The Gay Blade

I read a lot. So I go to bookshops a lot, and love spending time and money in them. If you're ever stuck on what to give me for a present, book-vouchers are perfect. But I have to admit that it took me a while to figure out that Unity Books here in Auckland had moved their gay literature section to another part of the store. On reflection, this surprised me: not that they'd moved it, but that it took me so long to notice. Time was I couldn't wait to get my hands on any books that dealt with gay life. Fiction, poetry, biography, research, theory, whatever, they just seemed so important and so necessary to me. When I first enrolled at University, one of the first things I did was find out where all the gay books were kept in the library. I used to have that catalogue number memorised. The first time I went up there I remember looking at the books, pulling a few off the shelves, and looking down the aisle to see a guy with his cock hanging out, using the gay section as a crui...

I think I was 16 the first time I was rimmed. It was an utterly mind-blowing experience. Nothing I had ever heard or thought about had prepared me for the fact that my arsehole could be so exquisitely, delightfully, sexily sensitive. The tongue working away down there, in that most forbidden of areas, the waves of pleasure sweeping over me, and then even more shocking to my youthful mind, his tongue actually going up inside me! A man's tongue up my arsehole ! Feeling so good ! Taboos broken left, right and centre. Shock, but no horror - shock and delight. A pleasure which continues to this day I might add. Of course, at 16 I had such a sweet arse too. Pert, firm, ripe, all those good things. it stayed that way pretty well through to my late 20s I guess. These days it has given in to gravity a bit. But I still admire a good arse on another guy. Sometimes those cheeks just call out. And if you want to freak a straight boy out, tell him he's got a cute arse. And part of it i...

Yeah, well I wouldn't say that or even think it, because it's offensive. In New Zealand, why hasn't "That's so Maori" as a term taken off? Or "That's so Samoan"? In the States, why haven't for example, "That's so Black" or "That's so Latino" to equal "That's so lame" become popular? Maybe because people would find those terms just a little offensive and you'd get your head kicked in if you tried it? So why do more and more people think it's fine to say "That's so gay!"? I've heard the argument that "gay" used this way has nothing to do with me as a gay man - but that's deceitful self-serving bullshit. It does, and it's oppressive and insulting. What people do, when they use the word in this way, is take a word that is associated with a minority group in society, a group that has regularly and continues to be targetted, beaten up, murdered and have their basi...

A friend gave me some back issues of gay mags the other day. DNA, Attitude, Gay News etc. All choc-full of images of beautiful men. Men who obviously spend hours every day in the gym and live on wheatgrass juice, tuna and rice - I know, I know, they're models, but even so, they're held up to us as the image of what a gay man is supposed to be. These images are powerful, and their common-place use to depict gay men tells us something about our world, and I'm not sure I like it. And really, let's face it, these guys are our equivalent of busty blonde bimbos for straight guys. Hasn't Gay Liberation been a great thing? Baby, we've come such a long way... So many muscles and such sharp definition that the split in their abs starts to look like a vagina, a friend noted. Ridiculously slim waists. And, with one exception, no body hair. So even though they're supposedly what gay men aspire to be like, if we're not already there, they actually look more like perpe...

I was at Urge again the other night and noticed a poster from The Basement. for those who don't know, The Basement is a sex-club. Anyway, the poster read something like "Thursday Night is Fetish Night at The Basement". I looked at it and knew I wouldn't go. I just don't think I have any fetishes these days. I used to. The feel and smell of leather used to be a fetish. Hairy chests used to be a fetish. B&D and role-playing used to be a fetish. Actually, without boasting, there are few things that men can do to each other sexually I haven't tried, and only a few of those I haven't really enjoyed at some stage in my life. Not that they were all fetishes I guess. But now, I just don't seem to have any. I know guys who just about cream their pants when they see a guy in the right sports kit. For some it will only be Adidas, never Nike or any other brand. Others are just into sports-kit in general. Other guys get all hot and bothered over tatts, or facia...

Why is it that so many wonderful men that I know are single? And, for that matter, why am I ? Not that I am necessarily all that wonderful. Is it the pool of men around? I mean, I have so many friends in Auckland, but I can't see myself falling for them, not when we've been mates for so long. And then you look on-line and see, well, all sorts of guys, some, let's admit it, seem just a bit sad and desperate, or wildly unrealistic. Guys who post entire shopping lists of desired characteristics on their profiles are not going to be my choice. I mean, how could you ever live up to it? A few weeks ago an 18 year old messaged me on NZD and asked if I wanted to do cam-sex with him. I mean, really - 18!? Do his parents know what he's getting up to in his bedroom at night when they think he's studying? Shit - imagine if they walked in just as we were reaching the point of the whole thing. But most parents of teenage gay men have no idea what their sons are up to, let's ...

Mike, Glenn, Alan, Peter, Alan, Andrew, Chris, David: I used to have a list somewhere of all the names of the men I know who’d died. Then it got too long. And now I can’t remember everyone I knew who died of AIDS. I hope their families still do, but it is over 20 years now since many of them sickened and died. Even to their brothers and sisters they will be turning into misty memories, the sadness and grief now all but worn away over time, as they look at old photos and remember the good times. I suppose this is what it is like after a war. Twenty years on who wanted to hear talk of the trenches of WW1 and their horrors, or who in the 1960s really cared about the agony and brilliance of the Battle of Britain pilots? Who cares today about the veterans of the first Gulf War? But in all of these, families were destroyed. Young loved men in the prime of their lives disappeared into some distant land or city, and returned, if at all, either plague-wracked and waiting to die or already dead,...