Twinks

Taylor's Twinks, a 2009 release from BG East, offers an odd blend of delights.  It's an engaging combination of related but contrasting fantasies:  rowdy pile-on over at the Jonas Brothers' house and pillow fight at the Olsen Twins' sleepover.  It blends man-to-man combat and cat fight.  A surprisingly rewarding combo.  The wrestlers' unique balance of athleticism and just a hint of effeminacy is vital to the video's rare and delicate tone and unexpected success.  It sweetly puts the "gay" back into gay wrestling.

Christian Taylor seems determined to keep things light in his matches with Billy Lodi and Jonah Richards.  The constant giggling would be a bit much for me to swallow if it weren't for the, yeah, well, adorableness of these young men--and it helps that the snickering arises not from nervous self-consciousness but from (apparently) unfeigned delight in rough and tumble with another ridiculously good-looking and clean-cut youth.

Lodi is not a fighter I have paid much attention to.  He's good-looking all right, a star at BG East, but for some reason not one who's entered my radar till now--except, that is, for his turn as Kid Vicious's chump a while ago.  His match with Taylor can best be described as "frolicsome."  That is about as far from Kid Vicious as a person can get.  This is not to say that Taylor and Lodi go easy on each other.  They are competitive, but they are more caught up in the fun of tussling with another cute twink than in beating each other up.  Each hold, each twist, evinces childish chuckles, somewhat strained at times by real discomfort.  They mirror the innocent roughhouse of summer camp--boyish, teasing, yet relentlessly pugnacious.

Particularly nice, for me anyway, is the way Jonah Richards tilts the giddy tone in the final match on end.  Sure, he's chipper as can be at first, with his Tom Cruise smile and see-through mesh undies.  Predictably, though, given his perverse mix of Huck Finn and Marquis de Sade, Richards is unwilling to maintain the light tone for the duration.  The match ends as lovey-dovey as any Glee-loving queen could possibly hope for, but Jonah is constitutionally incapable of smooching until first he knocks the other guy's lights out.   Only then does he show an interest in snuggling.  As a man who likes his Glee hardly less than his pit-fight melee, I find this fight to be a huge turn-on.  Its juxtaposition of play and mischief captures something of what it's like to be young and male and gay and full of oneself.  I like Richards precisely for the chip he has on his shoulder, and this is one of the better matches I have seen him in.