People Seem to be Frightened of Sexual Imagery
February 4, 2023 8:42 AM Subscribe
Even as Opel’s fifteen minutes ticked down, his quest for exposure was just getting started. The Oscars were not his first or his last brush with history, and five years later he’d be dead. from What Became of the Oscar Streaker? [The New Yorker; ungated] [CW: references to antiquated 1970s language about homosexuality]
What an interesting person, someone who faced homophobia from the usual suspects of the day (Reagan, Feinstein) and yet lived on his own terms, unapologetic.
There's a great autobiographical short story "The Hard Crowd" from Rachel Kushner (also republished in the New Yorker) about growing up in San Francisco around the same time period.
If she wasn't writing about some of the same people that Opel circulated with, they all seemed one of a kind in similar ways, before Reagan and his Republican enablers actively helped homophobes and AIDS kill off many of them.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:04 AM on February 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
There's a great autobiographical short story "The Hard Crowd" from Rachel Kushner (also republished in the New Yorker) about growing up in San Francisco around the same time period.
If she wasn't writing about some of the same people that Opel circulated with, they all seemed one of a kind in similar ways, before Reagan and his Republican enablers actively helped homophobes and AIDS kill off many of them.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:04 AM on February 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
I knew what that link was going to be before I even clicked on it! I can still recall the chorus lyrics, despite my best wishes.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:44 AM on February 4, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:44 AM on February 4, 2023 [4 favorites]
"In Lansing, a man wearing only boots and a ski mask darted through the Michigan House of Representatives."
If it was winter - half the year - that was a prudent way to streak.
posted by doctornemo at 11:02 AM on February 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
If it was winter - half the year - that was a prudent way to streak.
posted by doctornemo at 11:02 AM on February 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
Tangentially, inspired by this from the article speculating why streaking was A Thing: "Or maybe it was just a fun thing for bored college students to do."
Back in the day, I was part of a team that regularly competed in the trivia contest at Williams College in Massachusetts. Ironically, none of us had ever attended Williams - the closest was that one of us had been dating someone there long-distance while he was at Queens College (incidentally, that someone was Des Devlin, who ended up writing for MAD magazine for several years), and discovered it during one visit and then regularly started dragging friends along on twice-yearly pilgrimages up to play.
Williams Trivia is a streaming thing now, but back then it was broadcast over the college radio station, starting at midnight after the last day of finals and running 8 hours until the following morning. Anyone could get points for the call-in questions, but the contest also had in-person things to do - puzzles on paper, live-action sketches, and suchlike. So we would head up and find an on-campus group willing to adopt a bunch of 30-something weirdos onto their team. (And we were not the only such group of 30-something weirdos, either.)
So, anyway - one year, it was sometime at about 4 am and the usual trivia mayhem was going on - a cluster of people gathered around the radio working on the broadcast questions, a couple huddles in different corners as people worked on the puzzles, a couple others rehearsing the latest live-action thing - when suddenly three completely naked guys wandered into the room. "'sup?" they all asked us, as people gradually stopped to stare. They just stood there in the middle of the room, looking at us all with grins.
Des finally head over to say hello and ask exactly what was going on. It turns out that they knew NOTHING WHATSOEVER about trivia - they were just guys who'd been hanging out drinking beers or something, and decided to strip off and wander around "because it sounded like fun." They ended up staying a bit longer than intended - they were just going to walk in, say hi and hang around a few minutes and walk out - but one guy apparently got a little, er, stimulated by the situation and had to sit down with a newspaper in his lap for about 15 minutes while his buddies stood guard. Over the course of that 15 minutes I noticed that gradually all of the other guys on our team edged as far away from them as they could, while all the women on the team were finding excuses to edge closer to the three. Meanwhile Des was trying to talk them into hanging around until the next live-action question was announced so we could see if there was a way we could work them in. But after 15 minutes, the excitable boy calmed down, and they said they had to get going and ambled slowly out again, as naked and as mysteriously as they had walked in.
A lot of us spent the rest of the game arguing about whether we really COULD call them streakers - because they were naked, but they weren't running. So we weren't sure if that counted.
(Postscript - whenever we did Trivia, the 4-hour drive home was spent in a flood of in-jokes and discussion about the contest in an effort to keep ourselves all awake. This time was no exception, and the naked guys were of course one of the things we talked about. At one point, one of the guys on the team cracked a joke about how the guys were all uncircumcised; and when he said that, INSTANTLY I and the other woman in the car simultaneously blurted out "wait, no they weren't." The guys didn't stop laughing about that for three miles.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:36 AM on February 4, 2023 [12 favorites]
Back in the day, I was part of a team that regularly competed in the trivia contest at Williams College in Massachusetts. Ironically, none of us had ever attended Williams - the closest was that one of us had been dating someone there long-distance while he was at Queens College (incidentally, that someone was Des Devlin, who ended up writing for MAD magazine for several years), and discovered it during one visit and then regularly started dragging friends along on twice-yearly pilgrimages up to play.
Williams Trivia is a streaming thing now, but back then it was broadcast over the college radio station, starting at midnight after the last day of finals and running 8 hours until the following morning. Anyone could get points for the call-in questions, but the contest also had in-person things to do - puzzles on paper, live-action sketches, and suchlike. So we would head up and find an on-campus group willing to adopt a bunch of 30-something weirdos onto their team. (And we were not the only such group of 30-something weirdos, either.)
So, anyway - one year, it was sometime at about 4 am and the usual trivia mayhem was going on - a cluster of people gathered around the radio working on the broadcast questions, a couple huddles in different corners as people worked on the puzzles, a couple others rehearsing the latest live-action thing - when suddenly three completely naked guys wandered into the room. "'sup?" they all asked us, as people gradually stopped to stare. They just stood there in the middle of the room, looking at us all with grins.
Des finally head over to say hello and ask exactly what was going on. It turns out that they knew NOTHING WHATSOEVER about trivia - they were just guys who'd been hanging out drinking beers or something, and decided to strip off and wander around "because it sounded like fun." They ended up staying a bit longer than intended - they were just going to walk in, say hi and hang around a few minutes and walk out - but one guy apparently got a little, er, stimulated by the situation and had to sit down with a newspaper in his lap for about 15 minutes while his buddies stood guard. Over the course of that 15 minutes I noticed that gradually all of the other guys on our team edged as far away from them as they could, while all the women on the team were finding excuses to edge closer to the three. Meanwhile Des was trying to talk them into hanging around until the next live-action question was announced so we could see if there was a way we could work them in. But after 15 minutes, the excitable boy calmed down, and they said they had to get going and ambled slowly out again, as naked and as mysteriously as they had walked in.
A lot of us spent the rest of the game arguing about whether we really COULD call them streakers - because they were naked, but they weren't running. So we weren't sure if that counted.
(Postscript - whenever we did Trivia, the 4-hour drive home was spent in a flood of in-jokes and discussion about the contest in an effort to keep ourselves all awake. This time was no exception, and the naked guys were of course one of the things we talked about. At one point, one of the guys on the team cracked a joke about how the guys were all uncircumcised; and when he said that, INSTANTLY I and the other woman in the car simultaneously blurted out "wait, no they weren't." The guys didn't stop laughing about that for three miles.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:36 AM on February 4, 2023 [12 favorites]
Serendipitously, I just yesterday listened to a podcast episode of American Hysteria on streaking that goes in-depth on it's history and origin. Enjoy!
posted by emjaybee at 12:12 PM on February 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by emjaybee at 12:12 PM on February 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
Reminds me a bit of the story of Andrew Martinez, aka "The Naked Guy" who used to walk naked around the UC Berkeley campus in the early 90s. He had unconventional views and simply refused to conform. His life story ended tragically, however, when he died in a Santa Clara County jail cell at the age of 33. Apparently he was exhibiting signs of schizophrenia or other psychological distress.
posted by mikeand1 at 12:15 PM on February 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by mikeand1 at 12:15 PM on February 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
EmpressCallipygos--I went to Williams (at a time when Trivia was played through the radio station)! when was this?
posted by what does it eat, light? at 2:17 PM on February 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by what does it eat, light? at 2:17 PM on February 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
Around here it's more on bikes. (nsfw-ish)
posted by MtDewd at 2:49 PM on February 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by MtDewd at 2:49 PM on February 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
I went to Williams (at a time when Trivia was played through the radio station)! when was this?
It must have been May of 2001; Des gives a shout-out to "the three naked guys who inspired us all" in the creator's roster for the December 2001 contest. (Oh, yeah - the "prize" if you win the Williams Trivia contest is, your team creates and runs the contest next semester.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:36 AM on February 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
It must have been May of 2001; Des gives a shout-out to "the three naked guys who inspired us all" in the creator's roster for the December 2001 contest. (Oh, yeah - the "prize" if you win the Williams Trivia contest is, your team creates and runs the contest next semester.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:36 AM on February 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
Less to do with Robert Opel (what a great article) than with the New Yorker and its vaunted fact-checking apparatus: this article states that Harvey Milk was "the first openly gay elected official in the country."
Kathy Kozachenko of Michigan, and Elaine Noble of Massachusetts, were out when each was elected in 1974, three years before Milk won his seat in San Francisco.
posted by goofyfoot at 8:51 PM on February 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
Kathy Kozachenko of Michigan, and Elaine Noble of Massachusetts, were out when each was elected in 1974, three years before Milk won his seat in San Francisco.
posted by goofyfoot at 8:51 PM on February 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
It must have been May of 2001: Ah. I graduated in 2001, but spent most of the year basically comatose with depression/anxiety. Probably explains why I don't remember this.
posted by what does it eat, light? at 10:38 AM on February 6, 2023
posted by what does it eat, light? at 10:38 AM on February 6, 2023
…the New Yorker and its vaunted fact-checking apparatus: this article states that Harvey Milk was "the first openly gay elected official in the country."…
But they did get the name of the drink Jim Jones and his followers laced with cyanide right. Agree that it was a great article though. Opel was in the center of all sorts of historical movements.
posted by TedW at 11:47 AM on February 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
But they did get the name of the drink Jim Jones and his followers laced with cyanide right. Agree that it was a great article though. Opel was in the center of all sorts of historical movements.
posted by TedW at 11:47 AM on February 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
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It was also mocking the jogging craze that had briefly infected America. I'm guessing ten times more participation than now, which the movie Forrest Gump handled well.
posted by Brian B. at 9:20 AM on February 4, 2023 [2 favorites]