Steve Antin

Then:

Now:

Steve Antin played Rick in The Last American Virgin (1982).

I saw The Last American Virgin when I was in high school. It’s one of those raunchy sex exploitation films for teenagers. There’s a few good laughs, but unlike Porky’s and many of the others, LAV isn’t a light comedy. It has a rough edge to it. The main character Gary, played by Lawrence Monoson, is insecure, not exactly a social success, and he is desperate to fit in, make friends and find a girlfriend. The film has some fun with that, but real angst runs deep throughout the story. You feel Gary’s pain, and he gets his heart broken in the end, too. But before then, he and his buddies Rick and David have a few randy adventures. Rick and David are a couple of sleazy, self-centered boys who treat girls like sex objects, and Gary allows himself to be pushed around by them.

Like many teenagers, I was drawn to the film because it was about boys my age, and it dealt with sexuality in a direct, if at times brutal way. When you’re in your mid to late teens, and you’ve been having pornographic thoughts since you were 11, and you might even have some sexual experience, and all the adults in your life still talk to you like you are eight years old, and most of the movies you see and books you read are very coy about the subject of sex, it’s a great relief to see a film that doesn’t beat around the bush…so to speak. I also related to Monoson’s character Gary. He was so awkward and insecure, and what he really wanted, besides sex, was love and friendship. That’s what I wanted as well, and like the Gary in the movie, I didn’t really know how to go about getting those things.

I suspected that Monoson was gay even if his character wasn’t, and that was another reason why I was drawn to the film. There was something about his mannerisms, the way he looked, and the sound of his voice that made me think he was gay. I didn’t know for sure, and that bothered me. I wished like hell that there was some way of finding out. And I wished his character had been gay.

I thought Monoson was cute, but Antin was the one I thought was sexy. Antin’s character was very into girls, and I assumed that Antin himself was straight. My gaydar didn’t go off when I was looking at him.

Funny thing is, about fifteen years later, he played a gay man in the independent film It’s My Party (1996), and then about ten years after that, I found out that he is gay, and he had been out in Hollywood, if not to the public at large, from the start. He was even David Geffen’s boyfriend for a while.

Golly, I wish there was some way to let my teenage self know about Antin. He would have been thrilled.