Timeline is a regular feature looking back to events and milestones that have helped us evolve into the community we are today.

Late March, 1994

In this glossy-paged cover (the only page that’s not just black and white) of Metroline, which was sold outside of Ct, RI, and MA for $2.95, Owen Keehen talks with hunky husbands Bob and Rod Jackson-Paris.  Blake West, The Managing Editor of Metroline at that time, comments on the interview and this “match made in heaven.”

This “model” gay relationship of these two coverboy-musclemen, ended, as we probably all know by now, just a few years after it began.  While it lasted, though, the couple wrote a book, entitled “Straight From the Heart,” gave interviews and went on talk shows to promote it, graced the covers of several gay magazines, were the subjects of a photo book by Herb Ritts, and ultimately earned hundreds of thousands of dollars. As well as money, they also earned the celebrity status which both of whom admit in their book to having always wanted.

Before they met, Bob Paris was a body building hulk who held the title of Mr. Universe.  He lived and worked out in L.A., and had plans of moving through the same channels Arnold Schwarzenneger had, hoping to end up as a celebrated, well known, film star.  Rod Jackson was a male model and “Playgirl” centerfold, who also wanted to be an actor in films.

In his article called “Too Good to be True?” Blake West  describes their book, “Straight From the Heart,” as a Disney version of a Harlequin Romance.  It “reads like propaganda designed to convince people that gays are human and that we rarely, if ever, engage in society’s worst fear of homosexuality.  It superficially validates and indulges the union that is Jackson-Paris”.  He also points out that, cynical as it may sound, “they’re good looking guys who have made a carreer out of getting married.”

He ends his article, “although the book and the publicity blitz calls into questions the Jackson-Paris motives, it would be too easy, too cynical, to say that they finally got the celebrity both...always wanted.  But still, we should ask ourselves, are they for real?” Alas, it turns out, they were not.

Tags: 2011, 38-03, EARLY FEBRUARY