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[Image description: Text ‘Considering My Crushes Guest Post’ on a lilac background]

This guest post series is a space where other writers in my community think about their own fruity memories and fantasies from back in the day.

Check out ‘#53: Guest Post – Considering My Crushes’ for Peter Apps’ piece on his crushes Princess Jasmin, children’s TV presenter Katy Hill, J-Lo and the character of Cassie form the Animorphs book series; and ‘#50: Guest Post – Considering My Crushes’ for Karla Marie Sweet’s essay on her crushes on Aladdin, footballer Paul Ince, Spice Girl Mel C and lots of sexy actresses from film and TV.

And earlier on in this season of ‘She Dares To Say’ I wrote ‘#46: Considering My Crushes – No. 02’, where I describe early 00s crushes on Sirius Black and Kingsley Shacklebolt from Harry Potter; Harvey, Romeo and Asher D from So Solid Crew. And in ‘#40: Considering My Crushes – No. 01’ I went back to the mid/late 90s, to my first crushes who were Peter Pan, Damon Albarn, Billy Kennedy, Ernst Robinson and US President Bill Clinton.

‘Considering My Crushes’ by author Justin Myers (AKA ‘The Guyliner’) who also writes the Substack ‘The Truth About Everything’

The crushes you feel when you’re young are supposed to be harmless, consequence-free explorations of the more intense version of these emotions that will plague you as an adult. But as a gay child growing up in the north of England in the eighties and early nineties, my crushes were more loaded, malignant. They were over-analysed by onlookers to such a degree that, for much of my adolescence, I barely dared look at a boy who was not already my friend.

It was a very different time, where gay crushes were not flattering or even mildly amusing, they were presented as toxic and disgusting. I didn't quite know my deal was sexually until I was much older, but my peers made their minds up on my behalf. It had the unfortunate side-effect of making most of my fellow classmates repellent to me. But there was always Harry.

Harry occupied a middle ground. Not one of the meat-headed alphas who made my life a misery, nor one of the trembling wets who sat in my corner of the class. He pretty much left me alone, was always civil, never unpleasant, and this vague indifference felt like kindness, and it was attractive.

The only opportunity to see bare flesh in those days – the internet had yet to be invented and democratise adolescent ogling – was to either buy a copy of teen magazine BIG! and see if Jordan Knight had been photographed shirtless that week, or get changed slowly in PE lessons. I was a pale, weedy, scrawny child, who looked around eleven years old until I hit twenty. The bodies of the boys in my class fascinated me, not entirely in a sexual way, but in how different they were from mine. Harry’s genetics gave him ‘proper’ legs, with defined thighs, and calves, and a smattering of hair on them; his torso had a shape, there was the early broadening of manhood.

[Image description: Cover of vintage pop culture magazine Big!]

This is the function of crushes everybody forgets, and one that holds with me today – I have very rarely wanted to have sex with my crushes, they represent what I could never be, and fire my imagination. What would my life have been like at school if I’d had Harry’s rapidly expanding shoulders or his confident voice, which deepened almost overnight? If my hair had been like his and fallen just right over my eyes, and my hands square, and my legs authentic, and ready for the conversion to adulthood. Harry was not knockout gorgeous, but he had almost everything going for him aesthetically and, even more alluringly, didn't seem to know it. Why does beauty have more value when the owner is less aware of it?

My future crushes, all through university and those early post-grad jobs we never talk about on LinkedIn, were young, good-looking men who were kind to me. I knew we would never be going home together, that they saw me as a mildly amusing, sexless and unthreatening side character. But I imagined their strong necks on my shoulders, rolling up my sleeves to reveal not my bony, freckly wrists, but their toned, masculine arms. How much better my clothes would look on these bodies, how much nicer the world would appear, I imagined, if I could live in it as a handsome, confident man desired by strangers.

[Image description: Screenshot of heart-throb Maxwell Caulfield wearing a tuxedo]

My celebrity crushes are few. The aforementioned Jordan Knight was a skeleton key into feelings I didn't understand. It was so rare to see men’s bodies at that time, that I wonder had I had access to them earlier, might my sexuality have taken on a more solid and refined shape in my teens and saved me a lot of trouble and misdirection later on? Like I said, different times. Men’s bodies existed only in occasional shirtless scenes on TV or movies, or beach pap shots of famous men. Jordan Knight’s entry into my pantheon comes only from his willingness to whip off his shirt in concert, or on the beach, and magazines’ willingness to publish the photos.

I remember too, catching the much-maligned Grease 2 and seeing Maxwell Caulfield as the lead, smouldering in that old-fashioned matinee idol way but with a very modern body. Clive Owen, slicker and hotter than most men on TV in Chancer or showing his backside in Close My Eyes. Will Smith, handsome, lithe and brimming with confidence in Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Snippets of beauty. It wasn’t just desire driving me to crush on these men, but the power I imagined their looks gave them. I was too young, I suppose, to understand how even the terminally gorgeous are treated like dirt and taken advantage of, how they may fight to be taken seriously, or have other problems we could never imagine. It was easier for me to believe that my unhappiness was not because of my sexuality or my personality, but because I was too ugly.

[Image description: Screenshot of Will Smith in ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’]

My contemporary crushes are thin on the ground. As a man, I have found those flutters of attraction not from celebrities but, much like my teenage years, in those brief interactions with regular guys who show me kindness or who exist in their own bodies with what appears like complete ease. Of the red carpet-botherers I do find attractive, I suppose I would name Jake Gyllenhaal, and perhaps Jamie Dornan, if only because I can imagine how smooth their passage through some aspects of life must’ve been because of their looks.

[Image description: Screenshot of actor Jake Gyllenhaal gesticulating]

What interests me about them is not what I imagine are the two things they, and their fans, prize most – their fame and their heterosexuality. It’s the power. Not the noxious kind where you run roughshod over everyone else just because you’re pretty, but the power from within, the confidence, the knowledge you can walk into a situation and, nine times out of ten, know you will be treated well because there’s a pretty good chance someone in the room has a crush of their own and will make it their personal mission to ensure you don’t leave without a smile on your face.

[Image description: Screenshot of actor Jamie Dornan holding a cue card and smiling]

I’m an older man now, and having had my own, brief, handsome stages over the years, I see these crushes for the pointless fantasy they are. Crushes can be a useful way to health check your own feelings about the way your life has turned out, but in all honesty, the person you need to crush on hardest is yourself. Be that person who won’t rest until they’ve made you happy.

About the Author
Justin Myers is a writer from Yorkshire who now lives in London. He is the author of four novels, The Last Romeo, The Magnificent Sons, The Fake-Up, and Leading Man, with a fifth, The Glorious Dead, coming in 2025 on Dialogue Books. Sometimes writing under his pseudonym ‘The Guyliner’, Justin’s journalism has appeared in many major publications including The Guardian, The Times, The i, and GQ, where he had a long-running dating and relationships column. More of his writing can be found on his website theguyliner.com. His newsletter and bestselling Substack ‘The Truth About Everything*’ began in 2017 and can be found at theguyliner.substack.com

Websites and socials

The truth about everything* Essays on TV, pop, the media, celebrities, and the crushing reality of twenty-first century existence. I slide into your inbox with the grace of a cow rollerblading down the steps of Leicester Square Tube station. By Justin Myers

theguyliner.com | @theguyliner

[Image description: Text ‘POSTSCRIPT’]

The ‘POSTSCRIPT’ segment for paid subscribers will drop on Wednesday 2 October and will feature some fun background commentary on how Justin Myers and I orginally became online friends… because many years ago I was in the much-beloved Guardian ‘Blind Date’ feature and Justin wrote it up hilariously for his long-running ‘Impeccable Table Manners’ content strand on his website, and also re-visited my blind date for a big feature in The Guardian for Blind Date’s 10th anniversary.

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[Image description: Text ‘PRODUCED BY’]

I’m Almaz Ohene, a Creative Copywriter, Freelance Journalist and Accidental Sexpert.

Commission me!

This content is not behind a paywall, but since it takes time to create and upload each piece, do please consider becoming a paid subscriber of ‘She Dares to Say’ to support this project. Paid subscribers get additional subscriber-only posts each month and continuous access to the full archive. Paid subscriptions are either billed monthly at £3.79 or annually at £34.99.

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If you would prefer to make a one-off donation, feel free to send a contribution via PayPal.

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You can also show your enjoyment without spending £££, by liking, commenting, restacking via Notes or just generally sharing 😃