7.31.2009

Discredit

These were not wayward, damaged boys. They were athletes. Leaders. Popular, college-bound, bright-futured kids. Boys so unimpeachably straight that there was no way you could imagine them doing the things they were supposed to have done with Tony Stancl.
-Michael Joseph Gross, "Sextortion at Eisenhower High"
Gentleman's Quarterly
August 2009

Gay panic plagues GQ at every corner, even in work by an writer who can be so thoughtful, adroit, and expansive in his conception of adolescence. Contemporary GQ that is or, as Kenneth says, GQ after its pages ceased to include ads for bathhouses. Wayward and damaged, I can all too easily imagine athletes, leaders, popular, college-bound, bright-futured boys doing the things they were supposed to have done with Tony Stancl.

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