Meet the Straight Boys Going Gay for Zendaya

Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers is the rare film that features an actual love triangle, as in a three-sided figure with all points connected; most others that pretend to this setup are really tracing a love vertex, in which one central point connects to two others that do not. In the new pas de trois setting silver screens and social media feeds ablaze with the raw charge of attraction, tennis aces Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) battle it out on the court not just for trophies and bragging rights, but for the regard of their mutual crush object, Tashi Duncan (Zendaya). And yet, for all their competition, something—maybe the phallic churros waggled in each other’s faces, maybe the phallic Coke bottle Patrick idly grazes against his lips, maybe the literal phallus Patrick shows off to Art during a sesh in the steam room—suggests a roiling homoerotic tension between Tashi’s two “little white boys.”

Challengers operates under the logic of porn, wherein everything is made to sound like innuendo-laden foreplay to the main event—in this case, athletics rather than intercourse. But are the boys both using Tashi to launder their desire for one another? Or do the three of them comprise a discrete unit, Tashi’s presence essential to an equation with fragile balance? Is this all a game to them?

As with anything else, inquiring minds are best served by turning to Reddit for answers. The approximate dynamic of Challengers plays itself out every day on the subreddit r/gayforcelebs, where posters construct and engage in scenarios riffing on a theme: two men join in sexual activity at the behest of, to earn the approval of, or simply while imagining a female celebrity. (At the risk of stating the obvious, be forewarned that the links contained in this essay will send you into NSFW territory.) The board currently boasts almost 58,000 subscribers, with a wide variety of approaches and wants under the umbrella of this specific kink. And while the upvotes on a popular post usually hit a ceiling around the mid-three figures, they also rack up a higher average of comments than seen on some more heavily-trafficked boards. Transatlantic offshoot r/gayforcelebsUK has only 3,500 readers, but the fact of its existence says something about the prevalence of the original board.

“We go to a Dua Lipa concert and you spend the whole time pressed up behind me rubbing your boner up and down my ass while we dance from behind. What are you doing to me when we leave? [Sweating tongue-out emoji]” asks one post. “It’s okay bud, it’s not gay to JO to Jenna Ortega together. Your gf doesn’t have to know. Even if we start stroking or riding each other it’s still so fucking straight,” assures another. Even Tashi herself makes the occasional headline: “Love watching Euphoria with my friends with their dicks out. I need to blow them every time zendaya comes on screen.”

Within the myriad tweaks on format and details, r/gayforcelebs represents a hospitable stopover between a safe, if ill-fitting, default of heterosexuality, and the brave new world of out-and-out queerness. For those growing up with the presumption of straightness imposed from birth, reshaping their self-image of sexual orientation poses a daunting challenge, and so it can help to break down the process incrementally. One Redditor who agreed to an audio interview (referred to here as Throwaway, the slang term for anonymized burner accounts used to post privately) recalled finding r/gayforcelebs through boards dedicated to “gooning,” a next-level form of prolonged masturbation some “gooners” have elevated into an all-encompassing lifestyle. Throwaway explains that he sees a “direct link” from talking about masturbation with other guys—a perfectly natural pastime indulged in locker rooms across America by red-blooded young men—to talking about masturbating with other guys.

In breaking down the lure of this scenario, Throwaway uses furries as an illustrative point of comparison. Making that first foray into the gay community can be intimidating, and despite the layperson’s instinct to snigger at the oddballs, the foregrounding of cuddling and other friendly forms of low-stakes intimacy in furry culture open an entryway into unfamiliar forms of sexuality. “It’s a nice, smooth introduction, and then from there, you can go wherever,” he says.

“I think r/gayforcelebs works in the same way,” he continues. “You can be like, ‘Oh, man, when I was a kid, I used to jerk off to Britney Spears all the time. And now somebody else is talking about that?’ And then you go from there. The small hints of desire you’ve been having can be more gently opened up, because you’ve both started from a place of heterosexuality.” To that end, one post accompanied by a GIF from the film Red Sparrow speaks to the sense of revelation many of these Redditors share: “Who was the first celeb to turn you on so much you felt bi? Mine was Jennifer Lawrence. First celeb I ate my own cum for.”

There’s a solace to be taken in the shared understanding that, despite the name, what happens on r/gayforcelebs is only as gay as the individual wants it to be. The array of premises on offer imply a gradient of identity, from the tentatively bi-curious to the inventively homosexual. Each one comes with a measure of plausible deniability, either playacted for fun or sincerely clung to. Throwaway identifies as “pretty openly bisexual,” while fellow Redditor Budforu has a less clear-cut notion.

“Oh, I'm straight, 100%,” Budforu tells The Daily Beast by DM. “I say so, at least, which is sorta hot. Most guys here are straight or ‘straight,’ which is honestly just part of the fun. The labels aren’t restricting at all. Boundaries can be fun to mess with.” In this environment of sanctioned experimentation, straightness and gayness become personae to try on, perform, or defy. The basis of r/gayforcelebs sometimes functions like an umbrella category, under which any number of branching fantasies can be pursued. “For me, it comes down to being intimate with another guy in denial. Like, ‘Oh, it’s not gay because we don’t make eye contact.’ I’m not sure what the kink is called, but it’s about being intimate with a good friend or someone similar.”

The social element is key to fostering the welcoming, laid-back, supportive atmosphere that brings newcomers to the rigorously moderated r/gayforcelebs. Regulars make a habit of using the word “buds” in particular to refer to other guys, a term of endearment that emphasizes low-key camaraderie. “Saying slang like ‘bro’ and ‘bud’ makes talking to others much easier and actually relatable,” says Budforu. “You talk to a ‘bud’ as if you were talking to a friend.”

In the comment sections where wayward souls find one another for sexting—no IRL meetups; that’s how some similar Discords got shut down—a no-shaming rule is in effect. Any accusations, any insults, any effort to make users feel abnormal can be met with the trusty “Well, then what are you doing here?” defense. “If you’re here to jerk off to the most straight, hetero, big-titty porn, go for it,” says Throwaway, of those into the face-value appeal of famous hotties. “You’re here for guys slapping each other’s dicks with their dicks, we’re all about that. But if you say anything, slurs, making fun of anyone for being ‘too’ gay, you’re outta there.”

Throwaway recounts one episode in his online travels that plays like a cautionary tale, illustrating the utility of a safe space for guys to just do whatever: “There was a subreddit for Nicki Minaj, called something like r/NickiMinajGoonFarm. It started as a look-at-Nicki-Minaj, isn’t-she-so-hot thing, but then it became the default gay-for-Nicki-Minaj subreddit. But because it didn’t start out as a gay subreddit, someone came in like—and I say this as a queer man—‘Whoa now, what are all these faggots doing here?’ You mean, in the Nicki Minaj fandom?

“We can assume someone surprised by this is less a fan of Nicki Minaj’s body of work than her body,” he continued. “But it started a back-and-forth between two factions, one fully admitting that they’re gay for Nicki, and the second like, ‘Oh my god, you people are fucking freaks.’ Eventually, the subreddit shut down because the moderators didn’t want the trouble.”

The attitude of woman-worship remains a core tenet in this pocket of fetishism, amplified by the success, wealth, status, and excellence inherent in A-list fame. (Throwaway alludes to some controversy over who qualifies as a “celeb,” with some staunchly opposed to allowing TikTok stars or other influencers. As of now, the cutoff for fame is 10,000 followers on Instagram.) To an extent, focusing on the glitterati is a matter of practicality; if you’re a guy looking to chat up a guy about a gal, you both need a shared frame of reference. But the air of the elite gels logically with the “mommy kink” that Throwaway clocks as oriented around “a dominant, observational position.” Jerk-buds work to earn the favor of this woman by being good and compliant, doing whatever she might say, and she can say anything.

“It’s definitely an expression of submission on my side of things,” says Budforu when asked what he gets out of r/gayforcelebs. “Obviously this differs from person to person, but I’ve always been more on that side of the fence. And both of the guys don’t need to be subs, either. Now while that's possible and commonly practiced, the more mainstream way—or at least how I see it—is that it’s an hierarchy of power. One guy dominates the other on the instructions of the celebrity.”

“You run into traditional gay kink roles,” Throwaway adds. “Someone messages you [by DM, or on third-party messengers like Kik], ‘I’d like to have sex with Katy Perry, but I can’t, so I’ll use any hole available to me.’ That’s just one. There’s a lot of gloryhole-adjacent stuff, where it’s like, ‘Well, as far as I’m concerned, there’s a woman behind this wall. And I’m not gonna ask any questions. Yes, I’m a little curious about the possibility that it’s a guy doing it. But that’s not for me to know.’”

To that same point, one bloc of Redditors on r/gayforcelebs steers the roleplay in the direction of transference, picturing themselves not only in thrall to some starlet, but actually becoming her. “I just spent the last hour fucking my ass with a hairbrush while listening to Sabrina Carpenter’s music and looking at this pic. Oh and I kept muttering to myself ‘I am Sabrina Carpenter,’” goes the title of a post featuring a photo of the recent pop breakout lounging around a girlish bedroom set. Call it autogynephilia or call it sissification; but in either case, every sexual experiment marks another signpost on the journey to self-realization.

“I used to be really into sissy cross-dressing stuff,” Throwaway says. “I was young, I was 120 pounds, it was a great time for me to be a twink. It was a lot of fun, but there was also a lot of transphobic and misogynistic stuff in the mix as well. It was mostly through gooning that I realized I could just be gay, that I didn’t have to pretend to be a woman [in order to be attracted to men]. And it’s been interesting to see people at their own point in that journey. Some guys are like, ‘Well, I’m just gay for celebs!’ and the comments will be full of people telling them, ‘Sure, just wait a year.’”

Throwaway tried to check out Challengers at his small local theater after hearing about it on Ringer’s The Big Picture podcast, only to discover that the showing had sold out. When he gets the chance to see it, he’ll recognize a lot in the tangle of pulsating yearning between Art, Tashi, and Patrick: the arm’s-length flirtiness as Patrick recounts that one time he taught Art how to pleasure himself; the hustle with which they rush onto a hotel-room bed when beckoned by Tashi; the flush of thrilled alarm when she pulls away from their three-way makeout. Beyond that one fateful night, Art and Patrick’s muffled lusts and undying eagerness to impress Tashi continue their ménage through the rest of their lives.

These three people forged something delicate and uncommon with one another that they couldn’t have with anybody else. The precise shadings of their chemistry—the bro-flavored intimacy between old buds Art and Patrick, Tashi’s aloof-goddess vibe, the spirit of striving they all share—blend into a unified current of erotic energy. For Art and Patrick, that fleeting feint at going gay for Tashi begins a volley of physical encounters taking the shape of tennis matches, each one bringing the three of them closer and closer together.

In her work as a pro coach after a career-ending leg injury, Tashi excels as a pusher. After she puts down the racket, she lives to push Art and Patrick—to continually raise the bar on the court, sure, but mostly to admit to themselves what they never could. The film ends with a freeze-frame ambiguous about who’s won the big match, the camera instead on Tashi bellowing with orgasmic validation from the stands. Maybe Art and Patrick will never come out. Maybe they don’t need to; they’d rather get their jollies playing tennis and chicken forever.