Susie Bright's Journal

Hasbian Pride, Worn-Out Sluts, and Bisexuality

 

Susie, I want to interview you about your bisexuality.

In your memoir, you mention a little girl in day care whom you had a crush on when you were two. Your romantic fantasy was that she was Rose Red and you were Snow White. You were already queering fairy tales, in daycare. What do you make of that?

Interview by  Sheela Lambert

 

Snow White and Rose Red seem like an iconic coupling: twins, lovers, best friends, opposites. Jungian soul mates. I also always got the feeling Snow was the virgin and Rose was the wise whore. 

 

Your girl-crushes obviously started early. When was the first time you had a crush on a boy?

Hmm… good question. I became aware that it was “cool” to have crushes on boys by sixth grade— as opposed to hating their guts, the previous playground protocol.

The boys I truly adored were The Beatles. I broke with the Church over them. I wouldn't burn my albums. 

Kids were so segregated by gender in my day. I never went to birthday parties or events that weren’t “girls only.”

In 6th grade, Tony Bauer (how on earth do I remember these names?) asked me to dance at a school event. The song was "Venus" by the Shocking Blue. He told me I “danced good”— which thrilled me to death. 

I didn’t have much feeling for him, but the compliment made me woozy.

Junior high school upped the ante on flirting. The boys would chase the girls on the ice, the frozen lakes— and I loved “the chase.” But again, I didn’t fix my hormones on them. I had fantasies about both men and women, older men and women, not kids my own age. I was like the girl in the "Sound of Music," Looking for Someone Older and Wiser.

Your question makes me realize I was a late bloomer. I didn't appreciate pure masculinity, sexually, in men or women, until after I'd had more sophisticated lesbian life in my 20s. 

 

When did you realize that not everyone has such wide-ranging attractions and that bisexuality was frowned on by many? What was your reaction to that?

I came of age in a political, “start the revolution”-type atmosphere. I thought that if everyone would just relax and liberate their minds, they would realize they were truly bisexual and non-monogamous... LOL.

I’m poking fun at myself saying this. But I also viewed society with critical eyes, as any puberty-struck individual does. I knew most people weren’t anywhere close to living their sexual potential, and that’s still the truth!

My family and best friends at school-- we were on the same page. My parents knew a lot more gay and bi people than I did; they’d been in gay intellectual milieus (Berkeley, Venice, Hollywood etc) since the 1940s. No one I loved was going to condemn me for bisexuality, far from it. 

My bisexual higher education came from becoming familiar with the Kinsey scale. I realized that liberated or not, people would always have their druthers. Sexual life is a lot more complicated than it looks on the surface.  

In your book, you don’t describe any coming out process and it appears that you always accepted yourself. Was it because of the era of free love and the sexual revolution? 

Yes!

 

Or are you just braver or more matter-of-fact than most people?

The feminist and gay liberation movement made me even braver and blunter, but those are probably typical characteristics of mine.

 

Bisexual people are often assumed to be gay or straight, depending on the gender of our partner. Have you experienced this? How has it affected you?

Oh sure. A little less than most people, because my reputation precedes me. 

Now that I’m in my fifties, sexual invisibility is the greater issue, rather than everyone imagining what a hot chick I am in either direction.

Fretting over people getting my label right seems dewy and fresh-faced to me from my older vantage point.

As one ages and fucks around, you and your peers realize that anything, at any time, could be possible with the right social lubricant. You have been around the block... no other label needed.

The peculiar thing I see as a public figure— and many activists know it well—  is that when you take an aggressive stand for gay rights, if you champion dyke culture and politics, journalists and scholars will call you “that lesbian So-n-So” for years to come. 

One is happy to be associated with dyke-identity. I don’t want to "correct" them if they think I am “shying away” from lesbianism… quite the opposite!

The journalists and scholars who make this error tend to be conservative in their thinking. I’d secretly pleaesd they assume everyone different from them is homosexual and let them stay awake at night, trembling with latent sweat.

But then, LATER, a critic who’s touchy about the INTEGRITY of my bisexuality will come up to me and say, “Who are you to be calling yourself Miss Lesbian in this article?”

They think I am trying to “wear the crown” without earning it.

Well, lesbian activists all over can tell you the “crown” is no ring of gold. We get used for target practice, mostly. I’m happy to be thought of as “dyke” for any and all waving banners and political agendas. I am one. In my personal life, though, like everyone else’s, things are more unexpected and un-label-able.

 

Having a child was a turning point in your life. You say it forced you to take better care of yourself, because of your motivation to protect your child. What things in your life did you change as a result?

Number One: I stopped parenting "surrogate adult-children." Who has the time when you have a real baby? 

Suddenly Real Grown-Ups seemed SO sexually attractive to me-- a first. This was a bigger deal than being bi-sexual. I got out of the Peter Pan playground.

 

I was shocked to read that, when you made the decision to leave On Our Backs, which you co-founded; you were sued by your partners, who were also your close friends. 

Yes, I was shocked too. I hope I conveyed that disbelief in Big Sex Little Death. It was shattering.

 

Obviously, they thought you were irreplaceable and were afraid the magazine would go under without you.

No…  that’s not true. That wasn’t the language or the feeling of it. 

My business partner had been my best friend. I was the "little sister" to her. She didn’t think I was especially irreplaceable... it was more like, “What is Susie trying to pull?”

She didn’t believe my reasons for wanting to transition… my infant, the financial strain, my feeling that something “had to give.”

Debi Sundahl hired a new editor for OOB, sold it, it went on for years without me.  A different creature, to be sure— but still meaningful to readers and contributors.

It was terrible that seemingly overnight, we felt estranged, as if we'd never known each other well. It made me doubt myself more than her!

That’s the kind of blindness I was eager to recover from. It was the beginning of real therapy for me. I never want to have a friendship again where the important things remain unsaid, forever. I didn't want to be afraid of my loved ones.

 

I was mystified by their demand you couldn’t write or be published anywhere else, when you had been freelancing the whole time you worked there. 

You’re trying to be logical. None of it was rational. The lawsuit failed; it was a nuisance suit. Famously, anyone in America can sue anyone for anything.

 

After you had your daughter and left On Our Backs, you wound up partnering with a man. Reading the book, it seems as though you were lesbian-identified at the time….Did you surprise yourself? Was there any backlash from the lesbian community about that? 

It’s funny you said “partnering…” like it was premeditated and constructive.

I was lovers with several people, as usual. I had friends and sweethearts, and I didn’t think of any of them as my “partner.” Oh no. Some were good friends, which seemed to be as much as one could ask for.

I still feel that way. I don't feel like I've "wound up" anywhere except what's happening today. The story ain't over yet!

As time went by in the early 90s, my friend Jon and I spent more and more time together… it happened slowly, without precision. I wish I could remember what day we first kissed, or went to bed, or decided to mostly live together, and then to “really” live together. It all happened in such an unfixed fashion, I don’t know any of those dates! We are sadly without an anniversary date.

I was not surprised to love or be in love with a man; I had been in love with men before.

I WAS surprised to get along with anyone in a house together, day after day, that’s what I was surprised at. To have love's endurance instead of love's drama.

I wrote a lot about the the backlash you speak of in astory called “BlindSexual.” That IS my Bisexual RANT TO END ALL RANTS.

I quote Roland Barthes:

"I am reduced to endurance.... I suffer without adjustment, I persist without intensity, always bewildered, never discouraged. I am a Daruma doll, a legless toy endlessly poked and pushed, but finally regaining its balance, assured by an inner balancing pin."

 

According to your book, there was a time that all your relationships were open. Now that you’re living with a long-term partner has that changed? 

Nope. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

I know bi-sexuals are under some conformist pressure to proclaim that they can be "monogamous" lke anyone else... but that isn't me, nor does it speak to most sex lives looked at over the long haul.

My first sexual experiences were in groups, with more than "2" -- that's what felt normal to me. It still does. And it feels natural to be attracted to more than one person at a time, and to act upon that feeling.

It doesn't change my loyalty to my friends and family. I am bewildered how the two get confused.

 

Did you ever tell your father about your mother’s suicide attempts and abuse? 

Later, to a certain extent. Once I moved in with him at 14, he realized I was afraid of her. It made him feel so bad to know the details, it was like torture to put him through it. We both were happier to focus on "making it better now."  And for the most part, that was the right choice.

 

How did you recover from that emotionally?

a) I didn’t

b) Writing and the life of the mind

c) Therapy

d) Raising kids and breaking the cycle

 

I noticed that in your section about your time with On Our Backs, you mostly used the word “lesbian” instead of “lesbian and bisexual.”  Did you identify as lesbian at that point? I’m wondering, as a bi woman writer, why you didn’t try to integrate that more in your wording?

I know this isn’t going to answer your question, but I still feel like a dyke. Hasbian Pride.

Most of the lovers in my life are gay or bisexual, regardless of their gender. There really isn't a button big enough to explain the whole thing.

When I was editing OOB, it was no secret I was bi, or femme, or had varied sex with all kinds of people--- but what was the point of mentioning it like a social security number on every page?  

I was publishing a bohemian lesbian magazine. That’s what was the center of my life. We didn’t have conventional sex lives. Most of the lesbians I worked with were whores and strippers and butches. It was beyond lesbian, bi, or any acronym you can think of.

There were squares, the “civilians,” and there was us.

OOB ran thoughtful stories about transsexuality, bisexuality, married lesbians, sex worker dykes, all sorts of things, and in those situations, we were detailed in our descriptions. But I wasn’t going to print "LGBTFXXXXX" every time I touched the keyboard. We were artists, not sloganeers.

It was a given, if you embraced our philosophy, that we were the worn-out sluts, the unapologetic freaks, the whore diaspora.  For awhile, that’s why saying “queer” was a real relief. Then even that became politically correct. 

 

What is your advice to bi writers who want to write bi-themed works and get published?

I think the best bisexual stories I read now are just honest deliverance, no agendas. They may not even use that word; they just tell the tale. Don't try to win the community's approval; it's impossible. 

There's so many moments of bisexual life that no one talks about. It doesn't have to be Some Great Rant, although that's tempting. Take a day in the life and tell it well. 

Your subject is not a liability, at all.

Read American's greatest authors. A majority of them, I'm sure you notice, were and are bisexual.

 

Photo: Jill Posener 

 

 

 

 

Blind-Sexual: The Bisexual Manifesto

The bisexual dream: a lover in perfect harmony with the duality of human nature; sensitive to male and female desires, basking in the sensuality of each sex.

From Susie Bright's Sexual Reality.

*free on Amazon this weekend

That's what I believed when I first considered my bisexuality. I was sixteen; I had just been kissed, and in my case, it was a two-headed introduction. Sitting on the next-door neighbor's bed, I kissed my best girlfriend, and then, turning my head to the other side, I kissed him. Then all three of us made love. I was so pleased with myself you'd have thought I'd just baked two perfect cherry pies.

My first time was very much in sync with my political ideals. I thought that if everyone would get into a big waterbed, smoke a joint, and rub noses, we could live in peace, tranquillity and a perpetual state of arousal— my solution to world strife. This was before I had my own nose rubbed in that jealous, selfish pot of piss called human nature.

I came out as bi before there was a "bisexual movement" as such, before the B-word was attached to the Lesbian and Gay Freedom Day parades, community centers, and racquetball clubs. When I was sixteen, I would have gleefully joined them all and been pleased to find a political program that matched my bedroom behavior. 

You've heard what the bisexual movement has to say about "bi-phobia." Behavioral scientists know that human sexuality spans a spectrum from very homo to very hetero, and most folks fall down some weird crack in the middle. Accused of being infantile, or "fence-sitters," described as traitors by the gay world and perverts by the straight one, bisexual activists have told the status quo on both sides of the argument to grow up and get real.

Fifteen years after my coming out, when the banners started waving for bisexual recognition, I nodded my head in robot-like agreement with the ten and twelve-point programs, but I didn't join up. You didn't see me in the contingent; I wasn't on the float. The bisexual movement, as such, leaves me cold, as does much of the political gay movement it comes from. How can this be?

When I first proclaimed my bisexuality in the early seventies, I was very intimidated by my lesbian elders who pointed a blunt finger at my transgressions, damning me to the Judas seat of heterosexual privilege. I hadn't even had the "privilege" of having a relationship with anyone yet, and I had only had sex a dozen times. Yet I was loyal to the principles of feminism and gay liberation. It tore me apart to think that I would ever do anything to hurt our cause, in or out of bed.

I look at my sexual history today and see that my relationships have more often than not been with people who were secretly attracted to my bisexuality rather than repulsed by it. Some of them were leaders and some of them were led by me. I was intimate with people who wanted understanding for their capacity to love more than one person at the same time. I was cherished by men who desired other men and who desired their own womanliness. I was treasured by women who valued my appeal to men, because those were the same qualities that moved them as gay women. My lovers have been butches, perverts, bohemians, philanderers and Johnny-come- latently bisexuals themselves.

I used to get in a tizzy because I wanted a written proclamation from gay society saying that bisexuals— in fact, all sexual deviants— were welcome and considered family. I even wrote a platform statement expressing those sentiments for a gay convention, held in 1980 to fight the Moral Majority. I was all but thrown bodily out of the room.

Guess what? No one gets a proclamation. If you want to be in the gay life, then you sit your ass down in the middle of it, and you don't just get up and move because someone doesn't like you. Gay life isn't a cherry pie; it's a fire walk.

The political urge to wed gay rights to the rights of sexual minorities in a genuine sexual liberation movement has made for strange bedfellows. It's straightforward enough to ask for an end to prejudice. It's preposterous to ask sexual beings to stuff ourselves into the rapidly imploding social categories of straight or gay or bi, as if we could plot our sexual behavior on a conscientious, predictable curve.

A true sexual liberation movement does not simply deal with pride. Sexual liberation challenges our hearts with unbearable feelings that no one is proud of: jealousy, sexual shame, and the uncontrollable attraction to risk. Bisexuality adds a brutal twist to these subjects only because it confronts all the prejudices between and among men and women. 

Don't talk to me about gay pride or bi pride. Love has no pride— that's the banner the real world marches under. When I was young, I was very hurt by political ringmasters who said they wouldn't talk, fuck or work with me because I was bisexual. Now that I've worked, fucked and talked with them all, I'm not hurt anymore, because I knew their secret. They desire what they condemn.

The first time I spoke to a group about my bisexuality was in 1978 in a Cal State/Long Beach class called "The Lesbian." My hands shook as I addressed the circle of twenty young women. The Cal State Marching Band played "America the Beautiful" on the quad just outside our door.

No one said anything after I finished my speech. Finally, the most articulate student in class, "The Lesbian" to end all lesbians, a redheaded grad student with peerless feminist credentials, raised her eyebrow, and delivered my death sentence:

"How do you justify giving wimmin's energy and lesbian knowledge to our oppressors," she asked, "and then expect any principled lesbian-identified woman to trust you?"

I stared at her like a rabbit caught in the middle of the road. I did not know the answer to that question. Tears came to my eyes. I didn't expect anyone to trust or love me. My sexual confidence was all on paper. I had only been to bed with plain ole teenage girls, who probably thought I was the only principled lesbian feminist between us. When we made love, my mouth was full of their honey, wet from their lips and their cunts. The world of our affection and romance seemed very distant from this fluorescent-lit inquisition. 

I could not have predicted at the time that one day I would be a lesbian sex expert and that this very same redhead would be living with her husband and two kids in a suburb outside of Chicago.

My politics at the time did not allow for the most important principle of all: Shit happens.

As wounded as I was by gay accusations, I was sensitive myself to the daily grind of heterosexual arrogance. I never liked to tell people that I was bi. Straight men took it as a come-on line, an advertisement. Better that they should have seen my dyke button a mile away. Dykes took it as an indication that I was playing games. Wrong again. Latent lesbian girls took my bisexual admission as some sort of invitation to them to rag on about how repulsive real man-hating lesbians were.

"Oh, I'm sorry," I wanted to say. "You misunderstand me. I'm a man-hating bisexual. " 

But I didn't say that. I told all but the most sincere that I was gay. It hardly seemed to matter. For ten years, my live-action sexual encounters with men were few, far between, and rather odd. One time, I fucked the Christmas UPS man who made deliveries at my boring job. Another time, I spent the night with one of my childhood political heroes, an old man of sixty-eight who once led a waterfront strike, but as an old man, had heart trouble anddiabetes. He couldn't get an erection and felt very badly about it.

"It doesn't matter," I told him. "I'm a lesbian, I don't expect it... I just want to be with you." His intimacy was a privilege for me.

I understand now that a mouthful like "heterosexual privilege" doesn't have anything to do with the luxury or honor of bedding down with my oppressor— or my mentor. It's just an academic way to describe the flat-out devastation of losing your woman to a man. I've played every humiliating soap opera scene in that book. I've woken up next to women who couldn't look me in the eye after clinging to me all night, and I've watched them run to their boy friends so fast they tripped over their shoelaces.

One memorable evening at a drunken party, I watched my lover, Sherry, disappear behind a bedroom door with one of my roommates, a big blond man a foot taller than me. I pressed my ear against the door and blocked out the B-52s album blaring in the background. I heard him humping her. I couldn't believe it.

Why don’t you dance with me? The B-52's were blaring through the house speakers.

I was so shocked that I was bold enough to open the door and walk in. "Sherry?" I called out to the long hair trailing over the bed. Her tiny body was covered by his. I was so close to them, it was remarkable they didn't notice me at all.

I finally left them, closed the door, and resolved to wait there, all night if necessary, to confront her when she walked out.

At 4 AM, some fresh arrivals rolled in the front door with a new keg. "Hey, your girlfriend just jumped out the bedroom window," one of them said to me. "What's her problem?"

I ran outside, but the only bit of Sherry I found was the soft spot in the grass where she'd landed.

Everybody goes to parties, they dance this mess around....

Nowadays Sherry is a butch working on the Manhattan stock exchange, and she has lived with the same woman for ten years. But that was one bad night.

I need to find the redhead, "The Lesbian," and tell her this story. Sherry betrayed me, not homosexuality, not the lesbian empire. She spread her legs for that man; I stood motionless and watched them; she flew out the window; I cried, and then we started all over again. We are capable of every betrayal and every forgiveness that follows.

I pick up my bible, Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse, or "Lovers Disco," as I call it. 

"The sentiment of amorous suffering explodes in this cry: 'I can't go on...

But you do.

"Nothing works out, but it keeps going on."

I did not imagine I could go on after Sherry left me. Losing a woman to a man is as close to the burning sensation of childhood ridicule as one can experience. You feel incompetent, unable to compete, yet it makes you sick to even think of comparing yourself with that... thing. Not even that thing between his legs, but that thing between his ears that makes every man think that he's God. 

When *I* left *my* girlfriend because I fell for a man, the harshest thing she said to me was an accusation thrown at my back, screamed as I climbed up the hill to my car filled with my half of the household furnishings.

"Have you fucked your boyfriend yet?" A direct hit.

Yes, I had fucked him, and I would do it again and again. I wanted to yell back, "You don't understand, you'll never understand."

Had she never been engulfed with desire so extreme as to spit in the face of all her principles, beliefs, morals? Of course she had. She was twelve years older than me. She understood, but I didn't.

To submit to lust is to declare a panic, a state of body emergency. My shame at leaving my girlfriend, who had fucked me in the ass with her arm, who had tasted every fluid in my body, who had brought me to the brink again and again and loved me so well— how could I do this to her?

Just watch me— and then watch yourself follow in my footsteps, the steps that lead so faithfully into every dark alley we take such pains to shun. I did not want to be straight. I had been content with my bisexuality only as long as men were tangential to it. When I fucked this man, it was an act of greatest perversion.

In my shame I picked up Lovers Discourse once again and sat down on the toilet:

"I am reduced to endurance.... I suffer without adjustment, I persist without intensity, always bewildered, never discouraged. I am a Daruma doll, a legless toy endlessly poked and pushed, but finally regaining its balance, assured by an inner balancing pin.

"But WHAT is my balancing pin? The force of love?

"...Such is life, falling over seven times and getting up eight."

Intellectually, we always favor those of our own sex, even if they're not our sexual partners. Bisexuals are the same as everyone else in this regard; we just get more opportunity to view the spectacle. To be with the opposite sex is never "better;" it's a classic compromise, however compelling.

Some think that it is "feminism" for women to prefer women and "chauvinism" for men to prefer men. But the prejudice is older than that. You are always a little disdainful of your opposite. I am capable of believing in love, certainly lust, but never in equality between the sexes.

Jealousy, however, is the great equalizer. Security and exclusivity— promises broken as often as they are offered— are high on every lover's list of demands. I despise jealousy. I control it only with discipline; it is like a skin I cannot shed.

I search for the lovers who won't consider my bisexuality a de facto threat, who will not fear that to love me is to be in perpetual competition with their sex. That fear is the true reaction to bisexuality, not political epithets. Accusing a bisexual of being a traitor reveals one's desperate, and quite human, fear of rejection. I can barely accept that feature in myself.

Let me be honest with you, and let me be shameful, as it seems so essential to my discipline: I don't want to hear that you’re "bisexual" either, especially just after you've fucked me blind. Don't tell me who you are. I'm a mere mortal, jealous and vulnerable, and I might fall for you in a big way. Show me what you can do.

If you succeed in blinding me, I will follow you, potentially into loss, betrayal, into the fire walk. It will be personal; it will not necessarily be principled. In the moment after orgasm, this is what is memorable— and for many moments after.

From Susie Bright's Sexual Reality, free on Amazon this weekend

 

Photo: A Place in the Sun, Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift 

Tristan Taormino: The HBO Lesbian Strap-On Sex Party

 

 

 

"I was the subject of a 13-person all-anal gang bang— but the most degraded I've ever felt in my life was working in mainstream television."  

 

from Susie Bright's Big Sex Little Death book tour

TRISTAN: 

"To this day, people see the lesbian party-strap-on episode for the very first time and write me an email and they're like, how can I get to one of these parties?  I need to go to one of these lesbian strap-on parties.  I need to go there now.  I need the address."

 

SUSIE:

"I think when people say I want to go, I want the address ... When people would say that to me, about something they saw that I was up to ... it was this joie de vivre that they felt ...that there are people and when they get together they're just so compassionate and excited and funny and open to sex with each other.  Where's that??  Even if had just been the cunnilingus party... or the soft feathers and food-fight party... it's just that there's a place where people are playful and funny, not this 'you slut you cheated on me it's over!'  You know, a relief from that."

 

 

Footage shot and edited by Jacqui Deegan, from the Momentum Conference in Silver Spring, MD, April 3, 2011:  "Making Waves in Sexuality, Feminism & Relationship Through New Media."

Susie's attended the con to talk about scenes from her memoir, Big Sex Little Death 

This is the final keynote speech with Tristan Taormino and Susie Bright which we called, "Multi-Gen Feminist Pornographers Speak Out."

 

Are You On or Off the Float? —Vote for Susie for Parade Grand Marshall!

I have a huge surprise: I've been nominated to be one of a handful of Parade Grand Marshalls in the San Francisco Pride March this year.

YOW! I wanna win so bad. I promise, if I'm a parade marshall I will be so outrageous, and we will have so much fun, that we won't stop talking about it for the rest of lives. Deal!

Would you vote for me?

You can go online and press a button. Or, you can vote in person and make a big papery show of it! (See below for in-person voting details).

Let me give you a little background:

I've been involved in the SF Parade since... 1979. Before that, I was part of the gay parades in Hollywood, and Long Beach.

I have done every station of the cross at Pride celebrations except Grand Marshall.

I have protested the stage, taken over the stage, performed on stage, marched in the goofball contingent, the fuck-anita-bryant contingent, the anarchists, the strippers and whores, the angelic choirs, the diseased-pariah-news fellow travelers, as a parent with my kid in a little red wagon, as a spectator on poles, window ledges, running out in traffic, getting my car stolen, getting high, getting On Our Backs first issue out, getting mugged, Dykes on Bikes, in latex, in leather, in my pajamas, post-break-up, post-knife-fight, post poptarts, with straight relatives, with closeted gay relatives, with my eyes closed... every incarnation you can think of.  Let me reach my zenith!

I have never been in a "little red convertible," waving and singing with the crowd. I have not "led" a float covered with flowers and disco balls. THIS IS MY DESTINY. 

Now, who are the other contenders?

I hate to tell you this, but they're all worthy, wonderful people who are probably as hysterical to lead a parade as I am. I'm in the "community activist" category, so everyone on the ballot is more than deserving.

Just focus on your selfish pleasure to see me win, win, win.

Vote Now!  You can only vote once, darn it.

Polling has started already, and it ends 11:59 PM on Sunday, April 10th.

 

2011 Detailled Grand Marshal Voting Guide

There are three (3) methods you can utilize to cast your vote:

1.)  Visit a public polling place, get a paper ballot, and cast it in person.  Times and locations are:

 

Friday, April 1 – Bench & Bar (510 17th Street, Oakland)
6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
 
Saturday, April 2 – Mr. S Leather Co. (8th and Harrison Streets, SF)
11:30 am – 3:30 pm
 
Saturday, April 9 – Project Open Hand (730 Polk Street, SF)
11:00 am – 3:00 pm

2.)  Stop in at the SFLGBTPCC office between 10:00 AM and 5:00 PM, Monday through Friday, and pick up a paper ballot — then either fill it out on the spot, mail it in, or FAX it in to the office.  Multiple ballots can not be turned in or FAXed by one person, a maximum of TWO (2) ballots can be sent into the office via regular mail (1841 Market Street, Fourth Floor, San Francisco CA 94103.

3.)  Vote online at sfpride.org!

 

An Educated Man: Jamie Gillis, RIP

 

My friend Jamie Gillis died last Friday after a long struggle with cancer. He was an actor and legend in the sex film business whom I've written about over the years the way most movie critics write about Meryl Streep. They broke the mold with this guy.
 

 

 

Gillis grew up in the City, one of six kids with a father who was known as "The Mayor of the Roseland Ballroom." He graduated from Columbia University in 1970. 

 He was a classical repertory actor, scrounging extra money as a cabbie, when he answered an ad in the Village Voice for a movie gig that turned out to a casting call for porn loops— the kind of tiny movies that used to be shown in peep shows. 

Gillis went on to act in the most important movies that were ever made in American erotic cinema — Radley Metzger titles like The Opening of Misty Beethoven— and his unforgettable roles in the films by the late director Richard Mahler, Midnight Heat being most notable. 

("Mahler" was a pseudoynym for famous horror director Roger Watkins. It's frustrating that there are no video clips of Watkins' erotic work online. When I've shown clips of Jamie from the original Midnight Heat to theaterical audiences, the audience falls silent holding their breath).

Twenty years into his career, Gillis originated what came to be called "gonzo porn," simultaneously (and accidentally) pioneering the reality show genre. He teamed up with one of his favorite actresses, Rene Morgan, plus photographer Duck Dumont and a chauffered car— and cruised San Francisco's North Beach to find someone who'd be willing to have sex on camera, right on the spot. Much easer said than done. It was called On the Prowl.

I interviewed Jamie two years ago in NYC, for my podcast on Audible.com. When Gillis arrived for our interview he sheepishly admitted to the engineering staff that he turning sixty-four. My producer, a pro inured to "star-power," grabbed me aside and said, "I can't believe it! He's incredible!" 

The man had a timeless sex appeal. More than that— this capacity to get to something intimate with strangers that you couldn't shrug off. 

Beyond that, he was a great conversationalist. I can't tell you how sad I am I won't see Jamie and sit in his beautiful garden next time I'm in NYC. Jamie was a piece of the City's history you won't see again. He died way too early— yet he outlived most of his contemporaries. 

Below is a partial transcript (darn it) of one of our interviews, and an audio excerpt. It is all too brief, and I hope you can listen to the entire hour long interview. 

Audio Excerpt:
 

 

Jamie Gillis audio interview excerpt

 

Full Audio Interview: Link

 

Partial Transcript:

Jamie and I started off by talking about the last time we'd seen each other in person. We were at a Christmas party at the O'Farrell theater — owned by the late Jim and Artie Mitchell.

We reminisced about a mutual friend who partied with us there — Lisa Thatcher, a formidable (but now long-retired) porn star in New York during Jamie's early days in the business.

Susie Bright: If you remember, when we saw Lisa Thatcher at Jim and Art's Christmas party, you told me something like, "Not everybody is right for this business. Lisa was." 

And like myself, Lisa is now middle-aged. If you saw her on the street going to the grocery store now, you wouldn't say, "OMG, it's a porn star." And yet she still has this sort of glimmer in the eye. What did you mean when you said that to me?

Jamie Gillis: She wasn't just some innocent kid, you know? She knew exactly what she was getting into. She loved all kinds of sex, so she was never, in any sense, a victim of the business. And I think she did well in the business.

The seventies were some pretty raunchy days in New York. But you'd go someplace and there would be a line of guys trying to get to touch her. I'd never seen that big a line. And she loved it! She told me that one of the things that got her excited was the hunger of the guys who got to spend one or two minutes with her. She would relate to that kind of hunger that they felt. And she loved that. It turned her on.

SB: What do you notice about a performer who doesn't belong in the business?

JG: Well, they're not happy. They're doing it for the attention or maybe for affection that they haven't gotten from their families, or whatever. It's a sad story when they're not that interested in the sex — they just want to be noticed. They'll put up with the sex but you can see they're not there. They don't want to be there and they're trying not to be there. They're just saying, "Look at me. Hold me. Love me."

And, you know, you do get attention if you're a porn performer. “We're concerned about you, and we'll send a car for you” — all that stuff — you know? So it can feel good, but with disastrous results for people who don't really belong in porn.
 

 

 

 

 When Porn Wasn’t a Business Yet

SB: You got started in the business in the early '70s, I think.

JG: '71. There wasn't even a business. It was a dirty basement.

SB: I was about to say, it wasn't so much a business. It was a fly-by-night thing happening in a counterculture. 

 

So on top of the sex, you had this attitude: "This is our generation doing something different than anybody else would do." Even though it wasn't explicitly political, in the sense that some of the rock and roll was — it was of the time, like smoking pot or dropping acid. 

 

It had that vibe: "We hang together because we have some kind of consciousness, and we're also making some bucks and getting our rocks off." But then you had this complete change in technology in the business, and now there's nothing countercultural about the scene — nothing "outlaw" about it.

 

JG: It's no longer counterculture. The counter is gone. "Hey, Ma! We're cultcha now!"

SB: Did this change depress you at all? You came from this era where you could be a freak or an intellectual, or you could have some cinematic or theatrical background, and you could fit in. 

Whereas now it's more like, "What do you mean? I'm busy, I have this many minutes to make this many dollars before my next real estate seminar." Was that change hard to cope with?

JG: In a way. It's sort of sad to see sex be a business.

SB: You didn't do it for free before...

JG: No!

SB: ...but there was just something else going on.

JG: But then, we don't want to get too romantic about this. I got into the business just looking for part-time work. I wasn't making any money acting so I was looking for a part-time job to support myself. But it did feel good, and it became a social thing. We were excited about what we were doing. It was kind of fun. (Laughs)

SB: I got interested in doing porn and being a porn critic in a sort of revolutionary spirit. I have zero interest in going to the AVN awards or some business seminar, or making some cookie-cutter movie with people who wouldn't know a filmic moment if it fell on top of them. It pisses me off! I get a little cranky about it.

JG: Well, people are making money and doing what they want. But I did get disgusted with the business around '89. I'd been in it for a long time. That's when I started doing that gonzo stuff, because the scripts were so stupid. So I thought — we'll just take a girl out to the streets…

SB: See what might happen.

JG: ...get her fucked. Yeah.

Gonzo Porn

SB: For those people who don't know, what is “gonzo porn”? What did you want gonzo to be?

JG: All I wanted to do was just go out into the streets and meet people. Bring a girl out – maybe to a dirty bookstore or something — and just "throw her to the wolves."

SB: A lot of people will think everyone jumped at the chance. But of course, they didn't! There was a lot of tension. People were afraid of being conned, or that it wasn't real, or that she would cut their balls off in some crazy... There's this tension that they don't know if they can trust you with their nuts.

JG: It's a very unusual offer. Sure!

SB: (Laughing) Yes it is!

JG: I remember I was hanging out with Long Jean Silver and she said, "Let's go find some boys!" She wanted a group of boys to fuck. But we had a hard time finding them! 

We'd go up and I'd say, "Hey, you guys want to come back to our place?" They'd run! Finally, we found a group of seven. I said, "We're not taking seven. We're taking three. And I told her, "Pick three that you like the most."

There were two sailors that we picked up early on for a film we made. And I got a call from the Navy. One of the guys was in the brig because he did this movie. 

So I said, "What do you mean, one of the guys is in the brig because they did this movie?" (laughter) And it wasn't even the guy that did the fucking! It was the other guy.

So the guy's lawyer told me, "Well, they want to get rid of him, so they're using this as an excuse."

So I said, "You tell the Navy that if they use this as an excuse to get rid of this guy, I'm going to call the press and tell them that he didn't even do anything in this movie, and the Navy's just trying to screw him. Because they're leaving alone the guy who actually did the fucking. So tell the Navy it's going to be on the front page of the Chronicle. 

So the lawyer said, "OK, thanks." He called me back a half hour later and said, "Thanks a lot. He's out. Everything's fine." That was the only time in my life I had any sense of what real power was.

SB: The classic report from most men about doing porn is that they think they'll have a giant dick on TV, but when the camera is on them, they're just sweating bullets. Did you ever have one of those shy moments back when you were a little lamb?

JG: Never. I was a duck to water. I mean, to me it was like — wow! Even though it wasn't good money back then, it was like — "Thirty bucks to fuck a pretty girl!" I couldn't believe it.

I don't know if it was because I was a sex freak or because of my acting training. I didn't care if anyone was there. I would just concentrate on what I was there to do. It wasn't hard to do that.
 

 

 Is Porn Hard On Off-Camera Lovers?

 SB: I've heard that it might be hard for men who were in the business to have relationships. Mike Horner told me that.

JG: Mike is the male version of somebody who shouldn't be in the business. He's too sweet for it. You know what I mean?

SB: Well, I don’t agree with you about Mike, but I want to hear what you have to say about the dilemma he describes. He told me, "If I'm fucking somebody all day at work, and I come home, and someone's all needy and saying, "I want you to fuck me now, because I'm your girlfriend and I need you to show that same enthusiasm for me.'" 

And he said, "It's too much. I can't do that." 

And I said, "Well, what if you hook up with someone in the sex business? Maybe they'll feel the same way. Maybe they'd also come home from a hard day of being fucked, and they don't need you to turn on, or turn off." 

But he said, "Oh, I can't win. I've tried a lot of different things." He really wanted to have a girlfriend the way other people have girlfriends.

JG: But this is even true in the "legitimate" Hollywood. If you're a guy, you get on the set and you're working with the most beautiful woman in the world. Maybe your wife or girlfriend at home is just as pretty, but still, this is fresh meat. You know? And they're all over the place — not just the actresses, but there are the extras. But Mike has a point. You can't live with somebody "straight" in the sex business. Of course it doesn't work. How could it?

I've had relationships with girls in the industry, and that seemed to work out OK, because we were both sex nuts. You know? But a "normal" girl? How can somebody even think about that?

SB: Did you ever feel like you wanted a romance or a domesticity that you couldn't have, or was your attitude just, "No thank you"?

JG: At the time when I got into the business, I was with a girl who saw me as this nice Jewish boy. I came out of college. I was acting. I was a mime. I was a good boy. (Laughter)

SB: You still are.

JG: Yeah, I still am. But all of a sudden I started fucking all these strangers. Somebody once said that a man is as faithful as his options. That's how it is.

So all of the sudden, I didn't even have to go out and look for the girls. They were thrown at me. And I was getting paid for it. So it's like, you've got this really wonderful woman at home. But on the other hand, you've got this other great stuff happening too. And if you're in your twenties, that great stuff is gonna win out… or maybe in your thirties and your forties, even. You know?

SB: (Laughs) Okay, well let's go to the fifties.

JG: Fifties? I don't know. (Laughs)

Is All Porn Queer?

SB: Whenever I read official descriptions of your film career, they'll say, (solemnly) "Jamie Gillis — who never denied his bisexuality!"

JG: Oh… I saw that on Wikipedia.

SB: I love that phrase — "who never denies it." (Laughter) And it's not like you've ever been the grand marshal of the bisexual float in the gay parade. 

But you also haven't had this issue that some guys have where they think their career rests on a certain kind of perception that they're straight. I always think that's such a facade. If you're in the sex business, and you're fucking around other people all day long — the notion that you are some kind of "Kinsey 0" is a joke. You can't be. Because you're dealing with other people's dicks and cunts all day long. You better be comfortable with people's bodies.

 Anyway, how come you haven't been smeared by it?

JG: Well, I think the entire porn business is just fag-ridden. (Laughter) 

Including the customers! I mean, it's all about dick! It's all about dick, and watching dick come. Look at the dick squirt. See Dick. See Dick squirt.

I've always had this funny image of myself as a straight guy who just happens to have more fag sex than any fag I know. Because when I was coming up, gays were the only ones that were really sexually crazy. 

Before there was a Plato's Retreat, there was a place called Continental Baths. It was the exact same location. And I used to go to the Continental Baths, because that's where you could have crazy, wild sex! Nobody else was doing that. 

And I remember walking around that fucking place thinking, "If only there was a heterosexual place like this. Wouldn't that be amazing?" 

And I didn't even dream that it would happen — but it did, like about two years later, with Plato's Retreat. It was this straight place with all these hundreds of girls going there.

In my ideal world, if you were walking down the street, there'd be a place where you could just touch people. There would be a grope club.

 SB: Did you ever have a moment when you were a teenager where you thought, "Oh my god, why am I so kinky?"

JG: No, not "Oh my god." Maybe "Thank god!"

SB: (Laughs) But you're supposed to feel guilt and despair and compare yourself to everyone else. How come you didn't?

JG: I guess I always sort of liked sex — almost any kind. It was a big treat! There's this Woody Allen line about how bisexuals have it better because they have twice as many opportunities for a date on Saturday night. 

And I remember thinking the same thing when I was eleven, before Woody Allen said it. I thought that as a kid! It was before I had any kind of sexual contact. It seemed like a reasonable attitude to me.

The Mayor of Roseland Ballroom

SB: Has your family been shocked by what you do? Did you have to negotiate this with them?

JG: It was hardly a problem. My family always recognized that I was a little different.

SB: Why do you think that is?

JG: Cause I was always a little different. (Laughs)

Once my mother saw me on television — that sort of legitimized it a little bit for her. And she would read The Daily News or whatever and see my name in advertisements. My older sister told me, "You know, she has clippings."

My father became a pain in the ass because I made the mistake of getting him a girl once. My parents were separated, so I got him a beautiful young girl. I think it was for his birthday or something.

SB: And you had reason to believe your dad had a strong sexual interest in...

JG: Oh, absolutely. He was always interested in women. They used to call him “The Mayor of Roseland Ballroom.” His legend was that he had danced and kissed every woman who came there.

So I knew this would work out and he'd be very happy. But the problem was — until he died, I could not talk to him without him saying "Do you know any more girls?" 

So every once in a while, I had to throw him another hunk of meat.

SB: So the lesson is — do not procure for members of your family?

JG: Don't procure for your father. It's a pain in the ass.

SB: Do you have kids? I mean, how do you deal with it...

JG: I have one child who's practically older than I am. I was a virgin when I was seduced by an older woman. 

And then she got pregnant. It was a plan — she wanted the child. I told her, "If you have that child, I will never see you again." 

And she said, "Well, I don't expect to see you anyway. I'm going to have the child." So that's how that was. 

But I must say, I'm now delighted that I had this child, because it sort of takes that edge off of wondering what that's like. There is this human being out there and I'm glad that she's around now. 

But it took me about nine years before I even acknowledged her. It was only because I didn't want to be a bad father. I wasn't prepared. I didn't want to end up like my own father, who had six children because that's what you did in those days.

When I’m 64...

SB: As you get older, does the sizzle endure?

JG: It never ends. I remember — there used to be an old Jewish dominatrix in New York called “Belle du Jour.” And she was popular. I would go to her place just to hang out sometimes because it was interesting. Guys would come in.

This old guy who must have been close to ninety comes in, and he goes in the back with her. And she has these black, thigh-high boots on. And he falls onto the floor, and he's lapping at her boots. And I'm thinking, "My god. It never ends." You know, you'd think when you were ninety, you'd have a little dignity. Something would change. But it doesn't! It just goes on.

SB: Do you know more about how to touch people now, than you knew ten or fifteen years ago? Actually, I don't even know how old you are…

JG: I… I… I… sort of have a spasm whenever I say how old I am. This is the worst possible year, actually, because the Beatles song keeps running through your mind.

SB: Are you sixty-four?

JG: Sixty-four. And there's nothing worse than knowing that you heard that song when you were a kid, and you were thinking — what a joke. There are sixty-four-year-old people walking around the street. And then there you are. It's ridiculous.

SB: Well, you're very honest about this, so I'd treasure anything you can tell me about being a sexual man at sixty-four.

JG: (Pause) Well, first of all, I don't feel I have to fuck everybody I meet.

SB: What a relief!

JG: Of course, also, the girls also don't feel they have to fuck me as much. But you're a little more in control, particularly if you've had as many women as I've had. You sort of know what they're like. And you can appreciate them more just for themselves. You can talk to them and have a good time. And you can just sort of look at one of them and have a good idea of what it's like to fuck that one. And you can think about that and not have to go through with it...

...  audio interview continued here.

 

I know that Jamie's friends, his partner, siblings, and daughter— and so many people who worked with him— are missing him today. And so many people who had sex they will never forget, with Jamie, are thinking about him today. 

"The essence of freedom consists in thinking you have it," is something Giacomo Casanova once wrote. But today, it reminds me of Mr. Gillis. I will miss his kiss, his embrace, his teasing, and the way he knew he could say anything to me and I would just ask... another question.

 

 

Photos: the film stills are from 1983's Midnight Heat. Seriously, try to find this movie on VHS or 16mm. Try. The recent portrait is one he gave me on that famous 64th birthday interview.  Here is an obit from Ashley Spicer, which ought to be in The New York Times, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

 

To read the rest of Susie's history with old school porn, check out: 

The Erotic Screen, Vol. 1: The Golden Hardcore and the Shimmering Dyke-Core 

 
Available at Amazon, B&N, & Smashwords. Here's the whole Table of Contents.

Interviews from the 1980s with legendary artists like Russ Meyer, John Leslie, Sharon Mitchell, Jeannie Pepper, Christopher Rage... and many more.

 

Tiger Woods' Cuckold Fantasies

US magazine has reprinted an erotic cuckold dream that Tiger Woods reportedly sent to one of his alleged mistresses.

Woods told "Rachel" in an email that he envisioned her having sex with Derek Jeter and Bones star David Boreanaz— at the same time. The juicy email describes his fantasy in lurid detail...

via www.huffingtonpost.com

Okay, I'm finally interested! "Adulterous Sports Star" didn't rouse me out of my non-monogamous slumber. On that count, Tiger needs to listen to Mo'Nique:

“[My husband and I] have an agreement that we’ll always be honest— and if sex happens with another person, that’s not a deal breaker for us. That’s not something where we’ll have to say, ‘Oh God, we’ve got to go to divorce court because you cheated on me.’ Because we don’t cheat."
 

But this cuckold fantasy that Tiger spins— where he vicariously enjoys his pretty lover getting plowed by two butch hunks— how timely!

The humiliated-but-thoroughly-aroused-husband is the biggest new trend in taboo erotic fantasies.

In 2006 or so, I started seeing the first mini-fad of erotic cuckolding confessions, which started to proliferate on CraigsList. More elaborate versions subsequently arrived in the form of manuscripts in my mailbox— authors seeking to publish on the subject. It was still an "embarrassing" fantasy— none of the people who sent me fiction wanted to use their real name in print.

Most of the authors I read were amateur, but one was really worthy of "Double Indemnity" craftsmanship— a piece called  "Playing Doctor," by Eloise Chagrin, which I published in The Best American Erotica 2008.

Eloise offered this p.o.v. in a postscript to the story:

"It surprises me to no end that the sexual fetish of cuckoldry, once thought of as a disability, could be shared by so many people. The cuckolding fetish has an element of surprise, along with a bittersweet emotional masochism.

"Another key to the fetish, from the perspective of the cuckold, is that of eroticizing as a defense mechanism. When someone you care about expresses their interest in another person, you wrestle with your inadequacies. This fight may take on different forms, in many cases with the ultimate rejection of your lover.

"However, if your bond is strong, and you’re able to put aside that sense of self, then it’s possible to experience pleasure vicariously.

"Many people may think of this as abhorrent, as tantamount to abuse, while others believe it’s an essential part of their sexual health. I don’t know; I’m only trying to describe something that I’ve thought about for a long time.

"Some may find putting oneself second to be deleterious to one’s emotional health; others find something beautiful in the idea of loving your partner so much that you become attracted to whatever role he or she plays, whatever the two of you become. I leave the benedictions to others.

"A third ingredient to the mix is homoerotic. There is no way to avoid this with groups of three. Even in the most repressed situations, at least two out of the three people are of the same gender, and all parties are interested in the situation, else they would stop participating.

"In my story, as in my perceptions of cuckoldry from real life, betrayal is on the horizon. There’s a real possibility that any pair may break off from the group and form a greater intimacy. That prospect keeps the game competitive, and the players had better give their best performances, bank on everything they have in their bag of tricks— because, ultimately, someone must lose."
 

After I published "Playing Doctor," I heard from Kidder Kaper, the impresario of the Sex is Fun game group, who told me he was writing an illustrated book of sexy role-playing games for couples. He wanted my feedback on a cuckolding fantasy he was drawing.

His scheme involved setting up a tableau in your bedroom so it looks "as if" the wife is just getting buggered by a handyman before her husband walks in. Very clever! All the erotic drama without an actual plumber— or cheatin'!

I think ground zero for the "Out and Proud Cuckold" scene was Seattle; in part due to Dan Savage's column, who is always pulling off the manhole cover.

His column was the first place I listened to men, who, despite using pseudonyms, were unapologetic about their turn-on.

"Yes," they said, "it's emotionally masochistic; so what? Why do bottoms who merely request spankings get to have all the fun?"

Then there was the question, "But isn't it gay? Are you hung up on Daddy?"

Some men, said, "Sure, I'm bisexual and a submissive. I'm a happy camper." Others said,"This fantasy doesn't work for me without the woman; she's the star. I identify with her, but I don't want to be a man getting worked by another man."

Mostly what they said, like every other person who has a non-vanilla fantasy life, was: "Don't judge me!" 

Cuckold-fantasists are every kind of person, not identifiable by what they wear or the circumstances of their public life. You might think they were one of the most powerful, charismatic men in the world— you know, like Tiger Woods. Is he ready to be a poster boy?

Do women eroticize being cheated on? Jealousy is a universal experience and we often "play" with its green tendrils, to give ourselves a charge. Too much, and it's anti-erotic— just enough, and it's spice. 

To tell you the truth, though, I have never received a manuscript submission where a "wife" describes coming home to find her husband being ravished by two man-eating nymphos who make sport of her. In a classic cuckquean fantasy, the wife would then jill off, right in front of her sexy tormenters, simultaneously humiliated and exhilarated.

The next day, she would hold a press conference and "stand by her man." Right? ;-)

I think women of our times do eroticize sexual humiliation a little differently... perhaps you'd care to weigh in?  (Note: obviously no one enjoys reality-based humiliation... please address the erotic/S/M aspect!)

Those Unforgettable Lesbian Love Songs

Lesbian Pop historian Rabdrake has posted a remarkable contribution to the rarefied world of lesbian erotic music and video: The G2G Love Song List.

All the songs are by female vocalists singing love songs to other women—  "Not friendship love, but undisguised sensuality, an open expression of same-sex attraction."

Every tune links to a video featuring the likes of Patti Smith, Lisa Lopes, Janet Jackson, Ani DiFranco, Laura Nyro, Melissa Ethridge, The Butchies, Katy Perry, Joan Jett, Amy Winehouse, and Marlene Dietrich.

It's interesting to look at that group of names, isn't it? Some are outspoken dyke activists, some are "it-ain't-no-big-thing" bisexuals, while others are persistent closet cases who nevertheless make these videos which reveal their true affections.

My personal favorites are Amy's "Valerie," Marlene Dietrich's montage, and the concert clip above from Sarah Jane Morris.

I was always interested in "straight" pop songs that crossed over into the once-dynamic lesbian bar scene. It often had to do with a play on words, like "Me and Mrs. Jones."

"I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)," with Aretha Franklin wringing it out wet, has to be at the top of that list. I just had another little gasp listening to Allison Crowe's cover of the same.

Rabdrake is the researcher behind the story of "Emmie," Pop music's first lesbian love song, composed by Laura Nyro, who wrote it for her lover, Maria Desiderio.

The reason Nyro must've been so secretive about her lover wasn't because they were gay in a not-so-friendly time— but because they were 13 and 18 when they met and fell in love. That's when Nyro wrote "Emmie."

Later, she wrote "Desiree," another devotion to her partner. Both women died, still together, in middle age, of ovarian cancer, just a few years apart. It reminds me of the rose and the green briar in the lyrics of "Barb'ry Allen:"

They grew and grew to the steeple top
Till they could grow no higher
And there they twined in a true love's knot
Red rose around green briar

 I wish we knew more of their story.

Kissing in a Tree

Everyone I know in California is getting married this weekend. Everyone queer, that is. 

Listen to an excerpt from my podcast

Listen to the whole show: LINK

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Even some of my heterosexual friends are getting in on the action, because no one wants to miss the groovy free-love-and-a-license party down at City Hall.

There are some spoilsports, of course. The County Clerk of Bakersfield, (our Country-Western music epicenter!), has outlawed ALL wedding ceremonies  so she wouldn't have to face the horror— the horror, I tell you!— of watching a groom and a groom kiss each other with tears in their eyes. 

Or, maybe her phobia is dykes in tuxes. She says she "doesn't have the resources" to perform marriages of any kind, but behind everyone's back, she was writing a right-wing freaker group begging for solace and legal support.

I can't believe someone this ignorant is still hanging around the State bureaucracy, a gay enclave if there ever was one.

Back in San Francisco, there wasn't a dry eye in the house when Daughers of Bilitis founders, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon got married in City Hall yesterday, by the studly mayor who started the whole gay wedding stampede in 2004, Gavin Newsom. 

Del and Phyll are so frail, at their age, it makes you choke up to think of how they've been together since the 1950s, asking for nothing more than a little respect. They are more radical than young people a third their age! 

In one California local newspaper after the next, we see the photo story behind gay marriage: it's largely an elderly revolution. These are couples who've been together for decades, coping with the health and legacy issues than any old person does, wanting their beloved to be by their side without harangue and humiliation.

I remember when Newsom first declared San Francisco a "get married!" zone; it was Valentine's Day and the whole city spontaneously broke out in red balloons and pink garlands. You couldn't walk down the streets without people smiling at you like they'd just been dusted with sugar and kissed by the Easter Bunny. It felt as if, for one day, Love Prevailed. And that was a real love, not a romance, because we were celebrating a long-overdue social justice that would not be denied.

Newsom's wedding licenses were subsequently scrapped by the state, under pressure from the homophobic evangelical lobby— and for the five zillionth time, marriage activists went back to the drawing boards... how many times do we have to say, Yes, I Do?  

This time, even Arnold Schwarzenegger, our improbable governor, cannot put on the pretense that he gives a shit about the Haters. (This is a guy who gave Oui Magazine an interview in 1977, his weightlifting prime, boasting that American men were too uptight about getting their dicks sucked by other guys; that it's not such a big deal in Austria... really!)

So, marriage licenses for all, freshly minted, are finally here. It's already a fact in life in so many states and countries; soon the only hold-outs are going to look antediluvian.

However, there are good friends and lovers... who just don't wanna get married. They are all for justice under the law— and toasting the bride next door—  but they don't want to be swept into the nuptial tent themselves.

One of our readers, Chris, commented on a previous post:

What should I do about my long-term lesbian relationship? My wife keeps saying she wants to get married, and I don’t, because I think marriage is bullshit. It's propagated by a misguided human delusion that we won’t die alone and that we can belong to someone—or whatever people who believe in marriage think.

Chris isn't the only one to wring her hands and hide from the bouquet toss.

I'm not married myself. I never thought twice about getting married, to a man or a woman, for the first few decades of my life. It was never part of my parents' scheme for me, nor did I feel any peer pressure in the 70s, when I was first falling in love. I came of age at a time when weddings were seen as square, anti-feminist, state-pimping bullshit.

My friends who did tie the knot, squirmed as they made their announcement, apologized profusely, and choked out explanations that their parents were putting in the screws.

I patted them on the back and said, "Hey, don't worry about me; I'm your friend no matter what!" As if they had admitted war crimes!

Marriage was seen, in my milieu, as a bourgeois millstone, likely to end in divorce, that was better left uncommented upon, for the sake of sparing everyone the humiliation.

I never went to a family wedding... how bizarre, in retrospect!  My single (divorced) mom must have been more of a bohemian than I realized. She certainly rolled her eyes every time the topic came up.

The first wedding event I ever attended, I was 30, and it was an "illegal" lesbian ritual. (And yes, they split up in less than a year). I remember how corny I found the ceremony; we were supposed to sing their one-syllable names out loud, like a chant, as I sweated and stared into my lap to hide my mortification.

I especially get vexed about marital vows. I hate vows that invoke God; I hate vows that insist the betrothed renounce all others— I always take that personally, even though I'm not supposed to.

I hate the part where someone says they've never loved like this before, and they never will again. Is love really that small and exclusive?

Mostly, I rue those vain promises that are utterly impossible to keep. I feel like screaming into the chapel, "How are you going to live with yourself when you fail? What do you do when you find out this is a child's fantasy?"

The romantic delusions are what twist my gut, and leave me anxiously awaiting the other shoe to drop. The best thing to do, I've found, is politely decline all wedding invitations, and just send my best. I'm always the first person the newlyweds call when they're fighting like cats and dogs.

And yet...

I may someday get married, if it becomes financially or legally beneficial, and I can't negotiate a fairer solution. So far I've worked my way around it, through other legal declarations!

I've already blustered my way into hospitals when my lover was injured at work, saying I was "his wife," because there was no way I was going to endure a roadblock.

At those times, I worked myself into an inner hysteria, thinking about the discrimination I'd face if we were a same-sex couple.

When Chris wrote her question, it made me think, "What does her lover really want, what does she want?"

For some people, a marriage proposal, more than anything else, means, 'I Love You, Above All Others, You are My Destiny." What they want, more than anything, is that emotional dedication. They will find temporary succor in a wedding, but if they're captive to their own demons, that insecurity will never leave them.

How do you make your lover feel secure— and what part is their responsibility? You can never reassure an insatiable lover enough; and conversely, there are spouses who are such liars and cheats that they would put King Solomon on edge with their antics.

Some lovers, who are in a financially unequal relationships, want legal security. They don't want to be discounted as a SAHM or dedicated muse, if the shit hits the fan.

Then there's the unexpected illnesses, deaths, suicides, that beg for the protection of  lover-positive law. Some of the most brutal cases of injustice I've witnessed were instances when one partner lost her beloved suddenly, and the long-estranged "blood family" came swooping in, and took everything away, from snapshots to the family car.

For all these reasons, I embrace an evenhanded marital law, the one decent thing a wedding provides.

Justice is direct; it's rather beautiful to behold— but the romantic bundle that often goes along with people's hitching papers is another beast entirely. It's probably worth a few heart-to-hearts to get to the bottom of it.

"What do I want this marriage? What are my worst fears— and most delicate hopes?" If you can't bare your breast about these things, it's probably a bad time to get married.

I, personally, was always attracted to the wedding dress. The party of it all. Then I realized that anyone could buy one, wear several, and march down the street in the Doo-Dah Parade.

I also envied the way that weddings make your long-lost friends come out of the woodwork. There are people in my life, miles away, who I miss terribly, and yet the only time they travel to California is when some high school pal is getting married. I could fucking give birth to a chicken and it wouldn't inspire them to budge an inch. Only weddings get their ass on the tarmac. Weddings.... and funerals— and I really hope it doesn't come to that!

Which brings us back to dying alone. I love the existential certainty of that fact— I don't want to die crowded.

But from the other side of the deathbed, I know that being a fierce advocate for my dear ones, to keep them out of pain, to speak for them when they can't, to rattle the cage when they are too weak— that's something I'll always treasure, and fight to protect. It doesn't mean "marriage," per se, it means legal respect for the diversity of our chosen families. You can keep the cake-topper; I'll take the equality.

Update:  Arnold's Oui interview used to be on the Internet in its entirety, perfectly scanned. I read it during his gubernatorial run. I remember chuckling over his exasperation with North American men's homophobia, as opposed to his "easy cum, easy go" attitude that he credited to his European background. Anyway, all that remains for the Google searcher is The Smoking Gun's partial summary of the wide-ranging interview, which is the link I provided. They took down the pages they had scanned before. My guess is, the material is owned by Playboy, who owned Oui. PB probably issued an injunction. You can also find pricey copies of this issue for sale on Ebay!

Welcome to the Big Ween

Meet Jen Sincero, author of A Straight Girls' Guide to Sleeping with Chicks— one of the most illuminating books I read the past year.

I first picked up SGGTSWC because I was so outraged by the title— how dare this het-heathen get her jollies making fun of dykes!

But I was so captivated by Miss Thing, I invited her to appear on my radio show last fall, which I'm rerunning this week.

In Bed with Susie Bright, Encore Edition 223: Straight Girls' Guide with Jen Sincero

Here's the first chapter, which you can read in full at the jump:

I think my first sexual encounter with a member of the same sex happened when I was seven.

My friend Wendy and I would spend hours playing with these little plastic Fisher-Price people who came with cars and houses and villages and stuff.

We'd make up stories about them, have them go to work and cook dinner, and when they were bad we'd send them off to "The Big Ween."

"Uh-oh, Sally didn't do her homework again," Wendy would say, kicking off her panties and lying on the floor.

She'd hold terrified little plastic Sally up in the air and announce to the entire Fisher-Price community that "Sally was bad and must go to The Big Ween," then slowly lower the toy between her legs.

I'd watch mesmerized as Wendy rubbed Sally around and around, stopping only when Wendy's My First Pussy had gotten its fill.

Inevitably, moments later, my own Mr. Smith would wind up telling a lie or robbing the Fisher-Price bank and my panties would go flying across the room. "Uhhhh-ohhhhhh!"

I'm not sure if this counts as sex, since there were actually two The Big Weens, Wendy overseeing operations at hers and me at mine, but I do know that for me it wasn't all innocent play. I was a really sexual kid who started masturbating at around five years old, and who was constantly getting sent to my room for greeting company with my hand down my pants.

So I find it kind of surprising, since I was such an early enthusiast and a curious person in general, that it took me until my thirties to really get down and dirty with another woman.

I'd done my fair share of dabbling, made out with a few drunk friends, and groped the occasional boob here and there, but nothing all that intimate ever happened.  It was usually the result of being wasted and figuring that if there were no cute guys around I might as well pin Sharon to the couch. And it never went beyond that until my thirties.

Maybe I was too uptight or too immature, or maybe all my friends were just uglier back then -- whatever the reason, it took me a couple decades before I found myself face to face with The Big Ween again. And much to my surprise, just like little plastic Sally, I got sucked in by it...

Jump here...

Don't forget, you can send your feedback and confidential questions to susie@susiebright.com. (Episode 223). If you'd like a free introduction to my show (one month/no charge) send me an email, with the subject line: Girly Card, and I'll get some free coupon cards in the mail to you.