Or: Happy Trails to You.
It starts with a Richard Oliva photo in Steathy Cam Men on the 28th, with the caption “Hello, sexy daddy man!”:
(#1)
In leather singlet, displaying his furry pecs and treasure trail.
(As with my previous Stealthy Cam Men photo — #1 in this posting from the 26th — the subject is flagrantly displaying his body in a public place, so I have no compunction about passing on a picture taken surreptitiously.)
Two notable elements of this display: the treasure trail, and the wrestling singlet, cut low and crafted from leather, to make a piece of athletic apparel into a piece of fetishwear.
On treasure trails, from a 11/15/11 posting “Annals of anatomical vocabulary”, quoting from Wikipedia:
… hair grows in a vertical line from the pubic area up to the navel and from the thorax down to the navel. Slang terms for this line of hair include “snail trail”, “happy line”, “happy trail”, or “treasure trail”. (link)
Note happy trail. I’ll get to that in a litte while.
Then on gay singlets, from a 12/3/15 posting with a section on wrestling singlets and their adaptations as fetishwear:
Homowear singlets are scooped way low, below the navel, to display the whole torso; they are pouch-enhancing; they’re likely to be made of sexy materials (faux leather, shiny fabrics, camo fabric, fabrics in intense colors); and sometimes they have open rears, offering the wearer’s butt as well as his crotch … They are for fun and display, not athletic competition.
The Treasure of the Singlet Padre. An elaborate play on the title The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, playing on the treasure of treasure trail, substituting singlet for sierra, and replacing madre ‘mother’ in the mountain range name Sierra Madre by padre ‘father’, to make it all masculine, in grammatical gender and in sociocultural gender too (like the guy in #1).
On the movie, from Wikipedia:
(#2)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a 1948 American dramatic adventurous neo-western written and directed by John Huston. It is a feature film adaptation of B. Traven’s 1927 novel of the same name, about two financially desperate Americans, Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) and Bob Curtin (Tim Holt), who in the 1920s join old-timer Howard (Walter Huston, the director’s father) in Mexico to prospect for gold.
Happy Trails. The alternative title. A play on the anatomical happy trail, plus an allusion to the song title “Happy Trails”. From Wikipedia:
“Happy Trails” by Dale Evans was the theme song for the 1940s and 1950s radio program and the 1950s television show starring [Western movie stars] Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Rogers, always sung over the end credits of the program.
You can listen to Rogers and Evans singing their song here — and, if you wish, view a slide show of the couple through the years. The chorus of the song:
Happy trails to you,
Until we meet again.
Happy trails to you,
Keep smiling until then.
If you take happy trails to be anatomical, then this is slyly racy. Meet you at the end of the trail!
The alternative reading has not been disregarded. For example: a sexy romp on BuzzFeed on 9/8/14, “23 Breathtaking Instagram Happy Trails Everyone Should Follow: Because they all lead to happiness”. A lot of them have been removed from Instagram, but several steamy images remain, like this one:
(#3)
Homo eroticus on the hoof, head to crotch.
But wait! There’s more! There’s a titular spin-off of the song title “Happy Trails”. From Wikipedia:
(#4)
Happy Trails is the second album of the American band Quicksilver Messenger Service. Most of the album was recorded from two performances at the Fillmore East and Fillmore West, although it is not clear which parts were recorded at which Fillmore. The record was released [in 1969] by Capitol Records in stereo.
Ride a cowboy!
