BijouBlog

When I was younger, much younger, I slept with a guy who one could safely say was blue collar. He worked at various constructions jobs (mostly unskilled). He was hot (muscles, beard, deep voice, big hands) and he was gay, and he was kinky. What more could one ask for? In fact, at a gathering I held when I was sleeping with him off and on, a cultured friend of mine who sold suits to mostly white collar executives met him. He blurted out to me, “You slept with him! Can I touch you?” He meant it jokingly, but I think much was implied in his reaction, much about class, education, sexual orientation, and how that all ties into how we view what is masculine.
 

Where does the term blue collar even come from?
 

The term blue collar was first used in reference to trades jobs in 1924, in an Alden, Iowa newspaper. The phrase stems from the image of manual workers wearing blue denim or chambray shirts as part of their uniforms.
 

Some blue collar workers have uniforms with the name of the business and/or the individual's name embroidered or printed on it.

Historically the popularity of the color blue among manual laborers contrasts with the popularity of white dress shirts worn by people in office environments.

The blue collar/white collar color scheme has socioeconomic connotations, which comes from the British class system, especially as it transmuted because of the Industrial Revolution.

The people who worked in factories were called the working class, and they varied in degrees of respectability, ranging from the skilled laborers who could afford a small house and raise a church-going family (think Archie Bunker types), to unskilled day laborers at the bottom of the social ladder.

These individuals, because of their lack of education, were stereotyped as coarse and ill-mannered, but also as physically strong and big-hearted; perhaps Ralph Kramden in The Honeymooners exemplifies the best and the worst of this image.
 

The people who ran the factories and eventually created the big corporations of the Gilded Age and beyond, combined with the older, genteel professions of teachers and doctors, became the white collar middle and upper middle classes, and at the top of that ladder, the nouveau riche.

This structure pretty much held for a long time in the United States, but once factory jobs moved to China and other places because of globalization, a new working class replaced it, working lower paid service and retail jobs jobs, and also in office jobs, ostensibly white collar, but working mostly as servants to upper middle class and upper class high level professionals like lawyers and corporate executives.
 

Now, how do gay men fit into this social picture? The stereotype of gay men is definitely not the “rough” guy who works with his hands, but the effeminate artsy-fartsy queen who thrives in refined cultural environments, the “sissy.” If you weren't out in that way and consigning yourself to stereotypical gay professions like acting and hairdressing, you conformed to the social structure above, and if you were in the working class, you definitely didn't proclaim your sexual orientation.
 

Thus, in the book Maurice, the aristocrat Maurice is really taking a risk by loving Alec Scudder, a gamekeeper, much below him in social class.

So, what was a gay construction worker or trucker to do?

Hide their true selves, it seems. But note, so many gay porn fantasies involve these blue collar guys in places like truck stops and construction sites, but how much are they the projected fantasies of white collar gay guys who fetishize the conventional masculinity of these straight guys?
 

Tellingly, we saw this projection become dominant very soon after the initial liberation of Stonewall, when the gay clone look involved construction boots, denim, and keys hanging from belts.
 

And of course, one of the Village People guys was a construction worker.
 

Thus, in my case, it was almost a status symbol that I really slept with a real blue collar guy (I also slept with a fireman).

Neither relationship worked out, and it wasn't because of the social gap.

Yet, since the 1990s, when those relationships occurred, some social distinctions have blurred, but not all. Even in the increasingly mainstream LGBTQ community, upper middle class wealthy white educated males have wielded the most power and influence, ostensibly for the good of all in a diverse community, but the dynamic mirrors the class structure of the society as a whole.

The Veda Pierces (the snobbish daughter of Mildred Pierce) who looked down upon dollar days and men who wear uniforms (today what many retail employees have to wear) still exist, but they come from all social classes as the world of cyberspace creates a level playing field for everyone.
 

Yet, the world of Twitter can create identities that don't correspond with one's real life social status, and thus the opposite of the above can occur: an Amazon delivery person can show more class and education and insight than a nouveau riche person, the most powerful man in the world, who embodies the worst stereotypes of the blue collar worker every time he tweets.

We are just finished producing our vintage Nova 2019 calendar, essentially a pin-up piece featuring some of the hottest studs from Nova Studios.
 

The popular Nova series is noted for its reliability, primitive aura and raw quality. The quality is consistent and the type of performer tends to be athletic, hung, horny, and lustful. Each Nova film contains several short subjects with the accent on youth and real man-love.

Emphasizing fierce fucking, rimming, kinky outdoor action, cum eating, and, at times, humor, the films are usually silent or have voice-over dialogue and music.

Beginning with Brian's Boys, however, Nova turned to making feature films with fully synchronized sound tracks.

In many ways, Ty Arthur encapsulates the qualities of the Nova guy. He's got all-American looks, but not in a statuesque way; there's a humor and a kind of sexual derring-do in his appearances.
 

He made he debut in Beached, and what a debut: sex underwater!
 

Bill Lake spies on the handsome, muscular stud as he strips down to do some scuba diving and they end up doing male muff diving instead -- in an underwater fantasy! They 69 underwater, then proceed to land for mutual cocksucking and Ty to hump asshole.

And if those striped soccer uniforms and tube socks and the studs who fill them out suit your fancy, he then appeared in the loop, Soccer Games; one of Ty's teammates enjoys a fantasy that turns into reality, unbridled sex in the locker room and the shower.

Specifically, Eric Clements and Ty Arthur have sex in the locker room, in the whirlpool and in the showers before they wear each other out; Eric goes down on Ty's boner and then licks his ass. (This scene is featured in our title, Hot Lunch.)

Apparently he made quite an impression, because the March 1981 issue of Honcho featured a spread of him, called, appropriately, “The Power of Ty.”
 

The photo of him in the our calendar shows his other side as a cock tease; the hot dog he holds in his muscular hands is actually smaller than his erect cock, and he blends in quite well with the wild 70s florid wallpaper.
 

I have been not been able to locate any biographical information on him; he made a splash (literally) in the early eighties, and then disappeared from view.

Ty, wherever you are, your fans are still watching … and pulling their puds.

Blonds have more fun, as the saying goes, and when retro blond god Chris Allen was in his prime, he seemed to be everywhere! Just taking a look at his output on sources like Gay Erotic Video Index is mind-blowing. 

Yet we actually know very little about him outside of his movie and magazine appearances. A couple of sources say he was active (and boy was he active, especially in the eighties) from 1983-2008. So I would assume he is still alive, not a victim of the AIDS crisis that took so many legendary porn stars away from us.

His blond uncut (always a plus, in my humble opinion, and it is 8.5 inches) godhood graces so many Bijou Video classics. Here's a run-down of some his more memorable moments, even in more peripheral roles: 

In Hot Splash, a Toby Ross film from 1985, shows him in full splendor enjoying a sucking the nice-sized cock of David Ashfield, another seemingly omnipresent gay porn star of that period. 

In Getting It, he's part of the “Grand Hotel” cast that pulsates orgiastically around the main relationship in this film, between Jim Bentley and Shawn Michaels. Michaels memorably “attacks” Allen in the toilet, according to the review in Manshots. 

In the Nova film Hunk, Chris has a sex scene with Jesse Koehler (who also appears in a couple of Surge productions including Rangers). 

In The U.N.C.U.T. Club of L.A., he's one of the uncut coterie of guys who live to show off their foreskin. He's here mostly as exemplar of the fetish, but as I said above, his foreskin is a plus, and many guys during the period of his prime, especially Caucasian males, were routinely circumcised. 

According to Gay Erotic Video Index, in this film, Scott Roberts is picked up by Chris Allen and John Andrews on their way to a picnic in the mountains. Scott eats Allen's butt and lunches on Allen's and Johns sausage. Allen rims Scott and then two boys fuck Scott until they cum for desert. 

Lee Landis visits Allen's home and they get out porn magazines and beer for use in front of the fireplace. Lee chooses straight porn and won't let Allen touch him as the two jack off together. 

Allen and Lee set off into the mountains and Allen brings out the porn rags again. They both start to jerk themselves off but then Allen offers to substitute his mouth for Lee's hand. Lee accepts this arrangement. After some oral sex, Allen suggests his ass hole would be better yet so Lee fucks him is several positions. 

Chris Allen is also in the upcoming Bijou Video release, Nothing But the Best (1984), which co-stars Lee Stern, Scott Roberts (again), Sean Williams, Justin Tyler, Steve Knight, and Steve Roberts. 

I discovered, as well, that he appeared in an Old Reliable video called The Professionals, where he,

among other hung studs, jacks off solo. 

Chris also appeared in many magazines of the period, and I found in our files some a photospread from a 1980s Inches magazine.

That spread gives us some personal information about him, that he drove around L.A. In a yellow pick-up, he likes guys younger than himself (he was 22 at the time!), and that while making his movies, he gets so turned on and pulls his pud all the time off camera.

Watch Chris Allen videos on our streaming site!

Bijou Video’s social media is literally out of this world, and a major social media blitz by our esteemed videographer Miriam Webster actually increased sales and customers. I credit the brilliant Miriam with this development, and we are actually going to feature a different movie on Twitter and Facebook every Monday. Call it Movie Monday, and Monday rather than Blue Monday might actually end up being for our customers and social media followers Sex Monday. 

I do wonder though, as I’ve also noticed on Twitter even more retweets of our posts than usual, if what is really going on is an escape into sex. Yes, escaping into it, but what is it an escape from? The obvious answer: the profoundly shocking upset to America that occurred on November 8.
 

Yes, so shocking, to the point where I actually called my mother (we don’t communicate frequently). There’s that line from the movie Mildred Pierce, “everyone has a mother,” and in my case, I felt like my mother was all I had. We wept together for about half an hour. 
 

Now, I wasn’t necessarily escaping into my mother, but the election, especially for those in what are now liberal enclaves (I hate having to use that word, but it is true), triggered a descent into the most fundamental core, so deep, like the tohu-va-vohu of Genesis 1 (the primordial, undifferentiated waters, like the amniotic waters of the womb) of our personal and social psyches. And in that dark place everything gets mixed up together, what is taboo and what is pure, what is violent and what is peaceful, what is evil and what is good. It’s the place where we decide whether to cross or maintain boundaries, build walls or make bridges in the world. 
 

Sex is crossing a boundary, physically, mentally, spiritually. I wonder if this crisis just made people unconsciously desire to do so, to cross that boundary, to voluntarily experience the petit mort of orgasm, especially in a situation where they felt utterly helpless and powerless. And the orgasms perhaps were even more intense, more powerful, given the raw emotions surging through the person. There’s an intimate connection between sex and violence, and perhaps the external climate violence we are all experiencing viscerally connected with our sex drives, like an electrical charge so strong it could blow a fuse. 
 

I know in my case my horniness has literally skyrocketed, and I experienced some of the best kinky sex play the weekend after the election to the point where my playmate and I even decided to commemorate the day in the future. Yes, we were escaping from the election and into sex, but I think we were also in our own way taking back the night because in, around, and above those dark, primal waters is a living, breathing spirit. 

Gordon Grant! He's the total rock solid muscle hunk with a 9 inch uncut cock who's featured in several magazines and brochures we carry and on the covers of our titles Pleasures in the Sun and Hot Truckin'. In Hot Truckin', tough-looking Gordon, called Buck, is a handsome deliverman who sucks and fucks blue-collar types while on the job - first a carpenter, then a painter - both young, handsome, and horny. He and his co-worker (Nick Rodgers) end up picking up a hitchhiker … in more ways than one.
 

Born in Alaska of Dutch and Nez Perce Indigenous heritage, he appeared in such films many of the FalconPacs, like The Lifeguard, Working Late, and The Crotchwatcher in the 1970s and 1980s.
 

He also appeared in Dirty Words, billed as Falcon's first feature film (as opposed to loops). He also went by the name of Don Bowman.

According to a vintage Colt magazine, he worked for two years as a construction worker on the Trans-Alaska pipeline. Ripe fantasy material …

Gordon also did some stunning Colt photo spreads, often modeling two figures in the Village People gamut: cowboy and construction worker. Wow! Such big arms!
 

 

He pretty much epitomizes the original Colt man, a direct descendant of all those muscle beefcake types that appeared in magazines like Physique Pictorial and Tomorrow's Man.

Gordon has passed on, but information is obscure. A couple of sources claim he died in the early 1990s from AIDS related causes, the fate of so many porn stars of that generation, but I could find nothing specific.

Still, he pretty much has entered the Mount Olympus of gay porn icons.