BijouBlog

It's not porn (not really a strange addiction), and it's not my strange addiction. What is it? The series My Strange Addiction on the The Learning Channel. Everyone seems to be baring privates, or in this case, mostly eating publicly what they are doing privately, on TV these days, but what I find most fascinating is the eating. Yes, people addicted to eating objects one would not consider to be food. And we aren't talking about the sexual fetishes of eating/drinking piss/cum and the like that often appear in porn movies, though, recently, the show featured a woman addicted to drinking her own urine, which sometimes tasted "lemony" (she claimed it was a type of holistic therapy for cancer).

Here's the rundown on the eating strange objects episodes, and of course you can obtain more information about these episodes on-line  (http://.howstuffworks.com/tv/my-strange-addiction) : eating toilet paper; eating chalk; eating the insides of couch cushions; eating laundry detergent; eating household cleanser; eating glass; and eating cigarette ashes. Sounds gross, revolting, and other adjectives that mean approximately the same? Perhaps so, but perhaps not that unusual, in many cases.

What's disturbing, in my view, is that many of these addicts are socially, psychologically, and economically marginalized, such as minority women or gay men, many of whom have suffered serious traumas. For example, Crystal has been eating household cleanser everyday since she was twelve; her shame, embarrassment and concern for her health have caused her to keep this a secret. She said in a later interview that she thought she was "cleaning herself out" after suffering physical and sexual abuse as a child. Adele, an African-American woman, suffers from Pica, a disorder found most commonly in toddlers and pregnant women who lack certain nutrients, causing them to crave non-nutritive substances like chalk, coins, batteries and even dirt. Sometimes this addiction is caused by stress, and Adele admits her first time happened during a very emotional period in her life, when her parents were on the brink of divorce.

Not that these addictions are solely, or ultimately, class-based cause or effect, but where are the wealthy white upper middle-class men in this scenario (the ones who still hold the power)? Perhaps they can't come out with these types of issues because of their position in the society, or they have recourse to private (and expensive) psychological assistance, or they haven't experienced the level of trauma these women have suffered (including never having experienced hunger, forgive my self-righteousness). There's also perhaps the stigma, at least in certain social strata, of divulging such private matters in any public media, much less the specific "trashy" association of appearing on reality TV.

Or, more significantly, perhaps the powerful suffer from an addiction based on power (harming others), rather than powerlessness (harming one's self). I'm thinking of Larry Craig and his bathroom escapades, or, more overtly, Bernie Madoff and his colossal ponzi scheme. Note that Craig and Madoff were involuntarily outed; Adele and the others like her voluntarily submitted their addictive behaviors to the scrutiny of the public.

The key to a possible cure in many cases of addiction that are ultimately psychological (rather than organic) is moderation, founded on a respect for the self, integrated with a respect for others, a concept that proves elusive in a culture of narcissism. Everyone wants to be a celebrity; everyone wants, and attempts to imitate, the power and fame associated with such celebrity. And it's so easy to do so.

I'm concerned that someone on youtube is already eating poisonous couch cushions for their celebrity moment. I'm even more concerned that Madoff-like schemes, like the recent "Diamond Bar PTA mom" ponzi scheme in California, continue to devastate the livelihoods, and hopes, of many Americans.

Great advancements in modernization came about because of beer. Just listen to this, some German immigrants (think they were Miller & Coors) brought a new type of beer to America, lager beer which is cold brewed. Well to keep it cold they needed some form of refrigeration. So the first refrigeration was developed not to keep your milk cold, but to keep your brew beer perfect for drinking. Did you know that beer produced the first manufacturing plants. That's right and everyone thinks is was Ford who modernized manufacturing to built the Model T car. Not so, modern mass manufacturing plants were built to make bottles to hold all that beer.

Even advances in medicine comes from beer. The concept of germs and bacteria came from beer.  Distillers showed how the heating process in the brewing killed the crap in water that was making people sick. I learned in that wonderful Discovery Channel show that distillers took water from a duck pond and brewed beer from an old recipe, while the water was foul from the fowl, the beer was not. All because of the technique of distilling with boiling water. Need I say more, even the very idea of washing your hands came about because of beer.

Scientists in the 20th century discovered Tetracycline in Egyptian mummies which was long before the discover of this antibiotic in the 1940's. How was this possible? That's right, the brewing of beer from an ancient Egyptian recipe.

There was a lot more to this show and everything they presented about the evolution of mankind was based on the discovery, the production and consumption of BEER. All the way back to mankind settling down.

Now what they didn't show was how beer brought us porn, so let's just run with that idea for a moment. Because of beer we can relax in cool comfort on hot days (or cold days), grab a little something to eat (or not) and a beer from the fridge. We have our TVs for entertainment where we watch ball games and all those beer commercials and low and behold came the VCR, and "whala!" here comes porn right on my TV. So here I am with a bottle of beer in one hand and my joint in the other. So because of beer there is a lot of one handed entertainment.

Didn't I tell you that the educational valve of the Discovery Channel will give you a whole new perspective on beer?

Speaking of beer, we have plenty of freshly brewed beer on hand at Touché everyday and every night.

Touche's since 1978,  6412 N. Clark Street Chicago,  773-465-7400. M-F 5 pm - 4 am SAT 3 pm - 5 am SUN noon - 4 am)

Bijou/bijouworld.com the only name for Vintage/Classic gay porn films and magazines. 800.932-7111

Keep it hot,
David

I recently saw a show on the Discovery channel the other night that informed me about one thing that we all should be thankful for, and that is Beer.

Beer truly makes the world go round. Yes I learned that beer is the basis for everything in this world (I shit you not). The show was simply amazing, so grab a bottle and learn a little something from the Chicago's night life sexual underground. Early man was a hunter-gatherer, each day he wandered around for a couple of hours hunting looking for something to eat. May it be animal or vegetable it didn't matter the routine until around 9,000 B.C. Of course early man did a lot of  fucking also or we won't be here (to enjoy a good beer).

One of the things they gathered was barley. Well one day just by accident a container of barley was left outside and it rained, so guess what happened? The barley naturally fermented and some brave cavemen dared to drink that fomented, frothing mixture and boy did he yell, THIS TASTE GREAT, and it also made him feel really good 15 minutes later.

The caveman motto for beer became: Taste great and makes you fly like a bird. This caveman go so excited that he called all his cave buddies over to his cave to try out this great tasting brew; and what do you know, by the next full moon, they all moved into caves next to this great and wonderful party animal. This my dear reader is the true history of how communities and villages were first formed, all because of beer. (Ok, I made this last part up.)

So let's continue this wonderful story.  It was because of beer that man settled down, to plant and raise the crops that made beer (I shit you not). And as it turned out this drink was certainly was better than water. With this new discover mankind developed the mathematical designs to plot land and so we could keep track of the barley beer harvest. To be near beer people gathered together and towns sprung up. Did you know that the pyramids of Egypt were built by workers who were paid – that's right, in beer!

Lets jump ahead a bit to medieval times. I learned that the water ways rivers, brooks, streams,  reservoirs weren't keep clean for there was a lot of shit and piss floating around. So the drink of choice, you guessed it was beer because the water was boiled first and the bad shit was boiled out (the makers of bear didn't know this, they felt the boiling of the water made a better beer).

Colonists coming to the new world drank beer on the ships because it would keep. A famous event that took place before our revolution (and which a political group today is named after) came about when a group of colonists gathered at a tavern in Boston and decided to dump some tea in the harbor. Of course they were drinking only the best beer when they made that historic decision.

Find out more about beer and porn in part two of Beer, Instrumental in the Creation of the World.

I remember reading the book by David Leavitt, The Lost Language of Cranes, published in 1997. The closeted father of the gay main character has spent much of his adult life expressing his sexual desires in gay oorn movie theaters. In one strange scene, he evens runs into his wife on a Sunday while walking to one of the gay theaters in New York City. His wife never questions what her husband does every Sunday afternoon.

By the publication date of this book, 1997, the Internet was taking off as a means to hook up, most gay guys owned a VHS player which enabled them to watch porn by themselves, and AIDS had decimated much of the gay population that had experienced sexual encounters in such theaters: was the porn movie theater soon to become an icon of the past? How many guys, married or not, spend Sunday afternoons in gay porn theaters? Recently, in Chicago, the forest preserve has replaced the movie theater as spot of gay sex. Bathrooms are still popular trysting spots (perhaps because they are free, despite the obvious danger). Unlike many of the bathhouses, any of which which closed because of AIDS, the theaters continued their business, perhaps more fitfully, but all these factors seemed to signal an end to that world of endlessly available sex, a world depicted vividly in the classic gay porn film A Night at the Adonis.

The Adonis was New York City's famous gay porn theaters in the 1970s. Other theaters included the Eros, Gaiety, Bijoux, and Elgin. 42nd Street was the spot for XXX activity, both gay and straight. In fact, Any movie theater could end up being a space for gay sex, as depicted so brutally in the film Midnight Cowboy in the scene where the cowboy hustler played by Jon Voigt picks up a young kid who can't pay him for the sex. Even the New York Times accepted ads for gay porn films!

Jack Wrangler and Malo star in A Night at the Adonis, directed by Jack Deveau for Hand-in-Hand Films.

Jack stars as a store owner who has designs on his husky employee, Malo (a.k.a.Roger). Malo turns down a date with his boss and goes to his hairdresser, who promptly fucks him hard on the barber chair. But Jack and Malo do meet later because, as this film demonstrates, throughout the 1970's everybody in New York City wound up at the Adonis Theatre sooner or later.

From the balcony to the boiler room, director Jack Deveau does a good job of showing the wide range of customers (from young to mature, from leather to clean-cut) engaging in all sort of sexual enjoyment.

In a restroom of the theatre, the manager and a leatherman share blowjobs with one another, the latter blowing onto the sucker's face. Meanwhile, as different Hand-in-Hand films are playing on the screen, Jack and the barber have met up with one another and are busy beating each other off, but disturbed by the constant intrusions.

Into another men's room, three men begin to get into one another. Roger is there and has one of the guy's mouth with his big cock while the other watches. The barber goes down on Jack's boner and Roger is shown plowing ass in the bathroom over the sink. Roger soon glides Geraldo's cock into an ass he was sucking, the film here becoming a full-scale orgy. Highlighting this orgy is a dual jackoff session by "two" Big Bill Elds.

The Adonis was a place where, as the title of Brad Gooch's book reads, the “Golden Age of Promiscuity” played out, behind those marquees which are now dimmed. But new kinds of lights flash these days, but on cellphones, as the new generation hooks up via Grinder.

Slate Magazine recently published a six-part series of insightful and well-researched pieces by June Thomas, “The Gay Bar: Is It Dying?” (http://www.slate.com/id/2297608). The summation statement in part V, entitled “The New Competition,” intrigued me, “so maybe gay bars aren't doomed; instead they're moving into our phones.” I do wonder how that “netherworld” of gay culture, the leather/BDSM/fetish community, long a leader in on-line networking technology (starting with the beginnings of the Internet, before today's complex cellphones with Internet capabilities) because of its very specific and unusual content and audience, has been affected by this trend.

One leatherman, who identifies himself as “Middle Guard,” having been trained by the “Old Guard” leather of the late 60s and 70s, made this observation:

“Yeah, the younger generations socialize w/o the bars etc. The consequence of going mainstream w/c was our stated goal all along; not realizing the consequence of that, and the Internet Age. Specialty bookstores have long not been needed, that was the herald of things to come: now one can go to any Barnes and Noble or Borders Books, etc. All have large LGBT sections. “

And one can, if one doesn't even “do” hard physical copies of text (Borders is now closed, like many large bookstore chains), one can of course use one's computer and one's phone to essentially shop for a variety of like-minded partners and thus not be restricted to entrance into the backroom of a specifically leather bar or undergo initiation into a traditional leather club. Even those who still interact in a traditional leather or leather club setting assume one has a World Leathermen Recon profile.

Yet, despite the supposed diversity and seemingly endless flexibility in this new way of hooking up, what's interesting about this observation is the emphasis on homogeneity, which Mark Stoner, owner of Pony's in Seattle, quoted in the Slate article, claims is a growing trend in gay bars. Everyone mixed together. No separate backrooms with dress codes. Straights are welcome. Even ostensibly straight bars, like urban hipster ones, supposedly embrace sexual differentiation or “alternative” identities. Diversity is a virtue. But, also, could one argue that possibly the diversity is taking away some of the uniqueness of the BDSM presence in gay culture? Pluralism does not necessarily imply diffusiveness. According to the article in Slate, Part IV, “Can Gay Bars Make Money?”:

“[Pony's manager,] Marcus Wilson, explained why Pony has chosen to so clearly ward off uptight straights. He noted that 'gays and lesbians have gained politically in the last 20 years. The majority feel that the key is to be as inoffensive as possible. They want to trim off the edges, look or sound inoffensive. When gays were outsiders, gay bars could have more color and characters—the leather daddy, transpeople. Gay bars have discouraged that. Now they're going for homogeneity in the look of the place and in the music. They want to be innocuous. Some gay bars look and feel like airport lounges, with nothing to offend—or to stimulate. Pony wants to challenge that.'”

Pony is not a leather bar, per se, but what Pony is trying to do made me think  of what happened to the Cellblock in Chicago. (By the way, according to Yelp, Pony is now closed.) In the Cellblock, now the décor is “light” leather, but the sensibility, the activity, is far from leather/BDSM in the traditional sense. The place even auctioned off the BDSM equipment (such as a cross) in its once notorious backroom! In essence, the place essentially gentrified in line with its surrounding “gayborhood,” now populated by strollers pushed by both gay and straight couples.

But is the gay leather bar (and club) uniformly doomed? Jesse Monteagudo argues in his column celebrating International Mr. Leather (http://www.gaytoday.com/penpoints/050304pp.asp) that leather bars and clubs are far from dead, again, because of the very specific interests of its clientele, but he also argues that the what he calls “traditional patch” clubs that date as far back as the 1960s motorcycle clubs are in trouble, because “young leathermen” find their rules and admission criteria restrictive and outdated. Given the diversity of leather culture (and I would also argue diffusiveness), that may be true, but, as he does claim, some have evolved with the time, some provide unique services, and some may be the only outlet in areas far removed from the traditional gay urban centers.

The above is true, to some extent, but what seems to be lacking in the “new” culture is a sense of having to “earn one's leather,” and by undergoing what it takes to earn, one grows, into the leather life. It's easy to be leather-curious these days, and I applaud that fact, but doesn't the leather/fetish/BDSM embody elements of pain, fear, taboo, self-scouring, psychological submission to another, in fact, many of the components of a religious journey that requires a life-changing commitment? And what about the value learning from the past clubs and their own individual historical journeys, not just judging a club on how it has evolved with the times (which, in most cases, seems to be technological advancement?

Monteagudo mentions the passing of “leather elders,” which has created some difficulties for bars and clubs to continue, but doesn't seem to be aware that the techniques and philosophy of these elders are the foundation of what many leathermen today practice. I'm concerned that in the new diffusiveness of interactions that is occurring in the leather community this foundation, with its rough and ready, on the edge, unique personalism, will be lost.

But that dangerous edge in leather/BDSM/fetish still scares many (well, it's supposed to be scary!). Though many younger people, both gay and straight, subscribe to the new openness about sexual diversity where cable channels can air shows like “Strange Sex,” some still tend to view BDSM activity physically and psychologically harmful and dangerous, and the confuse it with situations like domestic abuse and slavery. Even that extremely open-minded nurse Sue on her show “Talk Sex with Sue” seemed ambivalent about BDSM practices; she, in one case, advocated the use of a flogger on the skin for a blind person, was clear that no pain should be involved. I do wonder if this attitude has affected the social interactions of gay leathermen and thus the leather bar/club as well, in addition to the other factors above, and will continue to do so.

I remember some kind of rumor or urban legend circulating that Lady Gaga is/was really a man. No, she is a woman, not a drag queen, but her extravagant dress and overwhelming public persona (all in the interests of self-expression of course, the byword among her young fan base) can honestly lead one to come to that conclusion.

Drag queens of course always adopt another name, as did Lady Gaga, who is really Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, as did gay porn director/star Christopher Rage (The infamous sex pig, who plays Mary Jim Stunning in drag) mildly camping (I emphasize mildly) it up as the evil Arachne, a “brilliant, evil madwoman on a crusade to rid the planet of sex” in the early 1970s porn flick Drive. In Drive Ms. Stunning kidnaps scientist Mark Woodward, who developed a drug that can control the human sex drive. Do you the reader knows what that means? It means that evil super villain Arachnein would have the power to control the whole world! In fact, as our porn reviewer argues, cause “the complete castration of humanity.” Oh No!!!.

Is this shades of Zsa Zsa Gabor, Queen of Outer Space, who hates all men? Or, a closer analogy, Faye Dunaway, essentially the drag version of Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest, taking over the town in that dreadful film Supergirl. The B-movie connection between Ms. Stunning, Zsa Zsa and Dunaway is quite obvious. What's different in Drive as to the other films is the sense of story, a grand outrageous narrative (and not just the big orgies with 50-plus people which the other films don't have). For there's something at stake in Drive: sex, sexual interaction, sexual closeness, sexual outrageousness the celebratory feeling in gay sex before the AIDS crisis and Ms. Stunning.

Back to Lady Gaga and Ms. Stunning. Lady Gaga is very talented who showcases diverse talents (yes, she does a drag routine playing a man) in a very entertaining flamboyant style. But I think one needs to understand that she is indebted to an exciting history of gender-bending that the gay community, one of her biggest fans, started long before the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 70s. Her style without question acknowledges the similarities of the Christopher Rage's aka Mary Jim Stunning's of the world.

Have you noticed that the typical gay celebrity on television dispenses advice on weddings, hair styles, fashion, desserts, and home décor. What if gays instead dispensed advice on fishing, truck driving, auto repair, hunting, American football, home repair (not decorating), and tool and die techniques (and I'm not in anyway referring to the classic gay porn flick L.A. Tool and Die)? Would anyone listen, much believe that the above is even possible? That gay men do men things? Or would the straight experts in those fields allow a gay guy infringe on their traditionally masculine territory? But then, there are straight male hair stylists, fashion designers, and wedding planners. Or are there, or are they hiding in the closet, pun intended?

I'm not calling for an all-out war on gay stereotypes, but I do wonder if the prototype of this gay advice genre, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, only served to perpetuate, if not emphasize the stereotypes. Not that all the guys on that show were as “flamboyant” as Carson Kressley, but several Carson Kressley types have popped up on such reality TV/advice show fare such as My Fair Wedding and Clean House. These gay “fairy godfathers” usually help straights clean up their messes, but what do they get out of it after they work their magic? I would love to know if there is any dick involved as gratitude for a makeover well done, but nobody's telling. The straight couple gets married, their house gets decluttered and redecorated, and the gay fairy godfather returns to his lover that he can't marry in most states or countries or to his beautifully decorated empty house and a cat (more stereotypes, perhaps?).