My first gay crush was The Monkees' Peter Tork!
I was around 9 years old when The Monkees premiered on NBC.
At that age I was also a big fan of music like The Beatles and Paul Revere & The Raiders.
I loved reading 16, Flip, and Tiger Beat magazines, all of them cover to cover.
But I could never actually "see" my heroes, except in the movies.
I remember seeing The Beatles' "Help!" in the Pascack Theatre in Westwood, NJ. All the girls in the theatre screamed the whole time!
With The Monkees, it was like I got to spend a half hour with my new "fave raves:" Davy, English and my height (LOL); Mickey, the perfect class clown; and Mike, the mature, responsible one.
And then there was Peter. He seemed like someone I wanted to live next door, to be best friends with.
Sometime in the summer of 1968, one of the mags printed a two-page "Body Painting" photo of Peter. There he was, no shirt, almost down to his belly.
I grabbed my markers and started designing Peter with groovy psychedelic patterns and colors. I remember lying on our living room floor, on my stomach, drawing circles and squares around his nipples, his pecs, and felt some sort of stirring in my 11-year old loins. So I guess you could say that coloring Peter's poster induced my puberty!
Forty or so years later, I met him, and he is a super nice guy. And still cute! I didn't tell him about him being a catalyst in my becoming a man, but I certainly remembered!
Wayne - Ridgefield Park, NJ
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Inspired by the "Born This Way Blog" - BornThisWayBlog.com
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