Gay pulp fiction

Gay fiction of yesteryear is something I started collecting recently. I wanted to comment on some of the best titles I've found. I've read a few books and articles on the subject with people talking how they picked up their collections from yard sales and Goodwills but I think those days are dwindling, if not gone. With the advent of the internet people now know they're sitting on a gold mine. Still I picked up most of these for less than $10 which is amazing to me.

I think this is the best one, I paid $88 for it. It is typical of the heterosexualization of the covers of the time, the book opens with the main character's mother getting drunk and hitting on him and the rest of the book is a "gay romp". But they put the woman on the cover. Also the main character is 17, he would be 18 now. The code word "Twilight" in the title is all that suggests the gayness of the plot. The author wrote about 5 books under the name James Colton then switched and wrote a mystery series under the name Joseph Hanson which was immensely popular and still in print today. The James Colton books each had one print run and are scarce as hens teeth. For these reasons, I consider this the primary example of the gay pulp fiction period.

This book is not what I thought it would be. It looks like porn, says "adult reading" and "fully illustrated". I scanned through it and saw nothing sexual whatsoever. Strange. The cover art makes this one an instant classic.

This is another classic cover concept, either a crying woman or a woman looking at a man who's looking at another man. Another example of the heterosexual orthodoxy, the only way a gay story can be appreciated is through a "normal" woman's perspective. The story is of a woman who's married a gay man and decides to steal him back from his male lover. The back cover declares "The man she loved was abnormal!"

This was the first gay pulp fiction novel ever made and I was able to get an original copy for pretty cheap so I'm guessing they printed a lot. It's a man's prison diaries, selling for 35 cents, and the back promises "homosexual slavery - inmates forced to practice abnormal acts with sex deviates who roam the prisons at will". The entry I read was about 5 lines long about how one of the prisoners hid in the laundry cart and had sex with a laundress and got the clap. Another reason I like this is it's in diary style. First persons accounts of gay life are extremely rare for this period.

This novel describes the "startling sexological problems of men who are different" and references the Kinsey study, says this problem "involves one out of every five men in America today!" (emphasis theirs)

The Kinsey study. The bible of sexual study. 3,500 case studies completed in 1948. Every page is gold, let me find a random page:
"As previously noted, the six chief sources of orgasm for the human male are masturbation, nocturnal emissions, heterosexual petting, heterosexual intercourse, homosexual relations, and intercourse with animals of other species. There are some individuals who derive 100 per cent of their outlet from a single kind of sexual activity. Most persons regularly depend upon two or more sources of outlet; and there are some who may include all six of them in some short period of time."
Totally picked at random! It's gold Jerry, GOLD!

This book I pre-ordered, it comes out in February. It's a reprint of the first medical textbook published on homosexuality. Before the 1960's homosexuals were called inverts, it was believed they possessed a female mind inverted into a male body. This was used interchangeably with pervert. "Are you a pervert?" or "Are you an invert?" meant the same thing.

This book promises the story of a "third sex slave to the Third Reich's brutal lust!" but is pretty tame by today's standards. The third sex was the gay sex, neither male or female. A quote "Guided the heat of his weapon..." it's like a Harlequin novel now. Plus the story doesn't really involve a sex slave, this Jew meets a Nazi who rescues him from the concentration camp and loves him and shows him the joys of S&M. Strange.

This is the third volume in the loon trilogy. I read somewhere that at the end of the 70's, 1 gay man in 5 had read the loon books. It's a latter day Brokeback Mountain with cowboys and Indians.

The back cover:
"The author who must remain anonymous has written an engaging work at self-revelation. The reader is led on a journey through the private hells of the HOMOSEXUAL.
This is Jackie Cassius's story... an actor who was a bi-sexual, he found himself more attracted to men than to women. From the moment of his meeting with the wealthy and influential Orson Doderer Cassius was led down the aisle into the twilight world of desire and dreams. He becomes a MALE BRIDE.
In the arms of the voluptuary Cassius found himself completely helpless... a slave to unlooked for passions."

This book is similar to my favourite of last year. I haven't read it yet but it is the memoir of a man who was arrested in England in the 1950's and imprisoned for being gay. As far as I know only these 2 books exist to detail this time in history. This one is harder to find, I paid $40 for it.

The final book is a version of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. There were several schools of thought on the causes of homosexuality in the 1940's-50's (this book being published in 1947 originally). One was narcissism, that the man loved himself so much he could only be with someone exactly like himself. Another more popular one was that homosexuals wanted to be women. This book describes a man who wears his wifes clothes and is obsessed with their next door neighbour. He urges the wife to have an affair with the neighbour so he can watch. When she says she wants kids it forces him to confront his maleness and he snaps, kills his wife and drives away in a purple angora sweater and sensible skirt.

Best/Worst of 2007

Best movie: High School Musical 2
Most years a film grabs me and makes me take notice, Elephant or Spellbound. This seemed to be the year of mediocrity, and a movie I've seen 10 times with songs to sing along to and a couple of cute boys, one gay.... what more could I ask?

Worst movie: Spider Man 3
I didn't see part 2 and went to see part three because I was lonely one day, it was worse than my wildest nightmares could have imagined. The new Batman has Heath Ledger as the Joker, this crap has the stupid mechanic from Wings. Ghastly.

Best TV Show (scripted): Reaper
Exciting and original, funny and the only reason to turn on a TV.

Worst TV Show (scripted): Dirty Sexy Money
As exciting as watching paint dry. Plots that went nowhere and everyone is too serious.

Best TV Show (reality): TIE X-factor and Project Runway
I love singing and dancing and Simon Cowell. The great thing about these shows is when Simon's nice, like 1 time out of 100, and you know it's genuine. It's like the tough English teacher who helps you get a scholarship.
Runway: take 13 gay men and let them camp and bitch it out fighting over dresses.

Worst TV Show (reality): The Two Coreys
In a strong year for reality, this show was DOA. Annoying people who used to be famous. In one episode the head of PETA comes to dinner with the meat-eating Corey Haim. Will wackiness ensue???? No.

Best Shows Turned to Worst: Ugly Betty, Friday Night Lights, Doctor Who, Brothers and Sisters
I was disappointed in all these shows. I tuned in for the originality and now most seem like one-hit wonders. Doctor Who had a great Christmas show but what about episodes 3-9 of season 3, each week praying for something more interesting to happen? Brothers and Sisters, Ugly Betty and FNL all got bogged down in super serious plots which no one cared about.

Best Book: Against The Law - Peter Wildeblood
The best autobiography I've ever read. Details his arrest and one year prison term for being homosexual in England in 1955. Never playing for sympathy, this book quietly draws the picture and lets the reader make up his own mind. Brilliant.

Worst Book: Shopaholic and Baby - Sophie Kinsella
How to take a franchise too far. These books started out light and fun in a Bridget Jones kind of way. But the reason we loved Bridget was she was the anti-hero, when she drank wine from the bottle and sang "All By Myself" we sung with her. When Beckie has a crisis because she can't get into the celebrity obstetrician, we're left thinking "Who Cares?"

Trend of the Year: Buying old gay books, I hope to do a blog post with some of my findings soon.

Person of the Year: Joe Strutt.
It amazes me how the nicest person I know still wants to keep in contact with me. He always makes time and checks in, I really appreciate it.

Worst person of the Year: Guindon.
Satan's secretary. Makes my skin crawl.

Best Political Party: Conservatives
For being the only party with ethics. The only party with a strong leader. The only party that believes in equality. To me the essence of the Conservative Party is that if you work and try to do right, right will be done to you. Everything should be above board. The government should not entangle itself in the affairs of the public.

Worst Political Party: Liberals
I don't understand what anyone sees in them. They are the definition of wishy-washy and have more corrupt members in their ranks than we will ever know. They say they won't raise taxes and then bring in the largest tax increase in history because it was "necessary". I would like to encourage anyone reading this, if you have had better health care in the last 12 months from your extra $900 annual tax let me know and I will eat my hat. Or yours. Whichever is smaller.

Best Memory of the Year: Seeing Hairspray on Broadway in New York City with Lance Bass and meeting him afterward.

Worst Memory of the Year: Tornado

Co-workers

thatstheheavy


I'm having a problem today in that I keep meaning to sit down and watch movies and get distracted by junk shows instead. Today was Project Runway Canada and America's Most Smartest Model. With the writer's strike isn't there supposed to be a big onslot of reality themed shows? I may never leave the house again.
Above are pictures of my co-workers. I can't believe tomorrow night is New Year's Eve already, I kind of feel like doing nothing, we'll see.

Happy Christmas!

So it's Christmas morning, 9 am, and everyone is still asleep.
I was kind of disappointed yesterday, I wait all year for the futureshop boxing day sale and they end up with absolutely nothing I wanted, would it have killed them to put ONE handheld video game on sale? Sheesh!
Here's a few more pictures, my mom doesn't exist for blogging purposes so I've got the minister at the church and me with a pink crown, me in the underwear shot, and more! Merry Christmas everyone!

Family Christmas

What the heck?

Underwear on the head. Sheesh.
Well I'm at my parents, no car that's working so we're listening to Christmas songs on satellite radio while my brother sleeps.

Hanky Code

This hanky code above is a part of the Gay Monopoly game I got today. Study closely, there will be a quiz later!

Evolution of sex

I'm looking for answers and I'm going to attempt to use this as a notebook to record my results.
The basis for sexual reproduction is to stay a step ahead of parasites (Red Queen hypothesis). E Coli can reproduce asexually millions of times in a 24 hour period but with no change in the genetic code, reproducing asexually leaves all offspring as copies, vulnerable to infection. We need the differentiation brought with sexual reproduction.

Above a chart, on the left each individual creating 2 offspring sexually. On the right, asexually.

In a recent study, women were given men's shirts to smell and select the one they liked the best. In over 90% of cases the woman chose a man who's immune system was at an intermediate difference from theirs, that is not too similar and not too different, suggesting women pick their mate at a biological standpoint for resilience and ability to fight parasites. This can be seen in the animal kingdom, with male peacocks with better plumage attracting more mates, less attractive plumage may indicate parasites, disease or a low resilience.
From this standpoint, why are there homosexuals, how do they chose their mates? Is it natural selection? As Desmond Morris suggested in an earlier blog of mine, is it because they contribute artistically and have more education? Or is it something else, something not readily apparent? For example the addiction gene does not seem to have a useful function, but addicts have problems distinguishing life changing decisions, for example they know using drugs will kill them and they continue. Addiction genes are very prevalent in societies that have been threatened, such as native Americans and the Irish. It seems these self-destructive genes help foster genetic survival. So what is the answer?
This article is interesting and poses some viable theories:
- homosexual behaviour contributes to same-sex alliances which directly contributed directly to survival
- same sex allies in females creates a more nurturing and stable environment in which to raise children while in males it lowers male aggression

Darwin imagined sex as a relatively straightforward transaction. Males compete for females. Evolutionary success is defined by the quantity of offspring. Thus, any distractions from the business of making babies—distractions like homosexuality, masturbation, etc.—are precious wastes of fluids. You'd think by now, several hundred million years after sex began, nature would have done away with such inefficiencies, and males and females would only act to maximize rates of sexual reproduction. But the opposite has happened.
I question the Darwinian theory, that females pick males for reproduction, males are panting dogs and gays have sex just for fun. There is a primal urge lodged in my brain, is it the urge to reproduce that got messed up along the way or something deeper? As Dr. Roughgarden states: "...most scientists are pretty dismissive about same-sex sexuality in vertebrates. They think these animals are just having fun or practicing. As long as scientists clung to this old dogma, homosexuality would always be this funny anomaly you didn't have to account for."
Patrick Henry states: "Evolution is as big a lie as the 'gay gene' and just as thputoghly debunked." Thanks for that Patrick. This is apparently not an easy question to answer.
I do like this theory:
"One of the major arguments regarding the fitness of homosexuality, at least in vertebrates, seem to revolve around child rearing. Caring for offspring is very expensive per individual caregiver, while yielding tremendous evolutionary benefits to the population, by directly enhancing the fitness of the next generation. Because the cost to the individual is so great, many populations have evolved ways of sharing the costs of raising the offspring, such that the benefits to the population are equalized by general costs to the population. In several social mammals, this is done through wet-nursing by non-pregnant females of related newborn, sometimes even requiring the forced abortion of the litters of subdominant females to produce more wet-nurses (seen in some wolves). Likewise, removing a portion of the population from breeding relieves the breeders of some of these costs either directly by assisting with child rearing, or indirectly by taking over other costly activities (like food collection) so that the parents can spend more resources on their progeny."
I like the idea that gay men are meant to be worker bees, not spending our time fertilizing the queen.
All this pre-supposes homosexuality is genetic, this article has some fantastic arguments for this (discounting Mr. Morris, hah!)
1. Homosexuality doesn't prevent reproduction: Of 262 self-identified lesbian women, 75% had had sex with men since age 18 and 43% of those who had always identified themselves as lesbian had done so, according to Kinsey. (no my book hasn't arrived yet)
2. Perpetuity of deleterious genes: Being maladaptive to reproduction does not ensure that a genetic trait will disappear. Even fatal diseases are not eliminated from the human gene pool.
3. Twin studies: Identical twins raised apart, for instance, are more likely to both be homosexual as adults (if one is homosexual) than fraternal twins, and both are more likely to share sexual orientation than genetically unrelated siblings raised together. Some twin studies have shown concordance rates as high as 100%.
4. An unchosen preference: There is no evidence to suggest that the sexuality of the majority of people, homosexual or heterosexual, is a result of a conscious choice on their part. The overwhelming majority of homosexual males and females indicate they never chose to become homosexual, but that they are that way innately.
This may be the best chart I've ever seen:

This was not referenced, indicating the author asked 3 of his friends to collect the data. I love the fact that it mentions welfare mothers, that the percentage of people who support Bush is over 250%, that nobody with a high IQ is gay and everyone who believes in evolution is dumb (also over 150%).
There seems to be no answer, so I'm going to post some other excellence before I go to sleep:
Goku: "we're not hear to judge anyone, but to set an example. i'm all too quick to judge, and it is sin on my part. i think jesus said it best, let he how is without sin cast the first stone.

god made adom and eve, not adom and steve.

people chose to be gay, god did give us choice. animals do not have choice.
there is no rappist gene
there is no killer gene
there is no evolutionist gene
there is no gay gene.

have you ever saw gattaca, the movie? if not watch it some time"
I love the spelling mistakes, the reference to a popcorn movie on a scientific forum, I think he discredits himself better than I ever could.
Mr Potato Head: "So what purpose could they have served? Who knows, maybe they were created by God to be tools for ancient man. Maybe not. Maybe they were easy to part with as sacrifices. Maybe not."
Biochemist: "It is perfectly reasonable to reject gay behavior (for moral reasons or otherwise) and still accept gays as peers, co-workers, employees, friends and citizens. This is not hypocritical, it is normal mature behavior."
Happeh: "Homosexuality is usually caused by an energy imbalance or physical damage to the body. It is not genetic except in perhaps a small percentage of all homosexuals. I looked thru some of the other replies. I do not believe it is population control or anything of the other ideas mentioned.
A person can be turned gay. Any person who masturbates excessively stands a very high likelihood of going gay at some future time. This points to gay being caused by physical changes within the body. Not psychological or genetic factors. "
All these quotes found on science forums. I don't think the world is yet ready to answer the question.

Gay Monopoly/John Waters/Gift Exchange/Bday

Lots to discuss! I should do this more often. I found an article in Xtra today about a game called Gay Monopoly. This is amazing. Released in 1983 by the Parker Sisters, the company was immediately sued and very few copies were able to be sold, fewer still remain today.

About the banker for example is written: " …choose this person carefully. A good choice would be someone who watches Let's Make A Deal often or perhaps a player who frequents S&M slave auctions. If no one fits these descriptions, at least, get someone who occasionally buys his own drinks. If you are still without a candidate, just settle for anyone who enjoys deposits and withdrawals and who looks cute wearing nothing but a banker's visor. With this last one, make sure she keeps her hands out of the till. She is likely to have had so many sugardaddies that she will confuse her own cash with that of the Bank."

Ollie's Sleaze Bag cards

The meaning of this deck of 31 cards corresponds the most to the familiar Community Chest cards, like:

	Go directly to Straight City - Do not pass Stonewall Savings.
	Your Madame Butterfly Halloween costume was to die for - Collect $ 43 - 2nd prize.

So I knew immediately I wanted one. A search of eBay turned up nothing. I was talking to a guy at work and he goes "Oh, I have one." He bought it new in 1983 and was willing to sell it. So $250 later I am the proud owner of Gay Monopoly. I offered the price, I just thought "If this came up on eBay, how much would I bid before I was outbid at the last minute and pulled out all my hair?" I'm collecting gay themed memorabilia from yesteryear and what better slice of gay life in 1983 is there?
In other news I went to see John Waters on my birthday. It was a lot of fun, he's a great storyteller and talked for about an hour and a half.
There was a potluck lunch for Christmas today at work, I brought meatloaf. Really this was a little short-sighted of me, who goes "Wow, the meatloaf is here!" So it wasn't that popular, but I really liked it. Then we had a gift exchange. I ended up with a 3000 pound paperweight which I plan to give to my boss tomorrow. It was hilarious, everyone was told to bring in something between $10-15 and someone brought a gift bag with 2 things in it:
1) A picture frame with no glass in it suitable for a wedding photo from 1982. The back of the frame was black velvet and it looked like a cat had slept on it for quite a while
2) A plastic serving tray. This was a stackable tray, missing parts so it couldn't be put together. The plastic was cracked. The box had severe water damage and was held together with an elastic band. I said "Was this someone's wedding present from 1962?"
I can't believe anyone would be so cheap. I brought an electronic Yahtzee game which a lot of people were interested in and ended up going to this woman who was desperate to give it to her 5 year old kid. Yeah I'm sure that kid gets the concept of a full house. What a waste.
It was my birthday on Saturday, I turned 29 for the first time, each subsequent birthday I will be 29 from now on.
I've been watching a lot of Bill Nye lately, he's got a new show "The Eyes of Nye" which is really smart and taught me about 600 different things I didn't know in 45 minutes.
This weekend I'm going to my aunt's for a family Christmas where everyone has to get a picture with underwear on their head. Don't ask me why, I think they're missing chromosomes. I'll be posting it on the blog, never fear.
Until next time!

Article on the "Neverland Factor"

I got my ticket today for the March 20 showing of Rent in Toronto, I also found out that Heinz Winckler will be performing as Roger, which is great, here he is back when he was sexy for 5 minutes:

He won South Africa's version of "Idol", beating a black man and causing controversy, then letting his looks go and now resembles a German Shepard. I firmly believe I will be the only person in the audience who knows who he is.

I found this article next to a section "Hunks in Trunks - Celebrity Swimwear":

by Desmond Morris
"Viewed purely from an evolutionary standpoint, there is only one valid biological lifestyle for the human male and that is heterosexual. Like all higher forms of life, the human species relies on sexual reproduction to avoid extinction. If a man does not allow his sperm to fertilise an egg at least once during his lifetime he has no chance of passing on his genes to the next generation, and the genetic line, hundreds of millions of years long, that led up to his appearance on earth is terminated.
The question is why a certain, small percentage of adult human males, with or without the approval of society at large, find members of their own gender attractive as sexual partners. Evolution has gone to a great deal of trouble to ensure that it is the opposite sex that is erotically appealing, so how can it be that so many men have somehow switched off these basic responses?
When questioned about the onset of their same-sex interest, many homosexuals say that from boyhood onwards they felt a strong attraction to other males, and never felt drawn to young females. This sets them apart from young boys who often play homosexual games with their male friends, but who pass on to a new phase when their interest switches to girls. For the lifelong homosexuals, this switch never happens. To understand why, it is important to look at the typical sequence of events in the first 20 years of the life of the human male.
For the first few years toddlers make no distinction between male and female friends. Then, when they reach the age of 4 or 5 the sexes suddenly draw apart. For a small boy, the little girls who were his close friends only a few weeks before must now be avoided. Now he plays only with other boys.

He becomes part of a group and the boys hang out together. This phase will last about ten years, during which time he will be going through an intensive educational period, programming the amazing computer inside his skull. Even if boys and girls go to school together during this phase, they will separate from one another socially. Indeed, despite modern educational theory, mixing boys and girls during this phase of growth is of little advantage. It may even be distracting.
This ten-year learning phase is something that other primates do not have. They reach sexual maturity in about half the time but, of course, they have smaller brains and far less to learn. The boys-together schooling phase is something special that has been added to the human life cycle. At the end of it, in the early teens, the bodies of both boys and girls start to flood with sex hormones and now, suddenly, the opposite sex is of interest again. During the ten-year stand-off they have become distant objects, often disliked. Now they are a new shape and have new features, as the secondary sexual characters begin to develop.
So the stand-off period has made the opposite sex into a novelty, a mystery, something to be explored. (For boys, this reaction does not apply to their sisters, because as siblings they have been pushed close together by family constraints, a fact that helps to avoid incest.) At this point boy-meets-girl is a theme that dominates the lives of teenagers, and intense sexual exploration is not far away.
There will be a brief period when there is a conflict between the old, all-boy gang and the new interest in girls. Each boy will have to report back to his chums to tell them how he has progressed with a particular girl, until, one day, there is a stubborn refusal to give them any details, and they know instantly that they have lost one of their group.
Returning now to the boys who do not reach the teenage heterosexual phase, they get stuck in the stand-off phase, and stay there for the rest of their lives. They cannot understand why young boys, who were playing sex games with them only a few months before, are now only interested in chasing girls. The all-boy phase seems perfect and when sexual maturity arrives, they feel no urge to abandon their all-male social existence. Their sex hormones activate them erotically, but their focus of interest is still masculine. This is how the lifelong homosexual male starts his sexual journey, but why does it happen to just a few boys, while the majority move easily to the heterosexual phase?
The answer seems to be that it is the unique addition of such a lengthy ten-year learning phase in our species that causes the problem. During that phase, male bonding is intense and male-to-male attachment is powerful. It takes a massive jolt from the sex hormones at puberty to break down the boy-to-boy loyalties, and if there are any special social factors adding their weight at this point, the break can be thwarted.
These factors can be of several kinds. A boy who has especially unpleasant experiences with girls during the stand-off phase may find that, even flooded with sex hormones, he cannot switch into the state where he finds them appealing. Or he may have found the boyish sex games that are so common in the stand-off phase to be particularly exciting and this may have fixated him on other males as sexual companions. For him it is impossible to make the switch because he cannot bear to leave behind what he had before.
There are many other social factors that impinge upon the prepubertal male and imprint upon him powerful attachments. The reason it happens to him and not to young monkeys is that other species lack this vital stand-off phase and are never put in this position of key switch from boys-together to boy-plus-girl.
In his study of what he calls The Eternal Child, zoologist Clive Bromhall says this extended childhood is part of a general infantilising of the human species, a process he sees as the basis of our evolutionary success story. As a way of maximising our human playfulness and curiosity, evolution has made us more and more childlike over the past million years or so. While this has made us more inventive and given us the technology that has made us great, it has also had certain side effects. To explain these, Bromhall suggests that there are four types of human male.
There is the Alphatype, like an alpha male ape, ruthless, determined, ambitious, strong and intolerant. Then there is the Bureautype, still concerned with high status, but much more cooperative, making him the perfect business partner. Thirdly there is the Neo-type, more childlike, the exuberant, fun-loving family man.And finally there is the Ultra-type, imaginative, insecure, and unable to move on past the all-boy phase of childhood.
If, as a result, the Ultratypes accidentally became “reproductively challenged” they also became unusually imaginative and intellectually inquisitive. Bromhall reports that their academic achievements are well above average. A male homosexual is six times as likely to gain a college education and 16 times as likely to have a PhD as males in general.
But what of the future? People deserve to be treated as individuals rather than as members of a group that they did not join but which was thrust upon them. Isolating homosexuals as though they are members of some exclusive club does them no favours. It encourages bigots to attack them, which makes about as much sense as outlawing left-handers or redheads."
I do think there is something in the Neverland discussion about gay boys never growing up and would like to see that more in-depth by someone who is sane. Unfortunately this article isn't it, I have been gay my entire life and this "psychological" viewpoint article doesn't account for the fact that I was born that way. I think there may be something to the fact that gay men don't want children and families like their straight counterparts do, and I think this separation phase may have something to do with that. But I find most gay men played with girls growing up and switched to boys when they hit puberty, like all their friends were doing. So there has to be something to explain that phenomenon earlier that this author does. Also I find interesting how many times he refers to gays as a "small" number. How many are we really?

Let's look as it's 2:30 in the morning and I can't sleep. The Family Research Institute, which I will not link here, says that in men aged 20-39, only 1.1% of men have had only male homosexual partners within the last 10 years. I believe that really, as I think a large percentage of gay men have sex with women because of societal pressure to be straight. The interesting question about numbers, and why I think it has not been stated and widely accepted is how do you define gay? Do you include bisexuals? Men who have sex with men but identify as straight (Larry Craig)? Even the article above repeatedly mentions sexual play among adolescents.

I like the Kinsey report definition, men who have orgasmed with another man after the age of 17, which I believe Kinsey stated at 25%. I'm not sure as Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, published in 1948, is $60 and my library only has one copy (note to self: buy a copy).
How often has the Kinsey study been discounted? Perhaps I should update it, it could be my life's work. Of course the problem is how many people say they're gay when you knock on their door versus how many say they're gay when they're naked. Again, my life's work!

I think this quote, taken from Google Answers says it all:
(Under the question of gay vs. straight sites on the internet)(first post) typically in a ratio of about 60:40 (for women)
(second post) I think the ratio will be 1:38.

The Amazon Kindle

WOW! This is a new ebook service from Amazon, watch it and check it out.

Some flaws to me right off the bat: I read old books, this only sells bestsellers, $400 price tag.

The beginning of the gay rights movement/NAMBLA and the decisions which led to where we are today

It is very hot in my apartment as I am cooking a quiche and it's raining outside.
I have been neglecting my blog lately, yes in a large part due to the fact that I'm busy, but also that I felt I was painting myself into a box lately, limiting myself to discussing what others may find interesting and not necessarily what interests me. Also, sometimes, as right now, you sit down with a grand scope of an entry you want to produce and it's difficult to reproduce to my satisfaction.
Saturday I received my copy of the Complete Reprint of Physique Pictorial, 3 volumes, about 2,500 pages from Austria. Here's some sample pictures:

Now in 1951 when this magazine was started, these pictures were the utmost in smut and challenged the landscape to become the one we have today. The best part of this magazine is that it promotes itself for "health professionals" and includes letters from priests advocating the beauty of the human form and stating explicitly that this magazine is not for "homophiles" as they were known in the day.
[It's disruptive, I had a store chicken with 700 cases of salmonella for dinner and I keep having to get up every 10 minutes to go to the washroom]
Anyway, the other great part of this magazine is that each model is literally surrounded by text about them (see example:)

This Bob Mizer included to give some history of the models and show some of their personality. It really gives a sense of the porn ("modeling") world that I had never considered before. The comments are all quite catty, "This model was late and uncooperative" "This model got out of prison recently and has a bad temper" to "This model burned down our storeroom and is in police custody" to "This model used the money we paid him to get very drunk and died choking on his own vomit in a motel room". It really succeeds in showing the other side of modeling, especially working with men, that no one before or since has discussed. These are for the most part not choir boys looking for extra money on their way to a doctorate.
Bob Mizer's words are by far the best thing about this book, the labour of love he put into this magazine that made every page his own. From the beginning where the editorials he wrote are about why this magazine should be allowed to be printed in 1951 to 1991 and the last issue where this magazine had become outdated by mainstream pornography and he only had a handful of subscribers, and he spends his time justifying the magazines existence, which ended with his death.
This, and my recent search into gay novels of the past, led me to more of these "physique" pictures and I purchased this one off eBay:

It's hard to imagine that 50 years ago when this picture was printed it was considered illegal to possess it. Our culture has become so sexualized now that this picture could be hung on a wall of a museum with no one taking notice. In European magazines this picture could be used to sell cologne in Vogue magazine. So now we know what changed and how quickly, but why, and to get to that, I want to point out some subtleties.
I was looking at my (recently banned) copy of Straight to Hell from 1982 (current issue shown:)

and noticed in the back ads for similar magazines, mostly independently produced titles shipped out of people's basements, that ended within years of the videocassette revolution. But one title was still (supposedly) printing to this day, the Nambla newsletter.
Nambla (The North-American Man-Boy Love Association) began in December 1969 as a part of the larger group The Gay Activists Alliance. It's original purpose was to ensure no one was left behind and to correct mistakes made when homosexuality was legalized, such as when England made the age of consent for gay men 21 in 1967, not lowering it until the 1980's and when Canada made the age of consent for gay men 18 (14 for straight sex) and didn't lower it to 16 until the year 2000.
Now what made me focus on this was in the early physique pictorials, while most of the men are over 20, I found one (clothed) 14 year old amateur body builder and later in the early 1980's, one nude 17 year old. None of these would have been printed today, and Bob Mizer himself acknowledges he would not use models under 18 in future shoots, but at the time these were form studies, not pornography, and so not illegal?
A similar case has occurred recently with police confiscating a photo belonging to Elton John from an art gallery, claiming it was child pornography:

And in reproducing the photo here, I do acknowledge this blog may be shut down, but it shouldn't, as I've broken no Canadian laws, and it bugs me that I have to justify it, even a little. Elton John's reaction was to close the entire show, it had run all over Europe and if one country wanted to censor it, then he was not going to show any of it.
And this is the quagmire I did not want to get bogged down in, with all the reading I've done and so many topics to cover, I am starting to lose my way.
I find it interesting that Nambla dissolved into a fringe group of Grecko/Roman pedophiles. The fact is they were the only ones that felt strongly enough about it to continue. In the early 80's the war cry from the homosexual community became "We're just like you!" even though we're not, and anyone who did not fit into that was left behind. Today, while briefly reviewing Nambla's website, it is clear that even this group has succumb to conformity, with the majority of text being written over 100 years ago and nothing offensive on the site whatsoever. Two things that stood out were a program where if you had a loved one who was incarcerated for molestation you could write to them to help make sense of it, and a prison Christmas card program where you can send festive wishes to inmates, which I support, but not enough to write one myself. Perhaps I'll ask if anyone is a card writer at my next Conservative Party meeting.
I fear I'll have to answer questions with more questions. Why is it as the world has become more accepting of sexuality has a modern witch hunt occurred to "protect" children. Should the nude 17 year old have been removed from the Physique Pictorial reprint? And why was it ok to print in 1997 but now now? One of the most striking things about this is that there is no discussion whatever on the subject as everyone with an opinion contrary to the majority is branded a pervert. I think the reason this has been an issue for the gay community is that you don't know you're gay until you're 13 or 14. Then it's only a four year wait until you can act on it.
I find it so interesting that as the world has gotten bigger, everyone is trying to be more similar.
I hope we can remember that nothing is ever black and white, and hold on to shades of gray.
Two things to close:
The first is the text with the 17 year old model from Physique Pictorial (It took me forever to find it) "Blackie Preston at age 17 (born Oct 17, 1946 in Cypress Calif (but was raised in Maryland) German/Irish/Fr. 5'7 155 lbs works at construction. Also used to work in Bruce of L.A.'s darkroom. Like to break wild horses, ride rodeo, shoot pool."
The second is to those that say there is no witch hunt or the reaction is justified, the other day I recommended a film to a co-worker about two 16 year old boys who fall in love, discover themselves, blah-blah, and when I took him to the film's website he said "Oh, you have to be careful with that stuff" and ran for his life. The second thing is QUITE a few times I have seen pictures from established Studios using models in their mid 20's and someone on a message board says "He's too young, I'm getting out of here and reporting you to the police!" It's gotten to the point of stupidity.
I accuse Goody Dunn!

New Post

I have been neglecting the blogging lately because I've been working a million hours and had no energy to think. Still concocting blogs in my head from time to time but not actually getting the chance to write them out.
Here's some pictures of my cat. Why is it so hard to get a cat to take a good picture? She looks stoned...


The Thursday before last I went to the Fritz Hedler CD release party.

Imagine my surprise when I showed up wearing the exact same cover of Vogue magazine!

This band always puts on a great show.

Kevin Federline has turned gay and was in the audience.

This thing was a bit of a mess, with the hip hop pants and pink hat.
I plan on reading today, I seem to have bought a few books lately.

The Gift

I've wanted to see this movie for a long time, now I can!
"On-screen, four men sit in a semicircle as part of their support group. They've allowed filmmaker Louise Hogarth and her camera crew in to observe them for her documentary The Gift. All the men are over 40, gay, and HIV+. They're not together merely to talk about living with HIV, but about living with cardiac conditions secondary to HIV medications. And when they talk about the image of HIV+ men in their San Francisco community, they wonder why it doesn't look like them.
Hogarth's camera captures posters, which show strapping young men in stylish clothes (when they're wearing any) flashing wide, white smiles, as the support-group members look at them.
"All these guys look healthy," one says.
"That one is making me hard right now," another jokes.
They're not being insensitive or cynical, merely saying out loud something that has been percolating through gay communities for years now: The current prevention strategy for HIV and AIDS portrays infection as being a relatively benign condition, manageable with medication. And in the ads the men regard, being HIV+ looks sexy.
"You never see any advertisements or anything that make it look bad--[they] glamorize HIV," Hogarth says from her office in Los Angeles. Since The Gift debuted this past February at the Berlin Film Festival and opened this month in London, she's been maintaining a steady stream of interviews as she prepares to screen it in the United States. "It's like if you have a family situation, and you have one kid who's sick and all the attention is devoted to him. And you have another child in the family who doesn't get any attention, he's always shunted off to the side. An HIV-negative man would never stand up in a room and say, 'I've been HIV-negative for 10 years.' That would be very insensitive. All the services go to HIV-positive men.
"And nobody dies from HIV anymore because that wouldn't be a positive image," Hogarth continues. "Whenever there's a death, it's never HIV. Forty-, 45-year-old gay men die of heart attacks or liver failure or diabetes or opportunistic infections or side effects from a minor surgery--that's all the result of HIV or HIV medications, and it's never mentioned. If HIV doesn't kill you, I believe that the drugs will."
Handling HIV with mittens crops up in even so-called progressive media. During the opening prologue to a recent episode of Six Feet Under--the HBO series created by the openly gay writer Alan Ball that has been commended for its well-rounded portrayal of gay relationships--a fortysomething character named Robert passes away in the company of friends and loved ones. When his male partner approaches the series' central Fisher family's funeral home, he informs them that Robert didn't die from AIDS, but cardiomyopathy. "His heart was too big," he says, using the cardiac abnormality to characterize the kind of man his partner was in his life--even though anybody familiar with HIV and AIDS knows that the condition can be caused by HIV infection or by superinfections resulting from the sequelae of HIV drug therapies.
"Herb Ritts' death was reported by gay media as pneumonia," Hogarth says. "That's a result of HIV, but [they] never mention HIV. That's incredible.
"It's not like cigarette smoking, where people look sick and are dying," she continues. "You can drive down a street in West Hollywood and see a billboard that says, 40,000 deaths this year from smoking. But you'd never see a billboard saying anything about deaths from HIV."
This reluctance to talk about HIV and the rising HIV infection rates in this country (according to a Centers for Disease Control announcement this past February, infection among homosexual men rose 14 percent from 1999 through 2001) are exactly the situations that Hogarth hopes her documentary addresses and starts to change. She says she's lost many friends over the years to HIV/AIDS, and she'd like to see AIDS organizations stop portraying HIV/AIDS as a chronic, manageable illness.
But she's afraid that this message is going to be overshadowed by her movie's primary subject: the sub-subculture of men (called "bug chasers") who actively seek out HIV+ men ("gift givers") with whom to have unprotected sex ("barebacking") in hopes of seroconverting (turning from HIV- to HIV+).
For two and a half years, Hogarth talked to men in California gay communities who hold barebacking parties, visited Web sites where bug-chasers go in search of gift-givers, and talked candidly with men who purposely sought infection. She contrasts these interviews--with HIV+ young men who have yet to become symptomatic or had to endure the debilitating side effects of years of medication--with men who have been living with HIV for years, examining how each of them conceptualize and talk about the condition.
Just as Cindy Patton's landmark 1990 book Inventing AIDS was as much a theory book about how medical "knowledge" is constructed socially and politically, The Gift is a movie about how social group attitudes influence public policy. Its main concern isn't bringing scandalous bug-chasing out into the open, but to examine how the current culture could result in the chilling irony of calling HIV "the gift" in the first place.
"I would like, hopefully, for the people in charge of prevention to realize that their strategies were developed for short-term," she says. "And they were very effective for the short-term, but now we have a long-term health crisis and we need to rethink the strategies and not just put our heads in the sand and attack the messenger, which is what they did with the Rolling Stone guy. They really went on the attack."
She's referring to the Feb. 6 issue of Rolling Stone, in which writer Gregory A. Freeman's "In Search of Death" article appeared, which presented interviews with men who had sought out HIV infection--including one young man Hogarth also interviewed, Doug Hitzel. The article was a tad salacious, but only because the subject--gay men trying to get infected--seemed so unheard of.
The story caused a flurry of activity once it appeared. The Drudge Report turned its contested statistics--i.e., that 25 percent of new infections are caused by bug-chasing--into a headline banner, and everybody from Newsweek to conservative queer writer Andrew Sullivan labeled Freeman and Rolling Stone sensationalistic.
It's understandable why. Public discussion of HIV/AIDS has been drastically reduced since its politically sexy heyday in the late 1980s. Now, even though AIDS/HIV prevention and management hasn't changed that much since the advent of safe-sex campaigns and AZT drug cocktails, the topic has drifted out of the view of straight media, while gay media toe a party line established almost 20 years ago.
No wonder the media freaked out about the Rolling Stone story; it wasn't what everybody was already comfortable with. Conservative straight media find bug-chasing morally reprehensible, gay media think it portrays a bad image, and liberal straight media feel it might sound mean to attack HIV+ men.
The ire the article drew was misplaced, though. While that 25 percent stat has been vehemently and thoroughly disproved (most contend that the rate due to bug-chasing is much lower), what has thus far been lost in almost all the coverage so far has been that number's greater significance. Whatever the rate of new infections caused by gay men seeking seroconversion, it still means that an overwhelming number of sexually transmitted new infections among gay males is caused by--as Dan Savage pointed out in his Feb. 20 Savage Love column--"gay male stupidity, recklessness, naiveté, and bad luck."
And unlike new HIV/AIDS drug therapies, which take millions of dollars and years of research to develop, stupidity, recklessness, and naiveté can be corrected right now. All it takes is for people to start talking about HIV/AIDS risks again.
"And that's the whole intent, especially for gay men, because they don't discuss it at all," Hogarth says. "The HIV rates in this country are way up. It's way up in the black community. It's a waiting avalanche that's waiting to come down. A lot of people don't test anymore, so you need for them to get sick [for the infection to be discovered], which takes about 10 years. And that's not the truth. We have to start telling the truth. And that would be the best thing that could come of [the documentary]--that people would start talking again and become aware of the risk.""

*Leafs Scandal

Following images of him tonguing another man:

Maple Leafs player Jiri Tlusty issued a statement:
Jiri: I don't know nothing about the homosexual
Then surprisingly naked pics of him surfaced!


I read a great quote "Anyone who has LUSTY in his name is alright with me".

Putting Baby In The Corner

I went to see Dirty Dancing tonight. As I was sitting waiting for the show to begin I had several thoughts.
Why am I here, this is clearly for women?
I only saw the movie once in 1986.
Then I remembered a joke from the Golden Girls that made me laugh for the whole first act:
Blanche: Have you ever heard of Dirty Dancing?
Dorothy: Of course, Blanche, they did it in that movie.
Rose: What movie?
Dorothy: Laurence of Arabia.
It was well done, overall I'm happy I went. They had cool staging tricks. They kept all the corny lines from the movie. When he said "No one puts Baby in the corner" everyone went nuts. And one of the most important parts of a musical, the closing number, was fantastic. Overall an enjoyable evening. I, of course, could touch the ceiling. Cats I'm in the front row. Sheesh.
At the end of the month I'm going to see Little Shop of Horrors at the Can Stage, I paid just over $70 so it should be terrible.
Also today, this British writer guy I like wrote a musical in 1964 and I found an original program on eBay. I got it today and ripped the cover getting it out of the envelope, I was so pleased. It survives 43 years in England and gets demolished after one day in Canada.
My cat is playing with pasta right now. She needs a therapist.

BEST TV NOT EFFECTED BY THE STRIKE
1. The X-Factor - It's an American Idol spinoff with Simon Cowell and Sharon Osbourne.
2. I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Outta Here! - It's Survivor with British celebrities you've never heard of and Janice Dickinson. Hosted by Ant and Dec!
3. Doctor Who - Returns for a special on Christmas Day with Kylie Minogue!
4. Torchwood - Returns in January with gay hottie John Barrowman! Yum!
5. Howard Stern on Demand - I don't understand how he makes everything watchable, he really is the best radio host ever. His Ru Paul interview last week was great!

Russian Mafia 2: Czech Mate!

Have they found where I live? I went to my mailbox today and my "No flyers please" sticker had been tampered with. Someone tried to pick it off! Was it the Russian mafia? The flyer companies? Have I made a new enemy?
Speaking of enemies, McDonalds changed their salt. They used to have finely ground salt, now it's just the regular old table stuff. I plan on writing a letter campaign and starting a hunger fast in protest. Who's with me? (silence)
I decided for research purposes to check out an online hook-up site, Criagslist Toronto, to see if what I said yesterday was true, that most men now do not use condoms. What I did find is that most men don't mention condoms in their ads, which I'm assuming is not a good sign. I also found some great ads I wanted to share. Act now, these men are going soon! (What does NSA stand for?)

This one from Dipping Sauce - 26
"Stange post I know
But I love guys in Mcdonalds uniform
I would love to pick you up at work in your
uniform and suck your cock
no recip needed looking for
one time or ongoing
would love to spoil a guy from mcdonalds"

This one from Girly Feminine Male - 24


"A soft feminine boy who looks and sounds like a girl but is still a boy. Adorable, cute, submissive, and loves top, aggressive, masculine, dominante men.
Daddy's and big brothers are awesome and so is roleplaying.
I'm the boyfriend that looks like a girlfriend.
Cream pies, ass to mouth, are favorites. Loves cock of all kinds"

And this last one from Bi Married Male
"Bi married guy here looking to try giving oral to another guy using a condom for total safety. Also willing to get the same way and into making out. Let me know."

Act fast!

Trannie Hookers/The Russian Mafia

A while ago I was reading X-tra, Toronto's free gay magazine, and saw an article about the trannie hookers union. It seems there is collusion over price among whores, one girl can bring the market down if she charges to cheaply. The article told of this t-girl who put an ad in Now magazine saying she would do anything for $20. So all the trannie hookers went over to her place and beat her up. The point is there's a standard and it doesn't matter if you're fat with no teeth and over 50, you can't just give it away.
This brings me to the DVD I bought off ebay recently for $100. I got it and the quality wasn't perfect but I was kind of mad I had to pay $100 for a copy of a DVD so I listed the DVD for sale saying I had 5 copies and went to bed. When I woke up all had sold, I made $225 over night. So I thought I'd chance it again and 3 hours later, the same thing, all were gone. It was the chance it again that's the problem, I got greedy. So then the Russian mafia contacted me and told me to knock it off. Bleek!
I have to sell my tv, I never use it and it's taking up a lot of space in my small apartment.
I was listening to Pride FM today, it was interesting, they were talking about charging people who infected others with HIV. I don't understand that, it's carpe diem as far as I'm concerned. What was interesting was the host said at the baths nowadays it's unusual for people to use condoms. What are these people thinking? Now granted I haven't had sex since... it's November now... carry the 7... plus 4... well a long time. Actually in my life I have had unprotected sex once with someone without discussing status.... maybe it just escalates from there? My dream has always been to die at 50, I don't want to compromise my chances.

GAY

I've bought a couple hundred dollar items recently, one was this picture:

By the incomparable Steve Walker. The other was a DVD of the Chop Suey Club.
Also yesterday something interesting happened at work. Some woman said "I can't be as straight as you are gay, it's your whole life!" To which I replied, "Please, I need an assistant to be this gay!"
This led to me talking to my boss and telling her some of the gay secrets. The problem with straights is you think you can tell them the gay secrets, but you must NEVER, because they don't understand.
1. The concept of bathhouses
2. Gay men do not use condoms for oral sex
3. All gay men have more than 100 partners
4. Gay men do not need the names of the people they sleep with
5. Monogamy is for straight people.

Quarterly Prohibited Items List

I subscribe to the Government of Canada's Quarterly Prohibited Items list. In order to get on the mailing list I think you have to know someone as a google search revealed nothing. This month's list of titles I have to check out, I mean stay away from, included one I own, Straight to Hell #66, which I bought in Manhattan for $6. It's independently published, basically photocopied magazine with stories from readers. I have no idea why it was banned. The best part is they print letters from total nut jobs, like this one:
MILWAUKEE-Okay this is really scary and I don't know how many people I can talk to about it, so I come to you. I suddenly have this huge crater in my butt crack. And I don't know where it came from. I woke up this morning and there's a bonus orifice. I wonder if aliens came for me last night and just missed their normal hole. I am truly baffled and a little concerned. How the hell does one wake up with an ass crater? I guess I needed another hole so I can have even more sex.
Now what bothers me is how secretive this organization is, much like in This Film is Not Yet Rated. Who exactly are these people? Can I become one of them? Is this done by vote? Committee?
I emailed them, asking for a Master List or back copies of the quarterly report, they refused. Similar to my Doctor Who toys being refused at the border, they need give no explanation. Does this list apply to titles I already own, or just ones I want to import in the future? Wouldn't it help the public to provide this list so they know if they're breaking a law by buying a book? And is it too much to ask they provide links to the sellers of these items so I don't have to do all the work myself finding them?
In other news, I am poor this month for some reason. Is it because of the $75 to renew my driver's license, the $87 for my passport renewal, the $601 in back taxes, the $900 dentist bill, the $300 hydro bill, $150 student loan? Or some combination of the above? Or the fact that I paid $100 for a bootleg copy of a DVD?
Finally I received a copy of Physique Pictorial today.

From 1962, it's a VERY tame magazine for "Health Professionals". It shows guys in bodybuilding poses, all wearing posing straps, the butt is the most they show. What's great is how interspersed with the magazine is letters and comments deriding the perverts who see this magazine as being for anyone other than "health professionals". I close with a letter from a reader:
"You should be very proud of your fine photography and artwork--be more positive--no reason to be ashamed. You are'nt (their spelling) going to change the dirty minds anyway. I am a priest in a small narrow-minded town so please do not give my name or locality. - O.R."
I forgot the best part! The best title off the prohibited items list "Cum in My Kimono".