Planet Homo

Speed has limits

Things I did not know about Crystal:
During World War II, GIs consumed an estimated 200 million pills.
The San Diego area was also the 1948 birthplace of the Hell's Angels, whose later habit of transporting illegally manufactured methamphetamine in the crankshaft of their bikes gave the drug its street name, crank.
These and other astounding facts and details are to be found in "No Speed Limit" a new book by Frank Owen. A drug with humble beginnings as a Chinese herbal remedy, the active ingredient, ephedrine (the one that makes your workouts VERY INTENSE) was identified by a Japanese scientist in 1887. Similar to adrenaline, the drug was first used to combat respiratory ailments such as asthma. Years later and after many a chemical revision, the drug was newly marketed in the 1950s as Benzedrine, a drug providing "gentle stimulation (that) will provide the patient with a new cheerfulness, optimism, and feeling of well-being." Indeed. Used mostly by American housewives, it was known as "Mother's Little Helper" for whom a pick-up was certainly needed. June Cleaver was a candidate. The drug would emerge in the gay culture in the early 1990's as a powerful stimulant to keep up with the exhausting nearly non-stop "tribal"  circuit parties. And the drug had an unexpected, addictive side effect for most gay men: it pushed sex from the ordinary to the majestically cinematic. Shy introverts would become porn stars, pushing past rejection in bathhouses as they moved from sex contact to sex contact in marathon sessions, with little regard for safety. In the secret language of gay men, it would come to be known as PNP (party 'n' play) and in the new frontier of cruising (gay.com. Craig list, manhunt, etc) the initials promised a long days journey into night with one or many partners. A drug known to take people to places they would not usually go, even the poor Rev. Ted Haggard bought some before his fateful massage with a male escort. While there is debate in the gay community as to how to stymie the insidious drugs use, it is evident that the drugs popularity in certain circles has not diminished. A recent Marc Jacobs photo shoot with Out magazine revealed a lean, emaciated looking designer whom according to most comments looked "fabulous!" And so it is within the gay community that looking good, however achieved, is still the brass ring. Owens has done a wonderful job of documenting the history and torments of the drug without being seeming like a poster boy for the ATF.
On a personal note: I have known many, many people addicted to this drug. They have lost their jobs, gone to jail, turned into zombies, many have died. It is a foolish, alluring drug. Many years ago I read a book about states of consciousness that suggested it was human nature to want to experience different, altered states, starting early in the simple physical act of spinning round, experiencing dizziness. It may be inherit in our genes the need to explore other realities, but we must choose them wisely.

Straight Acting, Gay Writing

A curious book was recently published called Androphilia: Rejecting the Gay Identity, Reclaiming Masculinity by Jack Malebranche. Mark Simpson, one of the people claiming to have coined the phrase, "metrosexual" gives this review: The word gay has never described mere homosexuality. Gay is a subculture, a slur, a set of gestures, a slang, a look, a posture, a parade, a rainbow flag, a film genre, a taste in music, a hairstyle, a marketing demographic, a bumper sticker, a political agenda and philosophical viewpoint. Gay is a pre-packaged, superficial persona--a lifestyle. It's a sexual identity that has almost nothing to do with sexuality.

Androphilia is a rejection of the overloaded gay identity and a return to a discussion of homosexuality in terms of desire: a raw, apolitical sexual desire and the sexualized appreciation for masculinity as experienced by men. The gay sensiblility is a near-oblivious embrace of a castrating slur, the nonstop celebration of an age-old, emasulating stimga applied to men who engaged in homosexual acts. Gays and radical queers imagine that they challenge the status quo, but in appropriating the stigma of effeminacy, they merely conform to and confirm long-established expectations. Men who love men have been paradoxically cast as the enemies of masculinity--slaves to the feminist pipe dream of a 'gender-neutral' (read: anti-male, pro-female) world.

Androphlia is a manifesto full of truly dangerous ideas: that men can have sex with men and retain their manhood, that homosexuality can be about championing a masculine ideal rather than attacking it, and that the wicked, oppressive 'construct of masculinity' despised by the gay community could actually enrich and improve the lives of homosexual and bisexual men. Androphilia is for those men who never really bought what the gay community was selling; it's a challenge to leave the gay world completely behind and to rejoin the world of men, unapologetically, as androphliles, but more importantly, as men.

It should be noted that the author, who is gay and also a Priest with the Church of Satan (we're not making this up) holds a baseball bat in his hands in the publicity photo, apparently to insure his masculinity and physically beat anyone who disagrees with him. What is ultimately bizarre is that it is 2007, and last time we looked, this all this seems, well, pathetic. With a lover of nine years, who he refers to as his "compadre" he goes on to further illuminate that his relationship with "compadre" has none that sissy, "female roll playing," that we have come to think of when we think of gay men and sex." Oh dear.

An Evening with Rechy + Mosley

The Los Angeles Library series ALOUD last week featured writers John Rechy and Walter Mosley for a discussion called: "Between the Sheets: Sex, Literature, and the Future of Erotic Fiction" moderated by "cultural theorist" Marsha Kinder. Mosley, best known as a mystery novelist is the author of the Easy Rawlings series (Devil with the Blue Dress). John Rechy is the author of City of Night, which was named as one of the 25 all time "best gay novels" by the Publishing Triangle in New York. His The Sexual Outlaw: A Documentary was included by the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review as among the 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the century. An odd couple to be sure. Mosley is confident, enigmatic, with an undeniable presence and sonorous baritone voice. Rechy is squirrelish, elfish, always moving, jittery, but with charming flashes of a dashing smile. They begin by reading passages from their most current work and Rechy curiously reads a very heterosexual passage from his new novel, "The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez." Rechy, now 73, with bright reddish hair, is best known as a gay author who chronicled his life, as a hustler, in his early novels. He essentially put Griffith Park on the gay map (boys in bushes, poison-ivy love) as well as the now hustlerless Santa Monica Blvd. To be honest, I met him once, there on Santa Monica Blvd., cruising, hustling in a tight tank top, a man seemingly of forties years of age, looking for IT. I was reading his book, City of Night at the time, so we spoke for quite a while.

Very little is decided about the future of erotic fiction.

Mosley is writing a "sexistential' work in progress, and Rechy seems to be leaning more toward writing straight fiction. We are spared the notion of a hustler at 73 working the streets. It's hard to gauge whether Rechy is nostalgic for a pre-AIDS world of sex. He tells the story of encounters in the 70s where names and words are not exchanged, only sexual fluids and one can almost detect a glimmer in his eyes. He mentions a lover of twenty five years as a stabilizing influence in his life, and only once mentions his issues with AIDS, age and the decline of physical beauty. Seeing him later at the book signing, he seems smaller than I remember, almost frail, no longer a man of the street, but a man of letters.

Publish

A new book has been published called, Documenting Gay Men Identity and Performance in Reality Television and Documentary Film by Christopher Pullen from McFarland.
From the publisher: This book charts an evolution in gay identity within American reality television and documentary film. Through focusing on the performative potential of gay men, it examines the emergence of the independent gay citizen as a bold new voice rejecting subjugation within the media. Through examining productions as diverse as An American Family, Tongues United, Silverlake Life, The Real World, Paternal Instinct, Trembling Before G-D, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and many others, this book explores how gay people as teens, devoted couples, parents, inspiring individuals and influential producers have contributed to the progression of gay identity in domestic arenas. These portrayals are played out while discussing AIDS, race, religion, the development of same-sex family forms, the issues of procreation and gay marriage and the changing views of gay men as both creative producers and responsible social agents. In these forms of entertainment, gay social actors as political agents challenge dominant ideas, and invent new social worlds.

Seeing Vidal: a Memoir

Last night, in the hushed epicenter of the Los Angeles Public Library, Gore Vidal was wheeled center stage to answer questions from BookWorm host, Michael Silverblatt and the audience.
Looking slightly rumpled yet elegant, the seasoned raconteur imparted lessons on morals, friendship and the the art of writing.
Now wheel-chair bound, the 81 year old patrician told many stories about Tennessee Williams, his eternal dislike of Truman Capote and of course his vocal disdain for the current American government. Of note was his remark that the Internet would soon be policed by the government, adding, "they hate freedom."
He also lamented the current generations lack of ability to read, suggesting that in time, books would become archaic.
On homosexuality he reiterated his curious position that "there are no homosexual people, only homosexual acts. In a biography of Gore Vidal by Fred Kaplan published in 1999, Kaplan then wrote about Vidal: "Vidal has been famously promiscuous. He prefers paying for sex to getting it for free and claims to have little interest in pleasuring his sex partners. Vidal has never had a sexual relationship with Howard Austen, his partner of nearly 50 years; nor does he admit to ever having been in love with him. Vidal partly accounts for all this in ``Palimpsest,'' which is built around the story of Jimmie Trimble, his blond Exeter boyfriend who was killed in World War II. Vidal writes quite movingly about Trimble as his missing half; he has chosen cemetery plots for himself and Austen ``midway between Jimmie Trimble and Henry Adams.''