I wrote this essay for a sociolinguistics class I was taking at SFSU in February 1989. In fact I turned it in five days before I met my husband. At the time I wrote it, I never imagined living long enough to someday recycle it in a class I'd be teaching or in a blog. (What's that?) But here I am, over 30 years later, still alive and kicking. Obviously, a lot has changed since then, including my rather naive spiritual views. I no longer believe everything happens for a purpose. These days, I'm more inclined to believe that shit simply happens, and our job is to try to navigate the chaos as best we can. The universe doesn't take any of us personally. Then we die.

The assignment was simple: Write an essay about an encounter you've had with death.

**************************************************

Positive Thoughts

It is rather hard to write about an encounter I've had with death while lying in the sun on one of my favorite beaches of the Big Sur Coast. It is rather odd to be thinking about death in conjunction with a class I'm taking towards a Master's Degree in English. I suppose it's not so unusual to think about dying while falling asleep late at night. These are all places where I've encountered death, for I encounter my own death every moment that I'm alive.

I first tested positive for the HIV virus three years ago. According to the most recent figures and statistics, I should be dead in four to ten years. So why the hell am I working on Master‘s Degree?

When I first tested positive to the antibodies of the virus which causes AIDS, the common belief was "it doesn‘t mean anything" and "this is not a death sentence." However, in the, three years since that time the statistical curve has continued its upward climb in an exponential manner. Time has made it apparent that now at least 80% of those infected with the virus do eventually go on to develop full-blown cases of AIDS, which ultimately leads to death. It just takes some of us longer than others.

Outside of a very minor case of thrush four months ago ("...even people who aren't HIV positive get this," my doctor told me), I have remained asymptomatic. I feel just fine. I certainly have no constant physical reminders that the aforementioned statistics apply to me. I can't say that I even spend much time in daily thought about these things; yet the specter of death remains a perennial possibility in my life, a potential reality I can't ignore which hides in those gray fuzzy recesses barely below the threshold of consciousness.

The New Age Thinkers tell us that our continued good health is dependent on not only sensible physical care, but effective psychological, emotional and spiritual maintenance as well. Our physical health is a direct manifestation of our emotional well-being. "Dis-ease" is a result of an internal imbalance. It's only a thought, and thoughts can be changed. I must not think bad thoughts. Positive thoughts.

Thinking about death when you're 26

Positive thoughts

Thinking positive thoughts about death when you're 26

About lost fathers   
whom you never thanked For teaching you to walk strong
Like a man, you loved so much.

About your lovers,

In their foreign lands, away from you

You reach too high, and listen for their alibi

Positive thoughts

About hospital beds and needles in my arms

Doctors, drugs, and forced hallucinations

About pain, about fear,

About fuck you

About I love you

About dying when you‘re 36
Positive thoughts

I rattled those words off the top of my head about two years ago as lyrics to a song (for which the music is just as morose, as well as a blatant rip-off of Phillip Glass, but that's another essay...) They pretty much sum up how I feel about the New Age Thinkers. Much of what they say I do believe. I do believe that maintaining a positive holistic approach to life is what keeps us well; but I am too much of a pessimist, or realist as the case may be, to not pay attention to the numbers generated by this epidemic. So I walk a razor's edge, a fine line between an image a future filled with good health and prosperity, and an image of an early death. Lean too far to one side and I could easily become moribund, resigned to what fate surely has in store for me, devoid of any will to continue living. Lean too far to the other side, however, and I could rosily trot through life unconscious of what‘s going on in my body, blind to what fate may have in store for me, blissfully unaware that life ever ends sooner than we expect. Fortunately I've developed an excellent sense of balance and am undaunted by walking on a razor's edge. I am blessed with a warm and caring support system which, along with my spiritual beliefs, allows me to live my life in a state of relative calm and centeredness.

Those who know me well enough to know of my HIV status, but haven't known me long enough to understand my core of acceptance are bewildered by my seeming detachedness from it all. "I'd be freaked out!!!" By what, I always wonder? It's not that I'm resigned to dying of AIDS at the age of 36; it‘s just that I'm not that attached to living in this body. I believe that the soul continues to live even after the body dies, which takes a lot of the pressure off of holding on to this lifetime as our only shot at "getting it right". We chose to incarnate into these particular lives because they held lessons our individual spirits needed to learn. Perhaps my spirit, for whatever reasons, needs to encounter the experience of an early death, or perhaps my parents must undergo the loss of one of their children. The changes occurring in the lives of my loved ones and myself indicate that a rapid acceleration of understanding and growth is already happening. This direct confrontation with my own mortality has given me a true appreciation for each moment of life that I'm granted. I  actually feel privileged when I look around at most other 27-year-old graduate students, locked into such a future-oriented pattern of living, in a self-perceived state of immunity from death. Observing them, I know that having this disease does have its benefits, that it has increased my awareness of what is truly valuable in my life.

I do believe that everything happens for a purpose, and if the "Good Lord decides to call me home" a little earlier than anticipated, well then who the hell am I to question it? We all gotta go sometime, right? If I do die when I'm 36, I won't feel like I've been cheated by life. I feel I've always tried to do right by my sisters and brothers on this planet, and I've been fortunate to already see and do a lot of things that many people never do in a "full" lifetime. On the other hand, I can‘t help wondering how much more I can accomplish in this lifetime if I live to be 90. But I am accepting of whatever comes my way, and believe that whatever happens, happens.

The More Things Change . . .

I wrote this essay in the Fall 1998 semester, when I was taking an "Introduction to Bi, Gay and Lesbian Studies" course at San Francisco State University. This is a more formal term paper that conveys my rather pessimistic assessment of LGBTQ politics as of November 1998. What’s remarkable, of course, is how much change we’ve seen since then. And yet, we still face the very same political enemies, who now try to disguise their bigotry under the banner of religious freedom. And I see that I was already starting to sound like a crabby old man before the end of the last millennium! It's been more than 20 years since I wrote this. Definitely time for an update!

A few notes:

The Stonewall Riots started on the night of Judy Garland's funeral, not on the night of her death as stated in the essay (even though the street youth most responsible for the riots were more likely to be listening to rock and R&B — not Judy Garland.)

I fudged a few of my sources when I tweaked my formatting to bring it up to MLA8 standards as a model for my students. I'm sure some of you will recognize a couple of my named sources! LOL.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The More Things Change . . .

As a gay man living out the tail end of my thirties during the tail end of this millennium, I want to look at gay and lesbian American history from my situated perspective. Born in 1961, I am on the younger fringe of the "Baby-Boomer" generation, which most demographers cut off with people born in 1964. But I've never really culturally identified with that group of people. They were my older cousins. Yet I'm a tad too old to be considered part of so-called "Generation X" for which demographers generally use 1966 as the initial birthyear. I was too young to fully understand or participate in the anti-war and civil rights movements when they were happening in the Sixties, but am too old to understand the "Slacker" mentality either.

I was only eight years old when the Stonewall riots occurred, at least 12 years away from acknowledging I was gay. I was a junior in a Southern California high school when the Briggs Initiative, which would have barred gays and lesbians from teaching, was on the California state ballot. (Working as the announcer that year for the school band during a football game half-time show just after the initiative didn't pass, I made an impromptu, unscripted reference to our band director, who was widely rumored to be gay, announcing over the loudspeaker: "... and Mr. Morgan would like to personally thank each and every one of you for voting NO on Proposition 6!" Needless to say, he never let me in front of the mic again!) When I graduated high school in 1979, disco was in full swing and sexual freedom was at its peak, though I wasn't quite ready to join the party just yet, but when I began taking those initial, tentative steps into the gay community in the early Eighties, the AIDS epidemic hit, and all the gay lib frivolity that I had just begun 2 to get a taste of vanished almost as fast as thousands of young gay men were beginning to. The bleak years of the Reagan/AIDS era coincided w/ my rabble-rousing twenties, so when ACT-UP and Queer Nation emerged as potent political forces to be reckoned with, I was right there in the middle of it acting up, fighting back, being here, queer, and demanding that others get used to it. Those days seem like another lifetime now, as we wrap up the Nineties. As I survey the socio-politcal landscape of the United States for gays and lesbians now, in light of the class readings that focused on the Forties and Fifties, there's part of me that wants to say "We've Come a Long Way, Baby!" Yet in my more pessimistic moods, I find myself thinking, "The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same." 

The WWII era created what was, in many ways, the most liberating experience yet for gays and lesbians up to that point. As queer historian John D'emilio points out, "In releasing large numbers of Americans from their homes and neighborhoods, WWII created a substantially new erotic situation conducive both to the articulation of a homosexual identity and to the more rapid evolution of a gay subculture" (24).

People who had previously self-defined as homosexuals now had greater opportunities to meet others like themselves, while those who had a strong same-sex attraction but had yet to act on it now felt relatively free to enter into homosexual relations. Although homosexuals were still officially barred from the military, WWII created pressures to temporarily suspend the normally harsh punitive measures taken towards them. Officers were given orders to not engage in "witchunting or speculating, to ignore hearsay and to approach the problem with an attitude of fairness and tolerance" (D'emilio, 28). This can be contrasted with the today's "Don't Ask / Don’t Tell" policy, which has only resulted in a disturbing 67% increase in gay-related discharges since its implementation in 1994, according to U.S. Senators John Kerry and Ron Wyden (Straky, 26). Another change set in motion by the War, the spread of the gay bar, also helped to reshape the consciousness 3 of the homosexual, fostering an identity that was both public and collective. Then with the publication of the Kinsey Report in 1948, it seemed as if America was finally free from the constraining morality of its Victorian past and well on its way towards the liberation of human sexuality. 

Alas, such optimism was soon crushed. As D'emilio notes "After fifteen years of depression and war, many Americans wanted little more than to construct a tranquil family environment. Especially among the young, traditional sex roles were reasserted" (38). Gone were the popular images of "Rosie the Riveter;" in her place came Donna Reed and June Cleaver, middle-class Caucasian breeders fully contented by a faithful working husband, two happy children, and a kitchen full of modern appliances.

The reaffirmation of normative gender roles made those who lived outside them appear clearly more deviant. Noted herstorian Lillian Faderman writes, "The heterosexual majority tyrannized. As one writer expressed it in 1951, if homosexuality was condemned by most people in a society, then loyalty to the society demanded that good citizens support condemnation of homosexuality and the laws against it" (140). With the psycho-medical establishment firmly entrenched in the conception of homosexuality as an illness in need of a cure, and the government following the lead of the military and the McCarthy witchunting team, all promoting the irrational fear of homosexuality, it is no wonder that the mass circulation magazines of the day presented homosexuality as the chief cause of American ills in articles with titles such as "New Moral Menace to Our Youth" in which same-sex love was said to lead to "drug addiction, burglary, sadism, and even murder" (Faderman, 146). lt's not at all surprising that in such a hostile climate, whatever bold steps gay and lesbian Americans may have taken during the WWII era were counteracted by larger steps back into the closet. The Fifties and early Sixties were the era of the Sexual Outlaw, and with the exception of some organizing by the Daughters of Bilitis and the Mattachine Society, would remain so until that hot Sunday night at the end of June 4 1969 when Judy Garland died, the night of the Stonewall Riots. 

But how much have things really changed for gay and lesbian Americans since the infamous Stonewall Rebellion? In terms of our civil rights and our acceptance by the heterosexual majority, are we that much better off than the sexual outlaws of the Fifties? Granted, the first half of the Seventies may have been a crescendo of sexual liberation for both homosexuals as well as the heterosexual majority, resulting in a number of state and local civil rights ordinances prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, but by the end of the decade the just-then emerging Religious Right spearheaded a wave of repeals striking down these laws. As author Barry Adam writes, "Emboldened by an increasingly reactionary climate, police and street violence against gay people escalated, television programs appeared resurrecting old stereotypes, and many public leaders shed their veneer of liberalism to attack gay people as immoral sexual predators and threats to the family" (109). 

Indeed, the Religious Right has only continued to grow in power and influence, to the point that it now controls the agenda of the Republican Party, and together, they've launched an unprecedented attack on the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. With the Republican losses in the recent 1998 Congressional elections, the demise of Newt Gingrich, and the Presidential primaries just around the corner, it may be tempting to smugly let down our guard. But these very same elections also resulted in the repeals of four local anti-discrimination policies in the cities of Ogunquit MN, Little Rock AR, Portland OR, and eerily, Ft. Collins CO, a city one hour away from where Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten to death. Also, these elections effectively dashed any hopes gays and lesbians may have had regarding legalized same-sex marriage, as voters in Alaska and Hawaii voted, by a 2 to 1 margin, to amend their state constitutions to define marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman only. San Francisco Chronicle reporter Chuck Krysieniel discusses a sodomy law case which 5 is now going to trial in Texas; two men engaging in consensual sex in the privacy of their own home were intruded upon and arrested by police officers dispatched to the scene by a "Christian" neighbor who falsely reported a burglary in progress (with the intent of having his "avowed homosexual neighbors" caught in the act and thereby forcing a prosecution under the state's sodomy law, which applies only to homosexuals). As if all this wasn't enough, the Supreme Court recently refused to hear a case from Cincinnati OH, thereby letting stand that city's ordinance which permits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and seemingly ignoring their own precedent-setting ruling in Colorado's Amendment Two case. Is this new wave of anti-gay lawmaking any less oppressive than those in the Fifties or in the late Seventies? I think not. 

I think the extreme right-wing is only going to become more viscous in its literal and figurative use of homosexuals as their favorite cash cow in an effort to consolidate their voting base and raise funds from it. Under the guise of compassion, the Religious Right has launched a new anti-gay attack campaign at a time when hate crimes remain pervasive. Several groups -- including the Family Research Council, the Christian Coalition, the Center for Reclaiming America, Concerned Women of America and others -- are promoting the bogus notion that people can be "converted" to heterosexuality as camouflage for a new effort to strip lesbians and gay men of their basic civil rights.

 The ads offer a beguiling elixir of "hope and healing." But this is merely a kinder, gentler bigotry, as these ads are not about religion and healing; they're about politics and intolerance. How much have things really changed in the forty years since author Joan Nestle waited in the bathroom line at the Sea Colony Lesbian Bar in New York City, on guard against "the nets of the righteous people, the ones that reached into our minds, that most threatened our breathing." These ads in 1998, just like those nets in 1958, "carr[y] twisted in their invisible windings the words hate yourself because you are a a freak, hate yourself because you use your tongue, hate yourself because you look butch and femme, hate yourself because you are sexual." (38). 

So this is why, in my more pessimistic moods, I'm inclined to believe that we're really not that much better off these days as gay and lesbian Americans. And I can't say that I have much hope for the future either. I worry about the nonchalant, seemingly apathetic attitudes of young gays today. As I walk through the Castro, all the young queens seem more concerned about their pecs, the latest circuit party, and the proper place to have a latte than they do about the political issues I've mentioned. I get that same feeling from the comments of some of the young (presumably) gay students in our class as well. There's just no sense of urgency anymore. 

Perhaps things will have to get worse before they get better; maybe the Religious Right will have its way, and gays and lesbians will begin getting arrested in massive numbers for making love in their own homes, getting prosecuted under biblical law, and getting stoned in town squares, the biblically-prescribed punishment for our "sin." Maybe a few more upwardly mobile lipstick lesbians need to get fired from their jobs, or a few more "bisexual chic" suburbanites need to be denied housing, or a few more young white fags need to get beaten to death. Maybe then, these apathetic young queers will realize that their complacency was ill-begotten. Maybe then they'll realize that we're not so well off, that the more things change, the more they stay the same. 

WORKS CITED 

Adam, Barry D. The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement. New York, Twayne Publishers, 1995. 

D'Emilio, John. Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998. 

Faderman, Lillian. Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America. New York, Columbia University Press, 1991. 

Krysieniel, Chuck. “Texas Sodomy Law Back in Courts”. The San Francisco Chronicle, p B2. October 4, 1998. 

Nestle, Joan. A Restricted Country. Firebrand Books, 1987. 

Straky, Peter. “Do Ask, Do Tell”. The Advocate, p 23. April 10, 1998. Print.

I Can't Believe I Turned This In (and Got an "A"!)

5/7/2019 Preface:  The assignment was to do first-hand research into one of San Francisco's minority subcultures. I was definitely seeing how far I could push the envelope with my professors at the time, but this just goes to show you that if you are a good enough writer, you can essentially turn in porn and still get an "A" on it! By the way, most of this is fiction!

VARIANT FORMS OF SEXUAL BEHAVIOR

IN SAN FRANCISCO'S

GAY MALE LEATHER COMMUNITY 

or

EVERYTHING YOU'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW

ABOUT KINKY SEX

BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK*

Jeff  Mitchell

Eng. 214 - Multicultural Composition

San Francisco State University

7 May, 1985.

*Not to be read by anyone with a closed mind or weak stomach.

. . . To the denizens of this nightmarish world, there is not and never can be any end to the variation on the sexual theme. The basic reason for this is that sexual indulgence -- and this is true of even normal sexual activity -- must ultimately lead to satiety. However, where the average man and woman find peace and relaxation in repletion, the invert, the pervert, the transvestite, the devotee of sadomasochism, the nymphomaniac and the satyr, the voyeur, the sexually-compulsive photographer, who must take pictures or have his picture taken in the "act," the necrophile, the thrill-seeker who needs scatological trimmings in order to climax his sexual experiences -- these unhappy souls can not stop with satiety. In truth, for these tortured ones, no degradation achieved or foisted upon another is never enough. Once on their treadmill of abnormality, they must perforce go on and on until ultimately they achieve their own kind of sexual Götterdämmerung . . .

from The Velvet Underground, by Michael Leigh

There is an alley in San Francisco called Ringold, south of Market, in the center of the Folsom Street "Leather Belt." After 2:00 AM, it fills up with men leaving bars with names like The Brig, Ambush, The Arena, and Stud. Most of these men spent the last two or three hours in smoky bars, drinking beer I and feeding their senses with images of ultimate stereotypical masculinity. Black leather pants, chaps, vests, jocks, harnesses and restraints are tightly laced over rock-hard, muscular bodies. These men are packed into these bars so tightly that to pass one another, they must press firmly against each others' hot bodies. Although their eyes may never meet, their erect nipples may lightly brush against each other as they pass. Although they may not speak to each other, a hand may reach down to feel the hard cock restrained in a bulging jockstrap. But no verbal communication is ever made at this point. The ritual is only beginning. Now, we are only drinking, to lessen our inhibitions. We are only looking, to get our hormones flowing. At 2:00 AM, the lights come up, and these leather-clad men venture into the dark streets, their pumps primed. The ritual continues on Ringold Alley.

I was drunk, stoned and horny. I'd been there before and I knew the rules. "Cruising" was a game that I played well. After taking a piss on a stack of old tires in a vacant lot, I veered past empty auto repair shops and abandoned warehouses to Ringold. I checked out the night's meat supply. In this game, love is not on my mind. Neither is intimacy, privacy or emotion. I don't want to know any names. My libido is in control. It's on its own, and I let it go.

The alley is full of night crawlers. I position myself against a wall and strike the pose I know will attract. This is my favorite part of the ritual: The Kill. After ten minutes of watching the parade, I spy the man I want. He is tall, dark, and bearded. He is wearing tight leather pants, in which I can see the outline of his hard cock stretching down one leg. He has on a black leather motorcycle jacket, unzipped, so I can see his shirtless torso. His tits are massive, and covered with coarse black hair. Each nipple is pierced with a tiny stud, and a silver chain connects the two, forming a delicate arc between them, begging to be pulled. He is also wearing black leather gloves.

I am in one of those rare moods when I know I am in complete control of a situation. I know I can have this man with just the right look. That unnameable vibe is exuding from me. Our eyes meet, and my face does something that is similar to a smile, but worlds apart from it. He recognizes it and acknowledges it. I turn and leave the sidewalk, going between the side of a building and a parked semi-truck, deeper into the shadows. He follows.

Now in a somewhat secluded area, he approaches me and immediately grabs me through my pants. He begins to rub me forcefully as I reach for the chain suspended from his nipples. I begin to pull it, gently at first, then with a steadily increasing pressure. He begins to hiss. "Easy baby . . . not so rough" he hoarsely whispers in a voice that lets me know he likes it. I find myself getting more excited. Taking his cue, I grab his crotch with one hand l while keeping his titchain taut with the other. As his hands come to my chest, I detect a certain arrogance it his attitude. He twists my nipples severely, causing a jolt of pain/pleasure to shoot up and down my spine. As he continues to twist, I tighten my grip on his balls. Our eyes meet for the first time, and his smug, commanding look is met by my defiant stare. More than the pain in my tits, I am aware of his attempted domination over me through this eye contact. But with his testicles tightly squeezed in my fist, I'm not about to submit. In this manner, never stopping my intense staredown, I make my position quite clear.

Finally, he relents. "I bet I could master you if I got you home," he grunts. I give him my best snotty kid smirk. "You think so, huh?" Suddenly I am aware that this stranger has come to represent every authority figure I have ever been forced to submit to. Through him, I am re-experiencing the feelings of rebellion I had towards my parents, the priests in Catholic school, the pigs that had recently arrested me. Here was this man trying to force his will upon me, and finally, I get to win. The fantasy was in full swing now.

He began to stroke my face with the back of his leather-gloved hand. Too firm to be a caress, it felt more like an assault, and my jaw jutted out defiantly against his hand. He began to force his fingers into my mouth. Teasingly, I let him put his index finger between my lips, before firmly planting it between my teeth.

Now I had him. But at this point, something happened. Suddenly I was outside of myself, looking at the absurdity of the situation and the fantasy was instantly shattered. Perhaps it was because the drugs were wearing off, or maybe I was just bored, but I couldn't maintain my "serious" attitude anymore. I was hopelessly filled with images of mom baking blueberry muffins and Flying Nun reruns. I began to smile at first, then to snicker. I increased the pressure on his finger, and he began to wiggle his hand free, leaving me I with a black leather glove dangling from my teeth. I spit it out onto the asphalt and burst into laughter. I told my mysterious stranger I would see him later and walked away.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

So was my first experience with "leather sex," my initiation into an area of gay sexuality that I previously had little knowledge of. I liked it. It was fun, on a mental level. Obviously, it was a mind trip, but in these days of AIDS, perhaps some mindgames are in order, as opposed to the usual fucking and sucking that happens on Ringold. Not that leather sex could ever become my primary means of sexual expression. I'm too much of a romantic for that. But as an interesting diversion, I think I could really get into that role-playing/fantasy trip. So, with my curiosity peaked, I proceeded on an organized exploration of this way of relating to another man.

I set a few ground rules for myself before undergoing this investigation. Should I decide to use myself as a human guinea pig, I would not allow myself to get "bound up" in a situation I could not get out of, and I would not engage in any unsafe sex practices. It turns out that I never got intimately involved with any of the men I met. My research took the form of interviews -- casual conversations in the homes of and bars frequented by men who enjoy leather sex with other men.

The first question on my mind was, "What is it, exactly, that you do?" The answers I got varied from the humorous to the macabre --  a wide range of sexual experiences, practices and preferences. Hernando, a Latino in his mid-forties with whom I talked for a half hour or so in The Brig told me that he was "basically into being a master." When I asked what he meant by this, he described the basic premise of most homosexual S&M (sadomasochistic) and B&D (bondage/discipline) encounters. One man usually assumes the master, or dominant role, while the other assumes the slave, or passive role. These are not merely labels put on the Fucker and Fuckee, but the roles assumed in complex, and often quite elaborate psycho-sexual experiences. Hernando's trip was to find a man, usually younger, who could get into totally orally "servicing" him without any reciprocation on Hernando's part. Given the package Hernando was packing, his powerhouse body and rugged good looks, I doubt if he has any problem finding his eager young slaves. He said he didn't get into bondage much, and was looking for "hot, no-strings-attached sex in which he was the subject of worship."

Peter, on the other hand, a white guy in his early 30's whom I met in a dirty bookstore, described his sexual fantasy (which he often realizes) as such: "I like to get tied-up and fucked." When I pressed him for details, he told me that although he likes intimacy, romance, and more-or-less normal relations with his men, when it actually comes time for intercourse, he likes it face down, spread-eagle, with his arms and legs tied to the bed. Furthermore, he said nothing gets his blood flowing faster than a good paddling and "dirty talk". When I asked him about AIDS, he said he "has nothing against rubbers."

While on the subject of AIDS, I found that several men, because of their preferred form of sexual pleasure, need not worry much at all about it. Terry, a Chinese man in his mid-twenties, a friend of mine with whom I sing in the Gay Men's Chorus, describes himself as "into rubber." When I asked him to  show me his toys and explain how he plays with them, he pulled out from his treasure chest all sorts of devices designed for sexual play. Of course, I was expecting to see an ever-popular dildo, an artificial penis made of rubber, but Terry's was over two feet long and had a head on each end. He showed me his butt plugs and ben-wa balls (an ancient Chinese toy consisting of five or six 1" diameter rubber balls strung together with about two inches of space between each one). These objects are inserted into the rectum to stimulate the prostate gland and anus. He also showed me some scary-looking medical equipment used for rectal exams. He had several different types of vacuum/suction devices for the penis, and plenty of tit-toys, including small suction cups and alligator clips. Terry was also into body piercing and not only were both of his ears pierced, but so were both of his tits, his nose, his lip, his foreskin, and his perineum.

Another activity associated with the leather crowd is fisting, or arm-anal intercourse. Because of the "fist-fucking" label, it is often misunderstood as a violent, bloody act. But a couple I know (who have been together for nine years in a monogamous relationship) who enjoy fisting described it to me in a way that made it sound almost euphoric. Max and Caesar explained the amount of time and trust that goes into the act, and the "severe pleasure" that it causes. Starting with a lot of hugging and kissing, Max begins by gently kissing, caressing and fingering Caesar's anus. When Caesar is relaxed and comfortable, Max begins to slowly insert two, three, four fingers into Caesar's well-lubricated anus, eventually sliding in his whole hand. A "fist" is never made, nor are "fucking" movements. Instead, it is one long, slow insertion, a sort of birth in reverse. Caesar says that the sensation is extremely intense and greatly tied in with a feeling of bonding and trust that occurs with Max. Max too described a feeling of union he felt with "half his forearm inserted into his lover's body cave." (He really did say that!) Obviously, Max and Peter are not fisting on a casual level, and I regret not getting the perspective of someone who gets fisted by several guys in one night at a sexclub.

Moving even further away from "normal" sexual behavior, I found people who get off on various types of human waste matter. David, a 29 year old man from London wanted me to take him home and piss on him. He said he'd buy the beer. Apparently, he had developed a taste for it and he said that "there is nothing like the feeling of warm piss being sprayed into your hair and all over your body." He did indeed seem genuinely appreciative as I peed on him, and in him, while he lay beating off in his bathtub. Others like to take "rimming" or oral-anal sex one step further, and enjoy ingesting human feces. That seems dreadfully unhealthy to me! A gay witch described ritual sex practices involving the letting of blood, and the use of hot melted candlewax, though I never spoke directly with anyone who claimed to be into genuine pain and/or violence as part of their sexual kink, nor did I meet anyone into extreme forms of humiliation and punishment that some people get off on. Some stones are better left unturned, I suppose.

Perhaps you are now wondering, "Why all this 'weird' sex?" The only answer I can give is the standard, "because it is there." The sexual revolution has allowed people to explore and experiment with alternative ways of relating sexually, and to be quite frank and open about it. But don't make the mistake in thinking that the practices I've described in this paper are anything new, or practiced exclusively by gay men in San Francisco. Men and women and people of all genders and sexual orientations have been engaging in these acts for centuries. However, it has only been in the last twenty years or so that we have had the possibility to be open about it, much less write a college paper about it. This freedom of exploration has led to new discoveries about our sexual selves, and opened up new possibilities for self-discovery in general.

As I wrote earlier, these acts often occur between relative strangers (though not always), and that is perhaps what most people would find "strange" about this interaction. Most people generally agree that whatever goes on between consenting adults in a monogamous relationship is OK. But for many urban gay men, the ability to have casual sex with whoever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want, and however much they want, is part of their very definition of what it means to be "free" and a core attribute of their gay liberation. Indeed, many gay men have grown to relish the "Sexual Outlaw" personna they've adopted in a culture that rejects homosexuals.

The purpose of this paper is not to judge, but to explore, so perhaps the question of "why" should be left to the individual reader. Speaking from a strictly personal standpoint, I occasionally enjoy sexual activity that might be considered "weird" (even by some of my gay brothers) because I like the insight it gives me into my own psyche. As I described in the first part of this paper, it's fun to get in touch with those inner realms of your being. Psychologists stress that not only is fantasy and role-playing normal, it is healthy and good, and gay men living in San Francisco in 1985 can quite easily live out their own fantasies and participate in others' as well. When this exploration is done in a healthy way, with the people involved respecting each other's limits and rights, the resulting experience can be not only sexually exciting, but enlightening as well.

Work Cited

Leigh, Michael. The Velvet Underground. New York: Macfadden, 1963. Print.