(Note: there will soon be a digression into the world of left-handed umliterature for gay men, with some raunchy material in it. I’ll issue a warning when it looms, so you can leave if it’s likely to affront you.)
As butch as it gets, at least in world of buzzcuts. Below, today’s silver fox job by Kim Darnell. Since it’s my head, it’s a kinder, gentler buzzcut, inviting you to run your hands over its fine silky hair — please do, it will feel great to you, and to me too — not an aggressive leatherman-syle buzzcut.
(#1) No studded leather harness for me, but instead a rainbow-colored FAGGOT t-shirt, with which I disarmingly claim the status of Big Fag for myself; it goes along with those nice eyes
No, it is not snowing here: that’s sunlight reflecting off the plant leaves on my patio. Just a trick of the light.
Otherwise, not much new in the photo, except for a book in the bookcase right behind me: William E. Jones’s 2016 True Homosexual Experiences: Boyd McDonald and Straight to Hell, the story of pornographer McDonald and his eccentric zine. And this is where the sexually modest should exit.
From Wikipedia:
S.T.H. (an acronym for Straight to Hell), also known as The Manhattan Review of Unnatural Acts [with the subtitle The New York Review of Cocksucking], is an American gay pornography and erotic non-fiction zine founded by Boyd McDonald. It publishes autobiographical stories of male-male sexual encounters, as submitted by the magazine’s readership. First published in the early 1970s, S.T.H. became an influential publication in New York City’s arts and culture spheres, and counted notable literary figures such as William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Gore Vidal among its readership.
… The precise date of S.T.H.‘s founding is unknown; the earliest known issue is #2, dated 1973. Publication is irregular, and early issues were not always dated nor copyrighted. The magazine was founded by Boyd McDonald, who edited the magazine from the early seventies through the mid-eighties. McDonald created S.T.H. as a magazine of reader-submitted male-male sex stories following his experience creating Skinheads, a zine about foreskin fetishism.
… S.T.H. consists primarily of readers’ submissions of stories of their sexual experiences. Submissions are edited only for length, with spelling and grammar errors intentionally left uncorrected; McDonald stated that “I find men who don’t use punctuation are more fun in bed than those who do.” McDonald encouraged contributors to read Ernest Hemingway and William S. Burroughs, and emulate their direct and unadorned writing style. He would often correspond with contributors, asking them detailed questions about their sexual habits and printing their answers.
There’s a series of anthologies from S.T.H., published by Gay Sunshine Press, beginning with #1 (1980) Meat: How Men Look, Act, Walk, Talk, Dress, Undress, Taste & Smell – True Homosexual Experiences from Straight To Hell. Then Flesh, Sex, Cum, Juice, Smut, Wads, Cream, Filth, Skin, Raunch, Lewd, and, most recently, Scum:
(#2)
December 5, 2021 at 5:42 pm |
I think I managed to score most of the STH mags as they came out. They made fun reading; and I even considered contributing to it. But I never did, although a good friend of mine did.
December 5, 2021 at 7:21 pm |
I would go to the Oscar Wilde Bookshop on Christopher St. and always look to see if a new one was out. They were brilliant, amazing. I wish I had kept them though.
My best story is that somehow or another I showed one or two to this housemate of my ex in London. He was a butch guy with a girlfriend and everything, a bit of a thug in fact. He had to sign on to police station daily while awaiting trial for something or other. I think it was a burglary but it wasn’t clear. In any case, he got totally excited by STH, quite openly. First time I met someone who was a man who has sex with men, and quite open about it, but who didn’t identify as gay or bi. Quite hot too actually.
December 6, 2021 at 12:43 am |
One of the issues of STH includes a letter from me, and another volume has a nude photo of my college roommate. (Our brushes with fame!)
December 6, 2021 at 5:11 am |
Wonderful! As I recall (my copies went away in the Great Dispersal of my books) the letters were (satisfactorily) crude in content but generally well written, as I assume yours was.