I came across this article on gay.com.  I’d love to hear what you guys think about it.

That’s one of the questionable findings in a study conducted to determine how the size of a man’s penis affects his sexual health.
The study, titled “The Association between Penis Size and Sexual Health among Men Who Have Sex with Men,” was launched and subsidized by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and looked at 1,065 gay men. Among its findings are the following bombshells:
Gay men who felt they had small or inadequate penis sizes were more likely to become “bottoms,” or anal receptive, while gay men with larger penises were more likely to identify themselves as “tops,” or anal insertive.
That’s all certainly debatable, but can penis size affect your mental health? Another discovery from the research: Men with smaller penises were more likely to be psychologically troubled than those with larger genitalia. The goal of the study was to understand the “real individual-level consequences of living in a penis-centered society.”

By the way, my job interview yesterday seemed to go well.  Now it is just a wait and see game.  I was told that there would be a second interview for those who make it to the top three.  Hopefully, I will make it to the top three.

My one year anniversary of The Closet Professor is coming up on Tuesday.  For a week now I have been trying to come up with what kind of post I should do for this first anniversary.  Since I haven’t really come up with anything good, I would love to get any suggestions from you guys out there.  So what do you say?

By the way, I am always open for suggested topics on The Closet Professor, so anytime you want to send me a suggestion, either put it in the comments or email me.

The above title is how an economist describes gay male students as his data suggests that gay men do incrementally better at college than straight men, while lesbian and bisexual women do worse than their straight female peers.  “The thing that really comes out (in the data) is that gay men see academic work as more important than heterosexual men,” said study author Christopher Carpenter, an assistant professor of economics and public policy at the University of California, Irvine. “They were 1.41 times more likely to say their academic work was important. Gay male college students are more motivated to learn and more likely to be mentored than their straight counterparts, and their above-average grades suggest this kind of engagement makes a real difference.”


Those are some of the findings of an intriguing new look at sexual minorities on American college campuses, which has just been published in the journal Economics of Education Review. According to the research, which is apparently the first of its kind, gay male undergraduates appear to be doing quite well: Their grade point average is about 2 percent higher than that of straight males at the same institution.

Gay men also spend 40 to 50 percent more time doing volunteer work or participating in student organizations, according to Carpenter’s findings. “It’s possible that these organizations they belong to could include fraternities,” he said. “But I doubt that, because gay men were less likely to say participating in parties was important to them.” 


Another possible factor in their success rate: Gay male students were about 13 percent more likely than straight male students to report they had a faculty member or administrator they could talk to about a problem.


Most of my students, who I have known were gay, did much better in my classes.  The two types of students who I find to be the most driven to succeed are gay male students and non-traditional older students who are returning to school or attending for the first time later in life.  Both groups tend to be more outgoing in the classroom environment and are usually wonderful to have when a teacher is trying to lead a discussion.

Matty (left) and Bobby (right)

International Kissing Day takes place on 6 July in the UK. However, the day has now been adopted worldwide and is also known as National Kissing Day or Kissing Day.

When I think about it, the concept of a kiss is everywhere in society and has many meanings. A first kiss. A formal kiss. A passionate kiss. A kiss goodbye.

Kissing Day aims to make us appreciate a kiss in its own right. No conventions, no social norms, just a kiss. Across the globe we embrace the kiss by embracing someone else.

Competition to hold the record for the longest kiss is rife – on July 6-7, 2005, the record was set in the UK at 31 hours and 30 minutes. Then on Valentine’s Day 2009 Nikola Matovic and Kristina Reinhart from Germany set a new record of just over 32 hours. 

Two guys from the College of New Jersey named Matty Daley and Bobby Canciello set the world record for consecutive hours spent kissing, reaching 33 hours on September 19, 2010.

Sadly, on February 13, 2011, a Thai couple, husband and wife team Ekkachai and Laksana Tiranarat locked lips and began their quest to break the current longest kiss. After 46 hours and 24 minutes they claimed a new record for the longest kiss. Impressive!

Perhaps you can get some kissing tips from a friend before puckering up. Or delve into one of the many kissing guides that proclaim to make you the world’s best kisser!

Think of your first kiss … was it all you expected and a treasured memory or were you too nervous to really care?

Think of your sweetest kiss … a kiss from your child? A thank you kiss from your closest friend? And think of all those supposedly meaningless kisses. Next time I kiss someone I will just think about how delightful it is and not about what it ‘means’.

One of the things that I always found perplexing about gay culture is the number of guys who won’t  kiss and use the excuse that it is too intimate.  I find kissing to be natural and beautiful, but on more than one occasion when things became intimate, they guy said, “Sorry, I don’t kiss.”  The guy will have oral and anal sex, but they will not kiss.  I have never understood it.  I love kissing and have always found it to be a wonderful experience.  I doubt I will get a kiss today, but maybe some day soon I will find someone to give me that kiss.  I hope that you will get kissed today, and that you have a wonderful International Kissing Day.

If you are not from the South, or you are not a long time listener of NPR, then you probably have no idea who this woman is.  However, you should.  With her large floppy garden hats and her unassuming dresses, Kathryn Tucker Windham was one of the greatest American treasures, a true storyteller.  I write this with tears in my eyes, because this woman was truly larger than life.  On a few rare and special occasions in my life, I have met her and listened to her tell her stories. Most of the stories were everyday life, but as soon as she spoke, you were in awe.  She wrote a series of books about ghost stories that were some of my favorite reads.  When she signed the books, her own personal ghost, Jeffrey, signed them as well.  Jeffrey had been her inspiration for collecting the ghost stories she wrote about.  I am sure that Mrs. Windham is with her late husband and Jeffrey in a better place today, she died on Sunday and the South, the United States, and the World have lost one of its great treasures. I urge you to please go to the link above and listen to the NPR’s All Things Considered story from today about Mrs. Windham and her contributions to NPR during the 1980s.

Here is her biography from the Encyclopedia of Alabama:

Kathryn Tucker Windham

Kathryn Tucker Windham (1918-2011) is best known for her series of ghost story collections, beginning with 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey in 1969, as well as numerous other publications, photography, and storytelling. Windham’s work focuses on the South’s multilayered lifeways and evokes positive qualities of the human experience: family, community, tolerance, good humor, laughter, and joy.
Windham was born in Selma, Dallas County, on June 2, 1918, to James Wilson Tucker and Helen Gaines Tabb Tucker. She grew up in Thomasville, Clarke County, the youngest of a large family. Her interest in Alabama lifeways began early. Her father, a banker, was a gifted storyteller. Windham also absorbed family history and lore from her mother, a former teacher, and her aunt, Tab Forster, the Thomasville postmistress. Young Kathryn attended public schools in Thomasville and in 1930, at age 12, began writing movie reviews for the Thomasville Times, owned by her cousin Earl Tucker. That year, early one morning, she sat on the sidewalk in front of People’s Drug Company in Thomasville to be first in line for a Brownie camera given away as part of Eastman Kodak’s 50th-anniversary promotion. Writing and photography would become lifelong pursuits.
In 1935, Windham graduated from Thomasville High School as class valedictorian, then attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery, graduating in 1939. She first worked in Thomasville as a freelance journalist and in March 1940 was hired by The Alabama Journal in Montgomery as a feature writer and police reporter, replacing a male reporter who was entering military service. She was one of the first women to cover the police beat for a major daily newspaper in the South. In 1942, she moved to Birmingham, where she served as publicity director for the Alabama War Bond Committee. The following year, Windham began working for the Birmingham News editing articles on state news and aviation and serving as a courthouse reporter. There, she also took photographs with the newspaper’s Graflex camera.
Windham married Amasa Benjamin Windham, a journalist, editor, and World War II veteran in 1946, and the couple would have three children. The family later moved to Selma, where Kathryn wrote freelance articles for Progressive Farmer magazine and many Alabama newspapers, and from 1950 to 1966 penned a locally syndicated newspaper column “Around Our House.” She also raised the Windhams’ children, Kathryn Tabb “Kitti” Windham, Amasa Benjamin “Ben” Windham Jr., and Helen Ann “Dilcy” Windham Hilley. (She had two grandsons, David Wilson Windham and Benjamin Douglas Hilley.) After Amasa Windham died in 1956, Windham joined the staff of The (Selma)Times-Journal, where she worked until 1973.
While in Selma, Windham began writing and publishing the first of some 20 books, the initial one being Treasured Alabama Recipes. Her eight-book series of ghost stories began in 1964. Alabama: One Big Front Porch (1975), one of Windham’s most popular books, is a compilation of stories, lore, and recipes from across the state.
In 1982, Windham worked on a Birmingham Public Library project on Gee’s Bend, a rural African American community in a bend of the Alabama River in Wilcox County, now nationally known for its quilters. During her visits to Gee’s Bend, Windham produced a long report, including interviews and observations. She and Birmingham photographer John Reese took extensive photographs, including a series depicting Pleasant Grove Baptist Church’s baptism ceremony in a local creek.
Windham was also known for her storytelling and radio broadcasts. In 1974, she was a featured teller in the second National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee, eventually appearing there more than a dozen times. Beginning in 1984, Windham’s commentaries were heard every Friday morning on Alabama Public Radio. Between 1985 and 1987, they also were broadcast on “All Things Considered” for National Public Radio. Windham also developed her personal interest in Julia Tutwiler into a “living portrayal” of Tutwiler, which she first performed in period costume at the Birmingham Public Library in 1981.
Even before she acquired her first Brownie camera in 1930, Windham had been interested in photography. From the 1940s, she took photographs as a journalist, and when she traveled around Alabama for pleasure or to cover stories, she was rarely without her camera. By the 1980s, she began including some of her photographs in her books.
In 1989, Windham’s photographs were included in the major traveling exhibition In View of Home: Alabama Landscape Photographs, organized by the Huntsville Museum of Art. Her work also appeared in the 1992Amazing Alabama exhibition in Montgomery, organized for the Retirement Systems of Alabama. In August 1993, the Huntsville Museum of Art invited Windham to make the presentation “Words into Pictures” for its endowed Marriott Lecture series. The museum mounted a one-person exhibition of 28 of her finest photographs: Encounters 24. Kathryn Tucker Windham. This exhibition led to publication of a book of her photographs and stories, Encounters. Kathryn Tucker Windham, in 1998.
It is highly unusual for a talented wordsmith also to be a gifted photographer, but Kathryn Tucker Windham used both forms of media to communicate memorably about southern culture. Whether telling stories, commenting on southern customs, passing along cherished recipes, or capturing Alabama life in photographs, her work has a unity that centers on her powers of observation and memory and her love for the South, its people, and its lifeways. Windham’s achievements have led to numerous awards and honors, not the least of which is the Kathryn Tucker Windham Museum at Alabama Southern Community College in her home town of Thomasville.
Windham passed away on June 12, 2011. She was buried in the New Live Oak Cemetery in Selma, in a custom-made pine casket that she had kept in a shed in her backyard.

Works by Kathryn Tucker Windham
Treasured Alabama Recipes (1964)
13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey (with Margaret Gillis Figh) (1969)
Jeffrey Introduces 13 More Southern Ghosts (1971)
Treasured Tennessee Recipes (1972)
Thirteen Georgia Ghosts and Jeffrey (1973)
Treasured Georgia Recipes (1973)
Exp loring Alabama (1974)
Thirteen Mississippi Ghosts and Jeffrey (1974)
Alabama: One Big Front Porch (1975)
Thirteen Tennessee Ghosts and Jeffrey (1977)
The Ghost in the Sloss Furnaces (1978)
Southern Cooking to Remember (1978)
Cou nt Those Buzzards! Stamp Those Grey Mules (1979)
Jeffrey’s Latest Thirteen: More Alabama Ghosts (1982)
A Serigamy of Stories (1988)
Odd-Egg Editor (1990)
A Sampling of Selma Stories (1991)
The Autobiography of a Bell (1991)
Twice-Blessed (1996)
Bridal Wreath Bush (1999)
Common Threads (with photographer Chip Cooper) (2000)
It’s Christmas (2002)
Ernest’s Gift (2004)
Jeffrey’s Favorite 13 Ghost Stories: From Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and Mississippi (2004)
Spit, Scarey Ann, & Sweat Bees: One Thing Leads to Another (2009)

Frances Osborn Robb
Huntsville, Alabama

I know as gay men, many of us may fetishize a particular attire.  Some love a man in uniform: a soldier, a police officer, or a fireman.  Others may like an athlete: football, lacrosse, wrestler, baseball, etc.  Some men like a man in a suit or tuxedo, while others may prefer less dressy cowboy or farmhand look.  What is your preference?  Do you have one?  And don’t be shy, we probably all have one, so speak up.

I will go first.  Though I love uniforms, and I think that soldiers and firemen are very sexy (French and Italian police officers are drop dead gorgeous—I think it is a requirement), I also love a man in a baseball uniform.  All of these have one thing in common, they tend to show off the man’s butt.  However, I always tend to have a thing for waiters and baristas.  Part of that is probably that they tend to flirt to get a good tip.  A waitress has to provide great service to get a larger than normal tip from me, but a hot waiter who flirts just a little, well he will get a great tip every time. And I think it goes without saying that in America, a lot of the waiters are gay, and many will use that to their advantage with other gay men.  I remember this one waiter, whose name was Michael, and a group of my friends and I used to call him the Archangel Michael, because only an angel could be that beautiful.  And he was: great body, fine ass, a head full of blond hair, and piercing blue eyes.  He could have been the worst waiter imaginable (he actually was pretty good), but you wanted him to wait on you just so you could have his attention, not to mention that you could stare at his butt when he walked away from your table.

However, my last two service industry crushes have been Starbucks baristas.  The first one is tall and slender with dark hair and eyes, and he is always eager to chat.  He always treats you like an old friend when you come in, and as many times as I have been in there, he knows exactly what I am going to order and starts it as soon as he sees me and asks me if I will be having my usual.  He knows that I am a teacher and always asks about how my classes are going, , etc.  I’ve never been in there that he didn’t have a smile on his face.  Lately, because of time constraints with teaching high school during the day and college at night, I have been going to the Starbucks that is closer to campus. Lo and behold there is another cutie there.  This one is shorter, with dark brown hair, and the most gorgeous and captivating blue eyes that you have ever seen which are accentuated by long beautiful eye lashes.  He always is a little bit scruffy, never a full beard, but not clean shaven either. He not tall like the other guy, but is just below average height and cute as a button. 

I go to Starbucks every time before my evening class, to the extent that my night class students in the Fall pooled together and gave me a Starbucks gift card for my birthday. (They also brought cupcakes and were an exceptional group of students—btw, they never curry favor with me by giving me those things, and they know it.)  I feel like I have been cheating on my old Starbucks guy recently with my new one.  Grant it, there is nothing going on except flirtations with either one, and they don’t know it but they usually make my day when I go in.  So with the old Starbucks guy (and I’m not talking in age here), I never was sure if he was gay or just very friendly.  He did wear designer belts and shoes with his Starbucks uniform of black pants/shorts and white shirt.  Where I live, you don’t see many straight men wear D&G belts.  But other than his accessories, he has never given me an indication one way or another.  However, with the new Starbucks guy, there is no doubt. He is gay.  He is not effeminate, but he makes the gaydar go off with just the inflections of his voice and mannerisms.  It also helps that the other day when I was in there he was talking about a movie and said of one of the actors: “He’s so pretty.”

There are several things that I was thinking about as I was planning this post.  The first thing was fetishes about uniform and profession.  Again, what is your preference? Do you have a particular type of uniform or profession that gives you tingling feeling in your nether regions?  Does a certain part of you want to stand at attention when you see a soldier standing at attention?  Is a passing desire for a hot guy really because of his uniform or is it just that he is hot?

The second thing is whether or not gaydar is real?  Can we really identify one another because of mutual attraction? inflections of his voice and mannerisms? animal instinct? noticing the way a man looks at another man v. how he looks at a woman?  I think these are all things that make up our “gaydar.”  What do you think makes up our gaydar?  Or, do you even believe in gaydar?