Tom lived out many of his most personal fantasies through Kake, and Kake's international fans made him the template for what came to be known as the gay clone look of the 1970s.
Then in 1968 Tom settled on Kake, a dark-haired, mustached leatherman who often wore a tight white T-shirt bearing the motto 'Fucker.' Kake lived up to this moniker, a sort of post-Stonewall, hyper-masculine Johnny Appleseed traveling the world on his motorcycle to spread the seeds of liberated, mutually satisfying, ecstatically explicit gay sex. He tried out a blond named Vicky-a common male name in Finland-followed by a Tarzan-inspired Jack. In 1965, Tom of Finland began flirting with the idea of an ongoing character for his panel stories, the ultimate Tom's Man.
