This image is me in 2006, when I was biking for an hour every morning and hitting the yoga studio three or four times a week. As far as I know I am the only straight guy to ever be in Flickr’s 100 Best Male Nudes. The founder of the group was a Flickr friend of mine and I snuck in at the beginning, then spent four months sliding down the ranks until some gay kid half my age who looked like a Greek statue finally kicked me out completely.

I had largely forgot about being in Flickr’s 365 Days Self Portraits contest in 2006, but Swifferthought he had a real prize when he found the half dozen nudes in my photostream.

The discussion on this from the right has been a mix of hilarious and heartbreaking. I think a lot of them who are hating on me are doing that in lieu of hating themselves for how they feel when they look at me being the little spoon. The truly troubled, like former ACLJ senior counsel James M. Henderson, spend their whole lives being miserable, pretending to be something they are not. Then they get busted, like Henderson did, trading alcohol and drugs to a seventeen year old in exchange for a brief chance to submit to the desire of another.

All in all, this image doesn’t embarrass me nearly as much as I suspect it does the closeted Republicans who linger over it.