4 May 2005

Beef Stock

I've been seeing this guy lately. He's kinda cute, with a sort of harmless puppy-dog scruffiness to him, letting his facial hair getty prickly and letting his dirty-blond locks go a little wild. A subtle smile and totally dreamy eyes.

I first ran into him on a men-for-men dating web site. What's cool is that we seem to have a fair amount in common: he's a bit of a techie, who not only has a broadband internet connection, but he's already running his home phone on it. I'm smitten.

The bad news is that he doesn't even know I exist.

That's because I've been seeing him... in online adverts. The first one is for the gay dating site I mentioned, where he serves as bait for other lonely homos. "Next week he'll be someone else's boyfriend," the caption warns browsers such as me. The second one is for a voice-over-internet-protocol service that advertises heavily on Slashdot.org. No come-on... just eye candy.

Of course there's a chance he's unaware of either use of his likeness. He's clearly a professional model who's posed for a stock-image photographer, who then sold the rights through an agency to use pretty-boy's face in their ads. For all I know, he's straight as a jacket and married, and uses a Hotmail or Yahoo address as his only e-mail account which he logs into at the library. He's just whoring himself out, using his looks to make some cash, attracting customers he has no feelings whatsoever for. Not that there's anything ethically wrong with that, of course. It's just another form of prostitution.

On the other hand, if he's really the person he's presented to be, he's quite welcome to drop me a line.

Legal Kiddie Porn

You hear a lot of talk about kiddie porn on the internet. It seems that every legislator on the planet is trying to eradicate it. It's the one category of material that no one on the internet permits; read the terms of service for web hosting services, and if they give specific examples of material they won't permit, child pornography and pirated copyrighted material are the two items always forbidden... but since nearly every music lover in the post-industrial world downloads tunez, it's apparent that only one of those is really universally condemned: kiddie porn.

Except that it's just as obviously not universally condemned. A review of my site logs (as I was just doing) shows that.

Think about it: the reason kiddie porn is such a hot item on law-makers' and law-enforcers' agendas is that it's popular. This isn't just a handful of nutcases with a rare psychosis. Child pornography is something that lots of people out there are looking for. By a wide margin, the single most-hit page on this blog is one in which I prominently mentioned "kiddie porn" (in the context of snuff films, hate crimes, and other targets of recent legislation). That phrase is also the most-common search-engine key showing up in my referrer logs, despite the fact that I've written lots more about a lot of different topics. If I'm getting hundreds of instances of that phrase every month, imagine what Google is getting. And the fact that people are risking prosecution to sell it shows that it's popular enough to be rather profitable.

That raises the question of what this says about our society. The obvious response is that we're heading to hell in a handbasket, we've abandoned morality, etc. I don't buy that.

The modern obession with pornography in general isn't anything new. The only thing that the inventions of photography, motion pictures, video recorders, and the internet, have done over the past century or so, is to make porn easier to produce and distribute. People have always been attracted to images of people in the nude and especially having sex. Any student of art history can tell you that. I see no reason to assume that interest in seeing young people like that is new, either. All you have to do is look at the millennia-old traditions of adult men taking girls in their early teens as wives to confirm that pedophilia - or at least ephebophilia (the attraction to pubescents and adolescents) - has been around for a very long time. Evidently it's a part of human nature.

So what this contemporary hullaballoo over kiddie porn really says about our society is that our society is in conflict with itself. One of the most popular search subjects is also one of the most banned subjects.

I'm not trying to argue that just because it's popular, that makes it right. I understand that spouse-beating and pre-emptive invasions both have long and popular histories, but I'm definitely not advocating either of them. But by the same token, the fact that something's illegal doesn't necessarily make it pernicious, as demonstrated by the prohibition of alcohol in the U.S. in the 1920s, or laws against consensual homosexual activity. You have to look at it objectively, on its own.

The one thing that nearly everyone does agree on regarding child pornography is that abusing children to produce it is wrong. Of course there's some considerable difference opinion about what exactly constitutes "abuse", but there are also some pretty clear "wrong" areas and "right" areas. For example, if a child is physically harmed, that's obviously "wrong". If there are no actual children involved, that seems rather harmless.

After all, we let movie studios use special effects to simulate murder, dangerous stunts, animal abuse, and other things that would be horrible to allow in real life. If a video game showing a virtual soldier blasting the living fuck out of other virtual people isn't a threat to society (the only thing we question is whether children should have access to them), why is a movie showing a virtual 15-year-old masturbating? (I don't mind saying that I personally find the former a lot more disturbing.)

Out of curiosity, I did some research about this. It may surprise you (it surprised me) that the U.S. Supreme Court has said pretty much the same thing, at least as it applies to the question of "obscenity". They ruled that material that was produced without any actual minors - such as illustrations from imagination, or virtual porn - is not "child pornography" and therefore isn't automatically "obscene". (It can still be ruled obscene if it lacks artistic merit and so forth, just like any other sexually explicit material.) Which would be a relief to John Singer Sargent, who painted the accompanying image. On the other hand, other countries have taken the opposite position, and created legal concepts such as an "indecent pseudophotograph of a child", which are outlawed on the grounds that such things would promote child abuse.

If Prohibition, the so-called war on drugs, and the utter failure of efforts to get rid of sex in popular entertainment have shown us anything, it's that where there's an interest in something, you can't just legislate it away. If - as with alcohol, drugs, and porn - there are potentials for abuse and for people to get hurt, then the most reasonable course of action is to let them be... with regulation to limit their harmfulness. So why not let the NAMBLA guys draw their naughty pictures, let dirty old men make virtual-school-girl movies, and so forth... and put the hurt of the law on anyone who abuses actual boys or girls?

I'm not saying, "If you can't beat them, give up". I'm saying, "If you can't beat them... maybe you're playing the wrong game."

Gay Sex in Grand Rapids

OK, I said last week that I wasn't up for pursuing any kind of relationship, and I'd just stick to the exquisite pleasures that can be had in bed alone. But since then I've reconsidered... somewhat.

I'm definitely not in the market for a husband or even a boyfriend. But as I think about it, why not take a little effort at making contact with someone for something more casual? The habits of doing "the usual" with "the regulars" of my small social circle are OK, but I could stand to get out of the house and do some different things with some different people. Whether that's a new friend or a new fuck buddy or whatever... why not? And if something more develops... I'll deal with that when/if it happens.

I am definitely not a cruise-the-crowd type, so I've been browsing a few online match-making sites: Match.com, Glimpse.com, and Yahoo Personals. Thanks to their recent advertising, eHarmony popped into my head, but since I couldn't decide whether "Man seeking Woman" or "Woman seeking Man" was the best description for me, I gave up on that constipated den of paternalism pretty quickly.

Yahoo's software seems a bit crippled, but maybe that's because I'm not using Microsoft software. Glimpse seems to work pretty well, but I've had to be a little careful using that one: on my first visit I recognised a guy I spent a few years trying to duck some time ago... not a bad person, but he's completely incompatible and completely oblivious of that fact. So no picture of me there. Match.com is my favorite, since their software not only digs up people who match your search criteria, but also lets you see whose criteria you match, and shows you profiles that are mutually compatible with yours.

Of course one can easly see the time-honored personal-ad strategy of men of age x seeking men of age 18 thru x-5. But there are exceptions, and I see a fair amount of x-15 thru x+10. On the other hand, to be quite honest, for what I'm looking for, I really would prefer someone in the 18-25 range, even though I'm well beyond that myself. If I were looking for a "soulmate" or something of that sort, I'd prefer someone who remembers the same presidents and pop songs I do, but... I'm not. {smile}

But of course, I know that guys that age aren't generally aching to spend time with guys my age. And I'm OK with that. So I'll take my chances, see what happens, and... just see what develops.

An Expired Condom

I was just cleaning out the "stuff" drawer in the bathroom, and came across something rather unsettling. An unused condom. With an expiration date of "02/96". Considering that condoms have a pretty good shelf life (at least compared to milk), it's a safe bet that this condom is a full decade old.

I suppose it should be a little unsettling that I have stuff that old hiding in my bathroom drawer, but what's most bothersome about this is what it symbolizes: several years of not using condoms. Not because I've been unsafe, or because I've been in a monogamous relationship. It's because I haven't been having sex.

It hasn't been a whole decade, I hasten to point out. In the days of this particular rubber's youth, I was getting laid on a rather frequent basis, and although condom-requiring activities weren't involved every time, I never had a problem with them expiring before I got a chance to use them. This one just happened to get put away where I wouldn't find it.

But it has been... a while. It was eight years ago that my boyfriend Andy had a bleeding aneurysm in his brain, and I haven't been in a relationship since then. I did fool around a little after losing Andy... we'd had an open relationship previously, so it's not like I felt like it was cheating or being disloyal or anything of that sort. My then-new neighbor was a bit of a sex hound, and I became an occasional drinking and fucking buddy of his. That was kind of nice: no commitments or entanglements, but more comfortable and meaningful than doing it with a stranger.

But I was never very good at pursuing sex, and I reached the age where it no longer really pursued me, so it just... stopped happening. The neighbor moved away, and it's probably been about five years since I last had sex with anyone.

I miss it.

I still have a fairly active sex life, and I enjoy it quite thoroughly. You hear about morose masturbators, joylessly jacking themselves out of boredom... that's not me. I sometimes wonder if I'm bothering the folks in the adjoining apartments. But even as rich as my imagination is, I do miss the experience of doing it with someone else. The challenge. The relaxation. The surprises. The power. The intimacy. The exhiliration. The surrender. The satisfaction of a ___job well done.

I've thought about getting back into the whole dating thing again, and I did flirt with it (so to speak) a while after I lost Andy. But even with the additional options for making contacts available in the internet age, it's just not something I'm eager to dive into. Anonymous one-night stands can be fun, but I don't have the charm or the cash to pull that off. (Readers in - or visiting - west Michigan are invited to proposition me, however.) To be honest, I don't think I could manage a "real" relationship at this point; I'm too busy and too set in my ways to make room in my life for a boyfriend. To say nothing of finding someone who'd actually A) get along with me, and B) really interest me.

The usual advice in such situations is to consider one's friends as possible more-than-friends, but I seem to have found myself surrounded (at least offline) with nothing but heterosexuals. And I'm pretty much the only homo any of them knows. The obvious solution to that problem would be to get involved (as I was, once upon a time) in gay organizations or social groups or the bars or whatever, but remember what I said about being busy and set in my ways? Not likely to happen.

So it looks like I'm going to keep on missing sex. At least I have a fresh tube of lube.

Birth

my rating:

Birth was a disappointment. It could have been a really great film, but ended up leaving me mostly un-engaged. It's about a widow who - 10 years after the death of her husband, and following the announcement of her new engagement - is approached by a 10-year-old boy who claims to be her late husband. OK, stranger things have happened in movies, but this one just isn't believable... not in the sense that "it couldn't happen", but "it wouldn't happen like this". The characters' reactions are all dictated by the plot, rather than making sense from them as characters.

There was a tempest in a teapot over the fact that Nicole Kidman (the widow) and Cameron Bright (the boy) have a scene in which they share a bathtub. "Child pornography!" some shrieked. "Disgusting!" some spat. "Child abuse!" some wailed. It was none of that. At the risk of spoiling it, here's what happens: Kidman is taking a bath (no nipples or other naughty bits shown or hinted at). Bright walks in, gets undressed (the last full-body shot reveals his undies), and sits at the other end of the tub. Kidman demands an explanation of what he's doing. He replies (rather blandly), "Looking at my wife." End scene. And for the record, both actors wore bathing suits for filming. There's also a scene in which the two kiss on the street. A little more intimate than any kiss I've ever shared with, say, my mom, but it was no more intense than when one of my sisters' friends showed me how to kiss, at about the same age. Furthermore, it was acting; the kid certainly wouldn't traumatized by it.

The kid's lack of passion is symptomatic about why the film didn't really work. I'm not blaming the actor; he was following the script and direction. The widow is appropriately skeptical of the boy's claim to be her husband, but she seems willing to entertain the notion despite the fact that he doesn't behave like the husband would have acted. No, "I'm so happy to see you again, punkin!" and nibbling on her ear, just "Don't marry whatshisname," sitting in the tub with her. And the tests of his authenticity all focus on his knowledge of private facts only the late Sean would know, not the obvious sniff test of "Does he seem like Sean?"

It seems like the movie was intended to leave the audience wondering along with the widow whether the boy is who he claims to be, or what. But in the course of providing the necessary foreshadowing of the answer, it provides the answer rather obviously. It doesn't take too much brain power to connect the dots from A to B to C... to D. There was a little bit of surprise about one aspect of the final proof, but the basis question of "is he or isn't he?" was answered even before he said "I am."

End of a Youth Group

This evening I went to a somewhat awkward event. It had nothing to do with the holidays, and it wasn't particularly joyous. It was the final meeting of the local lesbian/gay/bi/trans/whatever youth group.

The group was founded nearly 20 years ago, and I got involved shortly thereafter. I was on the upper end of the group's target age, but I was very newly out. I guess the facilitator felt I was a good contributor to discussions, because Mike asked me to stick around as an assistant facilitator when I got "too old". Later he had to drop out of doing the weekly meetings, and became just the administrator for the group, mostly applying for grant money when we needed it. I was the main facilitator (with help for a while from a supportive straight woman), took over the phone line, and became the local gay community's de facto youth advocate.

Running the group meetings was simultaneously a huge source of satisfaction and a huge burden. I'd usually walk away from them feeling good, but the preparation - both in terms of planning, and psyching myself up for it - was stressful. I'm not an outgoing person, and I'm awkward in conversation. I'm the kind of person who tries hard not to be the center of attention. But facilitating a meeting of this kind requires doing exactly that, whether it's engaging the interest of disaffected teens and young twenties in the evening's activity or discussion, or maintaining a semblance of order when their hyperactive attention deficit kicks in. I made a much better sidekick than leader.

The youth group meant a lot to me. During those days I was one of the youngest people involved in the "grown up" gay activist community here in town, and I'd also "grown up" in the youth group. I was doing a lot in those days, but "gay youth" was my thing. Not in the predatory ephebophilic sexual sense (I was perhaps overly cautious about that), but as a focus for my community activities. Outside of the youth group itself, I was involved in a statewide group working for LBGT youth services, I tried launching a post-teen group, etc. I really wanted to be good at it, to make it work. It was too important... to the young people, and to me.

But it was more than I could handle. I'd been burning the candle at several ends, and also trying to have a relationship and do a full-time-plus job, and I had to quit. I quit a lot of stuff around that time. The relationship went south (both figuratively and literally). I got fired from the job. And I pretty much dropped off the face of the earth, as far as most people could tell.

Fortunately, the original facilitator found a woman who was well suited to take over, and she did. And putting both him and me to shame, Kim stuck with it for over 11 years. But she's only human as well, and she decided recently that she had to let it go. As she talked about it tonight, I could understand all too well: It's a source of strength, but a source of stress.

Apparently neither she nor Mike could find someone to take it from here. The local gay community center (which was established after the youth group got started) is finally planning to do a program for youth, now that no one else in town will be doing it, which is encouraging. I'd hate for there to be nothing for them.

At lot has changed since the mid-1980s. "The love that dare not speak its name" has become "the love that won't shut up". There are other resources and the world in general offers more hope and inspiration for gay youth. Likewise, the group in recent years has been a bit different from when it started. Instead of most participants being closeted, most today are already out... to their families, to friends, etc. The bad news is that the group has been dealing a lot more lately with substance abuse and similar problems. My own hypothesis to explain that is that in "my" day, the folks with those problems weren't even making it to the group, and the comparatively well-adjusted youth (like me?) might not be bothering with it today.

The meeting tonight was officially a postscript for the group, the last regular meeting of which was last week. This week was for good-byes, thank-yous, and best-of-lucks. In keeping with my short tenure as facilitator, I kept my remarks to the folks there brief, thanking Mike who'd started it and Kim who'd picked it up and run with it, and telling the two dozen young women and men there to see to it that the gay community center took it from here, since they (the kids) are the experts who know how to make it work. To a large degree, they always have been; I know I was no expert.

It was nice to be invited to this terminus, to have a chance to see what had become of the group I'd once been largely in charge of. It's hard to see it end, though. When I quit, I took comfort knowing that it wasn't the end. I'd been a successful caretaker, and it would continue beyond me. This feels a bit like my legacy has been cut off.

But in talking with my colleagues this evening, reminiscing about the old days and a few of the people who'd been in the group back then, I'm reminded that some of my legacy is still out there. Last week I ran into one of the members from my "assistant facilitator" period, and he seemed to be doing well... some 15 years older than the last time I'd seen him. Not that I can take credit for his well-being in particular, but I do know (because they told me or showed me) that I made a difference in some people's lives, and that difference is still out there.

It also made a big difference in my life. It was through my involvement with the group that I met Andy, another youth advocate, who became my boyfriend. Although that relationship ended sadly (the low point of the multi-year emotional meltdown that included my quitting as facilitator), I cherish the memory of it. It made me a better person. In many ways I'm a fucked up mess of a human being. But I'd be even more fucked up if I hadn't been a member of that youth group, and if I hadn't stretched myself to co/facilitate it for a few years.

My thanks to everyone involved.

Circumcision Psychosis

Men have a certain attachment to their penises. And not just in the physical sense. I've always known that, and it certainly makes sense.

Many men (particularly gay men) - but certainly not all of them - have fairly strong feelings about whether they prefer a penis to be circumcised or not. Personally, I like them either way, but it's no surprise - and I don't question - that other people might feel otherwise.

What surprises me is the fact that, in some quarters, the question of circumcision takes on the importance of, say, the abortion debate. On one side you have those who describe it as mutlitation and child abuse. On the other you have those who characterise the anti-circumcision movement as a threat to public health and perhaps American society itself.

I'm circumcised. Most boys born in the United States are. Most boys born elsewhere are not, unless their families are Jews, Muslims, or other religious sects that consider it an expression of their faith. My former long-time boyfriend Andy, is not. I never had any problem with the fact that he wasn't and I was, nor did he. If you pressed me for a position on the topic, I'd say it's unnecessary but mostly harmless. The reasons most Americans have it done to their boys (because it was done to Dad, and because their pediatrician says it's routine) are pretty flimsy. Most of the rest of the world seems to be doing OK without it. But I'm not traumatised by it, and neither are most American males.

But some are. And some are traumatised by it not being done. It's even become one of those intractible "controversial" topics on Wikipedia (like Israel or abortion) where there's seemingly no hope of reaching a neutral, factual article about it. I made a brief attempt to fix up the article in question, but walked away pretty quickly when I saw what nutcases were lined up on either side. Not everybody with an opinion shows pathological hysteria about it, but there's enough of them to make it a phenomenon, not just isolated cases.

Why are these guys so worked up about it? I don't get it.

Then it dawned on me that maybe there's a Freudian explanation. It seems that both sides are wrapped up in some kind of obsessive fixation on the condition of their penises. The pro-circumcision folks are concerned about hygiene and the greater potential for uncleanliness with a foreskin. The anti-circumcision folks are hung up on the concept of "genital integrity" and the notion that they've lost part of themselves. Both sides, it seems, suffer from the classic anal-retentive fixation of cleanliness and possessiveness.

Where it becomes so incredibly screwed up, is the fact that they're channeling this anal fixation... on their phalluses. Note: This has nothing to do with homosexuality; it's about Freud's theory that we go through developmental stages, from oral to anal to phallic. They've got their stages cross-linked! I'm no expert in developmental psych, but that's gotta be hard on a person's mental adjustment.

I don't know. Maybe I'm as full of it as Freud and Jung and their contemporaries were about oh so much of psychology. But the thought occurred to me, and I owed it to the world (or at least myself) to record it.