Daniel Radcliffe and the Tacklebox He Rode in on

I have a crush on Kevin Spacey. I also have a "little thing" for Mike Timlin (middle reliever for the Red Sox) and an even "bigger thing" for Jason Varitek (captain and catcher). I think The Edge (of U2) is hot. Jeff Tweety (Wilco) makes me weak in the knees. So what does my husband think of this? He says he is happy to hear that I am interested in "the old guys," men that are in their 40's, men that are around his age. And I must say, that's true. I'm not sighing after all the young guys on the Red Sox, for instance. In fact, something about their 20-somethingness even bugs me.

But then their is Daniel Radcliffe. Yeah...Harry Potter.

He is far from 40, I know. But listen, I didn't have a crush on him when he was 10 -- for crying out loud. He looks like this now, for God's sake.

And now he is in a production of Equus in New York. For those of you who don't know the play -- it is fantastic and disturbing, the story of an emotionally unhinged young man who loses his shit and attacks horses -- the only warm-blooded animal he is able to relate to. There are only 4 or so characters and the staging is modern and sparse, including actors in wire-sculpture horse headdresses to play the part of the animals. The acclaimed and controversial original production had Richard Burton in it as the boy's therapist, the other central role. Because I lived right outside of NYC as a kid, I remember seeing the commercial for the production on TV -- and it used to scare me. Burton staring into the camera in extreme close-up, stressing how ill some boy was in his fabulous baritone, and then this weird horse mask flashed. Eeek! But it was not the horse heads or Burton's stirring performance that made the production controversial. It was the fact that the climactic (sorry) scene in the last act included full-on nudity. And not, "Let the Sun Shine In" romping-around-for-the-hell-of-it nudity. This was a scene that depicted the young man having ill-fated sex with an older woman. And so, when the news hit that Daniel Radcliffe would be playing the part in the London production last year, the first question was obvious: will Harry Potter show us his pecker?

Apparently the answer is yes -- which, amongst other reasons, was publicized so that if parents were oblivious to the plot of the play, they would not make the mistake of thinking it something appropriate for young Harry Potter fans. And as a result, once the play started its run, the adult theater-goers crammed the blogworld with reviews and more than one crappy video from someone's phone trying to show the evidence. One review was especially funny to me though. Having seen the production and therefore Dan in the nude, a male gay blogger wanted to weigh in on whether Radcliffe was homosexual -- which apparently is a hot topic, and by the looks of that leather vest -- it's no wonder. This blogger claimed with great confidence that Radcliffe was (sigh) heterosexual -- but, wait!, could tell by looking at his "tacklebox." Having never heard a man's genitals referred to as such, or the act of deciphering a man's sexual preference from how it was hangin, I asked around. Gay or straight I could not find a man that had heard of either the term or the talent. Now, as a disclaimer I must point out that none of these men were British -- so maybe it's simply cultural.

In any case, I'll do more research. I got my ticket to see for myself in January. Who bought the ticket for me? My husband. Who has, I guessed resigned to the fact that I've got a thing for the young man. And why not? His crush is on Beyonce -- who, last time I looked, was NOT in her 40's.