One Saturday evening in February of this year, my friend Robert and I stopped by the Suite, a gay bar on Amsterdam Avenue at 109th Street in the Morningside Heights area of Manhattan to relax and chat while sipping sodas. On a small table near the entrance were several paperback copies (free) of a self-published book called The Essential Sex Venue Etiquette and Resource Guide: For America's Gay and Bisexual Young Men by Robert Brandon Sandor. Browsing through the book (or pamphlet as the author described it), I was particularly fascinated by the glossary which contained many unfamiliar terms such as "bat boy" ("A boy that loves large penises") and "teabagging" ("Placing one's testicles down onto someone's mouth or forehead").
A guidebook such as this one would have been useful to and probably appreciated by previous generations of gay men who had to learn the ropes through trial and error.
I plan to write a much more thorough review of the guidebook for this blog later on.
Showing posts with label Gay Sex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gay Sex. Show all posts
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Exploring The Male Gaze
Backward Glances: Cruising the Queer Streets of New York and London by Mark W. Turner (Reaktion Books, 191 pp.)
Mark Turner's Backward Glances is not a memoir but a scholar's exploration and analysis of something all gay men do without a second thought.
Cruising is an age-old activity, not necessarily the exclusive domain of gay men. However, the particular ways and locales in which gay men do it are unique. And because gay men for centuries have been perceived as sexual outlaws, these rituals of cruising have developed as a way to protect oneself from persecution, imprisonment, entrapment, and scandal.
Turner, an American who is a faculty member in the Department of English at Kings College, University of London, looks at cruising through photography, letters, poetry, journalism, pornography, fiction, etc. as a way to show the reader that these media "all are part of the interrelated cultural production of the city and provide possibilities for understanding how cruising was imagined and how it gets reimagined over time."
He points out that it is not always easy to distinguish who is cruising and who is not, when individuals are sharing the same space that has multiple uses. Is the man standing in front of the department store window there to window shop or is he there in search of another man? This ambiguity is captured so well in the cover photo. A young man on the street is looking back at two other men with their arms around each other. They are unaware that he is observing them. If the photo was taken out of context, how would we read it? Is he a gay man attracted to one or both men? Or is he a straight man astounded by such open display of affection? This photo underscores Turner's question, "[H]ow do we know our cruisers when we see them?" I think the answer has to be that we don't, not always.
It must be pointed out that cruising, like voyeurism and exhibitionism, are about the visual. However, the motivation differs. Cruising is a more reciprocal activity. Whereas voyeurism is more one-sided and surreptitious and exhibitionism is more self-centered, more transgressive, more confrontational (in other words, blatant). Although cruising might be considered transgressive as well because it involves something forbidden by society--male-male attraction--but it is much more of a sharing or mutual appreciation experience.
Turner makes it clear from the outset that his study is a limited one, focusing mostly on those who are white, male, and middle class. He understands that "cruising as a street practice needs to be far more fully considered in relation not only to issues of gender but also to race and ethnicity."
Even though Turner's view is mostly Eurocentric (he does devote two pages to the black science fiction writer Samuel Delany's Times Square porn theatre experiences), it is still important to listen to what he has to say because his observations have some relevance to gay men in general. For example, he states that "The cruiser positively longs to be seen, but not by everyone, and not in all streets." I think that description can apply to all gay men of whatever race, ethnicity, or social background.
I did find one passage that was particularly noteworthy. In Turner's view, bathhouses are places that "have the potential to level out social determinants such as class." To some extent this is true, but then there are other considerations that may come into play such as race, age, looks, physique, mannerisms, etc. Elsewhere in the book, he quotes another writer who says cruising is "a type of brotherhood far removed from the male bonding of rank, hierarchy, and competition that characterizes much of the outside world." To say that rank, hierarchy, and competition are absent from cruising is a misstatement. Anyone who has spent any time in a cruising area knows that there is a pecking order. The ones who are young, good looking, and have a muscular build are the most favored. If a person doesn't meet the criteria, rejection is usually the result.
All in all, Backward Glances is worthy of our attention, if only to give us some insight into what lies behind the male gaze and how that gaze has transformed the urban landscape.
This is an excerpt of a book review that was originally published in the Gay and Lesbian Review (July/August 2004).
Mark Turner's Backward Glances is not a memoir but a scholar's exploration and analysis of something all gay men do without a second thought.
Cruising is an age-old activity, not necessarily the exclusive domain of gay men. However, the particular ways and locales in which gay men do it are unique. And because gay men for centuries have been perceived as sexual outlaws, these rituals of cruising have developed as a way to protect oneself from persecution, imprisonment, entrapment, and scandal.
Turner, an American who is a faculty member in the Department of English at Kings College, University of London, looks at cruising through photography, letters, poetry, journalism, pornography, fiction, etc. as a way to show the reader that these media "all are part of the interrelated cultural production of the city and provide possibilities for understanding how cruising was imagined and how it gets reimagined over time."
He points out that it is not always easy to distinguish who is cruising and who is not, when individuals are sharing the same space that has multiple uses. Is the man standing in front of the department store window there to window shop or is he there in search of another man? This ambiguity is captured so well in the cover photo. A young man on the street is looking back at two other men with their arms around each other. They are unaware that he is observing them. If the photo was taken out of context, how would we read it? Is he a gay man attracted to one or both men? Or is he a straight man astounded by such open display of affection? This photo underscores Turner's question, "[H]ow do we know our cruisers when we see them?" I think the answer has to be that we don't, not always.
It must be pointed out that cruising, like voyeurism and exhibitionism, are about the visual. However, the motivation differs. Cruising is a more reciprocal activity. Whereas voyeurism is more one-sided and surreptitious and exhibitionism is more self-centered, more transgressive, more confrontational (in other words, blatant). Although cruising might be considered transgressive as well because it involves something forbidden by society--male-male attraction--but it is much more of a sharing or mutual appreciation experience.
Turner makes it clear from the outset that his study is a limited one, focusing mostly on those who are white, male, and middle class. He understands that "cruising as a street practice needs to be far more fully considered in relation not only to issues of gender but also to race and ethnicity."
Even though Turner's view is mostly Eurocentric (he does devote two pages to the black science fiction writer Samuel Delany's Times Square porn theatre experiences), it is still important to listen to what he has to say because his observations have some relevance to gay men in general. For example, he states that "The cruiser positively longs to be seen, but not by everyone, and not in all streets." I think that description can apply to all gay men of whatever race, ethnicity, or social background.
I did find one passage that was particularly noteworthy. In Turner's view, bathhouses are places that "have the potential to level out social determinants such as class." To some extent this is true, but then there are other considerations that may come into play such as race, age, looks, physique, mannerisms, etc. Elsewhere in the book, he quotes another writer who says cruising is "a type of brotherhood far removed from the male bonding of rank, hierarchy, and competition that characterizes much of the outside world." To say that rank, hierarchy, and competition are absent from cruising is a misstatement. Anyone who has spent any time in a cruising area knows that there is a pecking order. The ones who are young, good looking, and have a muscular build are the most favored. If a person doesn't meet the criteria, rejection is usually the result.
All in all, Backward Glances is worthy of our attention, if only to give us some insight into what lies behind the male gaze and how that gaze has transformed the urban landscape.
This is an excerpt of a book review that was originally published in the Gay and Lesbian Review (July/August 2004).
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Rambling In The Ramble
Voice of the People
New York Daily News
450 West 33rd Street
New York, NY 10001
July 20, 1994
Dear Editor:
In Jose Lambiet's article about Central Park after dark, he referred to gay men walking past each other in search of "a date." Anyone who has ever been in the Ramble [a heavily wooded part of the park] knows that the men who frequent this area have no desire for a date. It's all about sex.
Sincerely yours,
Charles Michael Smith
Note: This unpublished letter was written on a scrap of paper but was never sent to the Daily News.
New York Daily News
450 West 33rd Street
New York, NY 10001
July 20, 1994
Dear Editor:
In Jose Lambiet's article about Central Park after dark, he referred to gay men walking past each other in search of "a date." Anyone who has ever been in the Ramble [a heavily wooded part of the park] knows that the men who frequent this area have no desire for a date. It's all about sex.
Sincerely yours,
Charles Michael Smith
Note: This unpublished letter was written on a scrap of paper but was never sent to the Daily News.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
The Cult of Masculinity Unmasked
Life Outside: The Signorile Report on Gay Men: Sex, Drugs, Muscles, and the Passages of Life
By Michelangelo Signorile
HarperCollins, 312 pp.
In a 1991 issue of the now defunct gay-oriented New York-based weekly NYQ magazine, writer Avram Finkelstein advocated for gay separation as a way to escape "the din and indoctrination of a missionary, heterosexist world." According to him, "Queer willingness to confront diversity makes us the hope for future humankind."
This rosy, utopian view of the gay male world is refuted in Michelangelo Signorile's latest book Life Outside, the culmination of two years of interviewing hundreds of gay men "of varying ages, races, classes, geographic locales, occupations, religions, and political affiliations" about what he calls the "cult of masculinity."
Signorile points out in the introduction that his study is not meant to "encompass all of urban gay life." The world he describes in the first half of the book and that goes by nicknames like "the scene" and "the hot boy party life" represents "one predominantly white, middle-class and often upper-middle-class segment of urban gay life" whose inhabitants, despite that demographic, have "a significant cultural influence on much of the gay population throughout its various racial, social, and sexual subcultures."
Divided into two sections--"Life Inside" and "Life Outside"--the book offers us a disturbing and more honest portrait of a community populated by many men enslaved to the notion of masculine beauty and its attainment. Life Outside also introduces us to gay men who have found alternative ways of living their lives, far from the gyms and circuit party venues where the repressive doctrine of the "body thing" rules.
If gay people ever decided to follow Finkelstein's advice and "separate from straights," this new society would no doubt resemble the urban gay ghettos of today, a place where a premium is placed on those who conform to "an idealized version of physical manhood--muscles, mustaches, and tight jeans" and where "white, upper-middle-class (gay) men" are the primary movers and shakers. And despite the fact that this image is "an idealized, fragile, ephemeral form of beauty that few men can attain and none can retain," many gay men through steroid use and extensive (and expensive) plastic surgery opt for the type of body that will make them and keep them desirable in the highly competitive fast lane of the gay world.
At the root of this need to be desirable, this need to conform is low self-esteem. "I think I use my body a lot as a way of feeling good about myself," says 32-year-old Alex, a New York consultant. "I go out, I think, sometimes to feel desired and wanted and that makes me feel superior, and then it offsets my feeling bad."
The cult of masculinity isn't anything new, except in name only. It has persisted for decades. In the 1930s and 1940s, for example, Beat Generation novelist/poet Harold Norse has written in his memoir that gay men like himself "cherished and idealized" masculinity. Those who didn't pass muster--"youth, virility, and athletic good looks"--were classified as "hideolas," a word Norse coined to describe anyone he and his friends thought were hideous.
In the 1990s that attitude survives, however, it has intensified and become commodified via the mass media (e.g. Calvin Klein underwear ads). This "highly commercialized gay sexual culture," writes Signorile, a columnist for the upscale gay magazine Out (itself a part of the commodification of masculinity), "sells a particular physical aesthetic to us and demands that men conform to it."
In an attempt to undermine the cult of masculinity which threatens to further marginalize and stigmatize gay men already suffering from heterosexist repression and persecution, Signorile found men living in small towns and in rural and suburban communities whose "simple and traditional" lifestyles mirrored their heterosexual counterparts and whose goals were to "meet someone, fall in love, and settle down." These are the men Signorile holds up as examples for the gay community to emulate.
This "deurbanization of homosexuality," as Signorile terms it, to some extent is "influenced by the overall greater acceptance of homosexuality in America." However, he points out, "the greatest influence on the deurbanization of homosexuality is the many gay men of younger generations," who prefer remaining in "the places they grew up in and want very much to live close to their families but out of the closet."
Although the first half of Life Outside (dealing with the sex, drugs, and hedonism of the fast lane) is the most riveting part of the book, Signorile's efforts have produced a work of journalism that is highly informative, cautionary, and encouraging. With its "Six Ways to Deprogram from the Cult" as a parting message, Life Outside is an important blueprint for any gay man who wants to "find another way" to live his life.
This article was submitted to the Oakland, California-based, African-American-oriented magazine Whazzup! It was not published. What appears here is a slightly edited version of the original article which was written in November of 1997.
By Michelangelo Signorile
HarperCollins, 312 pp.
In a 1991 issue of the now defunct gay-oriented New York-based weekly NYQ magazine, writer Avram Finkelstein advocated for gay separation as a way to escape "the din and indoctrination of a missionary, heterosexist world." According to him, "Queer willingness to confront diversity makes us the hope for future humankind."
This rosy, utopian view of the gay male world is refuted in Michelangelo Signorile's latest book Life Outside, the culmination of two years of interviewing hundreds of gay men "of varying ages, races, classes, geographic locales, occupations, religions, and political affiliations" about what he calls the "cult of masculinity."
Signorile points out in the introduction that his study is not meant to "encompass all of urban gay life." The world he describes in the first half of the book and that goes by nicknames like "the scene" and "the hot boy party life" represents "one predominantly white, middle-class and often upper-middle-class segment of urban gay life" whose inhabitants, despite that demographic, have "a significant cultural influence on much of the gay population throughout its various racial, social, and sexual subcultures."
Divided into two sections--"Life Inside" and "Life Outside"--the book offers us a disturbing and more honest portrait of a community populated by many men enslaved to the notion of masculine beauty and its attainment. Life Outside also introduces us to gay men who have found alternative ways of living their lives, far from the gyms and circuit party venues where the repressive doctrine of the "body thing" rules.
If gay people ever decided to follow Finkelstein's advice and "separate from straights," this new society would no doubt resemble the urban gay ghettos of today, a place where a premium is placed on those who conform to "an idealized version of physical manhood--muscles, mustaches, and tight jeans" and where "white, upper-middle-class (gay) men" are the primary movers and shakers. And despite the fact that this image is "an idealized, fragile, ephemeral form of beauty that few men can attain and none can retain," many gay men through steroid use and extensive (and expensive) plastic surgery opt for the type of body that will make them and keep them desirable in the highly competitive fast lane of the gay world.
At the root of this need to be desirable, this need to conform is low self-esteem. "I think I use my body a lot as a way of feeling good about myself," says 32-year-old Alex, a New York consultant. "I go out, I think, sometimes to feel desired and wanted and that makes me feel superior, and then it offsets my feeling bad."
The cult of masculinity isn't anything new, except in name only. It has persisted for decades. In the 1930s and 1940s, for example, Beat Generation novelist/poet Harold Norse has written in his memoir that gay men like himself "cherished and idealized" masculinity. Those who didn't pass muster--"youth, virility, and athletic good looks"--were classified as "hideolas," a word Norse coined to describe anyone he and his friends thought were hideous.
In the 1990s that attitude survives, however, it has intensified and become commodified via the mass media (e.g. Calvin Klein underwear ads). This "highly commercialized gay sexual culture," writes Signorile, a columnist for the upscale gay magazine Out (itself a part of the commodification of masculinity), "sells a particular physical aesthetic to us and demands that men conform to it."
In an attempt to undermine the cult of masculinity which threatens to further marginalize and stigmatize gay men already suffering from heterosexist repression and persecution, Signorile found men living in small towns and in rural and suburban communities whose "simple and traditional" lifestyles mirrored their heterosexual counterparts and whose goals were to "meet someone, fall in love, and settle down." These are the men Signorile holds up as examples for the gay community to emulate.
This "deurbanization of homosexuality," as Signorile terms it, to some extent is "influenced by the overall greater acceptance of homosexuality in America." However, he points out, "the greatest influence on the deurbanization of homosexuality is the many gay men of younger generations," who prefer remaining in "the places they grew up in and want very much to live close to their families but out of the closet."
Although the first half of Life Outside (dealing with the sex, drugs, and hedonism of the fast lane) is the most riveting part of the book, Signorile's efforts have produced a work of journalism that is highly informative, cautionary, and encouraging. With its "Six Ways to Deprogram from the Cult" as a parting message, Life Outside is an important blueprint for any gay man who wants to "find another way" to live his life.
This article was submitted to the Oakland, California-based, African-American-oriented magazine Whazzup! It was not published. What appears here is a slightly edited version of the original article which was written in November of 1997.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
The Confessions of an Ex-Teen Hustler, Part 3
Hustling is a demoralizing way to earn a living, Dwayne admits. "You sort of lose your morals. The only thing that kept me going is the people who I went with." That was what kept him from being a derelict scavenging in garbage cans for his dinner. But that didn't mean he couldn't
tell them where to get off, if it was necessary. "I used to choose the people I went with. If a person started treating me a certain way, I'd say, 'Look, keep your money and shove it up your ass. Goodbye.' They'd say, 'How can you say that?' I'd say, 'Easy. I just did.'"
Before he left New York to travel around the country, he had, in a safe deposit box, $15,000. On the road "I spent money like it was water," he says with a boyish grin. The money made it possible for him to have three wardrobes (each time his clothes were stolen, he immediately replaced them). For example, he had six or seven pairs of shoes. He wore nothing but custom-made clothes. But all of that is behind him. Although he is unemployed, he does, however, have his high school equivalency diploma. And he does have the desire to better his future.
Despite the hassles of hustling, he feels good about being gay. He believes the gay pride parade, in which he has participated, demonstrates to the world that gays "are somebody. We're not a minority. We're coming out."
Author's Note: Unfortunately, when I did this interview in 1984, I neglected to ask Dwayne if he was concerned about contracting AIDS or his experiences with other sexually transmitted diseases.
tell them where to get off, if it was necessary. "I used to choose the people I went with. If a person started treating me a certain way, I'd say, 'Look, keep your money and shove it up your ass. Goodbye.' They'd say, 'How can you say that?' I'd say, 'Easy. I just did.'"
Before he left New York to travel around the country, he had, in a safe deposit box, $15,000. On the road "I spent money like it was water," he says with a boyish grin. The money made it possible for him to have three wardrobes (each time his clothes were stolen, he immediately replaced them). For example, he had six or seven pairs of shoes. He wore nothing but custom-made clothes. But all of that is behind him. Although he is unemployed, he does, however, have his high school equivalency diploma. And he does have the desire to better his future.
Despite the hassles of hustling, he feels good about being gay. He believes the gay pride parade, in which he has participated, demonstrates to the world that gays "are somebody. We're not a minority. We're coming out."
Author's Note: Unfortunately, when I did this interview in 1984, I neglected to ask Dwayne if he was concerned about contracting AIDS or his experiences with other sexually transmitted diseases.
Friday, July 17, 2009
The Confessions of an Ex-Teen Hustler, Part 2
At one time he had a girlfriend. Her suicide attempt has since caused him not to want to get involved with any other girls. He claims she tried to kill herself because he wouldn't see her anymore. She was pregnant with his child and when he came back to New York from a trip to California and found out that she had lost the baby in her unsuccessful suicide, he got very upset.
"The average gay person that I hang around with is not a jealous-type person.If you just live your life and go out with this person, this person, and this person, they really don't care, just as long as you come back. And with girls, they want to be with you everywhere, they want to know what you're doing, how you're doing, and all this other stuff."
Dwayne made good money as a hustler. He got his johns through a call service. he would have sex with anywhere from 15 to 20 men a week, charging them $150. (($25 of that would go to the agency.) It didn't didn't pay for a hustler to be too picky about his clients. That could get you blacklisted, says Dwayne, especially by the big agencies, if you turned down three clients in a row. If the client didn't appeal to you, the possible loss of revenue and future clients loomed large in your thoughts and you just went on and did what you had to do. For one hour.
The amount of money Dwayne was bringing in a week came to something like $2000. And unlike his female counterparts, he did not ask for money upfront. That was too tacky. "What guarantee does the guy going to have that you're going to stick around?" Sometimes not getting the money in the beginning can and does present a problem.
Dwayne , being streetwise, knows all the old tricks (no pun intended) that can be played on a hustler. He also knows how to handle those problems. One old scam is to say that their wallet was lost and would he accept a check. Dwayne had a rule to never accept a check from anyone he didn't know. One guy who claimed not to have any money was quickly relieved of his Cartier watch. Dwayne later pawned it. Another guy from Connecticut after engaging in car sex, pulled the no-money routine. Dwayne reached over and took his car keys. The guy became frantic. "How am I going to get back home?" "You can walk," replied Dwayne. The guy came up with the cash in a hurry.
"You get these straight guys who come in, who still think they're straight, I call them half-way straight,they can't make up their minds. They think they can overpower you just because you're gay.Being gay does not mean I do not have the capability of fighting and sticking up for myself. They don't realize I'm still a man. If you want to have a fight, sure, I will fight you. I might not win but you definitely will walk out with some scratches."
(To Be Continued)
"The average gay person that I hang around with is not a jealous-type person.If you just live your life and go out with this person, this person, and this person, they really don't care, just as long as you come back. And with girls, they want to be with you everywhere, they want to know what you're doing, how you're doing, and all this other stuff."
Dwayne made good money as a hustler. He got his johns through a call service. he would have sex with anywhere from 15 to 20 men a week, charging them $150. (($25 of that would go to the agency.) It didn't didn't pay for a hustler to be too picky about his clients. That could get you blacklisted, says Dwayne, especially by the big agencies, if you turned down three clients in a row. If the client didn't appeal to you, the possible loss of revenue and future clients loomed large in your thoughts and you just went on and did what you had to do. For one hour.
The amount of money Dwayne was bringing in a week came to something like $2000. And unlike his female counterparts, he did not ask for money upfront. That was too tacky. "What guarantee does the guy going to have that you're going to stick around?" Sometimes not getting the money in the beginning can and does present a problem.
Dwayne , being streetwise, knows all the old tricks (no pun intended) that can be played on a hustler. He also knows how to handle those problems. One old scam is to say that their wallet was lost and would he accept a check. Dwayne had a rule to never accept a check from anyone he didn't know. One guy who claimed not to have any money was quickly relieved of his Cartier watch. Dwayne later pawned it. Another guy from Connecticut after engaging in car sex, pulled the no-money routine. Dwayne reached over and took his car keys. The guy became frantic. "How am I going to get back home?" "You can walk," replied Dwayne. The guy came up with the cash in a hurry.
"You get these straight guys who come in, who still think they're straight, I call them half-way straight,they can't make up their minds. They think they can overpower you just because you're gay.Being gay does not mean I do not have the capability of fighting and sticking up for myself. They don't realize I'm still a man. If you want to have a fight, sure, I will fight you. I might not win but you definitely will walk out with some scratches."
(To Be Continued)
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