulders. I’ve been completely floored by the response that I’ve gotten. Everyone’s been so supportive and so kind with what they’ve said.” Gus, who says he has known he was gay since he was five years old, appeared on the cover of this week's ESPN magazine, the venue he chose for his coming out story.

 Peter Hapak for ESPN



Kenworthy gained international media attention as a result of his efforts to rescue five stray dogs that hung around the media center of the Olympic village. He stayed behind for more than a month to save the family of dogs. Kenworthy arranged for their eventual adoption, calling further attention to the problematic rise of the stray dog population in Sochi, which grew significantly during the Olympics.
















To satisfy your foot fetish:



 






Gimme some frat boys:

















WINGMEN
by Ensan Case

Wingmen (382 pages), a work of historical fiction, is again available after a long gap since its first publication by Avon Books in 1979. This World War II novel, written when the author, Ensan Case (a pseudonym), was 28 years old, was a precursor to today’s gay romance genre, yet there is next to no actual sex in the book. Once m/m sex between the protagonists is implied. Another time it’s given just a few paragraphs, but there is page after page of repression, yearning and unrequited love between two Navy men who could not express their feelings for one another while serving in the military.

From Amazon’s description page:
Jack Hardigan's Hellcat fighter squadron blew the Japanese planes out of the blazing Pacific skies. But a more subtle kind of hell was brewing in his feelings for rookie pilot Fred Trusteau. While a beautiful widow pursues Jack, and another pilot becomes suspicious of Jack and Fred's close friendship, the heroes cut a fiery swath through the skies to keep a fateful rendezvous with love and death in the blood-clouded waters of the Pacific.

Frankly, I’m not sure I would have bought this book from that rather slick and flip description. This novel is so much more than that, and it had an emotional impact on me seldom elicited from m/m fiction. The tedium, fear, excitement and period details of the lives of aircraft carrier pilots are related with truth and honesty. It’s obvious that the author was himself a naval officer. Buy it while it’s again available, because copies of the original 1979 edition now sell for hundreds of dollars each.

In paperback and e-reader formats:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590215745/ref=assoc_qcb_im?ie=UTF8&tag=thegayaffiboo-20
To determine if this novel might be to your liking, read the customer reviews.

Ensan Case comments on his book (May 8, 2015):
http://www.glbtqarchive.com/essays/case_letter.pdf
 

Note: Sadly, the GLBTQ on-line encyclopedia website, which launched in 2003, closed on August 1, 2015 because of the collapse of the online advertising business model that had supported it. It has all been archived, however, at www.glbtqarchive.com