What turned me gay (not really) - Bodybuilding and Fitness Magazines

I'll never forget the first time I saw my first buff, veiny, hot man fantasy staring back at me from a bodybuilder magazine at the grocery store. 

I was just a kid standing in line with my mom, waiting to pay when the hot, overly tanned muscle man of my dreams caught my eye.  I was literally in a trance when suddenly the check out person commented to my horror, "Someone likes his musclemen..."

What turned me gay (not really) ... 

Again, this post is inspired by the sidelineland.com blog in the author's tongue and cheek look into "what made me gay (not really)".  The blog holds up well with time and although this author no longer posts on a regular basis, it's still worth checking out today in my opinion.  

So without further delay: 

Bodybuilding, Muscleman, Men's Health magazines, they all, without a doubt, turned me gay.  Big time.  

Reminiscing on it now, life was very different back in the late 1990's/early 2000's as a young gay boy.  Images of hot, muscly men were hard to come by and I horded every image I could find deep within the safety of my bedroom.  The nice thing about these images was also the the plausible deniability I could presume if someone ever found my collection - oh I'm keeping them for the fitness tips...Right.  

Sure the internet existed but back then for me it was dialup, slow, poor quality, and honestly I was scared I would get caught and the hetero police would come and arrest me for glancing at male torsos.  Such was the world back then before countless versions of sex could be found on every device imaginable.

We literally have it all nowadays and yet I somehow still long for those cherished scraps of glossy paper covered with guys in swim suits.  Younger me would be shocked by the level of male nudity available today but in many ways, how is it that the longing means more to me than actually having it all at your finger tips? I can still recall some fitness magazine cover from 2000 with a shirtless stud, but I cant remember the last 30 minute amateur clip I saw? That younger version of myself would think I'm nuts and insist I show him this magic internet right away.  

In any case, it's something that leads me to insist that the golden age of male porn (at least for me) was back then and not in the present.  Sure the quality was bad and you won't get the different camera angles, POV, different realities and the variety was poor; all good reasons to downplay the 90's/00's, *sigh* but in many ways, the shear scarcity of content made me cherish them.

It's a topic that I've been obsessed with lately, that in a world of endless stream-able content, enough content to fill several lifetimes, why is it that movies and media mean less and less to me?  To me at least, those low res, PG-13 vanilla images of heterosexual men flexing left a deep imprint on me and will always stick with me, making me the gay I am today.