View source for Tarzan made me gay

Those lips, those eyes, those thighs. And let's face it - I'd like to face it - that loincloth. Yes, I'm talking about Tarzan of the movies, but not just any old Tarzan. Today we're gathered to celebrate Mike Henry (pictured), the hunkiest and hairiest slab of beefcake to ever play Edgar Rice Burroughs's vine-swinging ape man. The 13th actor to grease up as Tarzan, he's the one who swung straight off the screen and into my heart. Or at least my loins, which felt "funny down there" whenever I looked at him. I was 9 years old. [...]<br>
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My Tarzan was a man. My "type" before I discovered I had a type. Did I mention I was 9 years old? Was it the character of Tarzan I was attracted to: a muscular "older man," holding a jungle boy's hand and leading the way? Could I be that boy, little Mowgli to his Big Mike? Just the two of us, camping out, making fires, swimming in the lagoon ... without Jane? I got a library book featuring all the movie Tarzans - Lex Barker, Gordon Scott, Jock Mahoney, Johnny Weissmuller - but no, it was just Mike that got me going. [...]<br>
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That was it, I realized; the common denominator - besides the muscles and the hair. I wanted Mike Henry or Sean Connery to rescue me. To save me. I wanted them to be my Daddy, long before the term "Daddy" had been invented. Fathers, yes. Daddies, no. Nine. Years. Old. I needed to be rescued. [...]<br>
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I continued going to the movies, week after week, thinking some '60s detective like Matt Helm or Flint would show me what I needed to do. Hoping some man on the screen would take me away to a happier place. I guess they did, for two hours at a time, every Saturday afternoon. I kept going back to see the "trilogy" of Mike Henry's Tarzan movies, finishing up with <i>Tarzan and the Great River</i> and <i>Tarzan and the Jungle Boy</i>, each one worse than the last. I read that Mike Henry had gotten bit on the chin by Dinky the Chimp during filming and suffered from "monkey fever delirium" for three weeks; he sued the production company, and that's why he never made another Tarzan movie. My immediate thought is that I could have nursed him back to health. I was 11 by then. My father is long gone, but almost unbelievably, Mike Henry is still with us, at age 83. Mike, if you're reading, give me a call. I'm old now too, but still interested.<br>
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<i>source: Article 'Tarzan Made Me Gay' by Kim Powers (senior writer for ABC's 20/20, is a two-time Emmy winner and author of the novels Capote in Kansas and Dig Two Graves as well as the memoir The History of Swimming. His latest novel, the heavily autobiographical coming-of-age story Rules for Being Dead, comes out August 4); www.advocate.com/commentary/2020/7/01/tarzan-made-me-gay; The Advocate; 1 July 2020</i>

[[Category:Kim Powers]]
[[Category:Homosexual feelings by minors‏‎]]
[[Category:Homoseksualiteit bij kinderen‏‎]]
[[Category:Mike Henry]]
[[Category:Edgar Rice Burroughs]]
[[Category:Lex Barker]]
[[Category:Gordon Scott]]
[[Category:Jock Mahoney]]
[[Category:Johnny Weissmuller]]
[[Category:Sean Connery]]