January 26, 2011

Manuel

Manuel, age 3
Oviedo, Spain (1955)

My friends see this pic now and tell me how I remind them of Jane Wyman in All That Heaven Allows. Which flatters me, and perhaps it predicted what would be my future. I always loved Jane Wyman in that movie, and Rock Hudson disguised as the gardener.

"My first day of school"
I was the smallest boy in my catholic school, and all the nuns (even the bad ones) immediately became my 2nd mothers. But they seemed so foreign to me, and I'd ask them questions like: 'Do you eat? Why are you dressed like that? What's going on in your mind?' They adored me, as I was a very nice boy.

Later, I went to work as an actor in children's theater and I'd recite poems standing on a chair. I sang songs, and people said I looked like Pablito Calvo, a famous child prodigy from that era. He was the actor in Marcelino Pan Y Vino, which is a great Spanish film of 1955 (the year of my birth), and a film that I still love.

Another signal of me being gay back then?

I was very into films and movies as a boy, and still am. I still love The Sound Of Music the best, and more recently Douglas Sirk's Melos and Far From Heaven. Julianne Moore is one of my favorite actresses, of course.

But it was the actors who I had crushes on, such as Charlton Heston, Doug McClure, Rock Hudson, George Hamilton, Troy Donahue, Michael Landon, James Franciscus, Robert Wagner, Warren Beatty, Jeffrey Hunter, Richard Harrison, and Stephen Boyd. Whew! :)

While I really didn't have an awareness that I was different as a child, my dreams were clearly telling me something just the opposite.

And it took me very little effort to be completely sure.

Manuel's first, famous-person same sex crush:
Robert Conrad
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ROBERT CONRAD 8x10 B&W PHOTO Marcelino Pan y Vino Melodrama and Meaning: History, Culture, and the Films of Douglas Sirk All That Heaven Allows Poster Movie B 11x17 Jane Wyman Rock Hudson Conrad Nagel Agnes Moorehead

7 comments:

antonio navarro said...

Si es que nuestras madres también nos vestían con mimo ....

Octavio Caraballo said...

Hola Manuel, he creado una versión "española" de este blog. El enlace es http://gaysenace.blogspot.com. Me gustaría contar con tu colaboración. Un abrazo

Anonymous said...

That is the cutest pic ever!!

Anonymous said...

Maravilloso para el cole! Felicidades

Virginia said...

Que precioso! I love Marcelino Pan y Vino also. :)

Anonymous said...

That photo of you is absolutely precious. What a beautiful child.

Daddy Squeeze Me! said...

Such a gorgeous little baby!