Susie Bright's Journal

Kissing in a Tree

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

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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!

The Sex-Positive Librarian Will See You Now

A couple weeks ago I invited my friend Steve Harsin, who works as both a librarian and a rare-book dealer, (not to mention blogger!) to come help me catalog and appraise my late father's library.

Finally, you can see the fruits of our labor!

We cataloged a couple thousand titles on my beloved Library Thing so far— use the tag "Bill Bright" to see everything of my dad's.

I decided to sell some of the collection, and set up "Bill Bright's Library," a rare-book storefront on Amazon.

If you are into Native languages, indigenous culture, Beat poetry, writing systems, Indian anything—East or West— botany, zoology, mushrooms, printing presses, California history, Sanskrit, typography, Aztec codices, missionary tracts from the Conquest, or the queer Berkeley literary scene of the 1940s... oh boy, are you in for a treat. I feel like locking myself into my room for a decade and reading every single one.

Steve and I worked on the books side-by-side for seven days, furiously typing and shelving. He told me so many great stories about public library patrons— either trying to FIND a sex book or trying to KILL the sex books— that I asked him to join me on my audio show to talk about the lengths people will go to the exorcise their sexual curiosity and demons at the public library.

Listen to Susie and Steve: LINK

Listen to the whole show: LINK

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You all know how I feel about librarians being the ultimate-freedom-fighters, and Steve, with his great knowledge of banned books, is one of my inspirations! Take a look at his famous Banned Books and Censorship Resources site, that he created with colleague Karla Petersen.

Steve has worked with a lot of small-town, Midwest, and Southern library systems. I bet you didn't know that in Minnesota, they had to bind Madonna's scandal-prone Sex book with ice-fishing wire to keep it intact.  Or what happened when a town of white folks went a little nuts over She's Gotta Have It... And, by the way, what does the Reference Librarian do when you ask them a sex question?

Also on this week's show, I share an autopsy report about a fundamentalist preacher who was found dead in an autoerotic "wet suit" mishap. There's something so odd about reading a coroner's report that includes personal item lists like: "watch, belt, tie, wedding ring, diving mask, dildo."

Is there any way to do "breath play" without fatal risk? Obviously, Mr. Closet is not here to explain, but I am!

Then, in the "Try This at Home" mailbag, I advise a young woman who wants to turn her boyfriend from sweet thing into a wild savage.

Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, and requests for girly cards to susie@audible.com. (Episode 314, October 19, 2007)

Photo: After our book cataloging blowout, we rented a Mustang convertible and drove down Highway 1 to Big Sur—  the most fun I've had in WAY TOO long. What is it about taking the top off that makes you feel like you can do anything? We blasted the tunes and I go-go danced on the back seat. That's Steve in the driver's seat, Jon riding shotgun. Thank you, Steve!!!!!

Penetrating Gay Porn with Jeffery Escoffier

This week on my audio show is part two of my discussion with sex historian Jeffrey Escoffier. We blurt out gay film secrets, discuss why straight male porn stars enjoy queer sex, how to achieve the perfect double-penetration shots, and the manner in which exhibitionists get ahead in the film industry.

Listen to Susie and Jeff's interview: LINK

Listen to the whole show: LINK

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Jeffrey wears many hats, but one of his most distinguished is as the editor of a reference book I use on a weekly basis: Sexual Revolution. It's a collection of the seminal (and ovulastic!) documents of modern sexual liberation: Susan Sontag’s "Pornographic Imagination,"  Al Goldstein’s notorious review of Deep Throat,  Anne Koedt’s classic "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm," Norman Mailer’s "The Homosexual Villain," Helen Gurley Brown, Lenny Bruce, Erica Jong, Lawrence Lipton, Masters & Johnson, Betty Dodson, Gayle Rubin, Timothy Leary, Henry Miller, Huey Newton, Sigmund Freud, Simone de Beauvoir— whew! I find new gems to mull over every time I read it.

Finally at the end of this week's show, in the "Try This at Home" mailbag, I get a letter from a listener who finds cheap thrills on freeway overpasses, and right in the middle of her dental checkups. Sexual revolution is indeed a guerilla enterprise!

Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, and requests for girly cards to susie@audible.com. (Episode 312, October 5, 2007)

A Mouth Like Mine

This week on my audio show, I premiere an excerpt from my new audiobook, The Best American Erotica 2007.

It was hard to pick which story to sample; they're all so good. I chose an excerpt from Daniel Duane's A Mouth Like Yours, read by the velvet Richard Brewer.

Yes, this is the same Daniel Duane who wrote one of the most compelling surf memoirs of all time, Caught Inside. This story is about a different, yet equally dedicated obsession!

A Mouth Like Yours: Listen

Next up, I talk with sexual historian and scholar Jeffery Escoffier about the beginnings of the gay porn-film industry, which in many respects defined modern American porn, period. Who knew... that Stonewall and Deep Throat were preceded by gay porn-makers who were unsatisfied with beefcake magazines and unrealistic portrayals of gay life?

Listen to my interview with Jeff: LINK

Listen to the whole show: LINK

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Jeff and I talk about perversity, porn chic, and straight guys who do gay porn. If you have any curiosity about the history of American porn, this is a must-listen. We'll do part two next week!

Finally, in the "Try This at Home" mailbag, I can't resist talking about another close shave— and I bet it won't be my last!

Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, and requests for girly cards to susie@audible.com. (Episode 311, September 28, 2007)

When Kurt and Justin Met Debbie

Once upon a time, there was a very serious reporter for a very serious newspaper, who decided to investigate one of society’s scourges: the child pornography ring.

Two years after his exposés riveted the nation, it turned out the reporter had gone off the deep end. He’d paid his main source, become a webmaster at the very porn site he was investigating, lied and bullied anyone who questioned him, and had all but ostracized himself out of a reporting career.

But it wasn’t just him. The witch-hunters, bogeyman blamers, and moral-panic enablers— were everywhere. Our little reporter might have landed in deep shit, but the hysteria he milked became bigger than ever before.

Call him one of the most bizarre media offenders in the past two years of fear-mongering: Former New York Times and Portfolio reporter Kurt Eichenwald. He wrote two front-page stories on the subject of sex that won't be forgotten soon: Through His Webcam, a Boy Joins a Sordid Online World, and its followup, Child Sex Sites on the Run.

From the get-go, both stories were creepy: the softcore sexy descriptions, the “blame the internet” righteousness, the homophobic ick factor, and the unexplained implication that Eichenwald had looked at piles of this material himself, when by current law, he wouldn't have that right, no matter how well-intentioned his purpose!

Why did Kurt portray himself as an elite one-man rescue mission, and why was he so lurid in his crusade?

It didn’t smell right.

Trebor Healey's Pancake Circus Gets A Cool Whip Topping

Trebor Healey's story, "Pancake Circus," is about a man who walks into a diner of the same name, and falls head-over-Aunt-Jemima in crush with a handsome busboy— who he nicknames Clown Daddy. Mr. C. Daddy turns out to be on serious criminal probation— but in the beginning, it all seemed so innocent...

...HE DIDN'T LOOK AT ME until I thanked him, and then it was just a shy, straight-boy grin. God, but his features were sharp, angled, and clean. His dark, deep-set eyes, the long lashes, the wide mouth with its full lips, the arresting pale blue-white of his skin and the night-black hair—that god-damn shadowed chin. And his eyes: dark as crude oil, raw out of the ground.

He was undeniably, painfully handsome. Prozac-handsome because he cheered me up. Wellbutrin-handsome because one saw one’s sadness disappear like a wisp of smoke—and those pesky sexual side effects? Gone.

Every woman in the place blushed when he cleared their plates. I probably wasn’t the only one stuck to the vinyl seat in my booth. Thank god my cock has no voice or it would have been barking like a dog. But I felt the letdown all the same. He’s probably straight. Though he ignored the blushing dames. He seemed even a little annoyed by their attention.

But we knew who each other were, the girls and I. I eyed them and they me. Did I look as greedy as them? Like there was one Cabbage Patch doll left and they’d kill to wrest it from whatever fellow shopper had his or her eye on it. Fact was, we all had holes we wanted his cock in. Simple as that. It was like there was one tree left in the world and the bitches yelped like graves to be the chosen one.

I gulped my food like a scat queen falling off the wagon. Delirious, my diaper soiled, I paid my check and left, one glance over the shoulder to see him bend to pick up a fallen fork. Damn, Clown Daddy had a butt like a stallion. My dog leapt, knocking over the milk dish again. Jesus H. Cock-Hungry Christ. I lurched out the door as my piss-slit opened like a flume on a dam.

I WENT FOR MORE pancakes two days later, but he wasn’t there. On the third day, he was, with a beautiful zit on his cheek. Clown Daddy looked right through me when he recognized me, and then he pulled himself back out.

I lurched. Shit— I came again.

“Coffee?”

“Uh, yeah,” I half coughed.

“Cream?”

I nodded. The greed. My shorts were already full of it.

“Sugar?” He’s talkative today.

I regained my composure. “No sugar— sugar’s for kids,” I answered flirtatiously.

I don’t know why I said it. I had to say something. I wanted to hold him there, even if for only a few seconds.

He smiled the brightest smile, and walked away.

My head swiveled. What was that? Had he flirted back?

While I waited for my waitress, I read the ads urethaned into the tabletop: vacuum repair, van conversions, derogatory credit, body shops, auto detailing, furniture, appliances, and bail bonds.

The clues were everywhere. It occurred to me then that he was the only white busboy in the place. The rest were illegal Latin guys who didn’t have a choice. What would a citizen take a job like this for?

Maybe he was Romanian or something. But he had no accent. What could he be making—four, five bucks an hour? Hell, his looks alone could get him ten doing nothing for the right boss. He could hustle at two hundred an hour, do porn for a few thousand a feature; he could wait tables and fuck up and they’d still forgive him because the doyennes of Sacramento would return for the way he made them feel against their seat cushions.

What was he doing here?

Who cares. Just let me fuck him. Shoot first, ask questions later.

He was as aloof as ever when he came back with the coffee. Three cups later, I asked for sugar. He smiled again. “Sugar’s for kids. You like kids?”

“Sure, kids are all right.”

He nodded and raised his brows with just a hint of a grin as he said, sort of stoned-like, “Kids are all right.” And he walked away.

Go figure. I scribbled my phone number on the coffee coaster, with a little cartoon kid, waving...

You can read find out what happens in the rest of Pancake Circus, by Trebor Healey, in Best American Erotica 2007

Susie Interviews Trebor

SB:The object of your protagonist's desire, Clown Daddy, is a pedophile. Of course, that's much to your adult narrator's earnest frustration! — "He was just too sexy to fit any criminal stereotype, which shows you what a dumb fuck I was."

I wondered if I'd get any shocked reactions from my readers, some backlash. It's not a regular love story or erotic story per se— it's more like dark humor, scary psychology and politics, and some extreme yet deliberate sexual frustration!

TH: Oh, yeah, I've anticipated backlash too, but so far I haven't gotten anything but laughs and compliments. Go figure. I mean, it is THE disturbing topic of our zeitgeist. That's why I wrote it.

What exactly are these people like "Clown Daddy" supposed to do with themselves, anyway? We don't seem to be having any discussion in our culture about how to address this issue, other than incarceration. Look how that's worked for drugs!

I went for laughs but what I wanted to do was make Clown Daddy attractive enough so that he couldn't be dismissed as inhuman. The guy who's crushed out on him attempts a solution, at least. Every love story eventually has to ask that question: How are we gonna  make this last?

SB: Your story reminded me of those teenage fables where the innocent girl is asked to "hold" the bag of drugs by the greasy dealer who she's hung up on— and then of course the cops nab her instead of him... "Oh Betty, Don't Do It!" How have you been influenced by those kind of moral tales?

TH: I love to laugh at people's folly, including my own. Those Betty-Holding-the-Bag stories crack me up because all you can do is howl. There's something very human to foolishness. Moral stories— where good triumphs over evil in a heavy, serious way— seem cruel and inhuman. Where's the laughs?... with the fools and clowns, of course! I'll hang with them.

SB: What do you do when you're in love with someone who has a "type," or fetish, that is never, ever, going to be anything like you?

TH: Well, it's an adventure to get hung up on someone who is out of your realm. It's a challenge to look at one's stereotypes and complacency. I have a problem with boredom, so I find it fascinating. But I'm also cynical enough to realize that we're all pretty much the same as humans, with our own unique problems. So how do we get beyond the differences and find the humans underneath? When you can do that, you reach a world where peace, understanding, all that— is actually possible. Maybe that's not cynicism at all.

SB: Where is the diner that inspired "Pancake Circus"? It reminds me of the all-night Clown Alley in San Francisco...

TH: Oh, yeah, I know Clown Alley. Pancake Circus is a similar place, but in Sacramento, and far more twisted. The walls are covered in bad clown art, home-made, and it hasn't been remodeled since it opened. As I ate my pancakes there, I just felt the place had the stink of a crime about to happen, and thus was born Clown Daddy and the poor fool who wandered into his lair.

SB: What were the first "dirty" pictures you ever saw?

TH: My first dirty pictures must have been the Playboys, Penthouses, and Cavaliers that my neighbor Jeff kept out in the woods behind our house, in a hole covered over by fern fronds. Later, I came upon another girl's stash of Playgirl magazines. She also kept them in a hole out in a field. Odd that all these things were kept in holes.

Seattle was a great place to be a kid: all those forests, lakes; no one had fences. Tons of sex happened in those forests.

My family was just an average middle-class suburban family. I was one of four brothers and my father was a coach when he met my mother, so it was a total jock-reality. That sucked a little, as I was an artsy little sensitive fag type. But my parents were very decent people who gave their lives to raising their kids, so I was lucky.

My sex education was the usual thing as one of four sons. I was the third so it trickled down from the older ones. I was a bit precocious though...  When very young, I asked my mother if my father and her had done what my brothers and I suspected. We were horrified at her answer, and I remember being surprised that my father was a co-creator. I had assumed mothers were earth goddesses who spawned their children and husbands!

After that, it was out to Jeff's hole in the woods, and then there were the stripping rituals that a crippled boy organized. These were pagan affairs in the forest, where willing girls would be chosen to strip and then get marched out to another giant hole. It was creepy and sacrificial and this crippled boy had a weird power that originated with his disability, which facilitated the whole thing. I don't think it would have happened otherwise.

When I was twelve, my father took me out for pizza and root beer and told me the facts of life. A bit late, but this was how he did it with each of us. Not only did I already know what-went-where, but I was also aware of being gay.

We moved back to San Francisco, my birthplace, when I was in high school, and I went to college at Berkeley— where I joined a fraternity and furthered my homoerotic education in a last attempt to dodge my queerness. Talk about folly and foolishness— I joined the one with the cutest boys. A blessed disaster.

SB: How does sex writing affect your own sex life?

TH: I think it's the other way around. I see people as living, walking stories— and sex is part of that story with the ones I have sex with. I'm aware that a story might actually grow out of an encounter. But I'm always surprised when it does, and I never look for stories. They just come to me. A lot of stories are wish-fulfillment, either regarding certain people or certain fantasies that never happened in reality. Or speculations, such as "Pancake Circus."

SB: What do you do when you're not writing... any children, pets, odd dependents?

TH: I work part-time at a lefty nonprofit, doing fund-raising, communications, and some teaching. I don't have any pets now, though I had a gay dog growing up, and a goldfish in my twenties, who I really loved. I am into toys and stickers and dolls, which are kind of my dependents, as I have four doll children (Billy, Henry, Red and Kim)— one of whom I lost custody of, and  now lives with my friend Karen.

And yes, I do have lots of clowns! I love clowns and have a clown outfit. I've always had imaginary friends, and I guess they're my dependents too. They can be rather demanding and needy.

Dan Savage Chum Chat

I'm researching Dan Savage's most recent writings/activities to prepare for an In Bed interview we'll be recording tomorrow in our studios, and podcasting in a couple weeks.

I've known Dan for decades, since he was a mere tot.*

By far the most fun of my investigation has been reviewing the Slog at The Stranger, the Seattle newsweekly that Dan edits. I wish my burg had a paper/tribunal like this.

Whether it's Dan carrying marijuana cookies and a toy gun into the mayor's office to make a point about unenforceable nightclub regulations, or their searing notes on which restaurants in town have the tiniest salt and pepper shakers, the Stranger's staff leave no city rock unturned or unthrown at the nearest plate glass window.

This is the kind of muckraking that makes you want to move to Seattle and pretend, like they do, that bad weather is all a state of mind.

Occasionally the writing staff throws in an international piece of chum, and this one is my favorite:

A flyer for an Australian strip club, that promises that each and every one of its dancers has been bitten by a shark, and has the scars to prove it!

'The Gubby,' 27, says she was savagely attacked by a bull shark during a class trip eleven years ago, causing severe scarring on one leg. "[The Boss] isn't the problem," she says, "it's the other girls and the stupid customers... It hurt a lot when that shark bit me— but not as bad as when guys sit at the rack and don't tip me."

Truth or satire? I have no idea. Plausible? Absolutely. Stripclub work complaints sound the same the world over.

Anyway... do you have any questions you'd like me to probe Dan with? He's likely to be more gut-spilling than Arianna, although he does have his limits.

So far, I'm planning to ask him about CraigsList ad pranksters, FTM/MTF generation wars, Poly Theory versus Poly Practice, what sex questions he's sick to death of, his forays into the NYT editorial pages, and what he's planning to get all his best bisexual friends (like me) for Christmas, really.  And there's so much more...

Since Dan keeps telling the most egregious whoppers about his true age, it has put his "older" friends in the delicate position of claiming that since we have known Dan since the 80s, he must have been in diapers at the time. Photo from recent book-signing for his new tome: The Commitment.

Buck Angel and the 100% Man Clit

My friend Steve is a Grand-Poobah at the gay fantasy/porn company Titan.  He called me up the other day to say he had something "extra special" for me. Then he couldn't stop laughing. An evil, seductive, mischief laugh.

In Bed with Susie Bright 261: Buck Angel

What was up his sleeve? I watch gay porn "professionally," to keep abreast of what's new, but it's not my passion. I love to meet women who get off on gay porn— I herald their liberation— but I'm not one of them. I want Heath Ledger all to myself.

But Steve is smart, and knows my number, so I accepted the DVD he handed me: Cirque Noir. 

It was packaged like an X-rated Cirque du Soleil, and my interest was piqued. I like anything perverse and Ringling-like. Paging Tyrone Power, Nightmare Alley!

The were three vignettes to the movie. The first was "Clown Sex," which I relished: an sadistik klown posse whose aesthetics will bring you to your Bozo-buggered knees.

The second section switched from the grotesque to the ethereal: a graceful figure suspended in air. It choked me up, to realize what the Summer Olympics could be like if someone gave a damn: Gymnastics, and trapeze art, in the nude. (Plus fucking too, of course).

The scene was like Greek frieze brought to life. How dare anyone put their clothes on for the pommel horse!

(I'd love to hear from any of you who've studied gymnastics and might watch this movie. Tell me what you think of these guys' performance! I'm just an idle viewer, but I thought they were incredible, especially when you throw in the fact that they are having sex at the same time. 10.0, with a perfect dismount!)

Still, with all this spectacle, I hadn't yet found the Explosive Easter Egg that Steve had hinted at.

The final segment was a Circus Strong Men Showdown, and it appeared to be the most predictable of the three rings.

A trio of hunky tattooed dudes in Folsum-Leather garb showed up and started getting sassy with each other. Muscle-bound roustabouts, all of them. They punched and jabbed and made rude innuendos.

Each hunk struck his mean bastard pose. One of the stars, Buck Angel, unzipped his jeans, and started plowing one of his comrades. The young man groaned and swore like he was breaking open. Buck pulled his thick cock back, as if he was going to pause one unbearable minute before nailing his lover into the ground. But then he took his dick off.

Buck's dick, you see, was plastic. And once it fell to the ground, we could see that Buck, underneath his massive chest and six-pack abs, had a perfectly-shaped vulva and bulging clit.

It's gorgeous, it's shocking, and if they ever shoot this movie again, I hope they will "Method" rehearse with the other actors a bit more, because they should have fainted dead away when Buck revealed his colors. I wanted them to be as surprised as I was!

Yes, Buck is a self-described "man with a pussy," an FTM porn star. My favorite part of the DVD was the special feature that interviewed Buck about how he sees what he's doing.

Here's an excerpt:

BA: I'm Buck Angel, the man with a cunt, the man with a pussy,  the man with a man-hole— whatever turns you on. I'm the only man like that, in the adult industry,working today.

In your view, what does it mean to be a man?

BA: Being a man is somebody who is very comfortable in their skin, and relating to other people.

I don't think it's so much gender, as it is  being a comfortable person. I don't think that the pussy makes me any less of a man. A lot of people think having a dick makes you a man, but as you can see I'm 100% man. Even with a pussy, I'm 100% man.

For some reason people are hung up about this cock thing. "The only way you can be a man is with a cock." I have to disagree with that, and I think I'm going to change people's minds out there, and show them that I'm just as much of a man as anybody else.

When did you realize that you were a man?

BA: My whole life. I was born female, but never felt female. Through my teens I was uncomfortable with my body and who I was, because I had a female body. In my adult years, I got the chance to have a sex change. I took that opportunity and my whole life changed. I decided not to have any bottom surgery, or have a penis or any of that. I choose to keep my pussy.

Now I use my pussy in my adult work to show people that there are guys like me out there. We are sexual, and we are hot, and we love having sex just like everybody else. It doesn't make me any less of a man.

What would you like to convey to the audience with your work?

BA:I hope they enjoy watching my work here, and that they'll keep an open mind and to understand that it is not just black or white. It's not, "there are just men and there are just women"— there are "in between" genders. I'd tell them to not be closed-minded about my pussy or whatever turns them on about it. Maybe it might not turn them on, but it might turn somebody else on. Hopefully they'll understand that the world is a big place and everybody has different things going on.

The nonchalance in Buck's deep voice was inspiring. I turned to my lover later that night, and announced, faking a baritone: "My pussy doesn't make me any less of a man, Jon!" 

I couldn't quite figure out what to do after that, due to my femme-delirious qualities, but I have to say, it was bracing.

Later, I asked a few friends to watch the video and give me their sexual reactions to it. I was surprised by mine.

As I mentioned above, man-on-man sex does not get me where I live. But after Buck took his dick off in the movie, started getting fucked vaginally by the two other fellas, I could feel him getting penetrated. My vagina waved her hand, "Hey girlfriend!"  I had physical empathy. When I see "men" being buttfucked, I don't feel that way... I'm more distant.

All the men groaned and yelled their satisfaction as they were topped by the other guys. Buck was no exception. in gay porn, the guys aren't supposed to be stoic, they're encouraged to growl and shout their pleasure— in a "masculine" way, of course. 

I wondered, when Buck was living life as a woman, did s/he feel uninhibited like this, to yell and curse in ecstasy? Or is it just for the camera? Was there ever any pressure on Buck to be "quiet" in bed when he was perceived as a woman, or as a dyke?

Buck wrote me, in answer to my questions, "Before my change, I wasn't comfortable getting fucked at all— and I definitely wasn't into having sex with men— just like many butch dykes.

"It was through my change that I've felt empowered by my pussy, because I feel comfortable in my skin now. I feel like a man. When I get fucked now, whether in front of the camera or not, I am the same. I love to just let it out. Man-sex is so raw.

"I like to have sex with both men and women now. Before my change, I only had sex with women, and I didn't always take my clothes off to do it. Wow, things have changed a LOT for me, and definitely for the better!"

I lent the movie to my friend Marcus. He is bi, and he likes all kinds of porn. He has a huge she-male collection, in fact. Can't resist a chick with a dick. He had the opposite reaction to me when Buck disrobed.

Marcus could not relate. It was like his erotic phone was disconnected.He could not turn on to Buck as a gay man or as a woman. He said he always thought that since he dug MTF porn so much, he would be titillated by FTM, but it didn't work out that way at all.

One of my lesbian friends was irate because she said that Buck was probably once the hottest dyke in town, and now it was all ruined.

"Yeah, but what did you feel when the sex scene happened?" I asked.

"Feel? I'm jealous, I'm pissed! These two leather dudes are getting fisted by Buck in their spare time, and I'm home alone with NOTHING!"  She was so pissed I didn't ask her if her vagina waved back.

Two gay men I showed the movie to, thought Buck was hot, and would do him, or be done by him, no questions asked. I think a lot of Titan's regular customers might feel the same way. "Gay customers" aren't as "Kinsey 6" as the marketers like to make out.

My "straight couple" guinea pigs, who I forced the DVD upon, had a big argument about  genderfuck, but then ended their tiff with really hot sex.

Then I had another friend who never got past the red rubber Clown Nose. Chacun a son gout-gout!

Buck is a remarkable performer, with tremendous sexual charisma. If we could cast Buck in one of Peggy Munson's stories, where the characters really come alive, and every surprise is multidimensional, I think we'd have another "Boys Don't Cry" impact on our hands.

Also on this podcast: In my Try This at Home mailbag, the "deluxe" hand job.  You can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, and requests for Susie's girly cards to susie@audible.com. (Episode 261, September 8, 2006).