Sunday, February 28, 2010

"Art by Furan"













































These pieces by Furan come from "Y Gallery", google them. There's alot of lad oriented comix art out there. Okay too much of it sucks, but some is cute. Anyway I kind'a like "Furan's" art.

(Of course click on all art on these pages for better viewing.)

I can't post stuff like my dear cyber pal "jj frenchie's", see below. Well not 'much' of his stuff as most of his characters are running around with big dripping hardons or are gleefully bleeping the daylights out of each other.

...and we all know how 'wrong' that is.



"Isilme",...by Khrys



"Summer"
































We just had our third,..or fourth blizzard here in the Emerald City. Btw the far right sez this proves that there's no global warming. Washington got a total of nearly five feet of snow out of three storms.

The left sez that the storms, 'and' the Haiti earthquake are the work of an evil weather machine the Navy has. Their HARP system for communication with our submarines. Seems this cooks up both the land, and atmosphere.

Ummm, this is why I'm an independent, nuff said.

Anyway my aunt used to do the above to my cousins, and me during heatwaves. The two day heatwaves we used to have before 'actual' planetary heating gave us two month steamwaves!

These images have been on the 'net for a few years, and I've been trying to find their source,...anyone know? I'm assuming it isn't some porn series. It seems too happy for that.

Btw, nothing wrong with porn, but most of it doesn't look joyful, Lust really ought to be fun. I remember long ago some trouble makers, and I saw this, unhappy industrial porn, as a sign of social decay.

We wanted to produce a funny, that is happy sex 'zine. All orientations included. Including gleeful boy sex. Like I say on these blogs,...if you count them as they go by, eros is supposed to be fun.

We've made horniness a business, and then narrowed it down to a very limited choice of dreams. Swell.

But I digress.

I really just love the pictures of these lads getting bathed. Very like boys skinny dipping in an even earlier time. So sweet. These pics remind me of another way of living from a culture long gone.

(We seemed to have broken the !!**100**!! views mark on our latest page! Okay others get zillions, but Quality beats quantity any day!)

Stay Tuned.

"Art Crime"
















THIS IS A RE-POST OF ONE OF THE LAST EDITORIALS I WROTE FOR MY RECENTLY NUKED BLOG "BOILED HAM"

(Thanks to Josh of "Milkboys" for backing up so many of my pages. Please link to his page listed on the right.)
__________________________________________________________________















("ART CRIME!",...or 6000 Volts Never Hurt Anybody,..that Mattered.)

I just read somewhere that some poor dumb bastard got six months for importing some Japanese comic books, Manga, into the land of the free. Yeah six or so scary issues of a sexy manga from the Emperor's comix shop of the Rise'n Sun.

Seems one of our new laws makes looking at comix book drawings of naked kiddies with damp dripping stiffies, and eyes full of Holy Lust worse than shooting a church full'a Popes.

Like I been saying Jesus won't be happy till 'Everything' in the U.S. of A. is illegal, and everybody's in prison.

There's a guy in Texas,...yeah where else.

Anyway the fella is doing 90 years for having a single hemp plant in his attic,..under a grow light. A neighbor turned him in for the reward. See in Texas if you grow your own you're legally a dealer. There's rewards for dealers. Dealers get life. One plant for personal use.

Nice country huh.
















Right so there's the poor comic book guy sitting between Charles Manson, and Theodore John Kaczynski the Unabomber.

The Unabomber asks him what he's in for, and he sez,...read'n sexy jap comic books. The Unabomber sez,..."Wow! It's worse than I thought! Nuts as I am even I didn't think the system would get 'this' bad!"

"...told ya so." Sez Manson.

So far the tame Angel stuff I do is safe,..for right now.

The original version of the law tried to ban 'all' images of bipeds under 18 years.

'Guess they was getting their bully boys ready to hit the museums, and galleries with tear gas, and *1200/3000 volt taser stun guns. These to bring down any curators that wouldn't play ball.

*(Word on the street is the cops juice up their units for effect. So if you piss some cop off you might get a taste of 5000/6000 volts. Which is why the old folks tend to have heart attacks, and die on the spot. There's been alot of that lately.)













Them taser things is killing people all over the country. Mostly old folks. Healthy young adults survive.


Btw, a six year old boy in Miami just got the crap zapped out'a him. Over a thousand of volts of electricity.

Yeah of course he was Black.

*Note to parents, and guardians, esp. if you're Black, Mexican or just plain poor. If the authorities taser, electrify, and make your kid crap gobs of shitty blood it is 'not' abuse.


So yeah American cops use these evil things on youngsters, and older folks. Israelies, and eastern Europeans are in on the taser act too, but I haven't heard them frying the very young or old,...yet.

I'm sure that's in the pipeline though.

See the damned things are just so handy. They're popular with the heat because they brings down the perps in two seconds. None of that sloppy gun play that always looks so bad on the precinct reports, and tv.

Understandable if you've got a 26 year old 250lb biker that's stoned on angel dust, crack, and whiskey coming at you with a rusty 10 inch blade while "Sympathy for the Devil" plays in the backround.

Hell I'd Zap the bastard myself.

Hey don't get me wrong. I loves the cops. Especially when some armed crazed maniac is climbing in through my bedroom window to chop me up, and the cop shows up just in time to air this guy out with a hail of 9mm slugs!

I sincerely loves'em then!

On the other hand,...a 72 year old granny stopped for a traffic violation. That or a 14 year old that was skate boarding on private property. Eh, seems other means other than 3000 volts could have settled them offenses.

Sorry I digress.

You get the picture. Seems the only safe thing to do is to hide in your basement or under your bed,...but than that might be illegal too

"Halo"

"Strike a Pose"

"WikiLeaks"



Saturday, February 27, 2010

"Another Way of Being"



Greetings Comrades. Our dear pal Sion Liscannor's collected chapters from his ongoing book "Another Way of Being". The collected chapters, which has been serialized here for the last year, now has it's own web page.



Bayword is hosting Sion's chapters.

Please link to Sion's page, which is still being worked on. He's got the first 16 of his 31 chapters up. No doubt they'll be illustrations eventually.




Hey cut'em some slack Bayword is not easy to use. Infact my own Bayword page, "Gimme Shelter", is slowly evolving as I figure how the heck to use the damned thing.



As I say over there all elder bloggers should have a Boy Scout helping them out. This way they can get their computer badge, and helping old farts badge at the same time!

So link to us so you'll always be able to find our stuff no matter what happens here.

***TO CLARIFY,...GO TO THE COLUMN ON THE RIGHT, AND LINK TO "SION LISCANNOR" FOR THE CHAPTERS, AND "GIMME SHELTER", FOR MY BACKUP PAGE.***

Stay Tuned.

"Neon Buddha"













A friend took this shot not long ago. A wonderful window! 'Wish I could have the neon Buddha hang'n over my bed. It is so neat.


"Oh My,..."












I've been lurking around dear Tristan's, who is most certainly a guy, I've been poking about our pal's blog, and web pages. See his links over on the right. Aw gee. I want to buy "ALL",..well mostly all of his works.

Maybe we can work a deal, we'll see.

Anyway his rationality about his work put me in mind to make some dough,..finally from my own swell stuff.

All my life others have raked in the scratch from my stuff. This because I was such anti-capitalist, or incompetent business person.

Take your pick.






Anyway book sellers make hundreds of bucks from my early books. Mostly because they think I'm dead. I've always intended to announce that I'm still here, and have crates of them "rare" books that they want so bad.

Aw, I know me. Business is not my art form. Still Maybe I might offer a few items now'n then.

"Avast ye!"

















I've just laid the keel for our latest lifeboat for 'when', not if this ship is nuked. Damn the the evil pirates of cyber seas!

Anyhow look yonder to your right, and link to "GIMME SHELTER". She was launched from the Baywords blog yards. They 'say' they don't delete,..heard that before.

We'll see.

Till then cheers, and behave.

Friday, February 26, 2010

"Guest Editorial"

















Our dear comrade, and author Sion Liscannor responds to my post "OOPS",feb. 23rd, and the comments it engendered


"Sublimation"

Some thoughts on a comment posted recently by Art Fanatic.
“I believe that males are supposed to be attracted to males, but then subliminate that desire and express it in an acceptable manner, including affection, sports, art and everything else, but not sex.”

Dear Art Fanatic,
I respect your point of view, but it raises many questions for me.
Firstly, there is the question of who it is that ‘supposes’ that males (or anyone else) are meant to behave in a certain way and not in another way. Again, who is doing the ‘accepting’? Who decides what is right or wrong? Who writes the rules of what is acceptable or not acceptable?

What I take you to mean is that all relationships (sexual or otherwise) take place within the context of a larger human society, and that society imposes certain rules, which society expects us to conform to and which we ignore at our peril.
We know that there are no absolute rules. Different societies and different epochs write the rules differently. What is sublime behaviour in one society and one epoch needs to be ‘sublimated’ in another.

Our society, as all societies before it, has inherited a heap of conflicting taboos, prejudices and religiously imposed strictures. Western society in particular, since Christianity exterminated the religious practices of the Classical world, has associated sex with shame and guilt.

Almost all sexual activity in our society needs to be ‘sublimated’ in one way or another. At one level it has to be legitimized by marriage; at another level it has to be redeemed by association with concepts of romantic ‘love’.

Even the ‘free sex’ lobby has tended to support its views by reference to physical and/or mental health or political liberation. It seems we cannot simply ‘do’ sex without calling in the gods, or Freud, or Karl Marx, or some guru or other, to give it the OK.
I would propose an alternative view: We could also regard sexual activity not as an end but as a means to an end. There is no such thing as a sexual relationship. There are human relationships which are enhanced in various ways by sex.

I am uncomfortable about the rather vague term ‘enhanced’ (though not as uncomfortable as I am about the even vaguer term ‘sublimated’). What I mean by ‘enhancement’ is that relationships can be made more intimate, more honest, more noble, more inspiring etc when sex is involved. Sex is a means by which one human being meets another in a more complete way. Most of the serious business of life is about such meetings.

That elements in our society have conspired to associate sex with guilt and shame simply shows that our social values and attitudes have been distorted in order to hinder such ‘meetings’ of individuals. Western culture is a wounded culture. Any culture that restricts the meeting of human souls – and which does so in the name of some higher morality – is a wounded culture. Fortunately, sex has an infinite capacity to heal. And it always returns to us however many times we try to drive it away.

Secondly, when we sweep away the ‘suppositions’ of what is ‘acceptable’ or not ‘acceptable’, where does that leave us with regard to the question of how we are to conduct ourselves in respect of sexual relationships? Such relationships are between individuals, not between individuals and society.

It is necessary that society legislates for human relationships in the economic sphere and in the sphere of human ‘rights’ – by which I mean everything to do with the concept of equality before the law.

But society cannot or should not attempt to legislate in the sphere of personal relationships. Personal relationships belong to the spiritual sphere, and it is in the spiritual sphere that human beings can be free. Friendship and love are part of spiritual freedom.

Society cannot legislate in this sphere, so it becomes the task of each of us to be responsible for his own conduct – and to be answerable to himself for his conduct. Personal relationships – and personal relationships which are deepened by sex in particular – are the part of our lives that require the most intense sense of responsibility.

It is an unfortunate consequence of our social conditioning that we are largely taught to ignore the cultivation of a sense of responsibility in the sphere of personal relationships. Society would persuade us that we are responsible for the welfare of the state, the nation, our caste, our clan, our family and all the rest of it.

Actually, it is in personal relationships that we require the deepest sense of responsibility, because it is here where we can directly do the greatest good and the greatest harm.


Thirdly, what is ‘responsibility’ in respect of same sex relationships, and in particular in respect of the inter-generational relationships which are of specific interest in the forum of ‘Pink Hell’?

Imagine for a moment that we were living in an Earthly paradise. I conceive of such a paradise not in terms of Eden gardens and sandy beaches and palm trees: I conceive of it as a world free of the burden of the past. A world without history, a world without religious traditions; and hence a world free of guilt and shame. A world in which each human soul could develop according to his or her own nature, without the pressure to conform to other people’s ideas of how we should be. There has never been such a world, but we can imagine it.

I find it interesting to speculate what sort of relationships might be possible in this imaginary free world and what part human sexuality might play in them. What interests me most about this imaginary world is that the possibility of hurting and of being hurt would be greatly diminished. For most of what is ‘hurtful’ or ‘damaging’ or ‘harmful’ about intergenerational sexual relationships is not inherent in the relationship itself: it is the product of the social pressures and tensions that surround the relationship. A boy is likely to be ‘hurt’ in such a relationship in consequence of the confused feelings of guilt or shame with which he has been socially conditioned.

He is likely to be ‘hurt’ by the mockery or rejection of his peers, who are victims of the same conditioning. He is likely to be hurt by the tension between the idea of himself which society has indoctrinated him with, and the alternative self that he discovers in and through the relationship.

So where does this leave us when we return to such relationships in the real world? What does responsible conduct look like in the face of the pain that such a relationship might bring? One might conclude that it is absolutely irresponsible to even consider a relationship that might bring such a hell down on the head of a boy. Unless, of course, personal relationships are of such value that they justify the risk. I would contend that relationships have an absolute value whereas social pressures are merely contingent. There is a choice: we can submit to the prejudices of society or we can have courage for the truth.

It is in this respect that I have the greatest difficulty with the concept of ‘sublimation’. To me sublimation either suggests dishonesty about the nature of a relationship or a refusal to accept human nature for what it is.
When I was a boy I was involved in several ‘sublimated’ relationships. I mean by this that I had relationships to adult males who were clearly sexually attracted to me but who insisted on limiting this relationship in one way or another. In one case the adult was a teacher who tried to preserve a formal ‘professional’ relationship to me; in another it was a priest in the role of a ‘spiritual counsellor’ who used that role to pry into the details of my personal life; in another it was an adult who cultivated a sort of ‘Iron John’ friendship that involved every kind of physical contact except sexual contact.

I have said that in the examples I have mentioned there was a clear sexual attraction from the side of the adult. I assume that most of the readers of this blog were boys once and that they will be familiar with the kind of ‘sublimated’ relationship I am describing. Sexual attraction is often revealed most starkly by the efforts people make to conceal it. A man who is ‘sublimating’ or concealing his feelings is like an actor who is playing a part. It is a dreadful thing to live out your life in such acting. And for the boy it is dreadful too if the relationship is one that is of value for him. It means that he will never really meet you. You offer all the peripherals of a friendship while denying the essential part of it.

In discussing the role of sex in relationships we tend to allow ourselves to be fixated upon physical acts, as if sexuality was made up of the various crimes that might be filed on a police charge sheet. Moralisers and legislators and pornographers are united in the fact that they all mistake the sexual act for sex itself. Sex is actually everything before and after. The bodily sexual act is simply the soul’s way of giving itself a break from sex.

If sex is at all it is everywhere and always. Sex is more like pollen than we suppose. It is in the air. It is around us and between us. That is why a boy usually knows when someone desires him. There is therefore no point in denying sexual attraction. What you do about it is, perhaps, another question, and it will depend on personalities and circumstances. But the first step, surely, is to stop denying the presence of sexual feeling.

This brings me to my second reservation about ‘sublimation’: that it involves a refusal to accept human nature for what it is.

I have several times in the above spoken of ‘human souls’ on the one hand and ‘bodily actions’ on the other. But we know, of course, that the distinction between soul and body is a fabrication. If we are in any doubt about it sex is always there to remind us. The concept of ‘sublimation’ rests on the erroneous belief that we can separate ‘bodily’ components of desire from ‘spiritual’ components of desire, and that we can transfer our desire from one realm to another. We don’t need to be philosophers to demonstrate the absurdity of this view of things: our ordinary experience of life makes it abundantly clear.

‘Sublimation’, I suspect, really means withholding ourselves from entering truly into a relationship with all that it involves – including our feelings, our desires, our needs – and substituting something else in place of that relationship. Sublimation means acting out a fantasy life of spurious relationships on the one hand and satisfying our sexual urges with such substitutes as pornography and masturbation.

Sublimation is, of course, a lofty spiritual ideal and has a long history. Plato seems to have thought of it first (though there are unkind rumours that he didn’t quite live up to his ideals in respect of some of his later youthful friends). Mahatma Gandhi liked to test the perfection of his sublimation skills by sleeping between a pair of attractive young girls. People who behave like this belong in a Freak Show. I cannot but feel that they have profoundly lost their way.

It is possible that I have a distorted view of sublimation. As the offspring of a Catholic Bishop I tend to regard myself as the product of a failed effort of lifelong sublimation, and I am grateful for the failure.
Finally, have we ever considered the point of view of the boys on the receiving end of these noble efforts of ‘sublimation’?

In two of the examples I have cited above from my own boyhood I felt a profound sense of frustration at what appeared to me to be mere cowardice or dishonesty. Like all adolescents I tended to see things in terms of black and white – but the fact that boys see moral issues in such stark terms doesn’t mean we shouldn’t respect their views. In these two cases I forced the sexual element of the relationship into the open. Why? I didn’t do it because I found either of the men sexually attractive in the way that I found boys of my own age attractive at that time. I did it in part because I really valued the friendship and all that it gave me, and I wanted it to be ‘true’. I also wanted to be able to give something in return for all that I received.

This ‘giving’ was an important issue. This ‘giving’ didn’t cost me anything and it transformed a lop-sided relationship into a reciprocal relationship. I enjoyed the fact that I was desired. It meant that I had something of value to give. A ‘sublimated’ relationship might look fine from the point of view of the sublimating adult, but in truth it is a distortion that belittles the boy whom it would protect.

"Cake Walk"













(A response from Bodmin one of our overseas editorialists to my "Hot Seat" post a few entires down.)

God damn, man, you wanna give old Bodmin a heart attack? Those shades, that presence, those smooooth brown thighs...You gotta put up 'pretty boy' warnings when you do something like that!

Speaking of sexy boys and Black History Month.

*****Pardon my intrusion a moment here Bodmin.

(Yeah, swell Black History Month! They toss us this damned bone in the shortest coldest month. As C.S. Lewis called this time of year, "...always winter, and never Christmas."

Try having a Bar-B-Q or fireworks in the middle of a blizzard or hail storm. Oh did I forget to say thanks?

Bleeping Thanks.)

Sorry Comrade,..couldn't help it.

******We continue now with dear Bodmin's response to "Hot Seat"


"Speaking of sexy boys and Black History Month."






Some history to go with them:
We don't know who he is (or her, for that matter), but they were the leads in the troop called Les Enfants Nègres, who performed the Cake Walk at the Nouveau Cirque in Paris during the 1905 season.



They were popular enough that S.I.P., the Paris theatrical publisher, who did postcard series of theatrical stars (particularly actresses) and opera singers, did a ten-card set of them (two of her, two of him, and six of them together, doing moves that run from the traditional Cake Walk (here) to things that look like the jitterbug).

While we don't know anything about this particular troop we do know that these "pickaninny troops" were touring Europe from about 1890 to the beginning of the First World War, generally organised in New Orleans, often of orphans.

One of the more famous was "Belle Davis's Piccaninnies", Belle being a Creole woman who had been a music hall performer herself. For instance, she is credited with beginning the career of the ragtime/jazz/big band pianist "Sneeze" Williams, at the age of nine, in 1895.

(On the other hand, there seem to have been some tragic stories of how the 'entrepreneurs' just abandoned the kids in Europe and returned to the States with their money...)



All of which brings us to the question: IS THIS RACIST????????????
You can find plenty of sites denouncing the Cake Walk as stereotyping Blacks as happy darkies with rhythm and loose bodies.



You can also find sites which explain that the Cake Walk was originally Blacks poking fun at the cotillion in the Big House; Massa was too dumb to realise the joke was on him, and joined in.

And as far as the 'strutting' goes: you know Michael Jackson got his moves (particularly the moonwalk) from Charlie Chaplin - and if you look closely at the film footage you realise that Charlie Chaplin got his moves from these guys. Could be this is the beginning of the Black influence on American culture...

So, I dunno... What I do know is that this little guy in his white tights is damn sexy for his plus/minus115 years, and knows it. (So did whoever his dresser was; note the highlight on the bulge at his crotch...)

"Truth"


















"Another Way of Being"

Chapter 31 – Truth

It was the middle of July and I was going to leave on my travels with Chris in a couple of days. I hadn’t told Adam about it yet. Adam once more mentioned his plan of going together to a holiday camp but I hadn’t responded. I didn’t want to tell him the truth.

Adam had imperceptibly become a part of my life. He came to the flat almost every afternoon when he had finished his work. I looked forward to his coming. I spent most of my day either writing exams or preparing for them and I wasn’t really interested in any of it. I had read all the books and I knew what I thought about them and there wasn’t really more to be said. But I quite enjoyed the exams themselves. I liked the intense concentration and the sense of competition. I never felt I was competing against other students, but I was competing against the questions, against the system. I had to prove that I could outwit it. I was often hoarse when I came out of a three-hour exam session. I sometimes nearly lost my voice altogether. I later realised it was because of what is called ‘internal articulation’. When you read or write you tend to ‘voice’ the words internally. Your vocal cords are at work all the time even though you don’t utter a sound that anyone could hear. In the exams I had literally written myself hoarse. But that didn’t make it difficult to be with Adam because we hardly ever spoke. We communicated, but we didn’t communicate with words. It is an incredible relief after so much writing and talking just to be close to someone without feeling the need to speak.

Adam is usually waiting for me when I get back from school. It has become part of the daily rhythm for both of us, I suppose, though we never mention it. Adam has gone through a remarkable change in recent weeks. He has lost most of his shyness. He begins undressing as soon as we get to my room. He does it in an unthinking, automatic way, as if he is changing into his football kit in preparation for a match. He pulls off his shirt and his jeans and drops them on the floor. He sits on the edge of the bed to remove his socks and his underwear and he kicks them away. It isn’t so much a feeling of urgency as a wish to get on with familiar things – as if there is a kind of security in repeating what we have done before.

Adam has shed his inhibitions one by one. He had been shocked by many things at first. He thought of certain things as ‘dirty’. Kissing was dirty and bodily fluids were dirty, which meant that kissing or touching parts of the body were dirty. Parts of his own body seemed to be out of bounds even to him. It is through sex that he is discovering much of himself. But he learns quickly. Once he overcomes an inhibition it seems to be gone forever.

But things are not as simple as they appear to be. They had been simple in the beginning. We had been two boys ‘slaking their body’s thirst upon each other’ as Lawrence puts it. But now there is more.

We don’t talk about feelings but the feelings are silently present. Each time, when we have finished, Adam clings close to me. He likes to lie on top of me or to curl around me. He lies still for a long time. I sometimes think he has fallen asleep. But he is not asleep; he is simply holding on to me.

Sometimes he starts wrestling. We play-fight for a while till he collapses on top of me and then we lie still once more. It is a strange thing, this play-fighting between boys. You sometimes use all your strength to get on top of the other boy or to throw him off you but you are always careful to avoid hurting him. It is more like dancing than fighting. And it always ends in this veiled embrace, this silent closeness.

When we are lying together I study his body. I study it with my eyes but more intensely with my hands. I run my hands over his back and over his limbs as if I am handling a sculpture. His body is lean and taut. There are faint traces of puppy fat around the belly and waist but otherwise there is no spare flesh, there is nothing superfluous about him. His skin is smooth except for his hands and his fingers, which are dry and chapped. It is a result of his tiling work, I suppose. The cement-based adhesives that he works with dry the skin and make it peel. But I quite like the roughness of his hands.

Adam is a pretty boy. He is handsome in an old-fashioned English way, but with an extra touch of delicacy – what the Romans would have called a puer delicatus. It is why I noticed him that first time when he was with his skinhead mates. The skinhead style is a wondrously effective formula for disguising good looks, but Adam has been shedding the skinhead style. He has started to wear running shoes instead of boots. He no longer wears braces. His hair is beginning to grow.
He hasn’t been beaten up again since that time after the football match. I would like to know why it happened. He doesn’t want to talk about it but I have my own ideas. I don’t think his skinhead mates saw me with him. But they didn’t need to see us together. They sensed that something in him had changed. Adam had stepped out of the herd. He smelled different to them and they punished him for it.

.....


I read in my Grandfather’s manuscript:

“It is possible that the imaginative and mystical side of Hadrian actually divined godly qualities in the boy Antinous. Who is to say he was wrong?

Antinous experienced Hadrian’s love and attachment. Some have suggested he drowned himself in order to escape from it. But perhaps the explanation is simpler. Perhaps he was drowned in it. Should we consider the possibility that Antinous came to share Hadrian’s idea of Antinous? Antinous found himself on the inside of a relationship – a love – so intense that it transcended everything else in his life. It was transcendent, but it was in its nature ephemeral, because it was tied to his youth and beauty – the one must soon end and the other must soon diminish and eventually vanish. Unless that process can be halted – unless the march of time and the attachment to the decay of the physical body can be stopped. It can be stopped by death. In death youth and beauty are frozen for eternity. From death comes eternal life of a kind.
It was perhaps easier for Antinous to die than to try to live up to the idea of himself with which Hadrian’s love had imbued him. Or maybe death was the only way Antinous could secure Hadrian’s everlasting love?

By dying now in his youth and beauty he would become the eternal ephebe. He would preserve the idea of himself that had come to mean more than life.”

.....


We all knew it was going to be a tight schedule so we coordinated our departure and return. We agreed to pack as much as possible into the second week of July before we went our separate ways. We would have the first ten days of September when we returned, and then there would be three days of performances.

Meanwhile there would be seven weeks without rehearsals, without proper practice even. It is difficult to practise unless you have a suitable space – a large space, a danceable space. It would be nice to think you could practise on a beach, in a meadow, on the side of a motorway – but it doesn’t work like that.

When I am not rehearsing or dancing I am thinking of dance. For me dance is connected to the idea of flight, to my longing to escape from the Earth. Throughout my boyhood, as long as I can remember, I have had a recurring dream. In this dream I am running. I run with bigger and bigger bounds – till eventually I am moving in great slow leaps – and eventually the leaps become so huge and so relaxed that I drift away from the Earth altogether. I am actually flying.

During my recent revision I had to study an anthology of religious verse – Christian religious verse. Christian poets are fond of the metaphor of a caged bird. The cage stands for the physical body. The bird is the suffering human soul who is trapped in the body and doesn’t belong there.
I never saw the sense of this. I yearn to fly, but I do not wish to escape from my body. I wonder why anyone should hate his body so much that he wishes to escape from it.

Except for the pain, of course. To dance, to fly, requires such hard toil. You must buy those few seconds of flight with hours of practice, week upon week of training. You drive yourself until your body aches. In my diaries from that time I found a poem. I must have written it then, but I had long forgotten it. What a young pervert I was! I reversed the Christian metaphor. I turned the bird into a body that was forced to dance for the delight of the soul.

Dance

It’s so like flying is the dance

but so much pain to make this leap in air
this so brief flight that you have trained all day
taming your body making it obey
as if it is a bird and you its snare

as if it first must bleed before you dare

an hour before you’re due on stage
before you crouch impatient in the wings
your body aches already, it begins
to flex and stretch and fret and rage

the bird first preens its feathers, then it sings

you will not set it free till it has flown
one perfect circle for you in a gyre
then throw it back like phoenix to the fire
and let it burn to ashes and to bone

when the dance is ended – and you are alone


.....


I read in my Grandfather’s manuscript:

“To understand what was passing through the mind of Antinous as he approached the river Nile on the day of his drowning we need to understand some of the key ideas of Greek thought. The ‘Hero’ is one such idea, and it is an idea that is usually misunderstood. We know that Hellenists thought of Antinous as a Hero after his death, because many of the surviving sculptures depict him with the traditional trappings of the Hero.

For the Greeks a Hero was a religious figure. He was a human being who, because of the achievements or quality of his life, was honoured and ‘immortalized’ in ritual. Shrines were erected in his honour. In some cases annual ‘Games’ were organised to celebrate his memory. The rituals of the shrine, the daily ‘worship’ in the temples, were means of keeping his memory alive. Through the manner of his death Antinous became such a Hero.

We are likely to misunderstand the idea of the Hero because we tend to view it either too concretely or too abstractly. Western religious thought has been dominated for two millennia by a Salvationist religion. The most important belief of Roman Christianity is Resurrection – the idea that the soul survives death and will at some future date return to life in a physical body. For Christians ‘eternal life’ is a concrete and literal concept. The word ‘eternal’ in the phrase ‘eternal life’ refers for a Christian to a measure of time – indeed, it refers to an infinite measure of time.
For the Greek mind ‘eternal life’ or ‘immortality’ was not a measure of time. It was a quality of life rather than a term of life. The man who achieved great things transcended the normal boundaries of life: he lived, like the gods, outside of time and independent of his physical body. He lived on in human memory.

The Hero was a mortal man who underwent an ordeal or struggle that finally led to his death. It was through his overcoming the fear of death that he achieved immortality and the status of the Hero. The Hero was a man who discovered something more valuable than survival, the man who discovered something worth dying for – and hence also something truly worth living for.
A suicide need not be an act of despair. It can also be a demonstration of faith in an idea – in this case, perhaps, that the beauty of youth is more precious even than life.”

.....


I don’t suppose I was unusual as a teenage boy in my fascination with the idea of dying young.
I once found a book in my local library. It was a kind of illustrated guide to the dreadful danger of drugs. There were illustrations – there were photos. If I had been looking for a manual to teach me how to shoot cocaine it would have fitted the purpose perfectly. But I wasn’t really interested in drugs. What fascinated me were the photos.

There were photos of a boy – a rather beautiful boy about the same age as me – shooting cocaine. There were close-ups of the needle entering his skin – close-ups of the scabs on the back of his hands - close-ups of the concentrated look on his face as the ‘rush’ reaches his brain.
The photos were taken inside a public lavatory. This was presumably in order to emphasise the squalor and degradation of the process. One of the photos showed the boy vomiting into the bowl. Another photo showed him dead – with the needle still hanging out of his arm.

I loved it! I thought it was magically beautiful. A young life shattered, ruined, wasted – how poignant! How unutterably sad! How alluring!

It almost made me decide to try cocaine. But I didn’t do that till much later. It wasn’t the drugs that attracted me – it was death. It was the wonderful conjunction of youth and beauty and death.

To die now – right now – when your senses are most alert and the taste of life is so sweet! To die now - before time starts to wear away at your youth. To die now – when you are free of fear.

To die – before you grow ugly and old.


.....


I read in my Grandfather’s manuscript:

“It was of course significant that the imperial party had arrived at the Nile in October. This was the month of the festivals of Osiris, the god whose drowning brought regeneration and fertility. This was the month of sacrifices. All boys who drowned in the Nile were considered a sacrifice. All boys who drowned in the Nile were revered and worshipped.

Was this in Antinous’ mind at the time? Or was it only those who worshipped him after his death who likened him to Osiris – and to Hermes and to Dionysus – all three of them gods that were linked to sacrifice and to resurrection? All three of them gods who journeyed to death and the underworld and who guided souls back to the light? Just as later the image of Christ too was linked with Osiris and Hermes and Dionysus – and to Antinous, of course.

Was Antinous re-living the profound experience of the Eleusinian Mysteries? Was he seeking to transform myth into historical fact?”

.....


Adam and I never talk about who we are or what we do. We never use the word ‘queer’ or even the word ‘gay’, which has only recently come into fashion. But Adam is insistent that we have to hide what we do together. It is our secret. It happens in my room and out of sight. Nobody else must know about it.

I can see that Adam has good reasons to be secretive but I am uncomfortable about this secrecy. It forces me to think of issues that I generally prefer to ignore.

I have been thinking of a passage in my Grandfather’s manuscript that I had read some days before – the passage where he mentions the Greek view of the pathetikoi. My Grandfather had probably written that passage in the early 1960’s. If he had been writing today he would probably not have used the quaint term ‘mature homosexuals’. He would have spoken of ‘straight gays’ – men who desire sex not with boys but with other men. The word ‘pathetikos’ had two meanings. It could mean a passive sexual partner, or it could mean a man who was an object of scorn and ridicule – a ‘pathetic’ person in our modern sense. The two meanings were usually combined, of course.

I did not want to become a pathetikos. But then, I didn’t want to live long enough to be capable of being one.

When you are seventeen most of the people who are ten years older than you seem to belong to another world, and it is a degenerate world. They seem physically coarse and they seem to be obsessed with money and material possessions. I could not imagine living to the age of twenty five. I certainly could not imagine being thirty.

Yet I also imagined a life together with Chris. Sometimes I still dreamt of finding Krisna.

I was occasionally aware that my view of things was riddled with contradictions.

Who was I? Who would I become? And what relationship did the various images I had of myself bear to the reality? I was a boy. I was mercurial, changing. Not especially moody, but changing, inconstant. I thought of the many photos Stefan had taken of me at the Studio. Yes, I could recognize myself in them – but by the time the photos had been developed I had already become something else, I had become another person. It is the nature of boys to be in perpetual change.

Was it possible to live without creating an idea of yourself? Or if you must have an idea of yourself in order to exist, could it be an idea that was fluid and changing? An idea that you discard at the end of each day and invent again tomorrow?

.....

One afternoon quite out of the blue Adam says: ‘I’m small, aren’t I?’

I know at once that it is his cock he is talking about. He is lying back against the pillows and he is looking down at his cock.

I tell him No, it is normal size. It is average. ‘It’s just right,’ I add after a while. He doesn’t answer. But he curls up close to me and buries his face in my neck.

He whispers in my ear. He tells me again about his plan for us to go together to a holiday camp. And he tells me again that it will be quite safe as long as we just pretend we are two mates and that we are looking for girls. I feel a sudden surge of annoyance. I want to tell him that holiday camps are plebeian and that his taboos are plebeian and that he himself is plebeian because he is the product of a disgustingly narrow-minded upbringing and that his suggestion that we pretend we are looking for girls is disgusting too. But I don’t say any of this. I check myself in time.

I get up from the bed and I go to the window. I gaze across the courtyard at the block of flats on the other side. They are still under construction. It was while he was working on that building that I met Adam. It seems such a long time ago but it is only a couple of months. And in a couple of days I shall be going away with Chris.

I feel ashamed of myself for all the unkind things that I nearly said. And I realise it is not Adam I am annoyed with. I am annoyed with myself. And right now I am annoyed with my snobbery and my sense of superiority. I am annoyed and ashamed. But most of all I am ashamed of my cowardice and dishonesty.

I go back to the bed and I sit beside Adam. I explain to him that I cannot go on holiday with him because I have promised to go hitch-hiking in Europe with a boy from my school. He listens quietly. He doesn’t ask any questions. Afterwards he puts on his clothes and he goes away.


Sion Liscannor

Thursday, February 25, 2010

"Frilly"



To pass the time I'm considering, once again, the opening of an unregistered, and most certainly unlicensed academy for young gentlemen. This is the proposed uniform.


Of course for the summer term what with the extremes of heat, and humidity in this region. For our summer term it would of course be clothing optional for staff, and student body.

"Pierre Bouillon"














"Will you wake the hell up!"

"Who Did This?!"



Okay fess up. I know you're out there! I first clapped eyes on this swell piece of art back in the late 1960's. Though I was just a lad,...Stonewall was three years away. I was 16, and prowling porn shops for likely reading material.


"Over 21 Only" my then underage, but horny butt!

Click on the above relic of a freer time for ease of viewing. Btw I spied one of the teaching brothers, a cleric from my religious school at one of these shops in civilian duds one weekend. Youbetcha! Yep he bought a Queer mag'n took it back to the rectory for private holy communion.

He went up 3000 points in my estimation for that!

'But I digress.

The above lovely painting appeared in one of the Lyric/DOM 'zines back in the mid-late 1960's. I think the one with "Peter" on the cover. You remember him,...be still my heart. Nude lad at the beach on the front cover of an over the counter 'zine.

I don't even know how many years you's get for even thinking about such things today.

I digress again.

Who painted that damned picture, and where can we see more of his or her art. It's been over 40 years! Is there an answer to this mystery. The only clue is what was mentioned in the 'zine.

"These door panels were painted for a wealthy patron"

Yeah, but who, who dammit! Who painted them panels, and what happened to him/her.

Any clues out there?

"Life on Mars"





























These strange, and eerily peaceful images just transmitted from mars via our tireless robot rovers. Btw, those guys were supposed to wind down in 90 daze, but here they're still running around happy as Queers at a Boy Scout Jamboree.

What gives?

Well besides that,...no really how do they do it. Besides that these images show a carefree culture of puppies, lads, and teddy bears at peace with the universe, and themselves.

What could this mean, and is it marketable?

Perhaps we should delay strip mining their planet till we can figure a way to make some fast dough from their strange peace, and life thing.

The teddy bears are cute.

"Hot Seat"













This image reminds me of daze long ago when I was a trapped like a bug in the somewhat loving amber of my family. Yeah family sucks. They're a tub of disappointment, and irrational hassles.

But,...

'But you love these impossible people. Not only that, but they'll probably be the only ones that will 'still' be with you at the end.

What with so many losses amongst friends, and family lately this has been on my mind. Well 'that', and...

The hot plastic rear seat of my dad's old Buick.

That's why I posted the above pix. 'Driving back from the beach with a butt full of sand weighed down with my little sister on my lap, squeezed on either side by my big brother, and older cousin while we all sat on the red hot back seat of dad's beloved '58 Buick!

I think this was a torture unique to mid-20th century western industrial cultures.

So yeah that's me up there,..sort'a. I was actually prettier. Although I would never have been allowed to wear dark glasses.

Only movie stars, and drug addicts did that, and my old man wasn't about to let either career befall me.

Well it was a close thing, but no I'm not either.

Drug addict movie star no.

Queer communist pornographer yes.

I'm just trying to make dad proud.














They just don't make'em like this anymore. In Heaven every body drives the 1950's Detroit iron of their dreams!

Amen.

"George Rennie"




















Now I 'was' going to title this post "Hard Boys", but I restrained myself.

Your welcome.

"Tristan Alexander"
































I first saw the works of Tristan Alexander perhaps twenty years ago. It appeared in a self published 'zine. Back in the day that's what some artists folks did with their stuff. The internet as we know it wasn't quite together yet.

Anyway as many of you know I was a "'Zine Bandit" back then too. Putting out all of them nude Angel small books, assorted broadsides, and Queer time bombs. You know, putting one's stuff on book store shelves.

This to get the goodies into the hands of the needy proles without having to deal with the butt holes at the front desk.

"What's this?!" "This isn't on our list"

"Keep it."

"We'd 'never' sell filth like this here!"

"Naked Angel Boys indeed!"

"This is a 'decent' gay book store!!"

This mostly worked.

Anyway this is kinda how I found Tristan's early 'zines. In certain now deservedly vanished book stores. Her stuff, yeah "Her" stuff is seriously Heartful. So follow the link on the right, and check out here blog, and other website.

(Please click on art works for better viewing.)




"Little Artists"











































The above pieces are by a teen blog artist over at "Little Artists", see link. There are several photo art items taken by the artist of himself.

Hey I don't know the guy. So I dunno if it's a real teen art person or a cop or just another older guy with a "self image as kiddie" compulsion.

Doesn't matter.

The work 'is' interesting, and I look forward to more.

"Beauty's Where you Find It!",...Madonna