BijouBlog

I thought this week it might be fun to do a more interactive blog (jacking off is fun, but your best friend isn't always yourself).

We're going to put out (maybe in more ways than one) some of our favorite Bijou gay porn scenes.

Then, you can share yours, and we'll even link to some of those clips on our websites on our Twitter page.

I'm into dominance and submission big time (the big is more mental that physical, but I do appreciate size, especially muscles!).

There's a scene from Al Parker's movie Turned On! that always gets me going. Now Al, for me, and I might claim many others, is a total top man (and I just don't mean fucking): he exudes a dominant, but not so much in your face (but then, who wouldn't want his glorious cock in your face) masculinity, but one that doesn't need much overcooked “on your knees, boy” proclamations.

But what makes this scene so fascinating for me is Al submitting, and submitting, endlessly... a hunger that is never satisfied, but is satisfied in its own hunger. Kind of the effect Al creates when he wields his mighty cock...

What is Al doing? In a locker room with male body parts behind every locker door, Parker and Sky Dawson (the man of Al's dreams in this movie) service rows (a sort of chorus line) of humpy, athletic men in jockstraps. It's a fantasy, but what it makes it even more enticing for me is the jockstraps. They conceal but also show.

Now, another movie, from Roger Earl's Dungeons of Europe trilogy, Pictures from the Black Dance, contains a scene which really gets me going. What's interesting is not so much the leathersex itself, but the overall dominance/submission dynamic I find erotic:

In the last scene, Dick Johnson is leading a hooded guy in a bondage/body suit. This is Tony Starr, who had previously been a dominant in the movie! The last dance, the climactic one. The slapping sound is its rhythmic accompaniment. They are still in the dungeon, but the wall looks like fall foliage. After what looks like a whiff of poppers, Johnson powerfully creates total submission; by pulling bottom up by hook on bondage suit. He barks one command that seems to pull most of the action together: SIT!

Johnson then attaches Starr to the board, and one hears a stomping and slamming sound with his powerful boots. He then, with amazing confidence, picks up the guy and then places him on the floor.

This lying down position, especially when contrasted with a standing position, is one of stripping away of conventional social norms, which often occurs in BDSM role playing. Johnson now has his bottom in this position of total submission in order for him to wield his power, by pulling the cock and balls on triangle attached to his cock and balls; this tension shows that Johnson himself actually reciprocating once he has shown his power.

I'm particularly interested in porn directors who use sexual explicitness as a vehicle for artistic expression. I also find emotionally raw states (such as love, sadness, or fear) to be intriguing mental spaces in which to tap into eroticism, the heightened emotional state acting as a potential sexual enhancer. The two scenes I'm featuring play with these approaches.

The entirety of Tom DeSimone's The Idol is a well-crafted build from sexual isolation and frustration to sexual freedom and open expression, each successive sex scene progressing the main character, Gary, along in his sexual journey.

The final erotic encounter in The Idol is a romantic and bittersweet one. We know from the beginning that college track star Gary will die at a young age. The film is structured around his funeral, and this final flashback to a moment in his life shows him in bed with his lover (who has been longing for him from afar in the flashbacks until this point). The lighting is soft and blue, with the soundtrack pared down to simply the thunderstorm outdoors accompanied by their murmurings and moans, and the camera pans lingeringly over their entwined bodies. They take their time kissing and fucking to the sounds of rumbling thunder, rain, and wind. DeSimone's strong sense of erotic pacing is highlighted here, creating a potent crescendo of sexual tension. The scene ends as the two collapse into each other in exhaustion after climax and the soundtrack kicks in with a song echoing the claim, "I could never leave you." We know that this statement is untrue. The story has finally brought these men together and has brought Gary to terms with his own sexuality, but these journeys are about to end.

This scene is visually gorgeous, atmospheric, and emotionally effective. Even the sentimentality of some of the devices (the slow-mo at the end, the romantic dialogue) doesn't interfere, but, rather, feels perfectly earned and adds to the ambiance. This is a brilliant example of scene that is, at once, melancholic, romantic, and erotic.

Peter de Rome's The Destroying Angel is easily one of the most unusual films in the Bijou catalog. It tells a Poe-inspired story of a priest on sabbatical who engages in mushroom trips and sex, which hauntingly meld together.

The film uses sexual explicitness to evoke as much horror as eroticism, playing with themes of repression/compulsion and revulsion/attracton. The scene where Caswell (the priest) fucks a young man he meets at a party is deeply unsettling and captivating. The two men eat mushrooms and Caswell observes his doppelganger entering into the action. "How many of us do you see?" he asks his partner. "Just you and me," is the calm reply. But we see the friend jerking off two Caswells at once, as the camera pans over to his double in an eerie moment of trick photography. Caswell seemingly watches himself from both positions. Both Caswells are alternately terrified, confused, maniacal, and sexually ravenous. Horrible yowls and laughs echo on the soundtrack and Caswell comes on his double's face, but won't stop trying to have sex even after his partner is clearly spent. His appetite is insatiable. It takes a sudden cut to achieve an end to the scene, which could have continued interminably in a wild hallucinatory state of unending erotic hunger.

This scene is a nightmarish distortion of sex, frenzied and made of pure compulsion, with Caswell watching himself in horror as if in shock at what he is doing. He can't reconcile himself with his sexuality and it bursts forth from him as if another him has been created, one made of his own repressed sexual side, his shadow self a creature of erotic monstrosity that can only be fed by being given more, more, until eventual destruction must occur.

Bijou owner Steven Toushin's selections are from two additional Steve Scott films (Turned On! also being by Scott): Wanted and Inches.

In Wanted, the scene shows brutal, sadistic warden Jack Wrangler as he makes an inmate suck his cock, rifle in hand, then fucks him, while he's supposed to be guarding a chain gang. This scene is especially notable in its depiction of an erotic prison fantasy between warden and prisoner that is not as typically found between men in films.

In Inches, its the cruisey barroom scene near the end of the film. This scene is relatable to those who were present in the era or who have experienced bar backroom action, capturing a sense of realism in the small details of the scene which make it feel like an actual '70s-era bar backroom, with anonymous sex going on everywhere.

If you want to know anything, simply anything about gay sexuality or gay history, spend some time digging through our extensive collection of magazines and files. Today, I was looking at some issues of After Dark and Mandate magazine (now, if you really want to show you are of a certain generation (and proud to be that age, of course), drop a line and let us know if you remember those magazines), and found an interesting tidbit about porn legend Casey Donovan. 
 

It's not anything sexually scandalous (according to the April 1992 issue of Manshots magazine,  Casey pretty much covered that area thoroughly in his personal life at the baths and tearooms). It's actually kind of a savvy idea, but like many porn stars of that era, many endeavors they tried outside the filmmaking pretty much fizzled. 

Cal Culver (Casey's real name) opened up the Casa Donovan Guest House in Key West in April 1979 and then, in conjunction with that entity, launched Moonbow Tour. The Tour operated during the time of the full moon. Casey personally guided the tours, which included “three special dinners at unique spots, a conch train tour, a variety of sightseeing, a one-half day reef trip, and a rented bicycle.” According to Casey, at Casa Donovan, the nine-room house with a pool, “Everyone's a star.” 
 

What I would like to know is how long this enterprise lasted (it started before his last film appearance in Christopher Rage's Fucked Up in 1986) and if it folded before his death in 1987 of AIDS-related complications. According to the issue of Manshots cited above, he did get a job as a gay tour guide with Hanns Ebenston Travel Agency in about 1985, having struggled to keep his establishment running for some time. 

Right now as I am writing this, I am imagining a gloriously bare-chested Casey rising from his pool like a young sea god, drying himself off, and then going out to greet his guests clad only in a tight speedo. I do have a feeling the majority of the guests weren't other porn stars he appeared with like Pat Allen, Steve Anthony, or Al Parker. They may have been the slightly heavyset older “queens” of the period (I do not mean any insult) wearing flowered shirts, Bermuda shorts, and lumpy sandals. Still, if he treated everyone like a star as he claimed, I hope the legendary gave them something to remember, even cherish, by getting to know him as the real but still amazingly hot “boy next door” he always tried to be in his movies. 
 

 

And Manshots also offered some telling biographies of and interviews with most of the great gay porn stars of the past; again, treating their lives (and of course their activities on screen) as something as interesting and entertaining as any feature on a celebrity in a mainstream magazine likePeople. 

And if there was a gay porn star, or “retrostud” who deserved celebrity treatment, it was Lee Ryder. But like many of the gay porn stars of that period, as noted in the all­too­common “Fade Out” feature at the back of so many back issues of Manshots, he died of AIDS-­related complications (in 1991). 
 

Lee Ryder was born in 1959 as Darras Robert Pyron. He was California born and bred, raised in Laguna, and he graduated from Esperanza High School in Anaheim. 

After Mark Reynolds discovered him and featured him in All American Boys, he literally made a splash in Falcon Studio's Huge in 1982. 

He starred in thirteen features between 1982 and 1986, including Bijou titles Screenplay, A Few Good Men, Giants 1, and 2 X 10. 

Now, of course, if one views these films, it's clear that Lee Ryder's cock is pretty much legendary. According to one Jeff Starkey, who reviewed the movie Screenplay in tandem with Ryder's appearances at the Bijou Theater to greet fans and sign autographs back in 1984: 

"Ryder's cock is long, thick, and shapely and is criss­crossed by just the right number of lovely veins. Beneath it hang a perfectly balanced pair of what appear to be 5­pound balls. When his cock appears in public, it is usually hard as a baseball bat, with its swollen head looking purple and petulant." 

Purple and petulant? Wow. Perhaps those adjectives could apply to the cock, but not the person. 

In an interview with Stallion magazine, known for his sexually aggressive but also unforced, natural screen presence, seems rather low­key, both veering between a quiet confidence in himself, but also showing a somewhat self­deprecating attitude. Definitely not the “divo” attitude of so many celebrities: “Everyone wants to look at me, I am the Adonis with the giant cock and all should worship me. 
 

In fact, in the interview, he actually seems rather pragmatic: he does it for the money, and for his business (he actually was a successful floral designer), but ... he actually doesn't see himself as a sex symbol. He just enjoys being himself, and letting a chink of vulnerability come out, being wanted. 

(We also find out in the interview he had a relationship with an older guy from ages 15 to 18, who tragically committed suicide soon after they broke up.) 

To add to the complexity of his character, despite his appearance at the Bijou and other venues as a gay porn celebrity, he actually admits he would rather not be recognized (he even goes to Europe to escape the attention)... and he notices, even when he does, the guys stay away, or “they stare – I guess I do show a big crotch – or they look at my eyes.” 

To be honest, at least for me, the eyes can be just as erotic as, especially in Ryder's case, a dick of death. And Ryder he admits in the interview that he loves his eyes. And rightly so! 
 

His eyes make love to the camera, like those of that famous movie star Joan Crawford (completely the opposite in her approach to celebrity). The eyes themselves create a unique effect in the viewer; they seem to draw you in with a promise of something intense; you think he is looking directly at you via the camera, which could satisfy your desire, but you at the same time feel like you will always want more. Perhaps it's their narrow shape but also richly colored pupils. I don't know, but I can't stop looking at his picture on the cover on Stallion magazine as I write this piece. 

And I promise you, you won't be able to take your eyes off of Lee Ryder in our remastering of Huge (now Huge 1) as he beats his meat while perched on the toilet ­ ­ making it bigger, hotter and harder. He, Rick Jensen and Matt Stoker roll around on the cold concrete floor, licking each other's hairy armpits and sitting on each other's faces. 
 

Lately here at Bijouworld we've decided to follow some “food porn” people on Facebook and Twitter. 

Now, there's a pretty obvious connection between food and sex (I think it may have been Freud who lumped to the two together as some kind of primal desire in all humans). In fact, the ancient and medieval monks and hermits and mystical philosophers like Pythagoras tended to abstain from both food and sex in their attempt to gain union with the divine. These gents (and ladies too) seemed to get off on who could eat the least! Saint Catherine of Siena supposedly subsisted during her last years only on the Eucharist. 

You can't have one without the other, it seems. And if you are not getting enough of one, you may tend to overcompensate with the other. Though, I do wonder: If the Golden Girls seemed to enjoy regular sex (even Sophia), why were they always eating cheesecakes late at night? 
 

So, what's the big fat deal with food porn? We keep getting images of the most fattening, rich, decadent dishes. Some of the food in the pictures may not be that fattening, perhaps, but they just look delicious (the presentation, perhaps). I've noticed lots of peanut butter, melted cheese, chocolate, pizza (gooey fare); overall, perhaps a greater preponderance of desserts. 
 

So, it's not necessary to associate food porn directly with, say, that movie Nine ½ Weeks with its fun and at that time shocking food in the fridge sex scene (I now think of it more like the mommie porn of Fifty Shades of Grey).
 

The Urban Dictionary gives a few definitions that involve stunning photos of food that cause you to break a diet, Food Network stars like Rachael Ray, and, most interesting, status symbols on social media. Apparently it is safe way to get attention on “clean sites” like Instagram or Pinterest, as well as a way to show you appreciate art, because the photos are so “artistic.” I guess we've diverged aesthetically from Andy Warhol's austere soup can art. What we are trying to do now is find some connections between some of our gay porn titles and food porn. I did note an obvious connection between Club Mandom 1: Blue Collar Cheese Factory and melted cheese, and I am sure there are more sweet and savory ones. 

So, dear readers: Is there any food that tends to get you thinking of sex? Or if you aren't getting sex, are there foods that you crave? Can you think of sex and food (or better yet, eat and have sex) at the same time? Are there foods you like to eat while watching porn, or are you so satisfied with one you don't need the other? Let us know your yummy answers in the comment section of our blog! 

And be sure to check out our food-related titles such as Rough Trades, with its memorable grocery delivery man elevator sequence, and Morning, Noon and Night, in which Kansas City Trucking Co. director Joe Gage (in his only sex role) participates in a three-way orgy of food and sex and takes a large squash up the ass!