It’s probably not whom I would think at first. If it was a question of a Speedo, hands down the safe money would be on Tom Daley. But if it came to underwear, I’d bet on David Beckham. This is a pleasant switch-around, with Daley donning his Calvins, and Beckham in a pair of tight trousers. I’m not sure who wears what better, so we’ll call it a British draw. It’a Sunday. I’m tired. Do the math.
“For I am – or I was – one of those people who pride themselves on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all – a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named – but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not.” ~ James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
“What happened was that, all unconscious of what this ennui meant, I wearied of the motion, wearied of the joyless seas of alcohol, wearied of the blunt, bluff, hearty, and totally meaningless friendships, wearied of wandering through the forests of desperate women, wearied of the work, which fed me only in the most brutally literal sense. Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home. But, again, I think I knew, at the very bottom of my heart, exactly what I was doing…” ~ James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
“He made me think of home – perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.” ~ James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
The scarcity of narrative forces the viewer to fill-in-the-blanks. Like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story (which I always hated – why make the reader write the book? And which ending is the definitive ending? What really happened??) in its infuriatingly obtuse and abstract construct, it offers hints and nudges, but no real directive. If you’re looking for answers here, you will come away disappointed. The essence of tease and release, the game at its most obstinate and inane. I would feel worse about it were there not other demons with which to duel. Confined by the frames and threatened ever by the cropping, it is a claustrophobic place to reside. It is, by my own design, a trap. A cage with the illusion of freedom, and plumage that grows more faded with the passing of time. This story is yours. Write it as you would have it written. Or better yet, listen to the words of James Baldwin:
“Now, from this night, from this coming morning, no matter how many beds I find myself in between now and my final bed, I shall never be able to have any more of those boyish, zestful affairs – which are, really, when one thinks of it, a kind of higher, or, anyway, more pretentious masturbation. People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.”
“Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare.”
“Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore.”
“He looked at me and I saw in his face again something which I have fleetingly seen there during these hours: under his beauty and his bravado, terror, and a terrible desire to please; dreadfully, dreadfully moving, and it made me want, in anguish, to reach out and comfort him.”
It’s been at least one hot minute since Tom Daley showed up here in a Speedo, and that’s one minute too many. Here he is, bulging out with all that centrifugal force, and you see now why science is our friend. At any rate, it’s nice to be reminded of this past summer, and the ones yet to come. After all the snow, it’s a nice respite.
“Andrew’s childhood had been spent in a tall, narrow old house in the French Quarter, a house dressed in iron lace, a house with lines as graceful as those of a willowy woman. The house was even more feminine than most of the houses in that odalisque district, full of silky and velvety textures and fragrant silence… There was an enclosed courtyard where a fountain ran musically amid japonicas, camellias, green frills of ferns. The Persian carpets on the dark floors were very old, their colors muted by age to the dim, coal-lit glow that stained glass can have when you stand outside a church at night. There was a Pleyel piano, a library of scores… The town house was full of big and little pleasures and comforts, as if it thought that everyone within deserved – a soft and perfumed lap to lie in… Relax, it seemed to say. Unclench your neck, breathe deep and slow. Read my books. If you’re tired, sleep. Sleep, for that matter, when you want to. Sit on the veranda in the sun and watch the clouds go by.”
~ Laura Argiri, The God in Flight
“Winter here was a manageable enemy, held well at bay by a little fire in a toy fireplace like the one in this room… There was also a peculiarly New Orleans detail, an ormolu gilt plant stand that held an ancient and flourishing feather-fern plant. A bookcase with bowed glass doors yielded a cache of French novels and poetry: George Sand, Balzac, Lamartine. Simion had awarded himself the pleasure of drying well before the fire and got into bed in one of Andrew’s old silk robes. He had hung it on the back of a chair before the fire to warm while he bathed and slipped into it with a sigh of delight. Andrew had given him this robe; it was a heavy yet liquid damask silk the color of strong pekoe tea. He brushed his hair and thought how nice it would be to have someone else do the brushing so he could concentrate fully on the pleasant sensations and fell into one of those strange states that came upon him in this house, at once abstracted and relaxed and utterly alert. The mirrors reflected him, still as a picture, hand and brush poised at the end of a stroke. There were lots of mirrors. Three, in fact; the one above the fireplace holding him full-face, the two on the side walls offering his profile. This was how Andrew found him when he knocked on his door and entered, wearing a sherry-colored dressing gown and looking particularly golden and godlike.
‘Come, don’t turn away. You let those heartless mirrors see you, now let me.'”
~ Laura Argiri, The God in Flight
While I’m not slipping into a jockstrap this year like I did here, and here, I managed to find a few guys who did, and here they are. They’re not your traditional football-playing jocks, and that’s why I like them.
There’s a more complete jockstrap post coming up later today in honor of the Super Bowl, but for now my own little football get-up is here to get in the sporty spirit.
The wild winds of January returned in full-force this past week, plunging us into the depths of sub-freezing temperatures and reminding us that winter in the Northeast is anything but a cake walk. Fortunately, there was solace to be found in the more superficial pleasures, and some of the deeper ones as well.
This may be the toughest question I’ve posed on this website. It’s one of those deeply philosophical debates, one that will likely rage for centuries to come. It has divided the world, pitting friend against friend, destroying relationships and altering the lives of innocent people everywhere. Who is the sexier footballer: Ben Cohen or David Beckham? I’ve got my own theories, and wholly unsubstantiated evidence to back up my beliefs, but in the end it’s in the eye of the beholder.
Here, I’ve given you the basic tools to which you can make your own comparisons and determinations. Personally, my money is on Mr. Cohen. There’s something kinder about him, something more vulnerable and less cocky and arrogant, something that can’t be put into words or even pictures – you just know it when you see it. What do you think?
While he’s already been a Hunk of the Day, Tom Daley deserves mention again here, as he continues his penchant for parading around in nothing but a Speedo, and I’m not about to stand in his way.
The Patriots are playing today as we near the culmination of the football season, and while we’ll never match the Madonna-graced heights of last year’s Super Bowl, we’re doing a build-up anyway in the hopes that the Pats make it to the Big Game. (According to gay whiz Nate Silver, it’s going to be a match between the Patriots and the Seahawks, in which case I’ll be able to cry out, ‘Squish the Flying Fish!’) [Update: And the Seahawks just made a pretty major come-back to set up Mr. Silver to be correct…] [Second Update: Mr. Silver was wrong – the Seahawks just lost by two… the perils of pre-programmed posts.]
For today’s Sunday Football post, a pair of favorites: Wes Welker and Tom Brady, both of whom have been Hunks of the Day.
It’s been quite some time since FaceBook forced us to write about ourselves in the third person, and I’ve missed it. There’s something very analytical about that, vain and vapid too, so it suits just about every part of me. In honor of that, and the ten-year anniversary of this site, I present to you the official Press Release on the decade which came before:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Ten years ago Alan Ilagan invited the world to the virtual party of www.ALANILAGAN.com, and since that time the revelry has raged every day.  From writer to photographer, poser to pantomime, gallery manager to exhibitionist, and husband to Uncle, he’s tried on a lot of hats over the years, every one photographed, chronicled, and archived on this very site. Revealing a lot while revealing very little is the hat trick at which he is most adept, and beneath every revelation he has made is another tantalizing veil, a hint at ever more to come.Â
This is where his talent for combining the written word and the visual image comes into clear focus. This is where he gets to experiment, explore and play ~ unabashedly showing off no matter the risks or mistakes that might result. It’s a sight to be seen, a voyeuristic and clandestine adventure, one in which the sharing of a journey has become an art form unto itself.
Somewhere along the ensuing decade, the site became about more than Mr. Ilagan himself. It was a mirror of all sorts of things ~ celebrity, art, music, beauty, pop culture, gay rights, marriage equality, family, love, and friendship ~ not only in the way he saw the world, but in the way we saw the world. It was no longer about Alan as the sole attraction, but more of a community cocktail party. He’d make the drinks, but he wanted you to be a part of it. An integral part of it. In fact, the reason for it. Like the parties he’s thrown, it’s become less about the host and more about the guests. While it feels like an exclusive event, one never gets the notion that they are anything but included in the festivities. Sometimes the gathering is elegant, sometimes it’s raunchy, and sometimes it’s too much for words – but it’s always engaging, it’s often enjoyable, and everyone is always welcome.
The title of this post says it all, and then some, but male model Ngo Okafor somehow says even more. I have never in my life been with a guy built like this, and if I had I probably wouldn’t have had the first clue what to do other than laugh nervously and get the hell out of there. Some things are too good to be true.
