It’s that time of year again. Out tumble the 2006 calendars. Collected shots of gardens, monster trucks and pugs dressed up as children.

And big swaths of stud-flesh on parade.

Scores of beefcake calendars arrive in our office each October. We’ve seen them all. But this year’s standout has got to be Dieux du Stade 2006, featuring the French rugby team in all its glory. Twelve months of nude sportsmen carefully configured with footballs and clinging wet towels — all shot with a retro-porn twist by Paris photographer Fred Goudon.

Goudon’s images radiate various degrees of heat — from sizzling to tepid. But a few turn of the months and your interest begins to wane. Chest after chest of perfection! Cascade after cascade of chiseled abs! You get the beat.

But then something fabulous happens.

Rafael Carballo happens!

Nothing prepared me for the rearend glory of this Argentinian. The portrait above is subversive and subtly obscene, with Carballo’s messy mop of hair, unkempt beard and the subtle “come fuck me” lift of his butt.

Starting with Rafael’s bold I-dare-you look, your eye licks its way down along the dramatic, athletic cleft of his back. You try to pause to study the shadowed arch more intently but primitive instinct forces your gaze to land, with a happy thud, atop — that ass. The Shock — the Awe — of the New!

I remember the blow-dried days of the 80s when the only flash of male flesh you’d catch was on a calendar produced by Chippendales. Cheese-glitz shots of guys with names like Dusty Deason sporting sequin-dotted G-strings. Or a gay-faced hunk, sitting just so, with a kitten strategically placed to cover his no-no zone.

Those calendars were gag gifts exchanged by women at office parties. Although the softcore pictures were innocent and safe, households with families certainly didn’t display them.

Today high school girls gift each other with The Raunchy Boys of Cancun. We are living in the Age of the Female Gaze. But we are also living in the Age of the Male Homoerotic Gaze.

The hot-assed beefcake calendar is a kind of Trojan Horse that slips into big sister’s suburban bedroom but unexpectedly works its Magic on boys who have always been complimented on how sensitive they are.

Month after month a new morsel of naked manhood appears on the wall. Suddenly brother Johnny is not so sexually ambiguous anymore. And each flip of the page is a new revelation, a new clarification.

Yes, a year-long education in the compelling, swelling joy of man-flesh.

I’m certain that in the year ahead countless teenage boys will instantly go gay by the month of June when they reach Rafael’s Ravishing Rear.

Such is the power of love.