Uncle Dirty A few months ago I was sitting in my room trying to think of people that would make good photo stories. When the idea to cover the Uncle Dirty story struck me I felt like an idiot for not thinking of it earlier. He is actually my great uncle. At 86 years old he is still completely obsessed with body building. Although he stopped working out a few years ago, he still spends much of his time admiring the body that a lifetime of weight training has given him by taking digital photos and videos of himself in his various homemade thongs. Dirty was a legend on the muscle beaches of New York City in the '40s and '50s. He would wake up at the crack of dawn every day and lift weights before working long hours as a truck driver where he also did a lot of heavy lifting loading and unloading trucks. On days off he would rub himself down with iodine and hit the beaches in his thong.

Before I left for Jacksonville, which is where Dirty and his wife Alga have been residing for the past ten years I called him to tell him I was coming. He was excited about my idea for a story and told me not to worry about bringing a thong because he has several... But I might want to bring a pillow because that's kinda personal.



Each day starts with a bowl of special K.









He has to hold his eye open to see in detail.





Alga is 91 years old and has been mentally handicapped her entire life. She uses the microwave to cook every meal. She only cooks for herself.





Dirty sleeps in this chair facing the TV with old country music playing.









"Not bad for a hundred year old man right?"





Another nickname that Uncle Dirty has acquired is "Professor" because he has always been great at building things and figuring things out. He has been making train sets ever since my Dad was a kid.





He spends a lot of time in front of the TV.





This is what he would look like if he was a kid again. "I saw a guy on the beach with nipple rings... It looked quite manly."





When he took me into his room I realized the extent of his fascination with the male figure.





This has been Uncle Dirty's hobby for the past ten years. He has hundreds of them. Some of the penises come from such publications as "WANG" magazine, but most of them are digital pictures of his own that he cuts and pasts onto other people. He is very proud of the fact that even at his old age he has no problem getting an erection.













Dirty admiring his craft "I should be an artist."





He was particularly impressed with this one and felt the need to measure it.





Alga is almost completely unintelligible. Uncle Dirty can understand her, but few other people can. When she was younger she was always yelling at everyone, but she had to yell to him and he would relay the message. She has calmed down now, but still has her occasional rants about her medication and will put her hand on her forehead and say "I'm sick and tired" over and over again.





She spends most of her time sitting in her chair looking out the window. She has one television program that she watches daily.





Uncle Dirty prepares a fresh thong.





We took a quick trip to the beach, but they told him to leave pretty quickly. He has been getting in trouble with the cops a lot lately. They say he can't wear the thong on the beach, but they will sometimes let him get away with it if he sits down. The police even came to his house recently because of a complaint from the neighbors about his risque' attire.





He recently stopped using Iodine because it was getting all over all of the furniture, so he now uses only baby oil.





The boots have always been part of the getup.















There has always been a joke in my family about Uncle Dirty's "mysterious bulge" When asked about this Dirty assures "What you see is what I got!"





A brief history on the thong: When he was in his thirties and doing the truck driving thing, Dirty came across a woman's thong one day in the passenger seat of his truck. He had no idea where it came from or how it got there. He was about to throw it away when he thought, "Eh, maybe I could wear this on the beach." Since the thong was about three times too big for him he had to cut and resew the seams to fit his waist. As the years passed he made more and more thongs and stuffed bigger and bigger objects in to the front of them.













This is a painting that his daughter made for him (who, by the way, is very disapproving of her father's lifestyle and hobbies). It is a painting of her skiing in the mountains. As a way of trying to bond with his daughter, he pasted a picture of himself in a thong in the foreground of the painting and poked ski polls through his hands... and drew in a beard and mustache.





This is their cat. It's about 24lbs.





The life of Alga





Alga enjoys having her picture taken.













The red spots between her eyes are cancer. This is the second time skin cancer has surfaced on her face.





She is very fond of her stuffed animals.



















Dirty has gotten in two car wrecks in his ten years in Florida. First he hit a homeless man crossing the road, then he ran off the road coming home from the beach and spun a 540 into a ditch. "You think that scared me one bit?" -Dirty





He told me to come take pictures of him vacuuming the floor in his thong. I'm not sure if he left these images on the television on purpose or if it was truly an accident. The images on the screen are videos of himself taken by himself.









One of the most amazing things about Uncle Dirty is that he is totally open about his lifestyle and has no shame about who he is. He knows that other people find him strange, but he doesn't let it bother him. He knew that I was visiting for the purpose of making an article and he still opened up to me completely and didn't hide anything. He saw the pictures and loved them and hopes that they can be published. I think that although his lifestyle may be strange we can learn a lot from him. He is free from self consciousness, he is doing what he enjoys and what feels good to him, and enjoying the same things in life that he did when he was 20 years old. He is comfortable with himself to the point of obsession.



Here are some medium format film shots that I took during my 3 day stay. They are accompanied by quotes and random facts about Uncle Dirty.







"I hate fat people"





One day Uncle Dirty was watching Ripley's Believe it or Not when he saw people swinging weights from their penises. He decided he would like to try this too. He uses a 20 pound weight and swings it back and forth. He enjoys this exercise because it stretches it out and makes it look bigger. "It makes you feel amazing. Vigorous, horny... incredible."





Sometimes he thinks he was supposed to be a woman because of some of the things that he enjoys doing such as sewing.





When he was 20 years old his father took him to a prostitute to lose his virginity. He was too nervous and was unable to do it.





"When I die they can take my ashes and sprinkle them in the ocean, or if I'm still in good shape, maybe they can stuff me and preserve me and put me in a thong and keep me in the living room".





For most of his life he had extremely poor vision due to cataracts. When he was a kid he was cross eyed. When he got cataract surgery several years ago he saw for the first time that he had brown eyes and realized that he is no longer cross eyed.





"I don't know... I like wearing a thong" -Dirty on why he takes so many pictures of himself in thongs.





"That's what did it, the digital camera" -Dirty on why he takes pictures so many pictures of himself.





"We choose our own destinies"





Uncle Dirty's father was a bootlegger until the day he died. After his death Dirty sold the remainder of his supply after watering it down a little bit.





"She'll make it to 100 if I don't kill her first." 27 Comments Posted on 11 Dec 2007 by mike Content Management Powered by CuteNews all photos ©2007 by mike belleme