The Gay Blade

A friend put a post up on facebook asking where he could buy a douche while he and his partner were on holiday - they'd  forgotten to pack one. I thought some of the reactions were interesting, that it was "TMI" or "ewww...gross". Shit is shit, and not many of us like it, especially when you mix it in with sex. Don't forget though that all the human sex organs are also rubbish outlets, there's no need to get extra squeamish about the arse. Not all gay men fuck or get fucked, but I guess for most of us, fucking is the defining sexual act. Sodomy. Taking or giving it up the arse. We're bum-bandits, and it's one of the things that straight men find so scary about us - that we can get fucked and enjoy it. It unmans us and is also intensely masculine. It is an incredible amount of fun, it feels fantastic, it is deeply intimate and personal, and physically it's the closest we can get to another man, to be there, inside him or have him inside ...

I have never been all that confident about my looks - like a lot of gay men I guess. I tend to see the negatives, all the things I wish I could change or hadn't been born with. When I was younger I genuinely thought I was ugly - and  now I feel sorry for that teenage boy who couldn't see how cute and hot he was, and wish I could sit down with me then and explain how wrong I was about how I saw myself. I don't think I'm unusual in that. So many guys I know have their anxieties about how they look, whether it's physically or their clothes, and so many of us have worked hard to come to terms with our bodies and faces - learning that we won't be as perfect as the images in the magazines takes time - some of us never really learn and keep beating ourselves up over our failure to look like a cover model. And I can think of men I know who are drop-dead handsome, fantastic bodies, and lovely personalities, but they still think they are ugly and undesirable. And for ...

I haven't blogged for a while - just been busy I guess. I'm sitting here on a break from my PhD writing and once again thinking to myself "Why the fuck did I decide to write a PhD about HIV? Why?" I ask the question because it takes up so much space in my life anyhow, so having to read and think and write about it as well in an academic way may not have been the best move for my sanity. The answer is obivous of course. It matters. What HIV does to the men I count as my community matters - the stories that poz guys have so generously entrusted to me about their own experiences matter and deserve to be heard and to feed into our work on controlling the spread of it. They also simply deserve to be heard, and I hope I can help do that. This morning I was re-reading the interview I did with a young guy who died earlier this year. We just had the annual Candlelight Memorial here in New Zealand - I used to go to them but I don't any more. I feel like I remember t...

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...