This article appeared in the February 1983 issue of Christopher Street on pages 26-33.
AT FIRST, my questions seemed simple enough. What is it like to be a hot and handsome man, to go through life with those erotic advantages which many of us, whether we admit it or not, want sometimes desperately to have? What are the pleasures and the problems? I had my fantasies, of course, and wanted to believe that someone, preferably a man who also appealed to me, had actually realized them. That demand more than any other, I think, explains why my search got nowhere for so long. The men I met and even followed in the streets were all attractive, but never quite right. After months of failure I finally decided to give up my search and as compensation began to write an imaginary interview. I would create a character out of my fantasies, and he would be my ideal man.
Then I received a telephone call from an excellent doctor I knew who was doing research on AIDS. He asked if I would participate in a control group for some experimental tests, and I agreed. A week later I found myself in a typically ugly hospital room with two other volunteers, both gay men in their thirties. The first greeted me cheerfully and continued reading his newspaper. The second smiled, but my eyes were caught by his wonderfully curly blond hair. Instantly, it recalled to my mind a playmate I knew when I was six, and with whom, between games and naps, I had had some of my earliest sexual experiences.
After that I began observing the blond man closely, and the more I looked the more beautiful he became. Finally, when the first man left us to go on an errand, I spoke to him. “What are you reading?” I asked. “It’s a biography of Bette Davis,” he said, holding it up for me to see. “Perfect for hospital rooms,” he added laughing. “And what are you writing?” “An imaginary interview,” I answered and recounted the story of my difficulties. He listened quietly then began telling me about his life as if he had been looking for someone to talk to. “Stop,” I said when he had told me enough. This was not the man I had dreamed of meeting. He was almost totally unlike the character I had created. But he was interesting, he was certainly hot, and one has so many fantasies. “How would you like to do it with me?” I asked. He stared. “I mean the interview.” He began laughing again. “Yes,” he said without the least hesitation, “that too.” I had found my man. I would learn that I had also found someone whose personal experiences and sexual tastes would surprise me.
❡
I want to say right off that you are videotaping this interview, which is the first time I have been put on the spot like that. More accurately, the camera is focused on you, or rather on you and your image in the mirror next to us, so you can in fact look at yourself being looked at by the camera and by me—a very trippy set-up demonstrating, I guess, the erotic blessings of modern technology!
Right! So let’s relax and have fun with it. I wouldn’t be doing it, and I wouldn’t be here talking, if I didn’t feel comfortable with you.
Well, whether I look at you or at your image, I see a handsome man, very handsome and very hot—two qualities which don’t always go together. That’s only my judgment, of course, but I’d be surprised if most people didn’t agree with me. I’d be even more surprised if you didn’t see yourself that way too.
There are good days and bad days, but I would have to answer yes, I do usually see myself that way. It’s something I can’t get away from because other people are always sending me that information. Still, the truth is that for a long time I didn’t believe it or accept it.
Why? Did you once think of yourself as less attractive?
No, but I tried to reject the idea that I was good-looking, that physical beauty was something valuable or important. So when people made a fuss over me when I was young or handed me compliments, I wanted to deal with it very lightly or not pay any attention to it at all.
Did you make a distinction between your physical appearance and the person you were inside?
Yes. I wanted to say to people: Well, now that you’ve decided I’m good-looking, let’s get that out of the way and go on to something important such as where else I might be on a scale from one to ten. I felt I had no power over the way I appeared to other people or any control over the looks I was born with. Also, I wasn’t really looking at myself. Those judgments and messages were coming from someone else’s brain. Of course, I did eventually equate what I saw in the mirror with what they saw, and as I got older I looked around me and began to realize that people who are attractive in any one of many ways are rare, and people who have a whole package of attractiveness including their personalities, their minds and hearts are even more rare. So I was forced to agree with at least part of that evaluation of myself. But there was still a problem because my background was rather puritanical. I had been brought up to believe in hierarchies of value for almost everything except physical beauty, so I was discouraged from feeding off my looks. It was considered a dangerous vanity, an attachment to the self that was not supposed to be indulged in.
Looking at you now it seems obvious that all that has changed.
The change is that I understand and get off on it today. And now I do feed on it because not everybody has it and because I have to make it with what I have. Maybe something of the puritan is still there because I feel I shouldn’t waste what I have, that I should enjoy it and benefit from it and should try to arrange for other people to enjoy it and benefit from it too. I like the fact that they can also get something out of it, that it’s a kind of trade-off.
You mentioned scales and hierarchies. Where would you place yourself on the famous Bo Derek scale of beauty?
Maybe eight or nine. I’d love to say nine.
Have you known any tens in your life?
Sure. There are lots of them. Rare, after all, is only relative.
Did you ever want to look like someone else?
No, but I wouldn’t mind being taller, bigger, hotter, hunkier. And sometimes I think it would be nice to be dark instead of light just to know how that feels.
A few years ago on Fire Island several of us sat around the living room one rainy afternoon and talked about what each thought was his best feature. One man said his hair, another his eyes or his skin, and somebody said his dick. What part of your body do you like most?
I like my whole body. My hair is nice, of course. I can’t help that. But I guess what I really get off on is my torso. It’s something that I’ve worked on, that I’ve made myself. I used to think I was on the small side, a kind of 98-pound weakling, and I still think I’m small although I’m a lot bigger than I was then. I’ve been going to the gym for about ten years, and it shows.
And your weakest feature?
I don’t like my voice very much, especially when I hear it reproduced mechanically. I find it too light. I would like it to be stronger, deeper, more forceful.
That’s funny because I like your voice, especially when you laugh.
That’s good. I like to laugh!
You must realize that your looks give you a certain power over others. Do you feed on that as well?
The first thing I want to be is cool, and I think I am cool, but I know what it’s like to be looked at and approached by men who think they are less attractive than I am, and who demonstrate that in some way. I’ve learned how to play with that and how to use it.
To use that inequality in an erotic way?
Yes, and have them enjoy it too. But I don’t want to have to work for it, to do anything special or extra to turn them on. They have to really want it the way I’ve got it.
But what they want may not be what they think they can get. Beauty can be intimidating, and even if you reach the point of having sex, some men may find it difficult to perform because of their own feelings of inadequacy. Whatever way you use it, you still have to get around some of that inequality, and that can be a tricky business no matter what side of the fence you’re on.
That’s right. I had a friend who was very attractive and very aggressive in pursuing sexual partners, but when we got into bed and tried to fuck, he couldn’t do it. He said he was just too turned on by me, too hot for me. It was a challenge to make it work for him, and it took me a long time to convince him that I was equally into it. And I remember a man I met somewhere on the docks one night. He was a tight little guy, dark and hairy with a beard, and I thought he was hot. But it was obvious he was intimidated by me perhaps because he was small. We eventually went up on his roof and sat across from each other on a blanket and watched the sun come up. We sat there talking face to face, so close we could feel our breath, and just played with each other’s nipples, nothing else, for hours! That was something he created, a different kind of sexual expression with a better balance. I knew why he was doing it, and he knew that I knew. It was a wonderful experience.
What about men who are always unhappy about their looks, or who always dream of having what someone else has, what do you have?
I get into a down trip sometimes when I see a guy who feels that way. I want to tell him, “Get over it. Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Go for it all the same.” There are a lot of men who aren’t all that attractive, but who know how to go for it. I used to live in a highrise on Second Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street, which is, as you know, a very cruisy neighborhood with lots of young street hustlers walking around. There was a little middle-aged man who liked to hang out on my block in the afternoons. He was always well-dressed in a suit and tie and looked quite jolly really. I guess he thought I was a hustler too because at least twice a month he would solicit me in a very respectful and earnest way, but I would always make excuses to put him off. Well, one summer afternoon I went out wearing black shorts, sneakers, and a tanktop, and there he was, dressed in a nice cream-colored suit with his hat pushed back off his forehead like a little ace reporter hot on my story. He ate me up and down with his eyes, and his fingers sort of danced out of the ends of his sleeves. He wanted to touch so bad, and he was very nervous. But he came up to me again, and this time he asked me if he could just look at me for a couple of minutes. So I said to myself, why not? We went over to my building, got into one of the elevators, and I pushed thirty-two, the top floor. He immediately took out his cock and started beating it, looking at me and breathing very hard. I grabbed the bottom of my tanktop and slowly peeled it up over my chest and shoulders and left it hanging around my neck. He was standing with his back to the door, and I could see the floor numbers lighting above him. I was afraid the elevator would stop suddenly and let someone else in, but he was so excited and determined to get the most out of it that I kept on stripping. I pulled my shorts down a bit, he bent forward to get a better look, and then, just like that, he came as we were passing the twenty-eighth floor. That was it. He grinned all the way back down, and he was very grateful. We walked out looking like pictures of innocence.
Is that what you meant before when you said that letting other people enjoy what you have could be a kind of trade-off?
Yes, it was a sexual trade-off. I know it was very simple and very quick, but that was the only way it could really work for us given who we both were at that time and in that place. We did what we could, and he was so happy with it all, and so was I. After that I never rode that elevator without thinking about it.
How do you deal with men you don’t want at all?
I just keep that attitude coming! That is the word we use, isn’t it? But I wonder sometimes what it really means. If I’m being appraised by someone in the street and don’t want to deal with it, I attempt to ignore it, yet just the fact that I know it’s going on inevitably comes through in my behavior. They would call it attitude. At other times in a bar people will ignore me, yet I know damn well that they’ve seen me and that they like what they see, but for some reason they’re afraid of showing it. That’s called attitude too. I know that a lot of it has to do with self-protection or just the need to avoid complications, but I also know that there’s no sure way of reading all the messages. My translation of someone’s gestures may have nothing to do with what’s really going on in his head, and vice-versa. Attitude is a convenient word. We use it to explain things we don’t always understand. We hide behind it.
Are you also saying that some of those men who liked you could have had you?
Yes, I’m easy! Cool but easy.
And you like the whole game of looking and being looked at?
Sometimes I don’t even want to go down to the street and face it. But there are also times when I do want to be looked at, when I go out with that specifically in mind. Still, I don’t really know how dependent on that I’ve become because although I’ve been rejected lots of times, I’ve never been in a situation where I couldn’t get attention.
Have you thought about what it’s going to be like when you get older?
Yes, I do think about that. Right now I just hope I live long enough to have that experience. I realize that it can be a difficult adjustment and difficult to make into something positive, but that’s what I hope I’ll be able to do.
We talked about men being intimidated by you. Have there also been times when you’ve been intimidated by someone else’s looks?
It hasn’t happened too often, but then, it’s been a long time since I’ve had a sexual partner alone without my lover being there too. But there are still men who I think are so much better than me by whatever criterion, that if I did have the opportunity to have sex with them, I might find myself in that situation. In fact, the first time I saw my lover I thought he was the hottest man I had ever seen. He had a very mature and rugged handsomeness, which is not at all the way I look. I was living in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and he was on vacation. I watched him every day for two weeks, but he always seemed to be interested in another direction. Finally, I got up the courage to say hello, and he liked it. We spent the last five days of his vacation together, and it was magic. We seemed to have dreams that the other needed to fill the holes in his life, and right from the start I knew that I would have to live up to who he was and be at least his equal, if our relationship was going to continue to grow. He is the reason behind what I’ve tried to do with myself. It goes beyond being hot or handsome. It’s a whole state of mind.
Has your relationship grown?
Yes, and it has involved trying to work on different areas of our sexuality for a variety of reasons, one being that the passion between two people doesn’t remain constant, and you have to find ways to maintain it. Another reason is that we want to experiment and know other limits. We’re both relatively new at certain things, and we’re both growing. For me especially it has meant learning about myself and growing up.
What have you learned exactly? How difficult has that process been for you?
It’s been very difficult at times, and it actually began long before I met my lover. For ten years I had a career in the Foreign Service. I was also married and had a family. I still do, although I’ve been separated from my wife for seven years, and she now has custody of the two boys. It amazes me sometimes when I think that she was really the first adult person I had sex with. We used to sing in the church choir together. I’ve come a long way!
Was the separation caused by your homosexuality?
No, because right after that I got into a relationship with a Black woman in British Guyana, and we went to Canada and lived there for three years. She was a wonderful woman, kind, attractive, vivacious, everything a man could want. But it was while I was living with her that I began to experiment with men and began to understand that part of myself. The breakup was very difficult for both of us. I was twenty-nine, and she was thirty. This was only back in 1978. She had a nervous breakdown and went into the hospital. My family accused me of causing it, and she did too. My father told me that my being gay was just not acceptable. He said that whenever I had that urge I should go to a baseball game instead!
Did you try to do anything about it?
I went to New York, and while I was there I did go to a couple of meetings with Eli Siegal and the Aesthetic Realists. I read their book, The H Factor, or whatever it’s called, but I knew they didn’t have it right. Even with my limited experience I knew that those men who got up at meetings and said, “I’m cured,” were all just playing. They were where I was before. So I left them, and a year later I helped put together a discussion group for gay fathers. I think I was the first officer of a gay fathers organization in the country. That support made me decide to tell my children who I was. By then the court had already taken them away, even though I had provided for them and cared for them. I told them as much as they could absorb and gave them time to digest it. In fact, I told them before I told my wife. I wanted them to know it from me and to get it right. Well, now we all get along very well together, my wife, my lover, and my sons. But I still feel that they were stolen from me. It was the most intense pain I’ve ever known, and it still affects me.
How do you explain this crisis and what now seems to be your total commitment to gay life and gay sex?
I don’t think I ever really understood sex, really felt it in my hand until I entered the gay world. I wanted to know its depths and its intensity, and I discovered that if you go out looking for it, you can find it in all its forms. So I did it all and in all the roles and positions—top, bottom, whatever. What fascinated me then and still does now is that every man in the game is different and has a different reason for being there and does it in a different way and to a different degree. There are so many things to learn. It’s really endless!
How do you compare it to straight sex?
There is no comparison. For me gay sex is an epitome, a summit. It’s a combination of the best things you could have. I like the look of it, the feel of it, the way it smells. It’s absolutely basic, an animal experience. That’s what we are before anything else—animals. I see myself that way. And there are animals who exist for one reason, and animals who exist for other reasons. I am an animal made for sex with other men.
Yes, I can see that too, but sitting here looking at you I’ve also been thinking of the photos of your two sons in the bedroom. The older one is particularly beautiful—blond curly hair, clear blue eyes, lucid skin. He’s a golden child, a fairytale prince, the kind of little boy one would love to give birth to. Imagine that you must have looked like that when you were ten or eleven.
I did look like that. And women especially loved me, all of them, old ladies and little girls, pretty ones and plain ones. I had to work hard to befriend the boys because the girls were just there all the time. I think there were boys who didn’t like me for that reason even though they didn’t know me. I wanted to tell them that I was no different, that I was just another little boy.
Do you think that women see a different kind of beauty in you or in any man than men do?
The straight women I’ve talked to about male beauty seem to like slender men who are not overly developed or have anything in excess. They also pay more attention to things like hair and teeth. When I came into the gay community, I found that they liked something a little more exaggerated, more muscles, a tighter fit. They were more specific and demanding and seemed to want a more artistic beauty. Women don’t get off on the statue of David the way men do. But there are some tastes they all share.
Like the taste for good hips and asses?
Yes.
Do they all like yours?
Well, I won a contest with it at the Spike, a hot buns contest. The day came and I just decided I was going. I wore a black leather cowboy outfit with nice faded and torn jeans, and I won. For the rest of the night I was the most popular guy in the Spike.
I bet you were! Do you get off more on your ass than on your dick?
My dick more. I get off on my ass when I see pictures of it, but I don’t see it that much because I haven’t arranged the mirrors yet so that I can see all sides of myself at the same time.
Well, that was the first thing that struck me when I walked into this apartment. There are mirrors everywhere!
I didn’t put them there, but I love them. I’ve always had at least one big mirror, and I’ve spent a lot of time in front of it.
Suppose someone called you a narcissist, would you agree?
I don’t buy that as something negative. I like my body, and I like to look at it. That’s not only true of me, after all. I think it’s a beautiful thing to do. It’s natural and it’s hot.
Judging by the pictures of you in this apartment, you must also like to be photographed.
I took some of those photographs myself. I want to study the male body in all its different aspects and to understand what male beauty is. I guess I’m a classicist because I think that the physical form of the human body is really a form of perfection. I use myself most often because I’m the handiest person around, but I also think there’s something strange and fascinating about capturing one’s own image, or for that matter about capturing anyone’s image in a photo or a painting. After all, that’s about all that’s left when you die. With myself it’s also incestuous in a way. It’s self-adoration and self-scrutiny, catching the surfaces and also trying to go underneath them, penetrating the inside. Actually, if I had my way, we’d expose our bodies all the time.
You would rather walk around naked?
Of course! John Lennon said he wished there would be no countries. Well, I wish there would be no clothes. I think that if we were all naked, we wouldn’t be so preoccupied with scales or with measuring each other’s bodies and dicks. I also think there would be fewer troubles in our lives. That’s why I seek out nudist beaches wherever I go, and I’ve been to a lot of places, especially during those years when I worked in the Foreign Service. But even when I’m in the apartment, I like to take off all my clothes. Sometimes it’s the first thing I do when I walk in. That’s how I feel that I’m really at home.
Is it also another way to feel like an animal again and to see your animal body?
Yes.
Would you like to take your clothes off right now?
Absolutely! That’s what I’ve been getting at. You should take your clothes off too.
Let’s play a game for a while—the artist in the studio. I’ll be the artist properly clothed, and you can be the naked model.
It’s strange that you should divide the roles like that because I sometimes call myself an artist, not just in photography or video, but at sex. I’ve begun to pursue it almost as an occupation, and I’m glad I have the physical attributes to be able to do that. I don’t have a big dick, of course, but that’s fine.
I would hardly call it small! It’s the dick I imagined you would have. It goes with the rest of you.
For me the dick is as much mental as physical. And you’re right, it does not mean much without the rest of the body, the face, the look in the eyes. I think a man is hot when he knows how to project the sexuality of his body and the fact that he’s conscious of it, and also when he’s open to what other people project. A few years ago I was in the Mineshaft where there were all kinds of activities going on, so much so that I felt I wasn’t being open enough, as if there was some kind of barrier preventing me from doing anything with anybody. I walked around for a while and then leaned up against a wall and started jerking off. That made me feel more comfortable, more at home. Then this man came and stood beside me. He told me how hot he thought my dick was, and how he’d like to see some pretty asses backed up on it, and asked if I would be into it. I said yes, not really expecting it would happen, but that’s exactly what he did. He hustled up a whole line of guys, and one by one brought them up, turned them around, and backed them onto my cock. It was incredible, and it all came from him, all that sexual energy. He made them hot, and he made me look hot to them and to myself. And there must have been at least ten more guys standing around us watching and jerking off.
Is that kind of sexual projection and consciousness part of what you mean by the art of sex?
Yes, but it’s more than that. I mean that sex is not just something you do, but a special practice, a study which involves appreciation, development, and even promotion. I want to work at it, put energy into it. And more than anything else, I want to create through it, create pleasure in other people, beauty, heat. In some eastern civilizations the art of sex was practiced by people who were greatly honored for serving that purpose. I want to be someone who does that.
Do you think most men know the art of sex as you’re defining it?
No, I know they don’t. For some it’s just a way of getting off, and some are as insensitive to it as they are to other experiences.
Do you have a specialty, something you do particularly well and that you would like to share with others?
I don’t think there are hierarchies in sex, things that are good, better, best to do. But what I enjoy doing most is jerking off, and I think I’m very good at it. After all, it’s probably the longest standing sexual activity we have experienced and have done more often than any other. It’s also a wonderful form of relaxation and a way to make your mind work not just on sexual fantasies but on all kinds of mental images. I know that a lot of people find it taboo and don’t even want to admit to it much less do it publicly. But I’ve been fortunate to find men who like to do it together. My lover and I have been involved with a club in the city that meets once a week. It is something we were seeking for a long time and for a number of reasons, health being one of them. But now I’m also putting together my own group, and the men in it understand that a lot more is involved than just jerking off to come. There’s touching, smelling, looking, hearing, all the uses of the imagination. It’s not only the dick that’s important but the movement of the arm, the way the muscles work, where they go and what they do, the way the sensations develop and how they concentrate themselves. We create an environment, a theatre with costumes, music, props, videotapes, photos, talk, whatever seems hot or interesting. Sometimes we throw packages of condoms around, and people play with them, draw them on, roll them down, grease them up. I would also like to develop some bondage games that would include touching, looking, wrapping and unwrapping, but without anyone actually inserting himself into a person.
Let me understand you. There is never any oral or anal penetration?
No. In fact, there are no exchanges of secretions of any kind. My lover and I are concerned about our health and the health of our whole community, as are the other men in our group. We spend several hours a week working as volunteers for the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. We feel that this is definitely not the time to take risks. But we’re not doing this just because we believe we have to but also because we want to. We enjoy it, and we want to bring it out of the closet and promote it. There’s been a lot of talk recently about developing alternate lifestyles, and many men are looking for new outlets for their sexual energy. Well, here’s one that’s wonderful and an exciting way of understanding yourself better, of letting yourself go and sharing the pleasure and good feeling with others. I thought it would be fantastic, for example, to have a huge circle jerk to benefit AIDS research. Can you imagine a place like The Saint filled with men all doing it together!
Well, I know that small groups have already been formed in San Francisco and elsewhere for men who actually have AIDS, but I don’t think everyone is quite ready for what you’re proposing. Even though men have been doing it in groups for centuries, and although mutual masturbation is still probably the most common form of homosexual activity, most men continue to consider it a very private act. Unless, of course, you’re saying that by making this usually private act more public you’re going to add a new erotic twist to it and create a previously unknown form of intimacy.
Yes. I’m saying that we have to rediscover it and reinvent it in a different context. I’m also saying that the old ways of doing things can be replaced by new ways that are just as hot. That’s what I’m here to teach people, why I’m here at this interview.
We’re also talking about penetration into each other of a different kind, and that is at least one of the reasons why I’m doing this interview with you.
I know that. So let’s get more comfortable. It’s time for you to take off your clothes too.
All right, I’ll play your game now. But I don’t know if I’ll be totally comfortable with it. I haven’t been in quite this kind of situation since I was a kid.
Right. That’s how it usually starts, and that’s when it began for me. I had completely forgotten it until a couple of years ago, then it all came back to me, every detail. I was about four or five years old. It was summer. We were all in the old army tent in our backyard, myself, my two brothers, and my older brother’s best friend who was about ten or eleven. His name was Billy, and he was a big redheaded kid. He laid down on the cot and without saying anything took it out. He let me look at it for a while and then put my hand on it and instructed me on how to jerk him off. I can still feel the sensation of his big warm dick. It was sort of a triangular shape, and I couldn’t get my hand around it. My younger brother worked on my older brother, and I worked on Billy. It was fine, the smell of him and the feeling of that warm dick that just got bigger and bigger. It was very quiet and hot in there. We didn’t really think about it. They taught us how to do it, and we loved it.
Triangular shaped?
Yes. Very thick and so broad on the underside it seemed almost flat.
Later, when I was eight, I remember walking home from Sunday school with a boy who lived next door, and who was a few years older. He used to tell me stories about things he did with a neighbor girl in the garage. They were fantasies because he didn’t even know what she was like. He told me she had a dick and how he would play with it. I didn’t know, either. I just assumed girls had cocks. He said that he grabbed it and squeezed it and pulled at it real hard. I would get an erection just listening to him. He grew up to be very hot, I don’t know about gay, but hot for sure. Then when I was eleven or twelve, I had a cousin who was a year or so older. We would go into the woods in the summer and take off our clothes and run around. We loved the feeling of the air and sun on our bodies. One day while we were lying on the grass, he taught me how to jerk off. He was dark and had a big meaty dick. Maybe that’s when my taste for darker men began. I’m really not interested in anyone lighter than I am. Well, from then on I think I must have jerked off every day except when I was ill or something. And for many years while I was married my wife was really not very interested in sex. It was the last thing on her mind. IShe was a beautiful, Raphael-type woman, and I never got enough. So jerking off was my main sexual activity.
Do you think that the pleasure of jerking off is somehow more focused, less subject to distractions?
Yes, but at the same time it’s not focused at all because it happens all over your body. A good cum comes from everywhere, from every sense you have. I often play on the fact that it takes me a long time to come. I work on it for days if I can. I can hold off for a long time.
You’re a man who has obviously perfected this thing to a degree of refinement that probably doesn’t exist in many places on this earth. But the expert I see in you can be intimidating too, especially if he demands a certain level of performance. Fortunately, I also see in you now the little boy in the tent or the kid in the woods.
I do sometimes think of myself as a little boy.
Do you think that’s another key to gay beauty, that there’s more of the little boy which shows itself, or at least that we pick up on more in the men we see?
Probably, but it’s in straight men too. I think I began to understand my father when I realized that he was just another little boy, that he had made mistakes and had paid for them and suffered for them.
For a long time the Freudians enjoyed saying that homosexuality is an arrested stage of development, a kind of refusal to come to grips with adult life, and that consequently we’re all still back in the tent.
That doesn’t bother me. Whatever it is, I love it. But I was probably influenced for a while by that whole idea of development and stages. I did get married and have children, and I did see them as steps I was taking in a progression that was expected of me. It went nowhere. So if we’re still in the tent, fine, except that now the games are more sophisticated. But children’s games or adult games, they’re still games. Everybody plays them. We just happen to be very good players.
Well, I’ve been observing you for a long time, sitting, walking around the apartment, adjusting the camera, playing with your dick, and I thought you might like to know how I’ve connected erotically with your body.
Go ahead.
Here again there are different ways of reading messages, and the ones you’re sending most consciously are not necessarily those which interest me most. For example, your torso is very nice, but what really catches me are the nipples. I like their color and shape and the way they’re set so neatly in place. And I’m tempted by the little space above your lip between the two halves of your moustache. If I could, and if things were different, I’d like to take a long time exploring it. I’m also intrigued by your pubic hair and how it tapers off on your abdomen. I see two distinct triangles pointing in opposite directions, darker blond below, lighter above, as if they were reflections of each other. But I have to say—and here the message is very clear—that you have a truly beautiful ass, perfectly rounded, smooth, with just the slightest down to give it a sheen.
In the summer when I get tanned, the hair gets whiter, which is another reason why I like to sunbathe nude. It drives them crazy, and I’d be crazy if I didn’t know that! Did you ever see that T-shirt: “I may not be perfect, but parts of me are excellent?”
What is the greatest compliment you ever received on your body?
I got it not too long ago. It was from a guy who said he jerked off to pictures of me in a magazine twelve times. But an even greater compliment is that my lover should be in love with me.
You admire him a great deal.
Yes.
He’s big and dark?
Yes, and a wonderful man.
Can we look at some of those pictures, or at least your favorite photo of yourself?
I’d like to show you this one, where I’m standing naked. It’s my favorite for a number of reasons. One of them is the angle of the shot. If a viewer were looking at me from that angle, he would have to be down on the ground in front of me, which is a trip in itself. My body looks particularly good from that angle. The musculature is hard, the pecs look big, and the arms look good. And the moustache, of course, the hair. You don’t know how big the dick is. It’s foreshortened. You only see part of the end of it. You know that it’s maybe only semi-erect. The hand is holding it, pointing it down to whoever is down there.
Do you see it as an image of power?
Yes, I do. Also, my lover took this photo, which is another reason why it’s my favorite. He likes to look at me from that angle, and I like to look at him from down there too.
Your photo reminds me of a kind of hallucination I once had while dancing on drugs. I kept thinking of the famous statue of the Colossus of Rhodes, which was one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. He straddled the entrance to the harbor, and the ships sailed between his legs. And for a moment that night, perhaps because of the incredible strength I sensed in my own legs, I imagined I had become that statue. I felt myself growing bigger and taller as if I were going to burst out of my clothes and tower above all those people. And I thought that that was how the gods must have experienced their power, that having the world looking up like that at your dick and balls must have been one of the basic ways of receiving worship.
It is.
But at the next moment I began to cry because as a god I suddenly saw the world, myself and everyone else, from another perspective. I saw that we were only weak mortals, passing creatures, animals if you like, entertaining impossible and probably mad dreams of power and beauty. I felt a very painful compassion, and I thought that in that feeling I recognized the other face of god.
I know what you’re saying. I haven’t forgotten that. I’m a father, after all, and I know what death is, too.
But here we have an image of you as a god.
Here I am a god. We’re all gods at some time.
Yes, but there are differences. You quoted a T-shirt before. Let me quote another that I saw recently on a rather good-looking young man in a bar in Boston. It said: “It’s just as lonely at the top, but you eat better.”
That’s true.
So if everyone is a god, some still eat better than others. And you sitting here in front of me all naked and golden are a well-fed god.
I guess I am. I’m one of the fortunate ones. ❡
George Stambolian
Michael Denneny
