The Gay Blade

I bareback. A  lot. Every time I fantasise I do it bareback. I never imagine condoms being used in my jerk-off fantasies, and  have never met any guy who does.Condoms just don't feature in my ideal imaginary sexual scenarios. In my head I break all the safe-sex rules and don't worry about it and no campaign or sanctimonious finger-wagging is ever going to change that. And I don't know any guys who act differently. How is this different from watching bareback porn? Well, it's fantasy, it's not real - no-one else can get infected through my fantasies, but part of the logic that condemns bareback porn is the claim that watching it undermines the safe-sex message and teaches guys it's ok not to use rubbers, but in fantasies that's just what I do, I watch and take part in wild  hot fucking without condoms, yet I am still able to look after my sexual partners safely in real life. And for some social and historical context for tho...

Mark Stpehens from Adelaide, Mr Leather ANZ 2011 I have a new-found respect for the people who enter beauty paegents and body-building contests and that sort of thing. It's fucking hard work! You really have to put yourself out there. The contest is in Melbourne because it's really the heart of the leather scene in Australia now. Sydney doesn't even have a dedicated bar or venue for this group anymore. My flight over was paid for me courtesy of the great guys at Urge , and I arrived, at 9pm on   Thursday, Melbourne time (11pm for my body-clock) met by my  friends Nick and Graeme who dropped me off at Joy FM , the  gay community radio station,  where I got to sit and wait (we did a lot of waiting...)  till the charming, hot and irrepresible Dean Beck was ready for us on his late night show Hide and Seek , along with Mr Leather South Australia and Mr Sydney Leather. It was fun, but shit I was tired, and not up to my usual sparkl...

So remember how last year I got cajoled into entering the Mr Urge Leather contest, and was Runner-Up ? Well as I was leaving Wellington a few weeks ago after the excellent Outgames Human Rights Conference and Urge Black Party, I discovered that the lovely Jamie who'd won the title was unable to make the contest in Melbourne this weekend - so I am heading over the Tasman tomorrow to represent my country on the international stage. Now, I won't be looking as good as the guy on the right, a photo that was taken in the 1950s, and that shows just how long leather has been part of the erotic world of gay men. I nicked the pic from a blog about gay leather history , and there is quite a bit of it. Just why some of us have a thing for leather is hard to pin down. It's something I've moved in and out of over my life. It's kind of cool for me that this is in Melbourne, because it was there, way back in 1980 when I was just 18 or so, that I first got involved in this worl...

The latest figures on HIV infections in New Zealand are not good news, with over a hundred new cases in the gay/bi male world in 2009 and a higher level expected over the coming years. Now of course, most countries would love to see a number this low, along with the estimated total of only 1,800 people living with HIV in the entire country. If we include the dead, we're probably at around 3,000 since the start of AIDS in NZ. While every new infection is a personal tragedy, we actually have a tiny epidemic compared to nearly any other Western nation, and that is a good thing. It's tempting to point the finger and blame people or organisations, and while blame is counter-productive, there are legitimate questions that must be asked. The NZ AIDS Foundation gets millions of dollars of government funding every year specifically to prevent the spread of HIV among gay men, and has an Executive Director now paid in the vicinity of $150k per annum to achieve that goal. It i...

Yesterday marked the 2nd anniversary of this blog - I know because I wrote the first one right after the Big Gay Out two years ago. That's a lot of writing since then. Aren't you lucky ? As for the Big Gay Out yesterday - it was fantastic. It's such a lovely way to spend an afternoon, hanging out with all sorts of people from the queer communities. It is great to see thousands and thousands of us in one spot. As it's a summer's afternoon, it's always pretty chilled, people  just cruising away, gay mums and dads with their kids, people catching up with friends, having a few  beers, others moving downwind from the Police when necessary. Thank you to the friends' picnic I crashed - you're great guys, nice Pinot Gris, and i loved the salami. To make up I drove them home and they drank all my beer on my back porch as the sun went down. The BGO is the last relic of Hero, and it really holds to some of the original Hero feeling and messages. Ideas like bein...

It's twenty years since the first Hero Party and the foundation of a deliberate attempt to strengthen the gay community and help us look after ourselves in the face of AIDS. Hero did a huge amount of good, it gave gay Auckland a face, inspired similar groups in Wellington and Christchurch, and it gave us an organisation that could act as a public voice for us, until it collapsed in a mire of corruption and broken trust. Yes, I'm still bitter about the money from the street collection, collected for people living with HIV, that a certain group of Hero trustees "borrowed" to cover a shortfall and never returned. Yes I'm bitter about the  CEO who embezzled funds then escaped back to Australia. But before that sad side of the story, there was a huge amount of good that came out of Hero.It made us visible, it gave us a reason to take pride in being queer. Visibility matters, and so does pride. Hero when at its best and strongest was inspirational. I doubt we can r...

Sometimes I hear newly diagnosed HIV+ guys say they'll never have sex again. They feel dirty. They fear passing the virus on to another, which is pretty understandable. They feel undesirable, unsexy, also pretty understandable as a reaction. But it doesn't have to be that way. I didn't have sex with another man for more than three years in the 90s. I barely even masturbated. Sex just seemed irrelevent at best, a terrible disease and death-ridden thing at worst. Over three years without sex - I did feel like a virgin again. Some good friends helped me through that phase in the best possible way. They had supported me in the mid-90s when I was so sick and we all thought I was dying, and they were there as I was recovering, helping me get back on my feet and into life again. When I was sick I'd totally lost interest in sex, and as I was recovering, I was stuck in a head-space where I saw myself as polluted, dirty, unsexy, and unloveable. They saw this on some leve...