We have always been here

By Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell From  Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love ca 1900.

Cowboy

I wonder why cowboys are so sexy.  Is it because they are seen as manly?  And is that because of internalised homophobia, that we somehow see 'manly' men as more 'valid' than us homos?  Is it because they are all men together in nature, forced into a rough male companionship because they need each other out there in the bush? 

When I was a boy I used to read westerns avidly, and I still remember, all these years later, a story which reached a soaring romantic pitch for me.  A man and his friend are escaping from a town having been in a gunfight.  The man is bleeding from a gunshot wound, and can only ride slowly.  His friend refuses to leave him to his fate, but rides by his watching over him, waiting for the inevitable.  For a lonely, bullied, queenie boy at school this summed up my hope for a friend in my life, long before I had any idea of my sexuality.  Someone who loved me despite everything, someone strong and manly who was my friend, despite me being effeminate and not at all manly, someone who would stick by me through thick and thin. 

I've moved on from that, I think.  I hope.  After all, friends come in many guises.  But there is still a romantic frisson when I see a real cowboy and remember.

Postcard

Only to hold your hand in mine, 

makes me forget my tears

Hope on my pathway seems to shine. 

The sad world appears. 

When in your eyes love light I see, 

all the sad world is true-telling me

that you are to me

all that I am to you. 

NE 

Dunlop, Mo, Aug 25, 1911

We have always been here, we gay-shaded people.  There has always been love between men, often never consummated.  Love makes the sad world bearable.  We should celebrate it and be glad it exists.

ElvenSword, chapter 8

Art by Kirasanta 

I've just uploaded another chapter, here.

Enjoy.

Bud sex

When Did Touch Between Male Friends Become Taboo? (Source)

The original of this article was in Spanish, but I have attempted to translate it.

What is "bud sex"?  Heterosexual men having sex with each other for pleasure.

A somewhat unconventional way to enjoy sex.

Each person experiences their sexuality how they want to and in the most pleasurable form possible.  With the sexual revolution, this terrain is in every case much broader where there is more space for experimentation.

In that framework, for some time now the term "bud sex" has begun to be used.  This expression refers to sex between male friends.  It is used for those heterosexual men who have intimate relations with another male with the sole objective of getting pleasure.

These men are not bisexual, nor homosexual, nor are they even confused in their sexual orientation: they are simply heterosexual guys who look to get pleasure without emotional or sentimental ties with people of the same sex.

The men taking part in "bud sex" can be married and even have children.  The practice is seen as obtaining sexual relief, caused sometimes by circumstances, for example in prisons, where there is no opportunity to share intimate moments with a woman.

Since these are heterosexual males, pre-agreed rules are set up before coitus so that there is no confusion.  Among those: no kissing, caresses, or any other manifestation of affection, nor to meet up with the other person (too) frequently.

I've been banging on about this for years, just like I've been talking about toxic masculinity: when being gay ceases to carry any stigma, then lots of men will have sex with other men.  "Bud sex" is at the extreme end of impersonal sex.  It's just fucking.

But it is equally possible to have what the French call une amitié amoureuse, a loving friendship, where you are not in love but nevertheless are fond of your sparring partner.  After all, how often does one fall in love?  Yet one may be attracted to someone, and what makes them attractive isn't just their bodies but their smile, their sense of fun, their integrity--those thousand things that draw us to other people, whether sexually or not.  In a world where male-to-male sex is no more noteworthy than male-to-female sex, it will be very likely that there will be buddies who do find each other in some sense attractive, and act on that perception.  And I try and show that in my writing.

Footy

Some time ago I started switching my website from http://www.nick-thiwerspoon.com/ to https://nickthiwerspoon.wordpress.com/

Lots of work, because each file has to be re-uploaded and each link redone.  And then I got depressed and unwell, so I didn't transfer the files at anything like the rate I'd meant to.  The good news is that I have started moving files across again.  I took the chance to re-edit the story and tighten it up, and I feel it's better for that.

Anyway, I've transferred 13 chapters out of 35, so there's still plenty more work,

You can read it here.

My kink

I'm a peculiar kind of gay man.  My kink is .... I'm more interested in the affection than the sex.  For lots of men that's a no-no.  For them the sex is paramount.  For me, it's the love/affection/friendship/connection which is the most important.  Don't get me wrong--I love making love.  But the feelings I have for my partner will always be more important than the physical pleasure.

Ah well.  Always an outsider!

Lament

This is the 1000th post to this blog.  The first post was in March 2006, almost exactly 6 years ago.

I started writing gay-shaded stories because I wanted to change the world (and maybe make some money too!)  I had such a miserable experience when I found out about myself that I wanted to  try and help other youngsters going through the same thing.  I thought I was the only queer in the world.  It was very lonely.  By writing stories which treated gay-shadedness as ordinary and normal, I thought I could help.  But the gay world had moved on from when I was going through my own hell.  In many places, being gay has gone from being worse than murder or rape or treason to being pretty much accepted.  One by one, countries have accepted gay marriage and gay adoption.  Yeah, you still can't kiss another bloke in public except in a few small endroits, but in 30 short years so much else has changed.  Hugely.  And for the better.






But I had a secondary goal in my writing too.  I wanted to show that sex is just part of a spectrum of love, running from the casual pick-up through to profound emotional and sexual intimacy.  It seemed to me that too many gay men were stuck at the lust end of the spectrum and not enough along the middle (friends with benefits) or the end (deep love).  And the more I looked at it, the more it became obvious that straight men needed to be liberated too.  The proscriptions of the church and the psychiatrists which so poisoned our lives, also stopped straight men from expressing their love for each other.  I don't for one minute think that all straight men are closet homos.  I think profound love can be felt without needing to fuck.  But I think fear of being seen as "gay" stopped and stops many straight men from loving other men even in the way what is misleadingly described as "platonic", let alone sexually.  That hasn't changed much in 30 years.  And perhaps it never will.  I am just tilting at windmills.


It became clear to me too that bisexuals were being shabbily treated by both sides of the great divide.  Gays maintained that bi's were hypocrites at worst and "in transition" to homo happiness at best.  Straights just thought bi's were really gays, if they thought at all.  I used to think along these lines too.  And I don't any more. I think bisexuality is programmed into our genes, because it helped bind otherwise competitive men within a hunter-gatherer group together, and that even with guys who in almost every respect might be labelled "straight", it is possible that they can grow to love another man, without necessarily finding men other than their best friend/lover desirable.  And this reluctance to acknowledge our innate bisexuality isn't going to change,  essentially because you run into the whole concept of fidelity.  Wives do not on the whole welcome their husband's male lover.  So bisexual guys become (to outside observers) het, just as I, married for more than 32 years, appear to others.  Other sub groups (Jews, Blacks, Muslims) have obvious membership.  But I, and other bi-ish blokes like me, don't know who out there is bi.  We're all "passing" as het.  And that isn't going to change either.  And it's ... lonely.

I feel weary and worn.  My prime motivation for writing gay-shaded stories has become irrelevant.  Gayness is accepted more and more by young ppl.  The trogs are mostly old and bitter. ( Funny, that.  A bit like me, really.  Just on different ice floes.)  And trying to make gay and straight men understand that love is what matters, and that sex is secondary, is a tedious struggle.  It's become clear to me that my conception of male friendship doesn't have much in common with the way other men see friendship.  I am like Jude Fawley, seeing Christminster's towers rising over the hill, living in hope but ultimately coming to realise that those golden towers are forever unreachable.

I am a natural optimist, and someone who innately likes other people.  But I don't believe I will change the world, and I've gone off gay and straight men.  It's made it hard for me to write.  Will I keep on writing?  I don't know.  I used to love writing, when I thought it was important.  Now, it's obvious to me that I am irrelevant, and also inept and useless.

A dreary post.  You will be rightly put off by my melancholy and depression.  Alas, sometimes I get sick of Mr Jolly, and lock him away in a cupboard.

ElvenSword, chapter 4 (Choices)

A very substantially rewritten chapter 4, uploaded to my website.

“Fluin.” He stopped for a moment, while he made his final calculations, before they both stepped through the door of fate from which there can be no return. To his surprise, he could feel the subtle, nerve-tingling buzz of future-change. He could sense the many possible futures lying in limbo, ready for one to align and crystallize out of the void, turning from possibility to probability to truth. The threads in the Tapestry woven by the Weavers were being moved and cut, and new threads inserted. Why? It could only be because what he was about to do was going to change the future drastically. This alarmed him. He tried to feel gently along the paths, to sense what was right. Yet he didn't know what to do, what the future held. The forces and the uncertainties were too strong. He must trust his instincts and his heart. May the Great Spirit guide me and help me!

Apollo -- via Karen'sWhimsy

Love seeketh not itself to please ...

... nor for itself hath any care

Footy, the story

Stefan Martin and Sam Fisher

OK, I know, it's been months.  I've been saying and saying that I was going to upload Footy, my novel about a straight footy player whose new best friend is a gay bloke.

Anyway (heaves huge sigh) I've started.  Here are the first 4 chapters:

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4

The other chapters will be loaded over the next few weeks.

[The usual disclaimer applies:  just 'cos these guys appear in the blog doesn't mean they're gay or bi]

Lawnmower Boy

I've uploaded Lawnmower Boy  to my website.

I called the fifth name in the garden services section of the knock-and-drop newspapers. Sean’s Super Services. It kinda appealed. The guy’s voice was... warm, deep. Gave me the shivers. Gave me a hard on, if you must know. But, hell, I know that most guys are straight. We all think they’re gay or bi, and they’re not. But what the fuck, I needed my lawns cut before the house disappeared into a jungle.

You can read it here.

Women's wicked thoughts

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald and its stablemate The Age about why straight women like male to male (m/m or m2m) films, videos and stories.  Interesting.  As you all know, more than half my readership is female. 

I've written before about The Power of Slash

Women like gay male erotica.  Especially if it's romantic.

[Picture from The Age]

Books I'm working on.

This charming graphic from hyperboleandahalf

I've written, half written and 10% written these novels:

Footy  -- about a straight footy player who meets a bloke who becomes his best friend.  Only the bloke he meets and grows to love is gay.
ElvenSword -- the great city of Cappor and its empire is decaying.  The task of those who would save it:  to find Vordath, the Bearer of the Sword of Fanuiloth, out of the millions who make up the empire's population.
DemonThrong  -- the sequel to Elvensword. 
I get no Kick from Champagne -- a laddish troubled boy takes on the armies of evil and becomes a man, in the process finding the love of his life.
Majorca Flats  --- a novel in progress, about the inhabitants of a Victorian terrace in Melbourne.
The Torc  -- a partly written novel set in the ElvenSword world
AngelFire  -- the partly written sequel to DemonThrong
Gift of Dragons  -- SF.  Why did the Urdani's civilization collapse?  Who or what is the living God?  And who's been surreptitiously buying up tactical nuclear weapons on Earth, and why?  About 1/3 written.
The Music of Love  -- a het romance with a gay character, partly written.
Zing went the Strings of my Heart  -- a secret group within Melbourne's police department is fighting a serial killer, whose victims are drawn from the city's non-human population.
The Musketeers --  four guys share a house.  One of them is gay, the other straight.  Well, straight-ish.
The Café Budapest -- a story about a café in a small country town, its owner and the people who come to visit.
Parringo Road -- a man goes back to the country town he grew up in and the boy, now man, he was in love with.
Heaven is a Pair of Wooden Wings -- a stranger turns up at Jake Fribourg's farm, a stranger with a deadly secret.   And Jake loses his heart and finds out too late he shouldn't have.

Plus there's my lady's thriller, Black and Deep Desires.


I'll be posting a chapter from one, or two, or even three of these every week.  I've been too busy to do this over the last couple of weeks, but I hope to start again soon.  I also intend to submit some of them for publication.  Watch this space!

Oh, and my short story set in Cappor, The Wolf, has been accepted for the August issue of Wilde Oats.

Love, Sex and Friendship

I often talk about how these three things intersect.  Then I found this very clever Venn diagram on The Slab.  (Dunno where he got it from!)

It sums it up, doesn't it?   We can't always get into the 'perfect match' centre of the diagram, but maybe any one of the overlapping segments might work quite well.  Second-best isn't always a bad thing.  And it's certainly much better than nothing.

By the way, I think they're talking about romantic love rather than the broader meanings of love when they label one circle "love".

Majorca Flats -- 110

“Is it the writing itself or what you write?”

“What I write. I would love to write something more … in line with my life. Actually, I have. But though it sells, it certainly won't make me rich. No chance.”

“What did you write?”

Graeme mentioned the names of a couple of gay novels.

“You wrote those?” Jason was astounded. “They're fantastic!”

“Thank you! A fan!” Graeme's eyes were sparkling with amusement.

“I loved them. When Jonathan dives off the cliff … Wow!” Jason thought for several seconds. “But hang on a minute! The novels were set in America. How did you manage that? They sound so authentic.”

“Pete was American. From the mid-west. A horrid town full of homophobes and Bible-bashers. He was much happier here, in Melbourne. We were happy, so happy together.” Graeme looked away. Then looked back, with a forced smile.

“Life has a way of taking away the people and the things you love. But I always tell myself, we had ten years of bliss, of a happiness some people only dream about. I mean, every day in Africa, or the slums of India or Mexico or Rio de Janeiro, some poor bugger wakes up hungry and dies. Every day. And I have all this. So much!”

Cape Town shanties

First Majorca Flats post      Previous MF post (#109)       Next MF post(#111)

Majorca Flats Episodes 1 to 10           Majorca Flats Episodes 61 to 70
Majorca Flats Episodes 11 to 20         Majorca Flats Episodes 71 to 80
Majorca Flats Episodes 21 to 30         Majorca Flats Episodes 81 to 90
Majorca Flats Episodes 31 to 40         Majorca Flats Episodes 91 to 100
Majorca Flats Episodes 41 to 50        
Majorca Flats Episodes 51 to 60   

Majorca Flats -- 106

Embarrassed, Jason cast around for a change of subject. He'd wondered how Graeme managed to do no apparent work, yet could afford a house like this in an expensive inner-city suburb.

“This is a lovely house,”he said, attacking the subject obliquely.

“Courtesy of Amantha Masterton.”

“Who?” Jason immediately regretted his rudeness. “I mean, um, I've never heard of her. Sorry.”

Graeme's eyes were sparkling with amusement.

Jason felt a little foolish.

“If you promise not to laugh ...”

“I promise,” said Jason, beginning to smile too.

“Hang on a tick. I'll be back in a moment.” Graeme got up and went inside. When he returned he was carrying a few books.

They were large paperbacks with glossy embossed covers and the titles in eighteenth century italic script. The author's name — in large gilt letters — was Amantha Masterton.

Jason looked as Graeme, enlightenment dawning.

“Oh!” he said.

“I'll just get the food, said Graeme, leaving Jason to inspect the books on his own, politely giving him time to make up his own mind and his own reactions in private.

First Majorca Flats post      Previous MF post (#105)      Next MF post(#107)



Majorca Flats Episodes 1 to 10           Majorca Flats Episodes 61 to 70
Majorca Flats Episodes 11 to 20         Majorca Flats Episodes 71 to 80
Majorca Flats Episodes 21 to 30         Majorca Flats Episodes 81 to 90
Majorca Flats Episodes 31 to 40         Majorca Flats Episodes 91 to 100
Majorca Flats Episodes 41 to 50        
Majorca Flats Episodes 51 to 60        

Sven de Rennes

It was fantasy which first drew me into writing.  I love fantasy and I wanted to read about worlds where people like me were normal.  Not enough authors were writing stories like that, so I decided to write my own.  The result was ElvenSword and its sequels.

Sven de Rennes is an artist from Rennes in France; you can read his blog here.  This image is classic fantasy.  I love it.  Have a look also at this article in Wilde Oats about gay-shaded artists .

Majorca Flats -- 100

The next night was the night that Graeme was supposed to come to The Lord Grey to meet Jason.

It was ten o'clock when Jason, who'd been watching the door all evening, saw Graeme standing at the door, looking a little shy and peering short-sightedly into the dimness of the bar. Jason went over, and when Graeme smiled at him he couldn't help grinning back.

Back at the bar counter, as he was pulling a pint of draft Victoria Bitter for a customer, Keith, who was next to him mixing a cocktail, said “Who's he?”

“I met him at the beach.”

“Yeah?” Keith's tone was aggressive and angry.

“He's just someone I met, Keith. Not a trick.”

Keith wouldn't look at him.

“Jeez, Keith! C'mon, then, come and meet him. Maybe he'll fancy you!”

He dragged a reluctant Keith over to where Graeme was sitting.

“Hey, Graeme, this is my friend Keith. He works here too.”

“G'day,” mumbled Keith, red with embarrassment, unable to meet either Graeme's or Jason's eyes. Jason grinned to himself.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Graeme.

“We finish tonight at about eleven, maybe eleven thirty,” said Jason. “Would you like to join us for a coffee afterwards?”

Every so often, he would pop by Graeme's table and chat for a moment or two. He was conscious that every time he did this, Keith's gaze would fix upon them.

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Majorca Flats Episodes 1 to 500

In Memoriam

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, wrote In Memoriam A.H.H. for his very dear friend Arthur Hallam, a fellow poet and a student at Trinity College. who died suddenly from a cerebral haemorrhage.   It is hard for us now to see their love as anything but homosexual, yet at the time, these intense, non-sexual friendships between two men were regarded as quite normal and perfectly "wholesome".   We hadn't yet had the psychiatrists and hate-mongers destroy any chance of non-sexual male2male love prospering.  Love doesn't have to be about fucking. But most straight men are too afraid of being thought 'mos to be really close to another man.  The saddest consequence of the long, vicious and futile crusade against homosexuality:  the tragic collateral damage -- straight male intimacy

The poem is very long, and very moving.  And whether Tennyson was having sex with Hallam or not is irrelevant.  This was the deepest and sincerest love.  Read the poem for yourself, and see.  For my friend who died, whom I loved, this canto, canto V, seems perfectly apposite.

I sometimes hold it half a sin

To put in words the grief I feel;

For words, like Nature, half reveal

And half conceal the Soul within.

 

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,

A use in measured language lies;

The sad mechanic exercise,

Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

 

In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er,

Like coarsest clothes against the cold:

But that large grief which these enfold

Is given in outline and no more.

I miss him so much.