In which The Gay Recluse holds a contest. But not really.

Today we received the above (and well, below) photograph from Eric Patton of Sore Afraid. (Which btw we recommend for anyone — like us! — interested in refreshingly unrelenting pessimism, literary angst, truthful travel writing and related rumination.)

This statue, obv one of the hottest and most smokin’ dads ever is from Drottningholm Palace in Stockholm (Sweden). Question: can a statue be NSFW?

Having also just returned from Europe, it makes us think about how the United States is in fact the worst country in the western if not entire world has an embarrassing dearth of hot gay statues. In our case, we were overwhelmed by the literally hundreds of hot gay statues we encountered; and how, for this reason, it was actually a relief to get a single photograph, because we’ve yet to wrap our mind around what we witnessed abroad, much less the obsessive documentation we brought back with us, as if to prove to ourselves that such things really do exist after they have faded from our memory.

To explore the realm of hot gay statues — something we started as really nothing but a traffic-whoring joke — can be surprisingly depressing in this regard, to the extent it confirms our continued existence in the new dark ages. Was life better 200 years ago? Although it’s ridiculous to ever generalize, in some ways, it seems like it probably was! (And here’s Exhibit A.)

But as often happens, the melancholy fades as we resign ourselves to our inability to change anything; we are consoled by the understanding that these places exist somewhere, even if thousand of miles away or hundreds of years in the past, which for our purposes now is pretty much the same thing.

The Hot Gay Statue round-up:

• Rules and Guidelines
• Dan Savage Endorsement
• Washington Heights (New York City)
• Washington, DC
• The London Eye Clarifies an Important Issue
• Florence (Italy)
• The Park Avenue Amory (Upper East Side/NYC)
• Murray Hill (New York City)
• Madrid (Spain)
• Los Angeles
• Philadelphia
• The London Eye: “In Your Face”
• The J-Man Inspires
• George Washington
• Georgia (Republic of)
• New Orleans
• Columbus Circle (New York City)
• Two Davids (Florence)
• Franco Harris Statue (Pittsburgh)
• London Firefighters and Other Heroes
• Columbus Circle Mall (New York City)
• Miami
• Paris
• Grand Central Station (New York City)
• Albany, New York
• Chicago
• Albany, New York (Hot Gay Statute)
• The Metropolitan Museum (New York City)
• University of Southern California (Los Angeles)
• More Getty Villa (Los Angeles)
• Union Station Centurions (Washington, DC)
• Hot Gay Ladies in Washington Heights (New York City)
• Honolulu