‘A Good Gay Item’

I remember when I first saw a copy of an International Male catalog. It was in the mid-1980s, when I was a senior in high school. My mother, a librarian, found a copy in the library’s catalog bin and brought it home. Most of the family—save my dad, who has no interest in fashion and dresses accordingly—flipped through the catalog, making fun of the clothes, though no one made fun of them more loudly than me. Yet inside I couldn’t wait to get the catalog alone, in the privacy of my room, so I could fully appreciate its contents.

But it wasn’t meant to be. After we all had a laugh at International Male’s expense, my mother promptly tucked the catalog back into her tote bag and returned it to the library the next morning. It was a good decade before I came out, but in retrospect it was clear that even then she had her suspicions. Her allowing only a limited, supervised viewing of that International Male catalog confirmed it. She also inadvertently elevated it from a mere clothing catalog to pornography in my mind.

The 2022 documentary ALL MAN: THE INTERNATIONAL MALE STORY isn’t perfect, but it perfectly encapsulates the clothing brand’s importance to, in the words of the late David Rakoff, “a certain kind of boy,” specifically those who came of age between the latter days of disco and the height of grunge.

Directors Bryan Darling and Jesse Finley Reed, with narrator Matt Bomer’s help, give us a (mostly) breezy tour of International Male’s founding, subsequent success and slow decline, as well as commentary on IM’s cultural impact, which means of course Carson Kressley and Simon Doonan are on hand to give their two cents, with an un-needed assist from stylist and “influencer”🙄 William Graper, to appeal to the kids, I guess. It’s like an episode of VH-1: Behind the Music, except instead of the pressures of recording a new hit single and touring relentlessly while battling drug addition, it’s about the pressures of selling Buns™  underwear and trying to look butch while modeling gold lamé thongs. Call it Behind the Baskets.

Fitness wear or fetish wear? The California Splits shorts allow for easy access when you go to Probe, while the handles of the digital jump rope could easily double as butt plugs. And exactly who was wearing that jock strap pendant on the lower right page? No straight (or gay) man that I know.

Luckily, Darling and Reed were able to get on-camera interviews with IM founder Gene Burkard before his death in December 2020. After a stint in the Air Force during the Korean war, Burkard took a job as a European sales rep for a liquor distributor selling exclusively to American military bases. The job afforded Burkhard, who was gay, an opportunity to not only experience the queer bars of Europe, but European culture as well (“I was always on the prowl,” he says, adding wryly: “learning, of course.”) Though the documentary makes special mention of the fact that men’s underwear design was becoming more daring in 1960s Europe, it was an item spotted in the display window of a medical supply store in London that inspired Burkard.

From left: Gene Burkard in the Air Force in the 1950s; on an appearance on the game show
What’s My Line? in 1974; and being interviewed for All Man: The International Male Story.

“There was this strange garment there. It was called a suspensory,” Burkard recalls. “I said, ‘You know, this would make a good gay item.’ So, I went and bought one.”

It wasn’t until Burkhard returned to the U.S. in the early 1970s, settling in San Diego, Calif., that a lightbulb went off. After reading How to Make $1,000,000 in Mail Order, he designed, with the help of a pattern maker, the product that would ultimately lead to the creation of International Male: the Jock Sock.

From medical garment to sexy underwear to fashion (?) empire: the Jock Sock.

As described by IM’s former Senior Art Director Dennis Mori, the Jock Sock “is a waist band with a cup in front that hooks around your balls.” Or, as a friend of mine described it: a bag for your balls. The initial advertising for the item was restricted to publications like The Advocate (“They’d take any ad,” Burkard says), but Burkard wanted to expand his reach, so he borrowed money from a friend to place an ad in Playboy. That’s when, Burkard says, all hell broke loose. “We had so many orders, and I had one guy helping me, and he was stoned half the time.”

The timing couldn’t have been better. The recent sexual revolution had relaxed attitudes, and Playgirl was sexualizing men for women’s enjoyment (sure). Burkard decided he wanted to launch a clothing company that would, ironically, butch up how it presented men’s sexy fashions, and its catalog would be like a magazine. And so, International Male was born.

The cover and inside pages of an early issue—possibly the debut issue—of the International
Male catalog.

‘PG-13 Porn’ vs. ‘a Fag Magazine’

As portrayed by All Man, International Male, with a staff of predominantly gay men and a few straight women, was a fun, if disorganized, place to work. None of the former employees have any dirt to dish on Gene, and it’s inspiring to hear how this group of people, almost all learning on the job, were able to create such a successful company—so successful that it opened brick and mortar stores in San Diego and West Hollywood. The clientele was predominantly, but not exclusively, gay. Even superstars Cher and Barbra Streisand shopped there (that tracks).

Another one of International Male's signature items, Buns™ underwear.

Yet the patronage divas wanting something sexy for their boyfriends did little to earn International Male much respect. The IM catalog was alternately dismissed as selling sex or, per one former employee, a “fag magazine.” Yet Burkard saw it as neither. The catalog was for all men. As for sex: “You never saw the words ‘hot’ or ‘sexy.’ I didn’t want that emphasis on sex.”

But sex was certainly on the minds of many of us who got the catalog. “The day the International Male catalog would come was on par with the Sears Christmas catalog coming when you were a kid,” says writer, comedian and one-time Daily Show correspondent Frank DeCaro. “You were going to be transported into this gay fantasy. And then you were going to spank one out.”

The Undergear section (later spun off into a separate catalog) was likely a highlight for many
a horny homosexual. This section here is notable for featuring an Asian model.

Scissor Sisters’ lead singer Jake Shears details his baffling IM jack-off ritual of tearing off tiny bits of toilet paper to cover up the models’ crotches to better imagine them naked. Not judging, but this extra work seems unnecessary, given that one of the appealing aspects of the IM catalog was the models’ bulging crotches, often with the outlines of their junk plainly visible. Well, whatever works for you, Jake. (Also, the strappy bodysuit Jake wears in Scissor Sisters’ “Any Which Way” video looks like it was inspired by one of IM’s creations, if not purchased directly from the company itself.)

Actor Parvesh Cheena recalls the catalog just showing up in the mail one day. “I never signed up for it. I was never that bold. I was never, like, ‘Please, send me PG-13 porn.’”

As, um, inspiring as the models could be, few of the people featured in the documentary were taking style cues from the International Male catalog. Says actor Drew Doerge: “I’d feel ridiculous wearing this stuff, but there’s something really sexy about a model who doesn’t feel ridiculous wearing it.”

To be fair, Dalmatian print boxers with matching robe aren’t the silliest of
International Male’s fashions.

Except, they did. Frequent IM model Brian Buzzini (who also posed for Playgirl) describes IM clothing as “clothes you had to be paid to wear.” Another former model, Robert Goold, says models would often try to trade assigned outfits and describes trying to affect a masculine pose while wearing them as “a professional challenge.” And those smiles on the models’ faces? That was laughter over the silly outfits they were asked to wear. Even the people putting the catalog together express astonishment that people were buying what IM is selling.

Brian Buzzini, then and now, looking just as good.

AIDS, Selling Out and the Puffy Shirt

International Male’s success continued from the hedonistic ’70s into the 1980s, when Miami Vice and MTV dominated pop culture, and people were getting into shape, and paradoxically, cocaine. The ’80s also saw the emergence of HIV and AIDS, and its impact on IM was substantial. The frothy tone of All Man turns bleak as it includes a slide show of all the staff members the company lost to the virus. I counted at least 16 who died. And as the death toll from AIDS increased, so did homophobia, making it more difficult to market IM to straight men.

It was during this time that Burkard, no longer finding the business he started fun, sold the company to Hanover Direct for $25 million. (The specific year of the sale was 1987, something I had to Google as All Man isn’t big on providing specific dates.) The sale to Hanover made IM employees nervous, with good reason. “There was a terrible day in the office where they fired almost everybody,” former art director Maureen Dalton-Wolf recalls.

“One day I was walking past the vice president’s door, and one of the people from Hanover was there,” says Mori. “I heard this gentleman say, ‘So, what are we going to do about the gay problem?’” Mori says he confronted them, asking, “What do you mean, ‘the gay problem?’” Unfortunately, the VP and the Hanover rep’s response is not shared on camera, though it’s clear Mori wasn’t with the company much longer.

IM’s new creative director Peter Karoll brought in a straight photographer and support crew for the catalog shoots to put the models, who were mostly straight, at ease. “There was a big gay crew who worked there, and it made me uncomfortable—it made me uncomfortable for the models.”

David Knight says he was one of two openly gay models when he worked for International Male. Goddamn, do these guys not age like normal people?

I’ll admit I found Karoll’s concern for the straight dudes’ comfort a punchable offense, especially in an age when “Don’t Say Gay” laws are a thing. My gay rage was tempered a bit when the documentary points out that Karoll employed more diverse models (including, per Wikipedia, Shemar Moore). 

Dennis Mori admits that in the six years he was art director for International Male, he only
  used two Black models. The reason: clothes modeled by POC supposedly didn’t sell as well.

As the 1990s progressed, IM faced a more competitive marketplace. The cheesiness of IM’s colorful prints, Baroque designs and synthetic fabrics was amplified when compared to Abercrombie & Fitch and Calvin Klein’s more sophisticated designs and artful marketing. Not helping was the Seinfeld episode, “The Puffy Shirt” (sold as “The Ultimate Poet’s Shirt” in the IM catalog), and the 2001 male modeling spoof Zoolander. Having entered the mainstream, IM was now a laughingstock. And yet, as All Man makes plain, so many of us (i.e., gay Boomers and Gen X’ers, with possibly a few older queer Millennials) still have a certain nostalgia for the days when we got a new edition of the catalog. Yeah, we laughed at the clothes, but the bodies that filled them we took very seriously. It wasn’t just PG-13 porn, it was starter porn.

These days, of course, kids have the Internet, so they don't need to bother imagining what treasures are stuffed in an Aussie Rower or what they’d do with the guy modeling the Brawn Bikini. They certainly can’t imagine ordering clothing from a printed catalog that arrives in the mail (what is mail?) It’s a fact that International Male, like so many retailers in the early days of the Internet, was slow to realize, and had to play catch-up when it finally started selling online. Today, the only remnant of the company is online, at undergear.com. The clothes are still cheesy (or just plain hideous), but its PG-13 porn days are clearly far behind it. 

Consider UnderGear when deciding what to wear to your next sex party: the Male Power Hose Thong, the Wicked Web Thong, or the Male Power Mesh Thong. Incidentally, these photos show more dick than you’ll see in All Man, yet the documentary does include full-frontal footage of a nude woman, as well as several pictorials from Playboy, presumably so all the straight guys watching (it’s a possibility!) don’t get too uncomfortable.

Throw it Back on the ‘Gaystack’

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Short Takes: ‘Nuovo Olimpo’ (2023) ★★★

Strength of acting and direction keeps Nuovo
Olimpo from devolving into a soap opera.

Spanning from 1978 to 2015, director Ferzan Özpetek’s Nuovo Olimpo is epic in scope, but its story is simple. When aspiring filmmaker Enea (Damiano Gavino) locks eyes with med student Pietro (Andrea di Luigi) at the opening of the film, the attraction is as immediate as the moment is fleeting. The two men encounter each other later at the titular Nuovo Olimpo, a revival movie theater and gay cruising spot. This moment is less fleeting, and they eventually share a romantic night in a vacant (but conveniently, fully furnished) penthouse apartment owned by a friend’s grandmother. In this one night they forge a connection that promises more of such nights, and they immediately make plans to see each other again.

Of course, that’s not going to happen. The pair are separated during the ensuing chaos of a police crackdown on a student protest happening near the Nuovo Olimpo and never find their way back to each other. When their paths cross decades later—after several near-misses—there’s anticipation that they can rekindle what they had so long ego, but they may have to settle for closure instead.

Though enjoyable as a whole, Nuovo Olimpo’s first act is its best, making one wish writers Özpetek and Gianni Romoli gave Enea and Pietro at least one more night together, and give the audience a little more time to enjoy Gavino and di Luigi’s chemistry. The movie becomes slightly less interesting once it leaves 1978, with the intervening years providing little beyond updates on the characters’ careers, love lives and graying hair. Enea becomes a renowned director, partnered with the hunky Antonio (Tony Danza lookalike Alvise Rigo), while Pietro becomes a respected surgeon, married to Giulia (Greta Scarano). Interestingly, during all this time, AIDS is never mentioned. Not that it had to be, but it was very much on the minds of gay men in the 1980s so it’s not unreasonable to expect the issue to be acknowledged when Nuovo Olimpo checks in with its characters in 1988.

But Nuovo Olimpo isn’t about social commentary. It’s a romantic drama, and a pretty good one at that, never becoming sappy and/or histrionic, the pitfalls of many a romantic drama, though there are several instances where it comes dangerously close (the circumstances facilitating Enea and Pietro’s reunion could’ve been lifted from any soap opera.). Özpetek’s direction is largely responsible for the movie’s relative restraint, but it’s the performances of his leads that sell it. Gavino gives the “bigger” performance, by virtue of the fact that Enea is a more emotional character, yet he never goes over the top. Di Luigi is more subtle, communicating Pietro’s inner turmoil without having to say a word. Finally, it should be noted that both men look good naked.

Short Takes: ‘Alpha Delta Zatan’ (2017) 1/2 ★

Gay porn without the gay or the porn.

Alpha Delta Zatan, features a cast of hot men delivering performances that can charitably be described as amateurish (absolute shit if just being honest), so naturally I checked their filmographies to see if any of them had done porn. None had—at least according to IMDb—but many of them should. I didn’t have to bother checking the filmographies of director Art Arutyunyan or writer Armand Petri for porn credits, however. Alpha Delta Zatan makes it clear that they wouldn’t know how eroticism works if it slapped them in the face with its dick.

But Alpha Delta Zatan is supposed to be a horror film, and Arutyunyan and Petri don’t have much of a grasp of how that works, either. Or basic storytelling, for that matter. This is Alpha Delta Zatan in a nutshell: A hunky member of the ADZ house strips down to his skivvies, unaware of a knife-wielding guy wearing a black Zentai body suit and harlequin mask (not “Harley Quinn,” as one actor insists on calling it) doing poses in the hall. Hunky guy then steps out of his underwear and into the shower, whereupon he’s attacked by the harlequin-masked killer. Rinse, repeat. 

That’s it. That’s Alpha Delta Zatan’s story, man-ass and murder, played on a loop, with only the color of the lighting (Artyunyan fucking loves his gels) to differentiate them from each other. There’s some business about Frat Dad Brad (Jared Fleming) mandating these killings for possible “Zatanic” reasons, and a lot of the frat brothers are shown drinking blood, but none of it is fully developed, let alone explained.

As one would expect, Alpha Delta Zatan is about as scary as David DeCoteau film. Yet, DeCoteau—early 2000s DeCoteau, specifically—would at least play up the homoeroticism, even if the guys in his casts seldom take off their boxer briefs. The guys of Alpha Delta Zatan, however, are decidedly asexual, or possibly just autosexual. They are always admiring their own bodies yet show zero interest in sex with any gender. Admittedly, several of the ADZ’s cast’s bodies are quite admirable, and certainly more to my taste than the twinks DeCoteau favors, but I started getting bored by the third shower scene; by the fourth I was hoping at least one of the guys would go full frontal, just to break the monotony (spoiler: no penises are ever shown). You’ll derive more enjoyment from watching 30-minutes' worth of “fitness inspiration” videos on YouTube than watching Alpha Delta Zatan. Or you could just watch the hard stuff [NSFW, but you knew that].

Short Takes: ‘A Closer Walk with Thee’ (2017) ★

David Gordon Green’s The Exorcist: Believer was released earlier this month to reviews ranging from meh to just don’t. I just didn’t and instead watched the 2017 gay-themed possession story, A Closer Walk with Thee, a movie The Exorcist: Believer is most definitely better than.

A group of missionaries belonging to a Christian denomination with very strict edicts against set decoration have set up shop in an East Los Angeles house with the hopes of bringing area residents to the Lord. They have their work cut out for them. Their first convert, Ascencion (Deborah Venegas), comes staggering back possessed by a demon within minutes of being baptized. (This is a horror film, after all, though it’s easy to forget that given the film is as moodily lit as the interior of a CVS.) Fortunately for Ascencion, Brother Eli (Gregory Shelby) is a crack exorcist and casts that demon out of her in time for her to be home for lunch.

But there’s a more insidious possession taking hold in one of the mission’s own members, sweet-faced organist Jordan (Aj Knight), who is not only cursed with Shane Dawson’s hairstyle but is also overcome with impure thoughts of Brother Eli (and, in one scene, the body of Christ). Jordan does his best to keep these feelings under control, but he’s powerless to resist his urges when he spies on Eli in the shower—urges that are so strong (because Brother Eli’s ass is that fine!) that he never once considers consequences of jacking off outside the bathroom door. He’s just asking to be caught by Lindsey (Kelsey Boze), the most judgmental of his fellow missionaries. But it’s going to take more than Brother Eli shouting, “Reveal yourself, you fag demon!” to turn Jordan straight.

It’s the treatment of Jordan’s possession where A Closer Walk with Thee goes from bad to patently offensive, and when my rating dropped from a star and a half to a single star. Had the writing-directing team of John C. Clark and Brie Williams chose to fully commit to satirizing the hysteria of religious fanaticism, as they do periodically in the movie’s first half, or base the horror in that same fanaticism, which, as we’ve seen again and again, is pretty damned terrifying, I might have been able to simply blame the movie’s shortcomings on a low budget and limited filmmaking experience. Unfortunately, Clark and Williams chose to literally equate being gay with demon possession, with Jordan becoming a rape-y, homicidal homo, making A Closer Walk with Thee more closely aligned with the shit peddled in an evangelical Christian “hell house” (albeit better acted) than a movie purportedly aimed at LGBTQ audiences.

And yet it’s distributed by Altered Innocence, a company “dedicated to releasing LGBTQ and Coming-of-Age [sic] films with an artistic edge.” I’d argue that A Closer Walk with Thee belongs with a different company, but faith-based outlets generally shun content with f-bombs and butt stuff. A shame, because A Closer Walk with Thee has the potential to be the best thing in PureFlix’s catalog instead of one of the worst in Altered Innocence’s. #PureFlixAfterDark.