In which The Gay Recluse orders Sachertorte.

In the United States — except for the rare exception — there is a well-documented dearth of hot gay statues.

Occasionally you’ll see a statue and think, “hmm, he’s a lil gay.” (Or she, obv.)

Or: “Why is that guy’s head between that other guy’s legs? It’s not that gay, but — ha ha — we should send a pic to The Gay Recluse.”

And then you go on your way, and perhaps in a year or so — assuming you don’t leave the country — you might spot another statue or piece of public artwork that could be described as gay, with a mix of earnestness and irony that is a hallmark of internet discourse.

Hi ladies! Did you know that the final season of “The L-Word” premieres this Sunday?

Whoa, Daddy!

Let’s just say that in terms of hot gay statuary, Vienna operates on a completely different level than any U.S. city.

It’s not like this was unexpected, of course.

And at first, we didn’t think too much about it.

After all, our primary purpose in coming to Vienna was not to obsess about hot gay statues.

Hey buddy, nice package! (Was Johann Strauss the “David Beckham” of 19th century Vienna?)

Here’s a gay in Vienna “playing straight,” just like today’s biggest stars in Hollywood.

While almost every statue in Vienna was exceedingly gay, not all were equally hot!

At night, there was a phantasmagoric quality to the statues, that made many seem NSFW.

We wouldn’t call this “man-baby” hot, would you?

This guy just won’t take “no” for an answer!

Some required more than one shot to capture exactly what was going on.

It’s not hard to figure out what happened here!

Oddly, as time passed, we became less innured to their presence, which was not what we had expected.

We began to consider the mindset of those who commissioned such work, and why they were so interested in “hot dads.”

We resented the puritanical tendencies of our own country, which for hundreds of years has made even the most innocuous statues NSFW.

We considered the drudgery of our own commute in New York City, and how we never see a hot-gay statue without making a special trip to Audubon Terrace.

Hey girlfriends! What do you mean you haven’t seen Milk yet!?

We wondered: why does our contemplation of this statue offer us so much more pleasure than any of the tedious shots of “real-life” models we see every day on all the mainstream gay sites?

Translation: Every one of these guys is smokin’ hot.

Translation: Workers unite (for a hot gay revolution)!

Vienna’s hot gay statuary is obv not limited to the neoclassical.

The more we looked, the more statues we saw; many of them contained features — and more incredibly, expressions — we found genuinely attractive, so that our posture of ironic disdain began to feel limiting.

Overwhelmed, we questioned the movement toward abstraction that occurred 500 years ago, when Pablo Picasso first heard Franz Liszt and was inspired to create a reality teevee show on Bravo.

We could not completely shed this irony, however.

Just your average fountain statue in Vienna.

As so often happens when we lose ourselves the past, we felt an intoxicating mix of suffocation and exhilaration.

It seemed miraculous to us that the roof of the Parliament could feature a lineup of NSFW men.

By this point, our resistance had completely eroded.

Seemingly every alcove was inhabited by a hot gay statue.

We felt as if our hatred of the present — not only the time in which we live, but the tedious, mass-produced nature of our surroundings — had been validated.

But in the next second, we felt deflated and beaten.

We arrived at Gonzagagasse, the street where our friend John had grown up.

And thought about how he must have felt as a child, walking past these hot gay dads every day.

Until the Nazis came to power and he had to flee to the United States.

Where he too would always remember life in Vienna with an irreconcilable mix of hatred and longing.

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
• Stockholm
• Florence (Italy) II