“I have no talent. It’s just a question of working, of being willing to put in the time.”
– Novelist Graham Greene (1904-1991) speaking to American author Michael Mewshaw in 1972.
“It was pretty, and the simpering, self-conscious style which shop girls adore and mammas dote upon. He had regular features, a placid and supercilious smile, drooping eyes which he would occasionally cast toward the crowd outside the window, and a daintiness of gesture which would have made him a success on the stage in the delineation of a certain type of metropolitan character. His hair was sleek, well oiled and beautifully banged, his colour pink and white and his narrow-chested body was encased in a beautiful blazer of pink and white silk, drawn together by a heavy and interlaced crimson cord down the front. On his head he wore a silk jockey cap, also of pink and white stripes, and his hands were rendered prominent by what might be called outside cuffs of snowy linen, which came up to the elbow and completely covered the blazer sleeves. The languid manner with which he tossed the taffy over the big silver hook was in thorough consonance with the languorous glance which he occasionally directed toward the women outside the window.”
Blakely Hall writes about a handsome young man working in a New York candy store.
The Philadelphia Times – 23 December 1888
Blakely Hall was a New York-based journalist who became editor of Truth Magazine in 1891 and spiced up the publication by adding more pictures of women to its pages, more social satire, and colour. Circulation grew to 50,000 subscribers at that point.
“I was probably eight or nine, a child of the postwar boom, and on vacation with my family at the Jersey shore. We had stopped at a convenience store on the way home from a day at the beach, and I was pawing through the store’s magazine rack while my mother shopped. I don’t remember picking up the magazine, but it opened to a page which stopped and startled me. Two mostly naked teenagers were posed for a picture titled “Victor and Vanquished,” one slung over the other’s shoulders—the spoils of a heated but not unfriendly war. Both boys were smiling, exhilarated, but I was fixated on their points of contact, especially where the naked groin of the Vanquished touched the Victor’s bare shoulder. What did that feel like? What could that feel like? Thinking about it made me dizzy and more aroused than I realized.”
Vince Aletti – The New Yorker – May 2025
“We speak of the body of the young man at his fullest development, just on the brink of maturity, a young man who has retained some of his original innocence. The model for the classic Greek was the young athlete, from an aristocratic family, who competed in the nude in the original Olympic Games. It is not until later that the natural male form was used as a medium for the expression of godliness, an idea that later became the basis for a popular religious sect. A look back through the twentieth century will demonstrate just how long the Beautiful Boy has been absent from our field of vision. Examine the popular male images of the past 60 years. How many of them have been both young and beautiful?”
Helen Ziou – Valley Advocate Amherst – April 1984
“Don’t fail to drop in to tea tomorrow old girl, or you’ll miss the treat of your life. A new beauty, my dear, the latest thing from Harvard. You may have read of him – Harold Halfseas. Has chestnut hair in crisp like waves all round his forehead; oval face, pure Grecian profile, marble and rose complexion and a magnificent figure. You’ll come? Thanks, darling! I thought you would.”
– From the World News – Columbus, Ohio – 2 December 1923
“The president is a camp icon. He’s like a drag queen. He’s outrageous, he’s transgressive, he’s catty, he’s a narcissist the likes of which we haven’t seen since Alexander the Great.” – James Kirchick, journalist and author of ‘Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington’, as quoted in in The New York Times.
“He was barely seventeen the first time it had happened, with that foolish Italian boy. He had naively fallen into the trap. It was all too good to be true and he was surprised when the boy demanded money, and kept demanding money. When he had no money left to give, the boy, true to his word, had gone to the police. Much to his shame and chagrin, he had been very publicly arrested in his father’s house in Wimpole Street, and every servant in the street had talked about it for a year and a day.”
The story of Charles Ferguson in ‘Fanny & Stella – The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England’ by Neil McKenna – 2013
Annie Ernaux. ‘Les Années’ / ‘The Years’. Paris. 2008.
“Look, tonight is the future, and I am planning for it! There’s this shirt I gotta buy, a beautiful shirt.” – Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever
“Uh, I’m not very hungry; just gimme a double Polar Burger wit’ everything and a cherry soda wit’ chocolate ice cream.” – Danny Zuko in Grease
“And now after all this time I finally figured out how to trap him… I will become him” – John Travolta about John Travolta
In years to come, people will talk about John Travolta as a famous old movie star.
“Now he feels like some ageing pin-up finding a pimply kid masturbating over photos of him as a boy, and peeping lecherously in on those carnal couplings of his youth.” – Separate Rooms – Pier Vittorio Tondelli – Italy – 1989
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 