Guest Post: He's So Fine, Prequel

Contributed by my truckbuddy Tim from England, now resident in Spain:

Everyone is doing trilogies these days:  The Hobbit, Iron Man, Lord of the Rings. Never one to lag behind the times, the Big Blue Truck has commissioned a third ‘He’s So Fine’ because you, dear reader, seemed to like the first two. So welcome to Part 0, the prequel to Part 1, which went back to my adolescent crush Wayne and starred the sexy Steve McQueen . . .

. . . and a precursor to Part 2, with the gorgeous Cam Gigandet doubling as a more recent crush, my friend José. Good news about José by the way: he has a motorbike again, so my fiery Spanish stallion has not been put out to retirement just yet!

This prequel takes us even further back in time than Part 1, back to some of my earliest memories and childhood heroes. This is another voyage of discovery for me, and hopefully it will be for you too. It stems in part from some discussions Russ and I have had on at what age you first realise you are gay, in your infancy or teens, or if, as some think, that you are born that way, the gay-gene theory. Was I gay at birth or at 5, or was it, as I have always previously thought, at puberty? Currently I’m not quite so sure, so by going back to analyse earlier thoughts and recollections I hope to shed more light on the subject. It’s also a good excuse to look back at some of the hunks and heroes that appeared in children’s TV all those years ago; which in itself is no bad thing. Who were your heroes?

If you sit down and list your childhood favourites I think you’ll be surprised at how many there are. From my own list of 10 or so all-time favourites, far too many to include in one post, I have whittled them down to my top three. They cover my age from 3 to 16, which hopefully will provide a good basis for my analysis. I’ve put them in chronological order to help you follow my development, and because it’s easier to write that way!

Continued after the jump

We kick off with Champion the Wonder Horse, a Western series about 12-year-old Ricky, adopted by Uncle Sandy and living on his ranch with dog Rebel and Champion, a wild stallion. I was fascinated by Westerns as a child; along with Champion were The Lone Ranger, The Cisco Kid, Rin Tin Tin, and later Rawhide, Bonanza and High Chaparral. Champion was first shown from 1955 to 1956, when I was 3–4 years old.

This seemed an ideal family unit to me: Ricky, played engagingly by Barry Curtis, seemingly never went to school, his days filled with adventure in those wide-open ranges. Happy and inquisitive, who wouldn’t want to be a boy like that? His Uncle Sandy (Jim Bannon) was a handsome, upright man, kindly, but useful in a fight. If you didn’t have a father, what better substitute? No mother to stop you from doing all those things you wanted to do! And of course his four-legged friends, who, for me, were the biggest heroes of all in the show, always outsmarting the bad guys and constantly saving Ricky from all sorts of scrapes. There is a direct line going back from owning my first German Shepherd, Legolas, who appeared in my last post, through Rin Tin Tin to Rebel: each of them was the dog I had always wanted ever since I was little.



My Ma had a lexicon of lullabies she and I would sing from at my bedtime, and that theme tune was a particular favourite of mine, along with another much-loved Western-themed song, ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’. Cowboys and Indians was a popular game to play in our back yard or in the fields beyond, more often than not with the girl next door, my childhood sweetheart Kate. She was my best friend, the Indian to my Cowboy, the Nurse to my Doctor and the Cop to my Robber. I promised her my undying love, and that we would be married when we grew up. But even then I was fickle, having already proposed to Gina, the pretty teenager who worked in the Italian ice-cream parlour, and shortly afterwards to Miss Jameson, my lovely young teacher at infant’s school.

Gina emigrated to South Africa, and Miss Jameson married someone else and went to live in to Canada, ah, the wonders of the Commonwealth! A couple of years later my family caught the long-shore drift and moved along the coast. It was barely 10 miles, but to insular coastal folk it may as well have been to the darker side of the moon! Kate, however, still lives in that little seaside town we both grew up in, and yes, she’s still beautiful!

Next we move on to another western, the classic Tales of Wells Fargo, starring Dale Robertson as Special Agent Jim Hardie, which was shown on TV from 1957 to 1962, from age 5 to 10.



I recall several thoughts I had about this series as a child. For one thing I was fascinated by Dale’s marked five o’clock shadow. I didn’t know many grown-ups who had this, most of my family being blond. I knew that my Pa had whiskers, I would say ‘Ow, Daddy your wikers hurt!’ when he kissed me goodnight, and sadly Grandma had ‘wikers’ too! But being fair-haired they weren’t as prominent as Dale’s, who also sported wondrously thick and wavy black hair, just like Elvis Presley’s, another of my heroes at the time. Elvis was always being chased by screaming adulatory girls and photographed in the papers, and he was a soldier. Was this the way heroes were meant to be then? Tall, dark and handsome. In fact the whole notion of having lustrous black hair became very strong in me by the time I reached the age of 6.

I remember going to our local barber-shop one day, just a block away from home on the corner of the little high street. I sat and watched Jock the barber cutting someone’s hair and afterwards singeing the customer’s nose and ear hair with a lighted taper, common practice back then; the smell of the burning hair was dreadful! Undeterred, I waited, and then suddenly it was my turn. I sat in the big leather chair, and Jock pumped it up so I was level with his scissors. I told him I wanted my hair dyed black and styled just like Elvis Presley’s. His face was a mask; he had a quick word with his assistant, then explained to me about the cutting and dyeing process. He put the heavy cape around my shoulders and just as I thought my dream was going to come true, in came my Ma with the assistant! I was spoken to in no uncertain manner and hauled out of the shop. I think it may have been my ear, rather than my hand, Ma held on the walk back home! But it wasn’t a gay desire, certainly not a conscious one, rather an attempt to mimic the celebrity look of my day. This is the look I had in mind:

Back to Dale: I had noticed he often had this sheen about his face, particularly after a hard ride, or a fist fight. What could it be? I had never seen people sweating before. Was it part of growing up, that oh-so-distant event? Furthermore, for a cowboy, his clothes seemed to be very tight, no chaps flapping around like the Cisco Kid’s, no baggy shirts like Uncle Sandy used to wear. You could see he had a muscular body under his clothes, which again intrigued me. People in Fifties Britain didn’t have muscles; everything resided under several layers of shapeless garments. Of course I had seen bodies on the beach, but apart from an occasional serviceman from the nearby USAF base, they were all thin pale ones. Post-war Britons didn’t shape up so well in comparison. How could you grow up to be tall, dark and strong, like Dale or like Elvis, when all around it seemed everyone was short, skinny and blond? Was it something to do with being American, was it a requirement for being a hero? I was too young to know, the answers eluded me.
Dale didn't take his shirt off much during his career, which was a shame. By the standards of his day, which we can see more clearly from our present time, he was quite a hunk. Not the lean, toned, six-pack look that we expect of today’s heroes, but a brawny muscularity, much favoured at the time. This is a rare glimpse of what we were missing:

I had to do some serious research for this post by the way – here I am checking out one of Wells Fargo’s coaches. Was my hero standing in this very spot more than 50 years ago?

Now it’s 1964, I’m 12 and it’s the start of a four-year run for that amazing marine mammal, Flipper.

This was another male-only family group, like Champion. (What happened to all the poor women in these men’s lives I wonder?) Widowed Park Warden, Porter Ricks, played by Brian Kelly, lives in the Florida Keys, with eldest son Sandy, played by Luke Hamlin plus an annoying younger brother, and an equally annoying dolphin (who was actually a female called Susie – but let’s not go there!) Anyway forget those last two, this is all about Brian and Luke. This image shows the hirsute Brian Kelly and the young gangly Luke Halpin. Look at that hair on Brian’s shoulders, almost as much as on his chest . . . grrrr, what a magnificent Bear he would have made!

It was not long into the first year’s run that I would find myself waiting in anticipation for Brian’s appearance preferably shirtless or in a wet-suit, I wasn’t too particular! Physically he was in the same mould as Dale, dark, muscular, but like Uncle Sandy there was also a fatherly tenderness underneath, an irresistible combination. Later, I would go upstairs to my room for a spot of single-handed relaxation, or a J. Arthur as we called it back then! (rhyming slang; J. Arthur. Rank = wank = masturbation) And I think this is the point in time that for me was crucial in determining my orientation. The time, around 13 years of age, when puberty gave me the ability to derive both physical and sexual pleasure from fantasising about a hero.

Luke at this point didn't do too much for me I have to admit. He would have been a great best friend to have, but nothing more. But who wouldn't want Brian for a dad or a hero? He probably represented the pinnacle of my great, dark, man phase by the time I was 14:

By the way, there is an excellent biography and selection of images for Brian Kelly here,

However, by the end of the third year my allegiance and sexual fantasies had begun to change from Brian to Luke. He had matured from that thin, awkward youth, too much like myself at first, and by the end of the third year was filling out very nicely. He began to embody the blond beach-boy look that, along with Steve McQueen and my school crush Wayne, was becoming my ideal type, in effect the new and improved me that I had longed for. Looking back now I can see he how much he resembled Wayne in many respects. The physical characteristics were obvious, although Wayne had shorter hair and better body tone, but there were also similarities in their personalities, both were active, adventurous, and never far from trouble!

Children's TV in the 50's and 60's was produced in a male dominated era, with little regard for feminine tastes, so action and adventure, male-dominated family groups, were the norm. And if you wonder why my selections are all American shows, it's because UK children's TV of the time didn't have the funding to make such programs. Puppetry and animation were more the usual fare, not the provision of role models. There were a few home-grown action series, but they certainly didn't capture my imagination in the way the American ones did, generally employing more elderly actors resting from the stage.

My love of Champion was an admiration of cowboys, adventure and the great outdoors, of wonderfully clever animals, but whilst I through Ricky enjoyed an enviously marvellous life and I admired his fatherly Uncle, there was never any sexuality in that love; the love there was familial and filial, a reflection of my own world. It was the romance of the adventure that entranced me. Certainly Dale's character in Wells Fargo interested me more than Barry and Jim's in Champion, probably because I was that little bit older and beginning to be intrigued by adulthood and adult things. I was certainly more aware of my surroundings and my place within them. The desire for that dark look came with dissatisfaction of my own blond looks; all the heroes of the day seemed to have black hair, a quiff and that muscular look. I didn't love the people that had that look, it was the look itself I was in love with. Flipper, however, was very different. There was definitely a growing sexual interest in my two heroes, and a transition within that period from wanting the strong, dark man, to wanting to be the blond youth.

Has this trip down memory lane helped answer my initial query? Certainly going back to such distant recollections has revealed other, long forgotten memories. I have tried to take those memories at face value, not to interpret them through an adult’s eyes, but rather as a child might. And so what is my conclusion? Well, I do not see a gay Tim between the age of 3 and 5, but rather a typical heterosexual boy, who liked girls and played boy’s games. Between 5 and 10 my interest in the physical appearance of my heroes was, I’m sure, simple curiosity about being a grown-up, and a desire to mimic what seemed to be the successful look of the time. Only later, after puberty, was my hero worship most definitely sexual in nature, and so for me that marks the beginning of my homosexuality. If it was there at birth, it went unnoticed, and if in infancy, unrecognised. One thing I do know for sure though, after all these years, I still wish I was a cowboy! Here’s the Electric Light Orchestra to play us out - listen to the lyrics, they are perfect!



Well, dear reader, I hope you’ve enjoyed this amble down my memory lane. I think most of us are frightened at how quickly the past recedes as we get older, so it’s good to stop once in a while and think hard about our earliest memories. But although we are shaped by our past, we live in the present, and next time, at Russ’s suggestion, I shall post about more recent events concerning my life here in Spain and why I find some Spanish men very easy on the eye!