porno

Now I guess I should preface this entry with a confession: I watch porn, gay porn. You know the stuff where men (mostly naked) touch, suck and insert their parts into other men? I mention this because before I go about moralising I should come clean. Pornography isn't exactly the most shining example of human expression there is, nor is admitting that I watch it my finest moment, but hey it's there and it serves its purpose (cough). I am not here to condemn it nor shout it down wholesale in some religious fervour, no but I do feel as gay men we are far too quick to justify questionable sexual activity with the broad brush stroke of liberalism. I am not talking here about pedophilia or beastiality videos (things that are truely indefensible) but something that at best receives little if any scrutiny and at worst general unquestioning acceptance within the gay male population. What I am talking about here is videos portraying the seduction of straight men.

There are many porn companies producing movies that portray supposed straight men performing sexual acts on themselves or on other men. In of itself this doesn't sound so bad. The gay porn industry abounds in rumours of "gay for pay" actors who are simply in it for the money and I have no problem with that, so much as it is their bodies and their lives. However there are videos that go beyond just a straight-identifying man having sex with other men. It is all in how it is presented. The website BrokeStraightBoys, for example, advertises that their guys are "...hot, they're straight but most of all these boys are broke. Real straight guys doing anything for money!" Again with the self incrimination. I have seen some of these videos or at least bits of them and and the men are made to look uncomfortable; this is part of the attraction it seems. This is not an isolated company, there are plenty of them, Seducing Straight Boys (an Australian company), god there is even a website that claims to hypnotise straight men into performing sexual acts.

This is not just about being sexually attracted to straight guys regardless of whether the men are acting or not. This is about showing men who due to circumstance are forced into performing sexual acts with themselves or others for our enjoyment, and might I say against their own nature (so-stated). BrokeStraightBoys state on their website that "Rather then lose their apartment, girlfriend, etc. they do sexual acts with other guys for some quick cash." Now I think "forced" is the imperative word here and any of us who get off on this sort of thing should do some serious introspection into their own darkened souls as to what exactly is exciting them.

Coming from a community that has fought so long and hard for social acceptance of our own sexual nature, fighting for the right to live as we are and not feel compelled to live like they do by getting married to the opposite sex and do acts we find contrary to our nature, we should not then want to see others put in the same situation, especially for our own sexual gratification. It is exploitation and it is ugly.

three days in Wilsons Prom

I can feel my muscles rebuilding themselves, the warmth emanating from my shoulders, my thighs and calves, as their fibres reform and the bruises yellow and my blisters heal. I can barely move my right middle finger, inflammed and sore from having steadied my five kilo camping tent as it swung back and forth, negotiating an outcroping overlooking the deep blue bass strait on what was effectively a forty kay hike through the Wilsons Prom wilderness.

I've learnt some valuable lessons over the past few days. Firstly, while it is nice to have a three person tent to stretch out in, a roomy ante-chamber to hang my sweat soaked jeans up in, that towered above the other hikers' pitiful one man squats, having to carry it however is another thing entirely. The words "think before you pack" ran through my head like a mantra to the rhythm of my footfalls.

A large black raven sat perched on a branch overhanging the track, watching and waiting for me to pass. My housemate, John was a good five minutes ahead of me. His waist-strap on his backpack was about to snap, forcing all the weight onto his shoulders but I wouldn't find this out for another fifteen minutes when I came upon him on the side of the track cursing the makers but for now I was being watched by the pale blue eyes of the raven. Everytime I would pass it, waiting a moment or two, it would fly on ahead of me to wait again. It kept this up for maybe a kilometre or so. I'm not dead yet you bastard! I was nearly out of water.

Here in lies my second lesson. You know you can walk for eight hours and drink two litres of water and still not need to urinate. Before setting out on our over-night hike I was only intending to take a 600ml bottle of mt franklin until John made me buy two 1.25 litre bottles at the Tidal River general store and I drank most of that on the first day. John had to give me one of his bottles on the morning of the second making us both run dry. With a little over eight kilometres to go, our canteens empty, we were brought to drinking from a small stream.

We sat there by the running water cursing our bags, our aching bodies and my poor planning as we enjoyed another smoke. I looked up at John and said "You know, for all my hurt there has not been one point where I've said to myself, I don't want to be here. This place is so fucking beautiful." John looked up at me and smiled.

As we climbed away from our oasis, exhausted but no longer thirsty we were past, going the other way, by a couple dayhiking. The woman was dressed in a long black summer dress that fluttered about her in the wind, an oaks day hat and Jackie-O sunglasses. On her immaculately manicured and pastel painted toenailed feet were bright pink thongs.

Fucking hell! How depressing.

It's been almost a month since we broke up, since I was dumped, drunk and in his house barely able to grasp what he was telling me, but then we weren't really together either and so like the war on meaning being perpetrated by one un-named superpower, orwellian goodspeak like, I wasn't really being dumped was I? I can tell, he said, that what you want is a boyfriend and I'm not really looking for that right now, my face blank with soused incomprehension. I actually had to message him the next day for clarification, saying "I don't have a clear recollection of the events last night but my vague understanding is that you've ended whatever was going on, yes?"

These three weeks now hang in some relational null space where I was denied the nomenclature, the right to definition, that my brain so needs to file and forget. He was my un-boyfriend in our un-relationship and that's about as good as I can manage. Just another un-event in my life that I can't own.

But words like "define" and "own" are bad, right? Who do I think I am John Hanning Speke? It was only three weeks after all and in my own defence I avoided words like "boyfriend" and "relationship" like they were tabu and they were. I gave him the distance I thought he wanted, and accommodated as best as I could as I explored this new world, keeping my developing taxonomy to myself (as best as I could).

It's true enough though, he had a point, I really did want a boyfriend. I had this fantasy, one that he actually suggested, where we were on a road trip heading west, sleeping by the beach in my new tent, cooking imaginatively prepared 2-minute noodles while a small pup yapped at our feet; excited just to be anywhere. But when I think about this un-dream, the dog is blurred, like a television prime-time news criminal, shifting brown and grey and then black. It stopped there, unfinished.

It is possible, I warrant that I was fixated more on the idea of being in a relationship, of wanting a boyfriend, with all these dreams and fantasies, than I was really interested in him and while I can see how the imposition of ideas upon reality is fraught with problems, the pressure it places on something new and fragile, someone was actually interested in me beyond the first night fuck and I was caught in the novelty of it all, the hope it offered, wanting to see where things lead. So for three weeks I stood confused, unsure what was really going on and then finally, three weeks later, it ended and now I am left no less confused. All I know is the un-relationship is gone and I am single again: solidly, verifiably single.