A 'Brief' Fling With Kevin Costner

Am absolutely loving GQ's new covers gallery. (All magazines should do this -- and more.) So fun to page through the ones from before my time, and even more fun to revisit ones I love. (Wasn't GQ like softcore porn for all gay boys in the '80s?) Didn't take me long to remember which was the first issue I ever bought. It was the spring of 1987 and the magazine -- sensing a superstar in the making -- put Kevin Costner out front on its May issue ("Meet Kevin Costner," it announced) leading up to the premiere of back-to-back summer films, "The Untouchables" and "No Way Out." Talk about love at first sight. I distinctly remember having butterflies in my stomach as I picked the magazine up off the rack at the old Alpha Beta near our house, so excited I felt as though I were picking up a Playgirl for all to see. That summer, I went to see both films on opening weekend -- "The Untouchables" was exciting, but "No Way Out" was the one that really DID NOT DISAPPOINT -- but little did I know the really good stuff was yet to come.

Riding on Costner's "overnight" stardom, the cable channels suddenly began showing his older movies constantly, including his 1985 road trip comedy, "Fandango" -- featuring a scene of Kevin in a pair of baby blue Jockey briefs that has been seared in my memory ever since (this was even hotter than John Putch's ocean underwear romp in "Jaws 3D"!) ...

and a mustachioed Costner in the bike-racing drama, "American Flyers."

Over the years, my love for Kevin has faded. Making crappy movies hasn't helped, but somehow I think I've just grown up and moved on. Still, I must confess that seeing his old GQ cover again did stir something inside me. It's like the feeling I'd imagine people get seeing an old high school flame, an experience I missed out on growing up in the closet in the '80s. Perhaps this is why gay people are so enamored with celebrities -- because in a way, Kevin was my first "serious" boyfriend ...