Above:
Bartek by Mark Leighton
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Sunday, March 29, 2020
Yard Work
Today was that day. The first really nice day when people were out doing yard work, I could also smell my neighbours barbecue for the first time this year. I didn't do any yard work, nor did I spark up the bbq, I puttered around outside, mostly looking at the mess that winter left behind, til today, mostly buried under the snow. It might have been more motivating if I had a hot neighbour hanging out next door.
A guy who works hard in the yard, raking and mowing shirtless and needing the sweet guy next door (me) to bring him a cold drink of water as he began to sweat under the springtime sun. My neighbour is a very nice retiree, not exactly Elijah James, (pictured) but.... he does use his snowblower to do my driveway when it snows. He'll do.
Elijah James
You May Now Kiss The Grooms
Animals don’t judge you.
Joe Exotic
Joe, Travis (in back) and John
And it's a good thing for Joe Exotic that they don't....
One of the results of social distancing and stay at home orders is the increase in television watching. Many are discovering new shows, finally binge-watching The Wire, or re-watching repeats of Schitt's Creek to deal with the anxiety and stress. (that would be moi!) Many have also dived into the weird and wacky world of Tigers, Lions and Bears with Tiger King on Netflix.
Although like Joe's zoo, there are so many sights to see, one of the weirdest, and most fascinating, is the story of Joe's many men. I always assumed gay men interested in seducing straight guys usually used money and career advancement. Nope, lo and behold, for Joe, it was Tigers and meth. An especially lethal combination of the straight guys you're seducing are homeless and struggling to find a purpose in their lives.
John
Although Joe was married twice before, the show spotlights Joe's 2014 dual wedding to third and forth husbands John Finlay and Travis Maldonado. Both voice being straight, and when John eventually left the trio of wacky he then married, and had a baby with, a female member of the zoo's staff. Travis didn't have the opportunity to move on from his relationship with Joe and sadly ended up taking his own life in an accidental shooting in 2017.
Dillon
Joe didn't didn't let grief hold him back, and just a couple of months after Maldonado's death, he met and then married Justin Passage. Passage was sleeping on his cousin's couch, and he too was looking for some stability... in his life. Although if you've finished the series you know they're not currently physically together, they are still married, for now, from a distance.
Window Seat: Bartek by Mark Leighton
'Don't want nobody next to me
I just want a ticket outta town
A look around
And a safe touch down'
Erykah Badu
With everything going on in the world, my motivation to work for FH often wanes. Some days it's hard to feel motivated about a something, that in the scheme of things, is rather trivial. Other days however, it's a wonderful escape. No matter what's going on in our lives, we all need daily escapes, now more than ever.
Some FH readers may remember my writing that FH actually began as an escape. I'd moved to a new job, left my friends, family and a long term relationship in the city, to move to a small rural town surrounded by fields filled with crops and cows. Feeling isolated, and without many outlets for a creative, and newly out twenty something, the seeds of FH were planted. It began first, with a yahoo group, a place to store images of the male form that I loved and wanted to save. A couple of years later, it morphed into the blog that you're reading today.
I always wanted FH to be a bit of a virtual vacation. Although I had traveled quite a bit when I was younger, since moving and committing to a full time career, the opportunities to take off and leave on a jet plane didn't come around as often I wanted and dreamed they would. So much of my enjoyment of working on FH surprisingly began to move beyond just the male form. My interest expanded beyond the man and body in focus to their surrounding locations.
I was soon loving and enjoying visiting the unique visions many artists had of the locations and environments in which they were shooting. It was fascinating to see how individual artists captured their own unique visions of locations, some I was familiar with, some I only knew from books and media, and some I'd never heard of before.
One of my favorite places to virtually visit has been the The Algarve in Portugal. I was introduced to the island and seaside southern region by photographers Mark Leighton and Mark Montovio back in 2009, and have headed visually back to the area, and the visuals, multiple times since.
Like so many parts of the world, Algarve is currently under a partial lock down, but Mark Leighton reports that on the whole, the people in his community seem to be sensible and are complying with the restrictions. They've certainly being paid attention to what's been going on around them, especially with their close neighbours in Spain.
Given it's magnificent beauty and beaches, tourism is an important industry for The Algarve, and presently, there aren't many people flying back and forth. Fortunately, the beautiful Bartek made the journey to Portugal late last summer for his work with Mark Leighton. New to modeling, Bartek's first visit and shoot was focused on new experiences, and with Mark's vast experience and skills, the results are seen in this incredible set of images.
This past winter, one of Mark's many projects was to change and update his website. Mark says he is pleased with the results, and with Zenfolio now hosting his site, it's now much easier for viewers to enjoy his many model galleries and to order prints. If you want to enjoy more of Mark's work with Bartek, check out his gallery on Mark's site HERE:, and even more of Bartek on Mark's OnlyFans HERE:
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