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  • Home
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    • Etc...
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    • Red Caps
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    • Trysts
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  • The Guide to Lost Queer Cinematic Characters
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THE GUIDE TO LOST QUEER CINEMATIC CHARACTERS
Volume III: Films of the Fantastic and FeareD

The secret lives of LGBT characters from old films is finally revealed!

B

Bakin, Thomas (​The Incredible Petrified World)  b. 1922, d. 1989

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The heir to the Bakin Flour Co. fortune, Thomas Bakin earned the wrath of his father for his interests in tennis rather than the family business, a major corporation in the 1950s. Bakin’s mother was concerned that her son’s keenness for the sport included the attentions of his tennis instructor, so she arranged for some large men to visit said instructor and forcefully recommend he leave Chicago and seek new clients on the East Coast. Much to his parents’ chagrin, Bakin followed after the man. A week later he received a telegram stating that if his mother did not see him in the society pages with a beautiful woman on his arm Bakin was would be written out of the will and left penniless. A heartsick Bakin found himself involved with reporter Dale Marshall, a vinegar-tongued woman reminiscent of his mother. Four months later the pair was engaged to be married in June of 1958. But in the spring of 1957 disaster struck when thousands and thousands of irradiated, enormous locusts devoured the wheat fields of the Midwest (as well as the farmers in the fields). The price of wheat futures skyrocketed and the Bakin Flour Co. found its supply costs unbearable; the company, founded just after the American Civil War, would months later be forced into bankruptcy. Emboldened by the fact that, regardless of whom he romanced he would never inherit a fortune, Bakin wrote Marshall—who was in the Caribbean on assignment, covering the story of an experimental diving bell—a letter calling off the engagement. He latter learned that Marshall threw the ring into the ocean. Bakin tracked down his former tennis instructor and resumed their relationship. Once California repealed its sodomy laws, the pair moved to Palm Springs and opened a small resort for gay tourists. Of interest to LGBT sport historians and enthusiasts: Bakin was one of the few friends of tennis pro Bill Tilden who did not shun the man after his arrests for soliciting boys, and Bakin loaned Tilden money to survive during the career droughts caused by probation. Bakin attended Tilden’s funeral in 1953.

Z

Zutai (The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake) –b. 1843 d. 1959

Among  the  Jívaro  tribe  of  the  Loreto  region  of  Peru,  Zutai  served  as  an  assistant  to the shaman and often secured  for him rare plants for his medicinal brews. The Jívaro were headhunters  and  greatly  feared, especially  by  Europeans.  Wilfred  Drake,  who  owned  a trading station in the upper reaches of the Amazon, took vengeance on the tribe after they captured  his  agent—every  Jívaro  male  and  male  child  was  slaughtered  except  for  the witch  doctor,  who  escaped,  and  his  faithful  Zutai,  whose  return  to  the  village  had  been delayed because of a tryst with famed Peruvian botanist Cesar Guisse. Through black magic, the shaman and his assistant gained immortality at the cost of their soul. The shaman vowed that each male Drake would be murdered, beheaded once they  reach  their  sixth  decade.  Before  the  turn  of  the  20th  century,  the  shaman  sewed Zutai’s lips shut, resembling the bound mouth of a shrunken head. The shaman claimed this  was  to  prove  his  helper  no  longer  needed sustenance  but,  in  reality,  it  was punishment for Zutai’s poor fellatio skills (he suffered from severe ankyloglossia). When he was not helping his master’s heinous deeds, Zutai studied Bolivian Sign Language and Kegel exercises for personal enrichment. By  1959,  only  two  male  descendants  of  Drake  lived.  One  was  beheaded,  as  per  the shaman’s curse, while the other, with the help of an American police inspector, managed to destroy both of the ageless Jívaro.
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