SensualPoet

2004-02-25T00:05:00.000-05:00

The Exhumation of Bobbi Campbell (28 Jan 1952-15 Aug 1984)

:: I can hardly be the first person to have been warmed by the angelic light of Bobbi Campbell, a soulfire extinguished two decades ago. Disarmingly handsome, Bobbi blazed for us a trail with the single-minded determination to make it safer for his brothers even as the world was about to enter its darkest hours with the onset of the AIDS plague.

I ached for him the first time I read Bobbi's words while browsing through some random items at the San Francisco gay archives (GLBT Historical Society) last week, just a few days after Valentine's. He'd written them for the June 1982 SF Pride Guide. It contained a warning, a haunting but gentle cry uttered as the terrible long night was about to descend upon us all: "Slow down. Take care of yourself". Bobbi Campbell already had AIDS at a time when no one knew what it was. He would live, at a frantic pace, to see but two more Pride Days.

Have you ever felt someone's ghost standing at your side, with his hand on your shoulder, and you can almost feel his warm breath on the nape of your neck? That afternoon in the archives I knew I had stumbled upon someone very special who I simply had to learn more about. Bobbi was only three years older than me and, at first blush, he seemed like a number of men I knew in my own early activist days in Toronto working as a volunteer at the The Body Politic.

"It was 20 years ago today ..."

How many of us are still alive who remember the Bobbi of flesh and blood? A registered nurse, and an early member of the drag troupe Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, there remain traces of his life story lingering on the net. Unlike others who survived the plague years, or lived on for some time - time enough for memoirs or artistic accomplishments -- Bobbi was taken from us in late 1984 -- much, much too soon.

Barely three years before Bobbi's death, reporter Lawrence K. Altman wrote a story in the Friday July 3, 1981 edition of the New York Times: "Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals".

Doctors in New York and California have diagnosed among homosexual men 41 cases of a rare and often rapidly fatal form of cancer. Eight of the victims died less than 24 months after the diagnosis was made.
The cause of the outbreak is unknown, and there is as yet no evidence of contagion. But the doctors who have made the diagnoses, mostly in New York City and the San Francisco Bay area, are alerting other physicians who treat large numbers of homosexual men to the problem in an effort to help identify more cases and to reduce the delay in offering chemotherapy treatment.
The sudden appearance of the cancer, called Kaposi's Sarcoma, has prompted a medical investigation that experts say could have as much scientific as public health importance because of what it may teach about determining the causes of more common types of cancer. But in the recent cases, doctors at nine medical centers in New York and seven hospitals in California have been diagnosing the condition among younger men, all of whom said in the course of standard diagnostic interviews that they were homosexual. Although the ages of the patients have ranged from 26 to 51 years, many have been under 40, with the mean at 39.
In a letter alerting other physicians to the problem, Dr. Alvin E. Friedman-Kien of New York University Medical Center, one of the investigators, described the appearance of the outbreak as " rather devastating." According to Dr. Friedman-Kien, the reporting doctors said that most cases had involved homosexual men who have had multiple and frequent sexual encounters with different partners, as many as 10 sexual encounters each night up to four times a week.

:: By September, Bobbi became the 16th person in San Francisco to be diagnosed with Kaposi's. This relatively rare cancer usually appeared first in violet-coloured spots on the legs but these new cases showed up anywhere on the body. They did not itch or cause other symptoms, often could be mistaken for bruises, sometimes appeared as lumps and could turn brown after a period of time. The cancer often caused swollen lymph glands, and then killed by spreading throughout the body. Doctors investigating the outbreak believed that many cases had gone undetected because of the rarity of the condition and the difficulty even dermatologists had in diagnosing it.

What Bobbi and his doctors didn't know yet was that Kaposi's, and a rare pneumonia called Pneumocystis, were merely symptoms of something else soon to be recognized as far more terrifying. In time for Hallowe'en, Bobbi distributed pamphlets about the new "gay cancer" at a Castro pharmacy urging caution for the community. When he made his public declaration that he was stricken with this new scary disease in the December 10th edition of the San Francisco Sentinel, he became known as the "KS Poster Boy". From that moment on, till he drew his last breath, Bobbi was dedicated to raising awareness around the disease which would claim a generation of our brothers and change the course of the sex-and-drug liberation which had been launched a half-generation earlier.

Early in 1982, he began a column in the Sentinel in which he openly discussed his health, his ongoing experiences and pointed to resources for others. He began sporting a button that boldly commanded: "SURVIVE". A few blocks away, writer, composer and one-time intern to Tennessee Williams, Dan Turner was diagnosed in February and, at the suggestion of his doctor, Marcus Conant, shortly after met with Bobbi. They developed an instant rapport and, in Dan's home in the hills above the Castro district, the seed of what was to become People With AIDS San Francisco had been planted. But most importantly, Bobbi and Dan focussed on the concept of PWA self-empowerment itself. It would become their greatest legacy and an incalculable gift to us all. Bobbi was determined not to become a victim; he would live his life to the fullest and with the fullest dignity.

Yet even as young men were dying in San Francisco and New York at alarming rates, doctors still didn't know what was wrong. Whispers of "gay cancer" and "gay pneumonia" slowly gave way to the ugly term "GRID" -- Gay Related Immune Deficiency. (Researchers in France were known to voice out loud their astonishment than anyone in the US could believe a disease had a sexual preference.) It wouldn't be until a meeting at the Centers for Disease Control on January 4, 1983 that the more neutral Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was embraced.

Some politicians were being roused to action and on April 13, 1982 Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Ca), chairman of the Congressional subcommittee on Health and the Environment, held a first-of-its-kind hearing at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center. Waxman hoped to raise political awareness, bring in media attention, and underscore the depth of the crisis for the relatively new Reagan administration. As expected, a number of established health bureaucrats spoke; but both Bobbi Campbell and Marcus Conant testified as well.

Waxman had grasped the seriousness of the situation even at this early stage and appealed for funding from the Federal government. "I want to be especially blunt about the political aspects of Kaposi's Sarcoma," Rep. Waxman said. "This horrible disease afflicts members of one of the nation's most stigmatized and discriminated against minorities."

"There is no doubt in my mind," Waxman continued, "that if the same disease had appeared among Americans of Norwegian descent, or among tennis players, rather than among Gay males, the responses of the government and the medical community would have been different."

Dr. Bruce A. Chabner, acting director of the National Cancer Institute's Division of Cancer Treatment, disagreed saying the National Cancer Institute had sufficient funds to research the new ailments and asserted that Kaposi's sarcoma has received a "tremendous" amount of attention from the medical community during the past year.

"Advancements in research in this area will have a profound effect on research into all cancers," Chabner said. "Thirteen papers have already been written on the subject." And with those words, and the concurring sentiments of others in the medical and political establishment, the fate of so many was sealed. Gay males for now would be acceptable research fodder for cancers in general. There would be no special funding for research, care or prevention. The afflicted class didn't matter. It would be five more years before President Reagan uttered the word "AIDS" in public.

:: Marcus Conant and Cleve Jones were among the organizers of the Kaposi's Sarcoma Research & Education Foundation created in April to educate the public about KS. It was Jones who encouraged Dan to join Bobbi and speak out publicly.

Following Bobbi's lead, Dan chose the occasion of the late Harvey Milk's birthday on May 22 at a rally on the closed streets of the Castro. His message contained three points: "Stay informed. Be cautious, but not paranoid. Be supportive." It was the start of his own journey of activism to which he dedicated enormous time, energy and love. At the time of his death, in 1990 at age 42, Dan was celebrated as the oldest surviving diagnosed AIDS patient.

(Another noted writer, Daniel Curzon, was a frequent collaborator of Turner's and delivered "The Monster in the Wood" at his friend's funeral. It is an angry, defiant, and yet hopeful tribute -- fitting for the lives of both Dan and Bobbi.)

A month later, buried in the closing pages of the 1982 SF Pride Guide, Bobbi's words rang out in an article entitled "What's it like to have Kaposi's sarcoma? It's a bummer." His plea follows in its entirety.

It's a bummer being thirty years old and having cancer. It's a bummer seeing friends stricken and die. It's a bummer going through the medical procedures that doctors use to diagnose and treat cancer. It's a bummer running up a medical bill into tens of thousands of dollars. It's a bummer not knowing what caused this cancer or if I can be cured.
Now, I'm a lucky guy in many ways. I don't feel sick. My cancer hasn't spread. I still function pretty much normally.
Also, I have a good support system -- a lover, a therapist, understanding parents, lots of friends. I have health insurance and disability insurance.
Even so, sometimes I get real depressed. This thing could kill me -- it killed two friends of mine, and hundreds of other brothers that I don't know personally. I don't want you to get it, too.
Are you thinking, "This can't happen to me"? I didn't think it could happen to me, either. But it did.
The main thing that underlies KS, and the other, related illnesses, is that the patient's immune system (how one fights off disease) has somehow weakened. No one knows for sure why this is happening. It is likely that immune suppression may be very widespread in urban gay communities.
How can you protect yourself? Well, I don't want to sound moralistic, but frequent use of " recreational drugs" lowers your immunity. So, too, does having sex with lots of different partners -- besides sharing good times you're also likely sharing all kinds of germs.
If your sex-and-drug lifestyle is in the fast lane, slow down. Take care of yourself.
Yes, it's your business, and only you can decide. But I want you all to be around for next year's Parade and Celebration! And the next ...

:: In the picture accompanying the Pride Guide column, the youthful, moustachioed activist smiles impishly at us, eyes twinkling, despite the severity of his message. It may be a key to why he was so effective: direct, yet gently non-judgemental.

In 1979, at the First Spiritual Conference for Radical Faeries Gathering in Arizona, two men performed in nun's habits and in doing so hatched the idea of a theatrical group later called The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. By the time of the health crisis in early 1982, and in his guise as Sister Florence Nightmare, Bobbi joined the troupe and co-authored the first SF safer-sex manual, "Play Fair!", written in plain sex-positive language, offering practical advice and adding an element of humour. In these early days, the full gloom of the AIDS disaster had not yet struck our community.

A year later, Bobbi and Dan helped organize the 1st AIDS Candlelight Vigil on May 2, 1983 proclaiming starkly the words "Fighting For Our Lives" on a 20 foot long banner. And while there was a lot going on in San Francisco, activists were being created in the other, bigger AIDS hotspot, New York City. As part of the National Lesbian and Gay Health Conference planned for Denver, organizers were co-sponsoring the Second National AIDS Forum. The work Bobbi was doing on the West Coast was just barely on the radar screen -- something hard to imagine in today's Internet world -- and spread largely through outdated copies of the Sentinel. Suddenly it occurred to the organisers that AIDS patients ought to be at the conference participating, not just listening. It was a turning point.

Rick Berkowitz is the only surviving member of the group of PWAs which included: from SF -- Bobbi Campbell, Dan Turner, Bobby Reynolds; from NYC -- Phil Lanzaratta, Michael Callen, Rick Berkowitz, Artie Felson, Bill Burke, Bob Cecchi, Matthew Sarner, Tom Nasrallah; from LA -- Gar Traynor; and two others whose names are lost. These heroes, along with about 400 other conference delegates, spent June 9-13, 1983 making history midway between the nation's two "ground zeros".

In 1997 Rick recalled in a poignant essay entitled The Way We War:

We came to Denver as sick people and left as activists. The friendships and romances forged kept us alive and fighting for years to come and, of course, made the deaths terrible to bear. We marched in parades, testified before legislatures, started newsletters and hot lines, organized PWA coalitions. Against a barrage of medical reports that an AIDS diagnosis was a death sentence and media images of PWAs as disfigured monsters, we gave the most stigmatized disease of our time a human face.
Bobbi Campbell, a San Francisco nurse, was the first person ever to go public as a PWA. Along with Dan Turner, Campbell founded People With AIDS San Francisco, the first organization of its kind, and organized the first AIDS candlelight vigil, leading a march with a 20-foot red banner that read FIGHTING FOR OUR LIVES. At the same time, a handful of gay men with AIDS in New York City was meeting in a weekly support group, with Michael Callen as its queen mother.
In Denver, the two cadres immediately clashed. The New Yorkers were uneasy about how the men from San Francisco kept hugging and holding one another and taking time for spiritual reflection -- a far cry from our tendency to complain, yell and curse. But our differences went deeper than style. We argued over treatment approaches (holistic or mainstream), the cause of AIDS (single agent or multiple infections) and, most fiercely, the connection between promiscuity, STDs and immune deficiency (a theory advocated by New York but denounced as homophobic by San Francisco).
One night at dinner, Michael Callen suddenly asked, "Who here knows how to take two dicks at once?" Opinions flew as Michael picked up two spoons and demonstrated his own technique. But, in fact, it was a trick question intended to reveal exactly what, other than AIDS, the 11 of us had in common: We were all sluts. By accepting the role of promiscuity in the development of AIDS, as personally painful and politically provocative as it was, Michael told us we could lead the way in protecting the gay community by promoting and having safer sex. For 11 men made to feel like lepers while aching more than ever for affection, this was a revelation.

:: It was a very powerful, empowering notion: we are not victims. (Michael Callen, another remarkably talented artist/activist, co-authored with Dan Turner a more extended version of the events of the conference that is worth reading.) Importantly, not only did they insist that the phrase "People With AIDS" (or PWAs) sink in with the health professionals attending, but the group created "The Denver Principles" which became something of a Charter of Human Rights for PWAs.

These included:

We recommend that all people:
Support us in our struggle against those who would fire us from our jobs, evict us from our homes, refuse to touch us or separate us from our loved ones, our community or our peers, since available evidence does not support the view that AIDS can be spread by casual, social contact.
We recommend that people with AIDS:
Substitute low-risk sexual behaviours for those that could endanger themselves or their partners. We feel that people with AIDS have an ethical responsibility to inform their potential sexual partners of their health status.
People with AIDS have the right:
To as full and satisfying sexual and emotional lives as anyone else.
To quality medical treatment and quality social service provision without discrimination of any form based on sexual orientation, gender, diagnosis, economic status, or race.
To privacy, to confidentiality of medical records, to human respect, and to choose who their significant others are.
To die and to LIVE in dignity.

:: Bobbi headed to New York directly after the conference and brainstormed with several of his new friends and colleagues on how to launch a national People With AIDS organization. AIDS was increasingly appearing in the mainstream press and this year the theme of June 1983 SF Pride was People With AIDS. Ever ready to lead, Bobbi had an "AIDS Poster Boy" t-shirt made for his appearances at Pride, to the delight of friends and onlookers.

For those of us living in large cities with visible gay populations -- such as Toronto in my case -- we were following the news with alarm and confusion. But for all of the talk in our community, it was still at least a year before the mainstream public "got it": that was when the gaunt, death -like grimace of Rock Hudson was splashed across the tabloids, newspapers, magazines and television sets the first week of October, 1985.

So when brave Bobbi Campbell and his lover appeared on the front cover of Newsweek on August 8, 1983, it was news! The cover story shrieked: "EPIDEMIC: The Mysterious and Deadly Disease Called AIDS May Be the Public Health Threat of the Century. How Did it Start? Can it Be Stopped?". In a sense, Bobbi was our human face on AIDS: a good looking, optimistic, undefeatable man who spoke plainly and compassionately and urgently on our behalf. Just as we had cheered when Leonard Matlovich, the Air Force Sergeant who came out as gay in 1975 and made the cover of Time, this was our moment to share with Bobbi. We were listening, even if hetero America, and the politicians, and the wealthy celebrity class were just as determinedly burying their heads in the sands intoning nervously "gay disease, can't touch me".

For almost the next year Bobbi drops out of sight on the net. I don't know if he was ferociously active or suffering bouts of ongoing illness. I haven't been able to verify if he even made it to 1984 SF Pride. I did discover that, in an ironic twist, Bobbi had moved into the same apartment previously occupied by Ken Horne -- the first man to be reported to the CDC infected with (what was later termed) AIDS -- and San Francisco's first AIDS casualty. But Bobbi did make two last important public appearances.

:: First, at the Rally for Gay Rights on July 16, 1984 outside the Moscone Center where the Democratic National Convention was taking place. Inside, Mario Cuomo made the most impassioned speech of his career while the delegates chose a doomed slate of Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro. Outside, Bobbi was joined by 100,000 marchers demanding that the next group of elected politicians heed the dire health situation which by this time was sweeping through all major cities.

The Los Angeles Times writer Harvey Weinstein called the rallies (a second one that day included 150,000 unionists) "stirring". He reported:

One of the principal demands of the march was "immediate and massive federal funding to end the AIDS epidemic," a reference to acquired immune deficiency syndrome, a disease that has struck many gay men. "AIDS is the issue," said Bobbi Campbell, who is afflicted with the disease.
The Democratic platform includes a plank calling for more federal money to combat AIDS and several other positions advocated by gays and lesbians, including an end to job and housing discrimination against them.
But, civil rights lawyer Mary Dunlap and co-chairman of the march said: "We have to do more than be visible and have the Democrats pat us on the head. Achieving our goals will be harder work than all this."
Near day's end, Bill Olwell, vice president of the United Food and Commercial Workers, the highest ranking union official who is a publicly declared gay, linked the two events in a speech to the gay rally.
"This morning, I marched up Market Street with tens of thousands of my labour brothers and sisters demanding an end to the Reagan Administration," Olwell said. "This afternoon, I marched down Market Street with tens of thousands of my gay brothers and lesbian sisters demanding the same justice and equality and an end to the same repressive Reagan policies. This is what today is all about."

It was all for nought in the end as the Mondale-Ferraro ticket was crushed and Reagan sailed blithely and silently into a second term. Even the death of his friend Rock Hudson, a year later, did not move him to speak publicly about AIDS before 1987.

Two weeks later, on August 2, 1984, Bobbi appeared on the CBS Evening News in a remote interview live with Dan Rather. Fighting to the end, his words of inspiration allowed him to overcome the indignity of the circumstance. He was placed in a glassed in booth and the technicians refused to come near him to wire him for the interview. The rumours, and fears had reached the mainstream audience, but not the facts: AIDS was not easily communicable.

Two weeks later again, on August 15, the angel that was Bobbi Campbell, died.

:: The 1985 SF Pride was dedicated in his honour and the ongoing third Sunday in May AIDS Candlelight Vigils feature an award in his name as an AIDS Hero. The uplifting, life-affirming work he did to found the PWA self-empowerment movement, and to insist on the dignity of gay men and women everywhere, is a debt we all share.

Afterword: I believe Bobbi Campbell was a true Aquarius child.

According to the stars, he had a talent for anticipating future trends, an inventive mind which gave rise to successful leadership. His flexibility made it possible to accept new circumstances and move forward where others faltered. He was best understood by other creative people and by those who appreciated an inventive sense of humour. As an Aquarian he made a good friend because he rarely judged anyone harshly.

I did not know Bobbi except from what I have read of his words and deeds and those of fated ones who shared part of his journey. I would have been bursting with pride to call him my friend. Perhaps, sweet Bobbi, we'll meet next time round.

2003-10-27T22:07:00.001-05:00

Poetry and Innocence: Life in Sepia Tones

:: The last few days I have found myself mesmerized by the life and times -- and mainly by the extant photographic artifacts -- of the astonishing Wilhelm von Gloeden. Thriving in the late Victorian and early Edwardian era, he was a pioneer photographer of nude adolescents, whose influence on the visual artistic community at the turn-of-the-20th-century, cannot be understated. While many of his photographs were known in postcards from the charming and sleepy Sicilian seaside village Taormina, Gloeden in fact made something on the order of 7000 images, mainly in the period 1890 - 1914. They are heart-warming, erotic, compelling, haunting, captivating ....

As music is never far from my thoughts, I can't help but keep humming The Pet Shop Boys' Being Boring whose opening lyric resonates with Wilhelm's story:

I came across a cache of old photos And invitations to teenage parties "Dress in white" one said, with quotations From someone's wife, a famous writer In the nineteen-twenties When you're young you find inspiration In anyone who's ever gone And opened up a closing door She said: "We were never feeling bored"

If there are occasional scholarly lapses in this post, please forgive me: everything I learned I learned on the net. :-)

This story has many different threads in it: male lovers, orgies, community tolerance, church and political repression, war, poverty, outrageous success, celebrities, and, not least, a life which constantly raises issues of public and private sexual expression.

:: Wilhelm was born in northern Germany 16 September 1856 of royal blood (he was, in fact, a baron). It makes him an almost direct contemporary of Vincent van Gogh, Gustav Mahler, Giacomo Puccini, Sigmund Freud and George Bernard Shaw; no doubt had he stayed in Germany he would have settled in the artistic communities of Vienna, Berlin or Paris -- and hung out with Gustav Klimt, Alban Berg and Arthur Schnizler.

But it was not to be. The young man fell ill with tuberculosis and had to abandon his university studies. On the advice of doctors and friends, he traveled to Italy for a rest cure. At the age of 22, he arrived in Taormina and immediately fell in love -- with the countryside, with the townsfolk, with the local boys, and with one boy in particular: Pancrazio Bucini. With an eight or ten year age difference, the two remained forever devoted to one another, even beyond the death of Wilhelm in 1931.

Wilhelm had a natural painter's eye and had studied art history, and then the craft of painting. His father died when he was young and his mother re-married (another baron), Wilhelm Joachim von Hammerstein who was a well-known, and well-to-do, journalist. The step-father provided Wilhelm the means to live in some splendour in Sicily. It wasn't long before the painter became photographer -- in the early 1880s something exotic and looked down upon as an artistic medium. However the painter made this medium his own and, at first, made memorable -- and saleable -- pictures of the surrounding countryside, including the famous Mount Etna which appears in a number of his later pictures.

:: But all this was really nothing more than the expressions of a dilettante who, though art was his hobby, turned his social life into an art. The parties, and the generosity Wilhelm was able to spread to the locals, not least of which included the lithe, adolescent peasant boys, quite literally spread the name "Taormina" far and wide. Single-handedly, von Gloeden turned a sleepy paradise into a thriving tourist destination, in particular for homosexual men.

It's remarkable that in the Victorian Age von Gloeden's fame spread so rapidly. His images first appeared in magazines and soon galleries throughout Europe began to feature his works. By 1893, the artist's fame had won him awards in Europe, not only for his work as landscape photographer, but for his stagings of classical settings and even for his growing interest in nude photography which was almost exclusively focused on adolescent males. A cousin, Wilhelm (Gulgielmo) Pluchow, as it turns out, was also in Italy, also working as a photographer and soon the two Wilhelms were co-producing nude male pictures.

A third photographer with a similar style, Vincenzo Galdi, joined the two Wilhelms in founding a sub-artform of its own. However, it was von Gloeden's eye for soul of the subject which his artistic companions rarely captured; Galdi's work, in fact, slips easily into pornography, something that few of von Gloeden's works do, however explicit in subject matter they may be.

:: When the political fortunes of his step-father changed, Wilhelm found himself in near-poverty. His sister had come to live with him and with the cut-off of his stipend, the servants were laid off and a lavish lifestyle came crashing to an end. But Bucini, who had first joined the household as a houseboy, remained on, finding jobs off the estate to pay for the needs of his mentor and lover. The community, too, did not turn its back on von Gloeden who, in better times, had been very generous. It was time to turn art into business and, on the basis of his fame, Wilhelm was able to begin selling postcards of his photographs, as well as individual prints, to the tourists who continued to arrive in ever greater numbers. It wasn't long before Wilhelm was again thriving and living a lavish existence.

By 1900, Wilhelm's Taormina estate had been visited by a number of world celebrities, not least of which were Oscar Wilde and Alexander Graham Bell (who took away a number of original prints which later were published in the October 1916 edition of the National Geographic). André Gide came to stay for a while penning his famous "The Immoralist" inspired by his stay at resort town. King Edward VII stayed at the von Gloeden estate; as did composer Richard Strauss, the King of Siam, celebrated French author Anatole France, industrialist Alfred Krupp and many others.

Fortunately, while a homosexual scandal hit his cousin Pluchow, forcing him to return to Germany, von Gloeden was adored by, and ultimately protected by, the locals. And nothing stopped the prolific photographer from creating, and distributing, image after image of male models, scantily clad and, more often unclad -- except for props such as sashes, flowers, leaves weaved into the hair, ancient columns, urns, and other paraphernalia evoking antiquity.

:: It's not just the flaccid penises or firm buttocks which litter his output: there is magic in Wilhelm's vision which makes these images decidedly erotic rather than pornographic. The contrast to the depiction of male beauty in our own times couldn't be more striking: there is not a single young man whom you would described as "buffed" or "gym built". Nor, contrary to the writings of some observers, are many of the images particularly "androgynous": the masculinity of the models in unmistakable, quite apart from the genitalia; this is not the art of gender-bending. And it is true that some of the models are younger than we are accustomed to viewing in our current puritanical climate. It is rare to find gratuitous nudity or raw sexuality in any of von Gloeden's images: the pictures invariably inspire, rather than titillate.

With the outbreak of WWI, Wilhelm, and his sister Sofia, were forced to return to Germany or stay in a camp in Italy as enemy aliens. During the five years away, the estate was managed by Bucini. With conscription, Bucini himself was forced into service but managed to be posted in his native town. At one point, letters from von Gloeden to "Il Moro" (The Moor), as Bucini was affectionately called, were intercepted and Bucini faced court-martial as a spy, charged with consorting with the enemy. But a silver-tongue -- which would come in handy years later -- convinced his superiors that Bucini was a loyal Sicilian. After a three-month gap, the correspondence between the lifelong partners resumed till the end of the war.

:: For the remaining dozen years of his life, Wilhelm returned to his villa at Taormina and continued to make new images. The world had changed, as so many artists who were famous before 1914 discovered, and the taste for antiquities -- the "hook" in so many of his pictures -- became less desirable. On 16 February 1931, three months after the death of his sister, Wilhelm followed her to the grave; they are buried side-by-side in the local protestant cemetery.

Bucini, who had married and had children, inherited the estate and the vast picture collection and the surviving masters. In 1933, and again in 1936, the fascists, in collaboration with the Catholic church, charged Bucini with being a pornographer and seized most of the collection. In a passionate plea before the judges, Bucini insisted the work was art and included as evidence names of the many important people, and institutions, which held copies -- including his oppressors. He was acquitted but much of the collection had been destroyed, the remnants of which were not returned until after WWII. Bucini passed away in the 1950s but his descendants remain in Taormina to this day.

:: It's difficult to estimate the exact output but a commonly held figure is around 7000 pictures. Of the 3000 glass masters and negatives seized by the authorities in the mid-30s, only 25% were returned intact. Substantial collections reside in the hands of the Florence firm Alinari; the Kinsey Institute claims 250; and smaller collections are prized by institutions and independent collectors. Currently, shows travel on all continents and still, occasionally, provoke controversy. A 1999 showing in Australia by the Martin Browne Fine Art gallery was threatened with potential closure after complaints to police by the Rev Fred Niles that the images constituted child abuse and pornography. However, no formal request was made and the exhibit, after a police visit, remained fully on view for the remainer of the scheduled exhibition.

In researching this piece, I have found almost 200 different images accredited to Wilhelm von Gloeden, in various states of quality. To be sure, a small screen image doesn't do justice to lighting, shading and detail of the originals, or even the copies of same. In a separate exhibit, I have created The Boys of Taormina, 22 images with captions which I invite you to visit and explore.

One hundred years ago, the world was a far different place, and the pace of life much slower than today. It's hard to imagine the pace at which von Gloeden created his life, his art, largely unfettered by modern preoccupations. Where once the camera was a quiet, intelligent observer, in our age it is the despised paparazzi or the eye of big brother, not the friend, or even sensual lover which von Gloeden's images often conjure up. The last surviving boy model who exposed himself to the great photographer's lens, died in 1977, at the age of 87. It is accepted that all of the models were photographed willingly and many were paid handsomely in royalties, their descendants continuing to prosper as a result today. No harm was done then; how can there be any harm done by showing the images, savouring the male beauty, and reliving, however briefly, the halcyon heaven von Gloeden created for himself, his friends and lovers on the romantic seaside in the heart of the ancient world.

2003-10-24T10:57:00.000-04:00

Marking Anniversaries: It Was Seven Years Ago Today

:: My adopted dad, Percy (Ping) Alexander Inglis passed away suddenly on October 24, 1996. Today marks the seventh anniversary of his death. I am suddenly so terribly aware I have so few pictures ....

Below is the eulogy I delivered on at a local chapel in a gathering of about 100 friends and family, Sunday October 27th, 1996.

Tribute by son Alexander Inglis

Although "Inglis" is of Scottish origin, had it been an Indian name, I'm sure it would translate as "Still waters run deep". My dad personified this idea: he was a man of great strength and quiet dignity. He strode through life with a rare gentleness and distinction. And he was the quintessential devoted husband and father.

Dad loved to laugh and had a sly, wry sort of humour and a kind of quirky smile -- you could see his natural playfulness peeking through. That playfulness is evident in many pictures. This past summer, my mum and dad took a trip to Nova Scotia and returned to visit the place they originally met. During the trip, a snapshot was taken of dad sitting at table with an absolutely enormous lobster in his hands. That characteristic look of fun was captured to a tee.

As an unflagging optimist, he was always able to find the clear-headed view. Yet though he held some ideas strongly, I never heard him force his views on anyone. His quiet optimism emanated a self-assurance that easily put fears to rest that those around him might be feeling. A few days before Christmas one year, the family home caught fire and needed extensive repair. What might have been a hugely stressful experience for many, dad helped us treat as an adventure.

As an engineer, he had a rational, logical way of looking at the world. He was always to curious to know about new things and ideas. I always think of how calm he seemed to be most of the time. Growing up, especially as a young teenager, I certainly gave him reason to be angry and frustrated with me. Yet he was always understanding: it was a very rare moment in which he even raised his voice.

Dad loved to travel: it was part of his constant quest to learn new things. Mum and he had the opportunity to take a number of journeys to many parts of the world. Whether exploring some of the byways of Europe, the Middle East or travelling through Asia to see the Great Wall of China, he engaged his mind and heart to examine new ways of doing things.

My father was a man of relatively few words. If he didn't have something to say, he said nothing. He measured his words with some care and always waited for the right moment to share them. And dad was the last person to blow his own horn.

Love for his family was an absolute with dad. There was never a time - never a single moment - in which I didn't feel his unswerving, deep love for me. My sister and my mother, his partner for 50 years, knew that same love each day.

These days, to say someone is a "moral person" can have a pejorative twinge to it. My dad was a "moral person" in all the best senses: he knew what the right thing to do in a given situation was and he unfailingly did it. He led by example: he would never tell his children that "this is what you should do and it is what you will do". He was able to step back and let us fall on our faces, if necessary, but be there whenever he was needed.

My father always encouraged us to do the best at whatever felt right for us. My sister fell in love with horses at a young age; I developed a strong taste for music. He let us explore those things, with his encouragement and deeds. I don't think dad had a judgmental bone in his body. If neither of us aspired to become Prime Minister, he was content to know that we were happy in our own pursuits.

I have always admired dad's relationship with mum. Different personalities to be sure, they made a uniquely satisfying balance. One always knew how deeply they cared for each other, how deeply they shared each other. I have often commented over the years -- in wonderment -- that I never saw them have a major rift. Sure, all families have moments of disagreement. But as a couple, they always managed to find an easy consensus, a path both willingly went down. I know mum and dad have had an unusually satisfying time together. In my view, they are an ideal example of spiritual soulmates.

Although I've focused on the immediate family, dad had a solid group of friends. His quiet nature meant he didn't go out of his way to make new friends. Yet when he made them, there were strong bonds there, many of which lasted a lifetime. Years after selling the cottage home he built for us on Lake Kushog, he and mum remained in constant contact with the lake crowd. Other friends, made in school or during their time living in Niagara Falls in the early 50s, remain friends for life.

There are ways in which my father makes me think of him as the embodiment of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Rational, calm, always optimistic, joyful, a wise, quiet self-assurance, beautiful on the surface, and always so much more below -- "Still waters run deep in the sparkling sunshine."

Dad had the good fortune to remain amazingly healthy throughout his life, allowing him to enjoy his work, his family and most definitely his retirement. And even when the end came so early and so suddenly, in a graceful way which was so characteristic of him, dad gave us a few hours to adjust and make peace before passing on.

My father's spirit, which touched so many of us more deeply than he'll know, will live on in all of us for the rest of our days.

We'll miss you always, Dad.

2003-10-21T11:09:00.000-04:00

Tuesdays with Tao: Six - Unending Fertility

:: Every Tuesday, I've been publishing one more chapter of my personal re-interpretation of Lao-tzu's awesomely inspiring and quietly wise Tao Te Ching. Despite being written down some 25 centuries ago, it is a marvel of contemporary insight. The opening chapter, The Essence of Tao, is here.

Occasionally the feminine is specifically invoked, in particular to clarify the role in the world of the masculine -- much of the Tao being illustrated in a yin-yang sort of way. But while the "eternal source" is likened to a womb, or flow from the legs of the mountains in a river valley, Tao itself is neither feminine nor masculine, and neither polarity has any more importance than the other. As will be pointed out repeatedly, strong/weak, sharp/blunt, white/black, male/female, day/night cannot exist without the other.

Six - Unending Fertility
In and beside a river, life flourishes.
Shrouded in eternal morning mist,
its source remains hidden,
but ever fertile, inexhaustible;
some call the source Valley Spirit.
Embrace the spirit, feel it inside, use it;
this primal "Mother River" of Tao never runs dry.

Comments welcome!

2003-10-20T12:21:00.000-04:00

Magic Sparks: The Birth Moment of Creativity

:: The act of creation -- writing a poem for example -- is very much like giving birth: once issued, it grows, taking its own life beyond the control of the parent. Like a bird released into the sky, its owner can only watch, admire, worry ... and hope that the world treats it kindly. I've been thinking about what it's like for the creator at that moment of creation ....

Fly Me To The Moon, American songwriter Bart Howard's most memorable tune, was written in 1954. I don't know where he was or what he was doing when the inspiration hit -- humming in the shower? on a date with his beloved on a moonlit cruise? half buzzed in front of a dusty upright piano in a seedy rundown apartment as he feverishly puffed through a second pack of cigarettes and hadn't showered in three days? Or perhaps it was a standard commission and he calmly dashed off the few lines of the lyrics and quickly added the melody in a flash of "that's it, that's good", nodding and smiling as he set it aside to polish after lunch before sending it to his publisher in the afternoon post -- another productive morning for a commercially successful songster.

Fly me to the moon
And let me play among the stars
Let me see what spring is like
On Jupiter and Mars
In other words hold my hand
In other words darling kiss me

In those few moments of work for the human brain and heart -- Bart Howard, all alone in this case -- created a marvelous, memorable song which, surely, most people in the english-speaking world recognize instantly, like Lennon and MacCartney's plaintive Yesterday. How does someone touch the soul of so many with a few words, or a few sequences of musical tones, that were never quite put together that way before? What's the unique magic behind such creations which elude the millions (and billions) of other combinations of words or music?

When he painted it c1503, Leonardo da Vinci's modestly scaled portrait (a mere 21 x 30.5 inches, oil on wood) of a 24 year-old local noble woman, the expectation was that only a handful of people would ever have the opportunity to view it. But something took life in those brushstrokes the Italian laboured over exactly 500 years ago and countless reproductions since have brought the young lady's wistful smile to the attention of, literally, billions of people. An army of admirers has studied it, analysed it, poked it, prodded it, scanned it, scrapped it, touched it -- trying to figure out what makes the image so compelling. Even lampooning it has turned into a cottage industry; Rick Meyerowitz's Mona Gorilla from 1971 has in itself become a well-recognized image whose source of delight for the viewer stems directly from the playfulness of the original. Isn't it fascinating? We see the original in a new, and not a disparaged, light.

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

... two lines among hundreds penned by Shakespeare, one of many evocative inspirations which all of us can recite (even though relatively few of us has ever seen the play live), which fell from the Bard's richly fevered imagination. In the movie Shakespeare in Love we caught a glimpse of what the young playwright might really have been up to when he drew from the ether his most memorable lines ... but of course we shall never know for sure. Man, as a species, can boast many collaborative creative accomplishments -- like cosmological myths (the stuff of sacred texts) or the construction of an engineering marvel like San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge -- yet it is these solo acts of magic -- one man, one spark, one birth -- which I am most interested in. What do you suppose Handel was doing the day he wrote down "For unto us a child is born" or JS Bach dashed off the "Goldberg Variations"? While all of us have felt that visionary spark -- a special "aha!" -- in our own lives, and our own creations, how many of us have stumbled upon something bigger? Did John Donne recognize the impact of what he just wrote down when "No man is an island, entire of itself" slipped past a shakey quill clutched by his inky stained fingers?

:: Creativity is not unique to the arts of course. e=mc2 is as familiar to us as any line of poetry and it is an incredible stroke of insight -- but how many of us have any idea what it really means? It doesn't touch us; it doesn't make one's heart smile (although to a physicist his intellect may break out in a knowing grin). Creativity needs a context, something to give the words, or music, or images a background from which it may tap the power to capture the profound attention of millions, and occasionally (and remarkably) billions of people, and across the diverse cultures and dozens of generations. Now that it has been born, can we imagine a world in which King Lear or George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue has been forgotten? Childhood, or at least the child-like in all of us, bubbles giggling to the surface in AA Milne's character Winnie the Pooh (and in the delightful drrawings of co-conspirator and illustrator Ernest H Shepard) on page after page. Milne could have had Pooh utter the words "Oh nuts!" or "Gosh oh golly" or "How amazing" ... but somewhere, somehow, Milne sucked out of the collective consciousness that endearing groan of the bumbling, all-knowing, honey-obsessed bear -- "Oh, bother!". Have those two words ever been more charming? The context, as well as the words themselves, are part of the creative energy.

Recently, I have been working on a new rendition of Lao-tsu's Tao Te Ching, a thin book of chinese philosophy from about 500 BC. I am struck by how men so very long ago had such modern insight into what the world really is and how we may safely and serenely navigate through the whims and adversities of daily life using Lao-tsu as our guide. We are not so modern after all, if a voice -- 2500 years old and counting -- speaks to us so plainly. But that is the magic of the creative spark which far transcends its originator.

When I was a teenager this notion fascinated me even then -- how could the Italian poet Dante, or middle-European lesbian Abbess Hildegard von Bingen, or Dutch painter Pieter Breughel, set down words and music and images which could set my heart on fire, feeling the "aha!" revelation in my toes that they had felt, though we are shifted across generations of time and a radically different cultural world? How awesomely glorious that a description of a descent into the circles of hell, or the soothing whisperings of women's voices in A Feather on the Breath of God, or the enchantment of peasants dancing in a rustic town square can make a heart leap today ... what was it like in that single moment that the artist "got it"?

It also occurred to me, and I have been testing this theory as I hurtle much too quickly toward 50, that a chief difference between "high art" and "pop art" is not merely that one may endure longer than the other but that whatever essence is in the original creation taps into something deeper in our souls and this grows inside us every time we revisit it. "Fly Me To The Moon", and "Yesterday", are both great songs but, for me, they are the same experience every time I digest them. They don't change me; they don't grow with me, or help me grow. But when I hear Beethoven's Ninth Symphony ("Ode to Joy"), I am moved differently each time. I bring a new part of myself that has lived since the last hearing; and the work is richer. But of course the sounds, the notes, are the same, aren't they?

:: I'm trying not to belabour the point, or belittle creations that lack "more spark", because those works are valuable too. But let's face it: Andy Warhol's "Campbell Soup Cans" or posterized portraits of Marilyn Munroe do not grab the gut in the same way as da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" or Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescos. What's different? The "high art" transfers something living to distinguish itself from its sometimes no less memorable "pop art" cousin. We are changed by the best, and continue to change. High art, perhaps, is a creative virus, egging us on, inspiring us to live richer, deeper lives.

Which brings me back to where I began: the act of creation, the moment of creating something really marvelous, might be a time of mundane everydayness. Did Michelangelo paint in the nude flat on his back high atop some scaffolding? Did Tennessee Williams pen "Glass Menagerie" in his underwear? Did Shakespeare have a fight with his lover the day he conjured the balcony scene? Was Bach embroiled in a petty bureacratic battle with his autocratic bosses while jotting down the Goldbergs? Was Bart Howard swooning over the memory of a tender kiss when he wrote the second half of his most famous song:

Fill my life with song
And let me sing forevermore
You are all I hope for
All I worship and adore
In other words please be true
In other words I love you

As a creative writer, I hope I may someday cobble together a phrase or two as successful as these, capable of stirring the souls of readers I'll never meet but who will come away from my words a little richer, a seed planted in the heart, and, when recalled, knowing the world is less black-and-white, and reality a little less harsh, discovering that we live our true lives inside, not outside, our skins.

(And it will be my secret what I was wearing, or thinking, or tasting, as these paragraphs slid from my fingers into electrons for you.)

2003-10-14T13:21:00.000-04:00

Tuesdays with Tao: Five - Impartial Nature

Lao-tzu sometimes uses the word "nature" as a synonym for Tao. Taoism recognizes, profoundly, in a way overlooked by most religions, that we are one with the world, a part of the physical reality we call the earth, and our power comes form being a part of it, not beyond it, or temporarily hampered by it. Alan Watts makes a delicious observation that we don't "come into the world" but "come out of it", like a leaf on a tree ... we are not a separate piece of matter in the world but rather an extension of the "one piece of matter" which is Tao.

Five - Impartial Nature Nature is not sentimental;
it faces the world impartially.
The Sage is neither kind nor hateful;
he treats all he meets with parity.
Like a bellows, Nature is empty;
yet in moving, inexhaustible as a giver of breath.
And so the Sage, in witnessing Nature,
finds his own wisdom constantly replenished.
Just as Nature's power lies internally,
your own good is found within.

Comments welcome!

2003-10-12T14:12:00.000-04:00

On The Road Again: A Weekend In Chicago

:: What's a boy to do? DJ, my roommate, loves to travel; and I hate to disappoint him. So when he says, "Let's drive to Chicago for Thanksgiving Weekend [Columbus Day for my US friends] to visit my grandson Joshua", how can I have the heart to disappoint him? Hence I am now blogging in the burbs (North Shore Holiday Inn, Room 205, in Skokie, Illinois, to be exact) on a very pleasant sunny, but chilly, Sunday afternoon. DJ is off at church and brunch (Joshua is eight months old); I've just got back from the mall (!) and am settling in to some coffee and surfing on his laptop. Holiday Inn has low cost WiFi here -- US$5 a day. They said it wouldn't work from our room but the signal is good enough.

(I'll be posting without pics, and in smaller chunks, just in case the signal gets flakey. But I was listening to CBC Radio One this morning with good success ....)

So it's still a very nice day and I've surfed around and had some chips and coffee. :-)

Best of all ... I ordered tickets to "Naked Boys Singing" at the Bailiwick Theatre for tonight at 8 pm. Wooohoooo! Eight naked guys sing their hearts out for $10 a tic! For some reason, this very popular show has not made it to Toronto. DJ will be very pleased. :-)

Last night we had a FABulous greek salad (wih anchovies! yahhh!) and then strolled up and down Halsted St (Chicago's main Boystown, also known as Northalsted), checking out the sex stores and novelty stores (Hallowe'en is almost here) and three bars.

Roscoe's was too busy to get into when I was last in Chicago -- Market Days, August 2002 -- but this time we got in. What a lovely collection of sexy young men, many watching the baseball game (the Cubs won). Later we hit SideTracks -- an amazing space with many different cruising areas, heading over to Gentry (a piano bar) where we had a nice chat, and shared a cigarette with, Angelo, who was one very cute man. Yummy!!

The night before we had spent in Lansing, Michigan and had a late night pint at Frank's Press Box -- 100 str8 guys and babes watching about 20 TVs -- again the pre-World Series match, and again the Chicago Cubs won. I was struck by how str8 men do NOT bother to take care of themselves. The gay boys at SideTracks wouldn't be caught dead looking like those slobs at the str8 bar. Don't women care if their guys are hot? Gawd, I am glad I'm gay!!

2003-10-07T12:37:00.000-04:00

Tuesdays with Tao: Four - Limitless Tao

This week, the limitless nature of Tao is invoked, as it will be a number of times in coming chapters. Consisting of everything, and beyond everything, it's a concept we can't quite grasp because for us as humans, we define something partly by what it is not. Tao is something like snow in a snowstorm on a moonless night; hard to see because there nothing other than snow to look at. ;-)

Four - Limitless Tao A yawning limitless abyss, Tao is never filled yet never drained -- so deep! So stratospheric!
A container for everything in the vast, expanding world, it will never reach the brim.
Embracing, taming all, with an ever-quenching, inexhaustible abundance, it:
Softens sharp edges;
Resolves all confusions;
Tempers glare into gentleness;
And unites the loose with the whole.
Whence comes Tao? Before infinity itself began!

Comments welcome!

2003-10-03T22:44:00.000-04:00

Timothy's on Church: On Being Scene

:: Dear Bloggary:

It's only been a couple of weeks now -- blogging for the very first time -- but I have to know: does that still make me a virgin? (Or is that ... a virgin again?) I feel as if we are just getting to know one another. Perhaps I am feeling a tad impatient for fame -- I'm ready for my close-up, Mr De Mille!. Call me impetuous but I want more! Maybe I need a slogan?

Slogan idea: I was thinking of "I Blog Therefore I Am" ... but it seems too obvious. Besides, I'd rather invoke Bacon, not Descartes, the former being gayer than the latter. This Canadian bacon is no Cartesian plain! And who doesn't want to bring home a little Canadian bacon nowadays? (Especially now since we can get married! Finally!)

But I dunno ... maybe "You are what you blog"? Still, I'm the writer and you're the reader so maybe I'll try on "I Am What You Read".

I've been poking around (the net, nicely) and am finding a lot of blogs are little more than glorified, and often perverse, rants. There are a surprising number of right-wing Canadian rants, too; but thankfully a lot of interesting, sexy, off-the-wall homos pouring their hearts out, too. If you check out my list to the right (oops! faux pas!), you'll find some local gay bloggers worth checking out. (Some of these guys are soooooooooo cute! MightyMaloney (at left) aka Too-Many-Heartbreaks-Recently, is definitely among the sexiest. *sigh*)

:: My most heartfelt blog desire, just as if we were meeting face-to-face, is to show you a good time. I want you to leave our encounter with a smile on your face and a warm silky glow in your tummy. I certainly want you to come back for more. In what not only seems like, and was in many ways, another lifetime far, far away -- the late 1970s -- I did write regularly. I even managed to get paid for it, from time-to-time, albeit earning less than a subsistence wage. Starting over at this stage in my life, I am aspiring to be a waiter; in the meantime, I write. I hope you'll agree, as an editor said of my work once: "Alexander, it doesn't really matter what you write about. It's just got to be a good read."

Slogan idea: A bloggary of buggery? Hmmmm .... I think that's best used with a different blog ID.

Hey! This is hard work! It ain't just purdy typing (and occasional hunky pics)! A silent room's a tough room. (Hint, hint: use the comments facility I've installed. See signature line below.)

:: It's not as if there aren't lots of interesting things going on in the gaybourhood. I live in the heart of the gay village of downtown Toronto -- steps from the doorway of Pittsburgh's most famous gay bar, Woody's on Liberty Ave, as seen on Queer as Folk -- the real Woody's, that is.

Which means I am also around the corner from Timothy's World Famous Coffee on Church Street. In fact, I am here now, writing this note, as I often do on a weekday afternoon. I tend to sit inside, usually, and all too frequently, alone. The place seats about 20, including about 10 comfy wingback chairs next to wobbly round tables. As the temperature falls, the four seats next to the faux fireplace may require "extra service" to obtain. ("Fresh cream in your coffee, sir?") Yes, this is the same Timothy's location I have been slaving over my Tao Te Ching so someday my ghost might haunt the joint, like Hemingway's does up the street at the Selby Hotel. I wonder what he would have thought had he known it would be a successful gay dance club some day?

(For those of you westies who think this blog is too Toronto-centric, let me add if I were living in Vancouver, I'd be at Delaney's on Denman, instead, every day.)

Slogan idea: "It's mainly because of the meat". Hmmmm .... quite apart from the risk of having my ass sued by mogul Conrad Black, noted Dominion Store empire ravager -- acccckkk! Or worse! His wife Barbara Amiel! *shudders* -- modesty forbids me adopting such a line.

The biggest challenge of blogging, on a more or less daily schedule, is that I lead a pretty mundane life. I need to get out more -- but that, alas, requires money. Did I mention I am for hire? At the moment, it's only words on offer, not my private giggly bits; but it looks like another long, cold winter coming up ... so you never know. Anyway, if you need someone who indents well ... I'm your man! (Please see the boxed ad under my sexy pic at top right.)

:: This afternoon, a little after 1 pm, I headed over to Timothy's and was pleasantly surprised to find Julian sitting here chatting up his friend, and sometime colleague in the film biz, Cindy. If you've been taking notes, you'll know Julian is my long-term ex-ex who had an emergency appendectomy in Barrie two weeks ago. Naturally, he showed it to me when I asked: the scar is lovely.

"They don't use sutures anymore. It's more like duct tape to seal you up," he said, pointing to the incision.

"Here's your chance to get creative with a tattoo", I parried.

Otherwise, he was looking well, if a bit tired. He's been in the big city for a couple of days for a check-up, renewing meds and friendships (not necessarily in that order), and having a couple of baths at his friend's condo (it's a very nice bath). A quick catch-up, and a slurp or a few of my coffee, and he and Cindy were off to catch the 2:30 Greyhound bus back to the wilds of the north.

With Julian off, I was able to get back to scribbling some notes about life, and sit back and enjoy the second "medium; black; in a mug; caramel vanilla nut" cup of coffee. And cruise, of course. (Cruising is so civilized at Timothy's ... you can just sit there and smile; none of that strenuous dancing, or shaving your nipples before you go out.) I paused, closed my eyes for a moment, and began to mull over what to write about today.

:: I felt the cool breeze as the main door swung open and in walked -- gasp! -- HIM ... The One I'd Shave My ... for. *sigh* He's about 30, I'd guess Pacific Islander ancestry (maybe Filipino with a little latin blood, or some Hawaiian influence?), medium height, olive skin with a hint of a tan, and an electric grace in the way he moves. As on the other occasions I have chanced to see him, I greedily gobbled him up. Oh, and he dresses with such class, a bit on the preppy side, but matter-of-factly so, with no pretence, simply making a statement. He's got a bit of that classic V, shoulders-to-waist, and he's trim but I don't think particularly athletic. (I imagine his arms could wrap around me quite securely, however.)

He stood in line a moment, got a coffee, and sat on the padded bench opposite me but at the far wall, as he usually does, opened his book and started to read. He'd caught me staring, indiscreetly, on past occasions while I was trying to write; so he already knows my goofy, slightly embarrassed smile.

This time I was determined to be strong. I buried my head back in my notebook and tried to think what to write about.

"Um, hi", I heard a soft tenor purr tentatively ... at me! I looked up. It was him -- HIM! -- standing right in front of me, book tucked under his arm, coffee mug in hand.

"Mind if I join you for a few? I've noticed you come here, sometimes." He paused.

"Sure!" I mumbled, finally, half out of breath. And gesturing, "Have a seat." Tripping over my words, I added: "Glad to meet you. My name's Alexan- " but he interrupted me as he accepted my handshake.

"You're SensualPoet, I think. That *is* you, isn't it? You posted some pics." He paused. I lit up. "My name's Randy, by the way."

"Oh my gawd," I blurted out. Well, giggled out. "You've been reading my stuff? I thought you might think I'm a stalker." I laughed, nervously, there being a ring-of-truth to that.

Randy smiled. "Nope. I've been enjoying your writing. You're obviously not a stalker! I thought I'd recognized your pic from, er, another site but when I came across your blog pic I realized that it was you."

Not giving to fainting, I didn't ... but it's a good thing I was sitting down 'cause I was swooning just then.

"I laughed really hard through the Sperm essay. I hope you don't mind that I showed it to a bunch of friends." He paused again, knowingly. "No, of course you don't mind ... you're very good at self-promotion, aren't you?" His eyes twinkled at me and he broke out into a warm grin. "Could I give you my number?"

Did I mention he has a very sexy Adam's apple? And now I know about the smile, up-close-and-personal, too. I closed my eyes, just for a second, to savour the moment.

:: Just then I felt a shudder of cold air -- that darned door again! -- and then my shoulder being jostled. I looked fondly to take in Randy's gorgeous hand resting on my shoulder. Startled, I discovered it was a uniformed Timothy's person. "You finished with that newspaper, bud?"

I blinked and looked across the table. Empty. I searched the other side of the cafe. No sign of Randy. I need more caffeine, obviously. Daydreaming like that sucks.

And, Lordy, I need a boyfriend, too, don't I?

2003-10-02T23:44:00.000-04:00

Ontario Election Night: We've Seen Worse

:: In Ontario, every four years or so, this Canadian province has an election. An election has to be called within five years of the previous election; the current Premier usually has the privilege of deciding when an election is called. During approximately a forty day window, candidates for all parties are signed up and the election is held. Ballots are counted (by hand) in about 3 or 4 hours election night. Then it's hands-off again for another four or so years.

Since I have lived in the province -- March, 1956 to present day -- we have had a steady stream of mainly Tory (Progressive Conservative or PC) governments. Most of those have fit the "Red" Tory mold -- fiscally somewhat conservative and reasonably liberal socially. But since the forty-two year Tory lock on successive governments was broken in 1985, the usual opposition party -- the Liberals (Grits) -- have been in power a couple of times; even the more extreme left, the New Democratic Party (NDP), have had one stint at the helm.

Tonight, the current eight year Tory reign was ended at the hands of the Liberals and its leader Dalton McGuinty. The new government won a comanding majority of 72 out of 103 seats in the provincial legislature (located here in Toronto, just down the road from where I live, on a grassy knoll called Queen's Park); the Tories, under Ernie Eves (who was fighting his first election as Premier), were reduced to 24 seats from 59, and thus became the official opposition. And while the NDP, under Howard Hampton, garnered almost 15% of the popular vote, they only managed to grab 7 seats; when the dust settles they will no longer be recognized as an "official party".

McGuinty is a "new style" politician: he looks good on tv; he sounds direct while being vague; and, as so often happens in politics these days, he's won his chance at the top job more because people dislike the current guy than have any special desire to see him as leader. He has four years or so to win the trust of the voters and put together a decent cabinet to nudge the province in a Liberal direction without upsetting too many people. McGuinty will do best if he turns into a "Blue" Grit.

:: Ernie Eves was the Finance Minister under the previously elected Premier (Mike Harris, who ran under a more strongly right wing platform than Ontario voters generally opt for; he resigned in 2002). To be blunt, Eves ran a dismal campaign that, to the casual observer, looked like he wanted to lose. After 16 months as Premier since the retirement of Harris (in Ontario the man or woman leading the party in power becomes the Premier between elections), Eves had shown himself to be a generally likeable, but lack-lustre -- and even directionless -- leader.

With the power blackout in August, he finally rolled up his sleeves and looked like "a decent chap" who might be capable of being in charge -- after a string of bad luck disasters from the Walkerton tainted water scandal, SARS in the city and, at the outset of the election, a meat packing plant brouhaha. There was a sense that in education, health and hydro -- three traditional Tory achievements of generosity and fairness -- Eves had dropped the ball. He looked good reasurring the people during the blackout; but what happened during the election campaign? Some would say he showed his true colours.

Some men are simply not cut out to be leaders and Eves strikes some (me, anyway) as the quintessential right-hand man -- not a leader. In his new role as leader of the Official Opposition he might actually shine -- although his generally quiet demeanour suggests otherwise. He will, at least, be well prepared. And his days are numbered: a party convention is likely to be held in early 2006 to replace him. After over 20 years in the legislature, Eves is not likely to try to hold on to the leadership.

:: For all this, the real story of the night was not McGuinty's triumph -- who many felt for the past year to be likely to win this election -- nor the failure of Howard Hampton, the leader of the NDP since 1996, and who is also likely to be cast aside in about two years time by his party; the real story is that of the Green Party of Ontario.

Who?

The Greens are linked to others Greens sprouting up across the Western world (especially in the UK, Europe and the US), although this is a "spiritual" link, not an organizational one. Possibly for the first time in Ontario history, a fourth party has gained 3% of the vote. It will be a very tough slog to make further gains in 2007, the likely date for the next Ontario election because the system discourages new parties; but there is room for a fourth voice.

Ontario is a place of centrist views and, for the Tories, Grits or NDP to hold power, they need to move into the centre while making the other parties seem extreme. There is a natural argument for Tory vs Grit; the NDP, normally identified as being the furthest left, have the hardest task. The only time they ran the government (1990-95) they won with a mere 37.6% of the popular vote but managed to win 74 of the 130 seats. Once in power under leader Bob Rae, they did not heed the call of "centre" and were tossed out dramatically after one term.

Ontario Election Summary:
From 1943, six PC leaders in a row ending with Frank Miller in 1985;
David Peterson (Lib) 1985-90; Bob Rae (NDP) 1990-95;
Mike Harris (PC) 1995-02; Ernie Eves (PC) 2002-03;
Dalton McGuinty (Lib) 2003-?

Seats and Popular Vote by Election Year
	1985	1987	1990	1995	1999	2003
PC	52 (37.0)	16 (24.7)	20 (23.5)	82 (44.8)	59 (45.1)	24 (34.7)
Liberal	48 (37.9)	95 (47.3)	36 (32.4)	30 (31.1)	35 (39.8)	72 (46.4)
NDP	25 (25.7)	19 (23.8)	74 (37.6)	17 (20.6)	9 (12.6)	7 (14.7)
Green	0 ( 0.1)	0 ( 0.0)	0 ( 0.7)	0 ( 0.4)	0 ( 0.7)	0 ( 3.0)

:: So how do the Greens fit in? Well, for one thing, they are so darned nice; you can smell mom's apple pie warming in the oven. Their party platform has "Ten Key Values" including: Ecological Wisdom; Social Justice; Grassroots Democracy; Nonviolence; Decentralization; Community-Based Economics; Feminism; Respect for Diversity; Personal and Global Responsibility; Future Focus/Sustainability. Red Torys, Blue Grits, Far Left Socialists and Far Right Libertarians will all find acceptable centrist turf in the Green platform.

No other party even mentions violence, except ina law-and-order context. Community-based economics is likely to result in lower taxes; feminism, diversity and grassroots democracy appeals to anyone who feels dis-enfranchised -- and with the skepticism about politicians in general these days, that is almost everyone. The problem is the Greens have not been tested anywhere in Canada yet: they have yet to elect a member to Parliament or a Provincial Legislature, let alone gaining official party status, graduating to opposition party or taking power. Each of Canada's main three parties -- left-leaning rightist Tories, right-leaning leftist Liberals and left-leaning leftist NDPers -- has managed to form a government provincially. Is there room for a fourth party? And if so, is it the Greens?

:: Tonight's election provides some hope: disenchanted Tories, Liberals and NDPers could all vote Green if the party itself grows in credibility over the next four years. In my riding of Toronto Centre-Rosedale -- a drastic mix of old-monied Toronto, a large working class, a large welfare class, and a highly visible gay vote -- the openly gay Liberal incumbent won handily against PC and NDP hopefuls. George Smitherman, a strong candidate for the next Cabinet, won 51.6% of the vote against a slate of five others, and a substantial increase in plurality from the previous election. The Green candidate, Gabriel Draven, captured a respectable 4.5% of the vote. In the riding next door, Trinity-Spadina, the Green candidate Greg Laxton managed nearly 6%; the incumbent NDP Rosario Marchese won handily with almost 48%.

Although I have been a member of the PC party off-and-on since 1970, I have voted NDP and Liberal on occasion; and while my first choice is PC, my vote is based more on the merits of the local candidate than the party. This election I voted Green and I intend to keep an eye on the party in the future.

With a federal election looming late next spring, after the coronation of Liberal Paul Martin as next Prime Minister succeeding Jean Chretien when he retires in February; and the NDP led by Jack Layton (currently not a member of the House of Commons); and the "right wing" in disarray with a shrill, extremist Stephen Harper as leader of the Canadian Alliance and a non-entity Peter MacKay leading the PCs -- it might be the time for the Greens. Alas, the party's website doesn't even mention the name of its federal party leader (it's Jim Harris). In the 2000 election resulting in a solid Liberal victory, the Greens actually came in sixth scooping up just under 1% of the national vote; the NDP came in fifth.

You do have to admire the hutzpah of the leader of the provincial Greens, however. Frank de Jong pulled in a respectable 6.1% of the votes in the riding of Dufferin-Peel-Wellington-Grey, beating the NDP candidate by 13 votes to take the third spot. The guy who won the riding took a commanding 56.7% of the votes, winning by a landslide. His name? Ernie Eves.

2003-09-30T14:54:00.000-04:00

Tuesdays with Tao: Three - The Way to Wu-Wei

:: Every Tuesday, I'll be publishing one more chapter of my personal re-interpretation of Lao-tzu's awesomely inspiring and quietly wise Tao Te Ching. Despite being written down some 25 centuries ago, it is a marvel of contemporary insight. The opening chapter, The Essence of Tao, is here; Two To Tango is here.

The first chapter introduced us to "Tao" and some of the inherent paradoxes of trying to describe the indescribable. Last week, the Sage was first invoked as someone who emodies Te -- the way in which Tao manifests in the universe. This week, "wu-wei" or not doing -- that is, taking action with instead of against -- is discussed along with related advice about desire: desire is a distraction from Tao. Much of the first 37 chapters revisit these ideas repeatedly so that gradually you come to "know" what Tao and Te is, without having to "figure it out".

Three - The Way to Wu-Wei
Exalting those who do good works, instead of celebrating the work itself, creates jealousy.
Withholding that which is rare creates artificial value and thus leads to scheming to attain it.
Placing the beautiful out of reach in glass cases quickens the desire to grab it.
Knowing this, the Sage distracts the People by:
Emptying their minds;
Filling their bellies;
Discouraging their ambitions;
Strengthening their bodies.
When the People are not exposed to trivial knowledge, they will not act from desire.
Then even the cunning ones cannot tempt them.
When not-doing is embraced, all is done, nothing is left undone, and peace reigns throughout the land.

Comments welcome!

2003-09-28T11:47:00.000-04:00

Sperm: Mining the Net for Humour

:: I was minding my own business -- I just can't believe it! -- when one of my best friends remarked when I had introduced him to my blog, that I "had too much time on my hands". Doesn't he know that I am an artiste?!?

To prove him wrong, wrong, wrong! I decided to spend the day surfing the net looking for facts about sperm and to discover, perhaps, a culture of sperm. This blog episode is the result. Steel yourself! During the time it takes to read this, hundreds of millions of these unfortunate helpless folk will perish. Alas, that is their lot in life.

I decided to begin my search in the discipline of music lyrics. Here man's natural expressions of admiration, frivolity -- and lust, perhaps -- might be found; a quick trip to Google did not disappoint. I searched for "sperm" and found quite a lot -- much of it not printable even in this blog. However, an old favourite headed the list: from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, Every Sperm is Sacred. It is sung from the point of view of a Roman Catholic head of the household and eventually every member of the family chimes in.

Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate.
Hindu, Taoist, Mormon,
Spill theirs just anywhere,
But God loves those who treat their
Semen with more care.
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is good.
Every sperm is needed
In your neighbourhood.

After this parody, however, things go downhill rather quickly, with images of death, destruction and nastiness in most lyrics containing spunky bits. Rap and metal are to blame! I am certain Schubert wrote nothing of the sort.

I did like the poetry in a lyric of a band called Momus -- "My Sperm Is Not Your Enemy" (from the album Oskar Tennis Champion (2003)) of which this is a sample:

My sperm is not your enemy
In it glistens destiny
Some day you'll appreciate
This acrid, viscose gunk
An agglomerate of goo
Ammonia, bamboo
Condensed milk, runny glue
And eternity!
My sperm is not your enemy
Hold it in your hand
You hold (you know it's true)
The future of man!

Among the remaining printable lyrics from other sources, Caldwell/Ferryman/Kaufman/Mullin sounds the most intriguing: "Airborne sperm from outer space / You better watch your face. / Airborne sperm from outer space / You know you love the taste."

:: Which brings us quaintly round to the correct use of sperm. Now of course, there is a fundamental purpose for it: to join with an egg and create a new human life. However, just as most women only make use of a handful of their eggs in a lifetime, most men dispose of, flagrantly some would say, on average 1,080,000,000,000 or so sperm. So if something on the order of 1 in 500 billion or so of these little devils is actually pressed into service creating life, it is probably ok for us to find other uses for the 1,079,999,999,998 remaining -- give or take a few billion -- that aren’t required for procreation.

Abby's Sexual Health Info site seems to have the right attitude and includes a Fun Sperm Facts page.

For example: what's the shelf-life of sperm? I don't mean in a fertility sperm bank; I mean still inside that cute boy you've been cruising? Did you know those tasty critters only last 2.5 months, from "development to ejaculation"? For most of us there's little danger in them "going off" because they've been let out long before they are due to expire. And it's a darn bit longer than a lot of boyfriends last these days!

I also discovered from Abby that they rocket out of one's manhood at the not too shabby pace of 28 miles an hour and generally only need to travel 3 to 4 inches to fertilize an egg. How ironic that, years later, it's so damned hard to get him off the sofa to carry the trash down to the end of the driveway.

Not that I'm bitter, but, ladies, we don't get those multiple orgasms you (reportedly) enjoy. We get ONE. And we hate wasting them. The worst thing in the world is to sploosh without the RUSH. And the whole thing only lasts four seconds, on average (that's the orgasm, even if sometimes the rest of it seems just as brief).

:: Emboldened, I decided to dig further. If a man's sense of virility is tied to size and stamina (or so say the dozens of Viagra ads overflowing my e-mail box daily), the amount he cums is also a vital measure of his masculinity.

While modesty does not permit me to divulge personal specifics, I chuckled at the unlikely claim that "average volume of semen per ejaculation is 1-2 teaspoons". I have seen a teaspoon of yoghurt! A teaspoon of maleness couldn't possibly create this much mess. (This is a good thing; unlike environmental spills, small is not better. Let's face it, men: quantity is part of the quality.)

More controversial, perhaps, is the 7200 ejaculations per lifetime. Durex, international maker of Performax condoms which contain a "climax control lubricant on the inside to help prolong your sexual enjoyment", reported last week that the average Hungarian was having sex (with a partner) 150 times a year. Most of us guys are busy exploring solo "down there" more than 2 or 3 times a week -- at age 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 .... Again, without releasing any state secrets, I'd suspect the average male might burn through those 7200 lifetime ejaculations just as a teenager.

Using the paltry teaspoon-per-ejaculate, and a mingy lifetime-of-7200-splooshes, let me just say the claim that we "average guys" only produce 18 quarts over 60 or 70 years of the world's finest, mass-produced, natural elixir sounds like it needs to be revised upward. Big time.

Every teenage boy has wondered if he's going to "run out" or "run dry" and most of us have tried to, on occasion. But they are persistent little critters, our sperm! Did you know we're producing these wiggly guys at the rate of about 5,000 per second? Our bodies are on a quota schedule to produce about 400,000,000 new ones every day. Now that's a party!

Thankfully, those cute sticky little guys are small -- there are 80 to 300 million of them in a single serving. You can see why your boyfriend needs to pause before providing a generous second helping if he really delivered well the first time. The risk of pregnancy has got to go down on the third or fourth outing in a single night.

:: If you were concerned that I wouldn't get around to discussing the nutrient value of that blond twink shaking his booty on the dance floor -- no fear!

The nutritional value, even of demon seed, is all on the plus side. Cute bois, and even less cute ones, will present you with a yummy mixture of: water, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), blood-group antigens, calcium, chlorine, cholesterol, citric acid, creatine, deoxyribonucleic acid, fructose, glutathione, hyaluronidase, inositol, lactic acid, magnesium, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium (just like bananas!), prostaglandins, purine, pyrimidine, pyruvic acid, sodium (something you'll need replacing if you've been sweating a lot coaxing the little beggars out of their cave), sorbitol, spermidine, spermine, vitamin B12 and zinc.

Still, it's less than 1 calorie and, based on a standard 300 million spermatozoa serving, provides: 150 mg protein, 11 mg carbohydrates, 6 mg fat, 3 mg cholesterol (not sure if this is good or bad cholesterol), 7% US RDA potassium, 3% US RDA copper, 3% US RDA zinc. If you're a vegetarian, I suggest you get over it and get under him. We all need some protein in our diets and this is an all natural living source. (Think of it as warm yoghurt.) Remember: a trillion of these guys are going to die anyway so you're not really harming anything.

There are numerous discussions of how to alter or improve the taste. Unbelievably, some women and a few gay men actually don't like the taste of the stuff. It's important to point out that the sperm itself -- that's the chewy, chunky bits -- have very little flavour; it's the semen, or carrier fluid, which adds to the savoury satisfaction. From a practical point of view, you might want to remember that the tongue is made up of different taste receptors. The ones sensing sweetness are on the tip so you may want to be sure to give your guy a good licking before swallowing ... I am sure he won't object.

One source on the net claimed: "In general, the taste of a man's semen varies with his diet. Some say that the alkaline-based foods (fish and some meats) produce a buttery or fishy taste. Dairy products can create a foul taste; the taste of semen after eating asparagus is said to be the foulest. Acidic fruits and alcohol (except processed liquors) give it a pleasant and sugary taste. Examples: oranges, mangos, kiwi, lemons, grapefruit, limes, Labatt Blue, Honey Brown, etc. (drinking a Corona with lime is double the fun." (Others reported celery, pineapple and cinnamon improve the flavour. Looks like I need to do some serious extended research on this.)

And nix the artificial sweeteners. Regular use appears to lower sperm counts measurably. Equal, Aspartame, Saccharine, Sweet-n-lo, Nutrasweet ... if you want your sperm counts to remain high ... or your boyfriend does ... stick to real sugar and do another couple of reps at the gym to burn off the extra calories. How's that for a win-win situation? Unless of course he's disposing of some of those delicious gooey treats in the steam room ...

:: A lot of women, as we have already seen, take a healthy interest in sperm and sperm production. Holly Webster reports:

The sperm's only motivation is to get into the woman's vagina and uterus, to impregnate an egg.
Sperm can swim in hot tub water, can swim through underwear, can swim across skin. They do not need to be PUT into the woman in order to GET into her and get her pregnant.
Sperm can live for up to 5 days after being released, and can 'wait around' for an egg in order to impregnate it.

(It made me wonder if gay guys produce sperm looking for other semen? Most of us are delighted to make the acquaintance of a sailor.)

The Australians have a neat male sex health site which is lubed and ready to answer your questions, safely, about all aspects of male sexuality. You'll discover, among other things answers to questions like:

Can I taste my semen?
Yes, though you have to get some in your mouth first.
Is it common among straight men to taste and swallow their own semen?
Who knows? Straight men are the least likely to talk about which parts of their bodies they like - they often have enough trouble admitting they like their partner's bodies. However, you are not automatically a homosexual (or a bisexual) just because you like your own body and its fluids. There is nothing wrong with enjoying your own body, regardless of what anyone else may say.

More than one site posited the question: "Are you looking for a sperm drink?" but they didn't mean a shot glass of fresh jism, just alcoholic beverages with a nod to the colour and possibly the texture of your date's private juices that you dragged to that fancy martini bar. Now just in case you think I am making this up, here's the instructions on making a Sperm Bank.

Fill a shaker half full with ice cubes. Pour all ingredients into shaker and shake well. Strain drink into a Cocktail glass and serve. Ingredients: 1.5 oz. Light Rum, 0.5 oz. Creme de Cacao, 1 oz. Heavy Cream.

No word on whether to shake or stir your boyfriend after a couple of those.

I also came across a couple of bizarre news stories. From Russia's Pravda (oh how things go down hill in the news biz once the dictators go home) I found this item:

The taste of sperm can predict future
The visitors of one of the brothels in the Japanese town of Nagoya are offered to mix business with pleasure. Kaho, the priestess of love who works there said that she can predict a man's future after having oral sex with him. As Kaho said, she has already predicted the future of almost one thousand men, and they are all happy, since they paid for sexual services, but also had their fortunes told. Kaho once told one of her clients which horse to stake on in a race, and he really won. She also helped another guy make a proposal to the girl he loves, and now they are happily married. This reputation is very good to Kaho, as she now has a lot of clients.

And a controversy erupted in Holland when a manufacturer of one product, Popsy, started to sell its vanilla-caramel flavoured booze in 20mL "sperm-shaped bottles" with the slogan "I’m coming!" emblazoned across the label. The Dutch Foundation for Alcohol Prevention grumbled that the campaign is perverse and breaks advertising codes.

Associated Press ran a story over the summer, "Study: Abstaining makes sperm perform worse", the gist of which was couples struggling with infertility due to low male sperm counts may increase their odds of pregnancy if they "do it" a couple of times a day around ovulation, instead of "saving up" hubby's juices for one massive assault during the wife's most fertile moment. Withholding those sperm for more than a day or two can actually decrease the quality of the male's contribution. 7200 semen sample were examined in this study (where do you get these jobs, anyway?).

The number and proportion of motile sperm, meaning active and moving sperm, fell significantly from day two onwards, reaching a low at day six and remaining low. The percentage of malformed sperm also increased after just a few days of abstinence, the scientists found.

"You may have more sperm and more semen volume, but the quality is less. Usually, fresh sperm are better than stale sperm," said Lynn Fraser, a professor of reproductive biology at King's College in London. "What you really want to do is flush the system out so that the sperm that are there are fresh."

Finally, leave it to the BBC to run a story indicating scientists are ready to fertilize a woman's egg without male sperm. Scientists in Australia have found a way to fertilize eggs using genetic material from any cell in the body -- and not just sperm. This could put Brian Kinney out of a job; he'd have to stick to making Justin sticky from here on in and leave the girls to their own devices.

:: Hey! And just when I thought I'd gotten all sticky in a barrage of one porn link after another researching this article, what do I find? Academics (fun people we know)!

In an article entitled Only the sperm knows, Hopkins MD/PhD student Loren Walensky asks: "Why is a sperm like a nose? Because both can, in a sense, 'smell'." He finds that sperm tails contain the same types of odor-binding proteins that noses do. The proteins, he suggests, "smell" odor messages from the egg, which allow the sperm to find the egg. He goes on at great length, always a happen circumstance with male sexuality.

Where is Wilhelm Fliess -- the man who convinced Freud there was a direct connection between sexuality and the nose -- when you really need him?

The Sperm Aficionado among current readers (are you still with me? Sick puppy!) will also want to check out some clinical discussions of sperm. A reasonably plain language introduction is provided by Rothamsted Research , a division of Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council of Britain. There will be a test following. Be sure to memorize acrosome, centriole, mitachondria, flagellum and be able to describe how the little guys wag their tails and how they eat their way into the egg to fertilize it (ugh).

And at California's Stanford University, there's even a whole website of sperm animations available online. I rather liked this one because it demonstrates another amazing sperm fact: A sperm's muscle drives nature's only known rotary-joint. The tail SCREWS, not whips. No kidding. Really. I am NOT making this up!

The things you learn on the net! Perhaps I do have too much time on my hands -- but when I do meet Mr Right, with regular access to that delicious male elixir again, think of all the fascinating things I can find to chat about?

Ending, as we began, on a humourous note: there were a lot of jokes posted about man's best friend; here are two that made me smile and not wince. (It helps to be gay to find these funny.)

How do you tell if your boyfriend has a high sperm count?
If you have to chew before you swallow ....

What does your boyfriend and the Bermuda Triangle have in common?
They both swallow seamen ....

2003-09-25T15:07:00.000-04:00

Adventures in the City: A Weekend with Gabe

:: I realise everyone believes I lead the life of a monk and, for the most part, that's true. But once in a while I actually do manage to meet someone -- like Gabe, who I met online. While this adventure occurred six months ago, it brings a special smile to my lips tonight.

As Sophia Petrillo might say ... picture this! ... A sultry spring (albeit snowy) Saturday night in Toronto ... Apr 5th, 2003 ....

A true tail in the city (mine? his?) ... and I'm still glowing from it. ...

So there I was, on a date this weekend, in truth the first one in quite a while, with this sweet Asian guy, 5'11", who'd been pursuing me online, on the phone, in e-mails and in person. We'd already had a beer together at Woody's once for a "look see", and ran into each other (expectedly) at a function called Asian Xpress the week before. But this was the "big night" -- a real date!

It started well.

We met at 10:30 pm on a (gasp!) still snowy April Saturday night outside Statlers, a cosy piano bar, where the guy at the keys was purring out Elton John, Annie Lennox, Cole Porter and various and sundry show tunes. Gabe (my date) had a smart tomato juice; I had a tasty local Toronto brew -- Cameron's Auburn Ale. Before I could lean over and compliment him on his lovely smile, he reached down into his knapsack and produced, at the ends of his long, sexy fingers, two documents: "A Meditation on Intimacy and Ecstasy" and "Forever, Brothers". (The first is a poem/performance piece I wrote for a spiritual retreat in Pennsylvania last January; the latter a story about a gay adopted guy who meets his mom for the first time, later in life; see links at right.)

"I'd like to discuss these with you, line-by-line," he said. (Did I mention he's studying to be an accountant and turned 21 in January?)

"This is a true story, right?", he exclaimed. "I was soooooo deeply moved!" He exhaled, with a slight squeal, authentically sincere.

"Well, um, actually, no. It's fiction. I made the whole thing up. I'm a writer."

His face fell. "But it's sooooo from the heart! You mean, that's not your brother in the story? I didn't mind the incest. You are such a romantic. I just love your mind. It's not just all about your sexy body, you know!"

Just then the bartender, incredibly almost as adorable as Gabe, came by to see if we wanted a refill. Dan is possibly the hottest young man on the street, white, blond, twinky in the nicest way; and as gentle a personality as you can imagine.

"Well, ok, maybe another tomato juice -- with a bit of vodka this time", Gabe suggested.

Dan squinted at him.

"I'll have to see some ID." He looked at me apologetically (Dan knew me; I'm a regular here). Gabe fished out an Ontario Health Card, and a driver's license, both with photo ID, an address and birthdate. Dan examined them for a moment, then lit up all smiles as he handed them back: "Gosh! You're 11 months older than me! I just turned 20!" and then scurried off to complete our order.

For the next 90 minutes Gabe read through every page, commenting on this and that idea, or turn of phrase, and then turned to the Meditation for examination, as well. I was at a terrible disadvantage because, in the lowish lighting and without my bifocals, I couldn't really see the page. (It's always a good idea to be on the same page with a hot young date. I would have studied up on them earlier in the evening! What can I say? I write, and I move on. Who knew there might be a test tonight?) He didn't ask for my autograph, though.

Meanwhile the piano player sang on.

:: But this was Saturday night and it's no place for two cute guys -- one young and the other of indeterminate age -- to hang out all evening. Ya gotta dance!

So soon he was packing up his knapsack, and, after I helped Gabe on with his coat, we headed out to The Barn, a local dance club, where he likes to go on Friday and Saturday nights while he's living in Toronto. (He'd been doing a four month co-op stint and would return to Waterloo in May.) The Barn was a couple of blocks down the street and, despite the snowy sidewalks, the temperature was mild. Bois were passing left and right, in both directions, and Gabe grabbed my hand as we walked.

Wasn't that nice? He didn't need to steady himself on the ice. He liked me! It's amazing we didn't float to The Barn!

We chatted about this and that until we arrived at the club. I noticed that I was feeling nicely warm with his fingers tightly clutched in mine. Then, after dropping off our coats at the door, we did a quick spin around the club -- all three floors -- to check out the scene. In the middle of it, suddenly he pulled me to one side and asked: "Can I spend the night with you?"

"Gosh", I thought to myself.

"How could I live with myself if I say no? Is it really my place to break his young heart?"

Deftly smoothing my hand over my forehead attempting, without much success I am sure, to keep the horns from rising any further -- and discretely wiping the drool from my lips -- I graciously responded, "Yes".

We then proceeded to dance for the next three hours, mostly to music I'd heard in the club before but had no idea what the tunes were (I don't own a radio). From time-to-time, we paused to take a breather and he introduced me to this friend and that, and to have a bottled water, or something even nicer, to drink. I had a chance to reflect on how many Glucosamine Chondroitin tablets I'd have to swallow the next morning for my knees to recover.

But quickly my mind wandered to swallowing other things. Gabe had returned with a fresh bottle of water in hand and I learned, over the thud-thud-thud coming from the adjacent dance floor, that we'd been listening to souped up J-Lo, Mariah Carey, Cher and other divas I don't remember now.

Suddenly I heard something I actually did recognize -- The Pet Shop Boys' Always On My Mind -- and we were back on the dance floor. I was really into this number and for the first time tentatively offered a kiss as I danced in close and put my arms around his shoulders. If we were sticky before, we were now, suddenly, very hot. A little tongue later, I was being twirled around and I found myself engaged in some interesting front-to-back manoeuvres (!).

But then it dawned on me this tune was released when he was 4. Thanks to the good manners of arithmetic, I am no longer twelve times his age. Small mercies!

(Trivia note 1: did you know that someone has made a rap/disco version of "Killing Me Softly With His Song"?!? So, call me an old fart!, but, honestly!, Roberta Flack's original was better. Much better.)

(Trivia note 2: did you know that when you are sitting in someone's lap, even when the music is very, very loud, you can still feel their cell phone vibrate when it goes off?)

:: By 3 am, we were literally soaking wet, head-to-toe, every article of clothing ready to be wrung out. We reclaimed our jackets (and knapsack) and faced what was now much colder night (early morning) air and walked home the few blocks north to chez Alexander. We tried to be quiet entering the apartment where, of course, my roommate DJ was sensibly long since sound asleep. The cat glared at us but stretched out in a silent greeting.

It ought to have been time for sleep, right? But bois will be bois.

I suggested we take a shower (hey! I was prepared for separate showers) and I tossed him a fresh towel as I started to take off my icky wet clothes.

But I didn't get very far. (Thank you, God.)

Tiger-boi decided the shower could wait and, for the next hour, there was much cheer in the land. The cat left in boredom and Teddy sobbed quietly in the corner (he hates to be left out). Don't ask me why I even bothered to try to make the bed.

With that out of our system, a shower was even more in order. Miraculously, based on the evidence of snoring, roommate DJ was still happily undisturbed -- but not for long. Here on Maitland Street, we have a Shower From Hell with a Whistle from Hades but Gabe and I managed to tame it, sort of. I don't know what they teach in university these days but if there is space to enrol in this semester's "Showering and Its Social Impact 101", I recommend you take it. I took it (is that the correct way to put it?) then and there -- the one hour introductory at least. This blue-eyed 40s-something pupil apparently pleased his teacher, muchly.

But boyish giggling from the soapy duo finally aroused (is that the right word?) DJ from his slumber. Sorry about that, sweet man! Kitty continued to doze. Teddy remained unamused. As the door to the roommate's room opened in the shadows, the two of us made a freshly towelled dash for my bedroom.

This was the evening of the spring time change (so it was already an hour later than it felt) and by now the sun was coming up; still, for the next hour or so, we managed to find interesting new ways to flex this muscle, and that, before finally (and gratefully) collapsing into a heap of arms and legs and licks and snuggles and tired giggles and a close, tender embrace.

Sleep had finally won out. Teddy stood guard, silently.

:: About four hours later, I opened my eyes to see another set, these brown and baleful and, realising this was not Teddy as usual, mumbled, "Mornin', Gabe". Has anyone else ever had an erection in the morning? Or is it just me? LOL. More giggling ensued -- followed by a lot of heavy breathing. No surprise that soon it was time for another shower.

(But not before he'd also looked at my shelf of CDs and squealed with approval. One title especially required his close inspection. Michael Jackson? Backstreet Boys? Sonique? Macy Gray? Ella Fitzgerald? Nope ... Franz Liszt!)

Sheepishly, as Gabe was dressing, I sauntered out to the living room to discover DJ diligently marking exams. I asked how he slept and got a glower in return.

"Tea?", I offered, knowing it wouldn't really soothe the savage beast.

But before I got the kettle on, the sing-song voice of my dressing-for-success date called out from the bathroom: "What sort of moisturizers do you use?"

Little did I know that his knapsack -- full to bursting -- contained only two classes of things: samples of my writings; and a plethora of hair and skin care products. The things I learned in the next 20 minutes would entitle me to an instant promotion as Estee Lauder clerk-of-the-month at Bloomingdale's.

Alas, all good things come to an end and, as it was now pushing 2 pm on Sunday afternoon, I retrieved his winter jacket (which had every pocket stuffed, incredibly, with even more hair care products -- did I mention he was studying to be an accountant?!?) and we were on our way to "breakfast". The all-you-can-eat special at the local pancake joint was already over so we settled on The Village Rainbow at Church and Maitland. At 5'11" and maybe 160 pounds, I have no idea where Gabe put all that food. I had the discrete two poached eggs and and a slice of fried tomato; he had the Lumberjack Special with sausages, three eggs over easy, french toast, homes fries, brown toast, bacon ....

But what a sweet conversation over the next couple of hours chatting about life, and dreams, and bois and the night before. Gabe isn't exactly what you might term "butch" (ROTFLMAO) so I wasn't quite sure how to take his going on about how "refined" and "dainty-like" my mannerisms were. Anyway, he liked them and thought I was polite. I heard most of what he was saying but I did get distracted by the way he ate those sausages. Slowly. Lingeringly. Nibble-by-nibble.

After much hand-holding, it was time for him to go home to his parents (!) so at 4 pm I walked him to the subway. We kissed and caressed outside the entrance for a minute or two and then he disappeared into the train station. I headed home, refreshed, and spent, in a good way.

What to do for an encore?

Is it Friday, yet?

(PS -- Whether an act of God or an act of Glucosamine, my knees turned out to be just fine, thanks. Whew!)

2003-09-24T10:06:00.000-04:00

Birthdays: Join me in Best Wishes

Today the oldest of my younger sisters turns 47. Another sweet offspring of Saskatchewan, not unlike her brother. You might say: a most beautiful flower from the good soil of the prairies.

Happy birthday, sis. And many, many more.

Kisses from your only bro.

2003-09-23T14:53:00.000-04:00

Tuesdays with Tao: Two - Two to Tango

John Chalmers created the first known complete english translation in 1868 and famous ones followed by James Legge in 1891, Paul Carus in 1913 and Aleister Crowley in 1918. Since then, famous and infamous, scholars and poets, ministers and aetheists alike have tackled their own Taos. If you hunt online, you'll find at least 35 current translations/interpolations/re-interpretations, including, soon, one by SensualPoet!

Tao Te Ching means "The Book (or sacred texts) of the Way and Virtue" where "way" is something like all-encompassing Nature and "virtue" is a way of being which attempts to harmonize with Tao. Much of the first book concerns itself with trying to describe the indescribable. Lao-tzu uses about 5000 characters (these are rich chinese characters, each equivalent to a word or a paragraph densely contained within) for the entire 81 chapters; my first 37 already stretch to 4300 words. But then, I am using english. ;-)

Two - Two to Tango
When your mind tingles aha! as it digests a morsel profoundly beautiful, don’t be dismayed that you must also have swallowed ugliness.
When your heart soars, alive and gleeful, because you have just experienced goodness, rejoice, too, that you have given your innocence to evil.
Day is unknowable without night; this is the bound-together inside-and-outside Truth of Tao.
Difficult and easy complement one another.
Long and short measure against one another.
High and low rest upon one another.
Sound and silence create music from each other.
Before and after are meaningless without one another.
The Sage teaches wordlessly, by example, allowing Nature to flow unimpeded, presenting its lessons according to Nature's own time.
He welcomes the coming, he accepts the going, of things;
neither restraining nor invoking, he nurtures them impartially as they appear.
By declining to take credit for his effortless efforts, nothing can be taken from him.

Comments welcome!

2003-09-21T10:16:00.000-04:00

Getting to Know You: A True Southern Gentleman

:: If you'd told me a few months ago that I would be spending part of my autumn in North Carolina, soaking up the pleasures of small town life, nestled in the Blue Ridge mountains bordering on Tennessee and South Carolina, at the very least I would have glared at you. I'm pretty much an urban bunny and while Toronto may not be Manhattan, it passes for cosmopolitan in my country, Canada. At about 70,000 people, Asheville, NC, does not a metropolis make.

But what a marvelous town it is! Schumacher got it right: Small can be beautiful!

Earlier this year, I had the good fortune to meet a youthful man of the theatre and arts, Jack Parsons, who, while he was raised in West Virginia, settled in Asheville in 1987. Like many of us, he's had his share of good relationships, and sorrows from the loss of departed loves. Today he lives in a modestly sprawling home steps from a quiet lake near a bird sanctuary and just a ten minute drive from the centre of town and his successful corporate career -- and you sense immediately that this is a man who comes home for lunch.

You don't know Jack? Come closer and let me share some reflections about a few hours he spent with me displaying his energy and quiet compassion for life.

After a somewhat harrowing experience actually getting to Asheville from Toronto, via huricane Isabel, Jack met me at Asheville's exceedingly modest (ok, ok -- small) airport on Thursday evening. He drives a bright sunny yellow Cooper Mini (now made by BMW, these legendary English "bugs", at one time called the Morris Mini Classic, reek of a bell-bottom, flower-power age). I was already some nine hours later than expected but Jack was gracious and attentive.

Home is on a hill, with a variety of trees and shrubs dotting the sides of a steep, curved driveway which provide shade and beauty to the front of the house. At the back, there is a wooden porch which we later held a party on, and an outdoor stone bar-be-que. And inside, a well-appointed and functional kitchen; a spacious living room with a baby grand in the front bay window; a dining room (or more accurately a dining room table in the dining room and very little else); two baths; two bedrooms; and a mainly self-contained wing plus a full basement. A lot to dust for one!

Photographs are everywhere. In amongst some very attractive paintings by local artists are scattered dozens of frames, of all sizes, showing off different facets of Jack's more recent years: his loves, his family, and most of all, his many friends. I was somewhat taken aback to discover a half dozen pictures of myself already displayed in various locations (we had met already three times this year, once in Pennsylvania and twice in Toronto). He "curates" his picture gallery in logical groupings, with labels; still other frames rotate from storage for variety.

:: On Friday morning we took a tour of Asheville, beginning with Malaprops, a local independent bookstore which is aggressively author-friendly and has a very well-chosen and broad selection of books. Its gay and lesbian section, and the atmosphere itself, was my first clue that Asheville truly has more than a hint of mint and displays it matter-of-factly. A cafe, and performance space, adjoins the front room. Part of the tour included viewing the town's biggest pun, a sculpture of an iron in front of the historic Flat Iron Building. (Get it?) Lunch consisted of some local fare at a modest venue called Early Girl Eatery which overlooks Wall Street from the second floor. The corn bread was especially scrummy. Beer seems to be a local pastime and more than a few bars and pubs could be found with at least a dozen brews on tap (one boasted 48). These folks are serious about their beer and they have every right to be proud. After sampling one at Barley's Taproom and Pizzeria, we headed back to the car (parking fee 50 cents) and returned home to freshen up.

The early evening found us back in the town centre for the Downtown After Five street festival, a recurring summer event, held at the base of the Vance Monument in Pack Square. After showing my passport, I was branded with a sticky yellow polyester tag and allowed to buy another brew in a plastic cup as the Dirty Dozen Brass Band revved up the large and appreciative audience.

:: We didn't have much time though because by 7:30 Jack had whisked me around the corner to a presentation by the North Carolina Stage Company of Joe Orton's classic, Loot. This 1966 British dark comedy -- about a young gay man who is in cahoots with a sexy bisexual undertaker, and attempts to hide some stolen money in his mother's coffin (!) -- was extremely well done. The theatre seats barely 100 but both production and acting was first-rate. Kermit Brown starred as McLeavy, the widower, and despite a distinguished career elsewhere, returned to his hometown for this three week run. Charles McIver as Inspector Truscott wavered just on the cusp of ham -- but his thespian acrobatics were perfect for the role (he is also Artistic Director of the company). Anne Thibault as Nurse Fay and Matthew Detmer as son Hal filled out their roles professionally. The very sexy Steven Campanella, originally from Alaska, in playing Dennis didn't give away that this was one of his very first professional gigs; many eyes stayed glued to his, er, performance.

David Hopes, a friend of Jack's, and a fellow writer, academic and theatre lover, had joined us for the show and afterwards the three of us strolled over to Smokey's Tavern on nearby Broadway for a pint (or two or three). At this particular gay bar you "sign-in" as a member at the front door. There are a couple of pool tables in the back room; the front area features a bar seating perhaps ten with three more high tables opposite. The music was recent but familiar, mainly pop and dance tunes; the lighting afforded the ability to actually see who was there; and sound and smoke levels made it possible to comfortably have a conversation and a good time. We did.

:: Saturday morning, after a reasonably early start, Jack and I tumbled into his lemon coloured chariot and we were off for a gorgeous day driving toward Tennessee on the Blue Ridge Parkway through the mountains. The weather was perfect for driving, and for hiking; we did both with aplomb. The roadway in this area leads up from Asheville's elevation of about 2200 feet to over 6000. The deliberately scenic follows a series of twists and bends and goes through a number of short tunnels. Much of the original roadwork was done in the 1930s as a depression era make-work project; the craftsmanship and engineering feats remain clearly in evidence even today.

We stopped at numerous lookouts, admiring the vistas, taking pictures and tickling each other. At Grave Yard Fields we took a trail down the mountainside to a rocky stream. At Devil's Courthouse, we hiked up to the highest point of our journey -- 5720 feet -- which afforded some truly spectacular views of the neighbouring forests and mountains. From this vantage point, and on a clear day, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennesse and Georgia can all be seen. On the return journey, we stopped at Mount Pisgah Inn for a bite of lunch in an efficient and reasonably priced venue with, again, an awesome nature view from our table.

:: The day would have been complete as is but Jack, ever the social butterfly, had other plans. We returned home shortly after 4 pm and a little more than an hour later, the first guests arrived for a laid-back potluck. Jack not only performs in musical theatre in his spare time (including starring in a highly successful revival of "Falsettos" last June) but he also sings in Cantaria, a gay men's chorus; several members came to party. Most of the folks already knew each other and none made me feel out of place. The crowd was broadly in my age range -- 30s to late 50s -- and the conversation, and laughter, was evidence enough that Asheville boasts a rich population of genuine and welcoming souls.

As the evening wore on, it became apparent that the final part of our day's plan, to visit a gay dance club called Scandals was not to be. By 11 pm, we were down to a few stragglers, including Amy and Douglas, who are to be married in mid-October. These are clearly long-term deep friends of Jack's -- and salt-of-the-earth folks, too. Douglas, who at 43 has a 21 year old son (whom he spoke of lovingly and proudly several times), has led an adventurous, checkered life including his current profession as a master story-teller. His partner, Amy, is equally delightful and has the warmest smile and most genuine laugh -- half giggle, half guffaw -- that I have encountered in a long time. When she bubbled, we all glowed in response.

But all good things come to an end and Jack had some obligations early the next morning at the Episcopal Cathedral of All Souls. The four of us had been enjoying a good time, and immodest amounts of liquid cheer. This canny Canuck came to the rescue with a spare contact lens case for Amy and so it was decided the pair would spend the night safely in the spare bedroom. After a few more hugs, and well before the cock crowed, we all said our good nights.

I hope, gentle readers, and kind Toronto friends, if I don't return to Ontario as soon as planned, you will forgive me -- and be able to guess why.

2003-09-18T21:24:00.000-04:00

Meet Me At Penn Station: My Unexpected Afternoon in New York

:: Wednesday night I was supposed to be doing laundry and getting ready to visit my friend Jack, in Asheville, NC, but as usual I was having many qualms about going on a trip. I first met Jack at the Kirkridge gay christian men's spiritual retreat in Pennsylvania in January, 2003. He came up to Toronto for a visit in February, and again for June Pride, and had invited me down to his home in late March. With the Iraq-US war hostilities in full flight at the time, we delayed the visit till now.

Hurricane Isabel was about to cut a swath right across my flight path (Toronto-Newark, Newark-Asheville, NC) but I did get on the flight early this morning. The adventure began as I was packing at 6:30 am for a 6:45 exit from Maitland St. Checking the web, my reservation could not be located. In their wisdom, Continental Airlines had done a re-org in May and, according to the nice woman at the 1-800 number, they had "sent an e-mail" last spring; my flight was now at 9:30 am and the stop-over in Newark would be eight hours instead of 53 minutes. Welcome to the new realities of today's improved airline industry.

I managed to get to Toronto's Pearson International airport and be checked in by 8:30 am. The arrival in Newark shortly after 11 am was uneventful except that all available staff were busy closing the airport; many people were sent home early to avoid Isabel, "just in case"; Laguardia was already closed. In the end, Newark remained open with a skeletal staff, and, appropriately I suppose, it resembled a wind-swept ghost town (not unlike Pearson since SARS); I expected to see, but didn't, a tumbleweed or two drifting by in front of me as I strolled around deciding what to do next. After some inquiries (thank you, Jeff Weber, of Terminal C's Group Reception Lounge), I determined it was a relatively safe option to spend the day in New York City, assuming the rail line was not shut down later as well. My back-up plan was to stay with a friend in New Jersey who happens to work for Continental (at Newark, in fact) but he was in Houston for the day and would not be returning till nearly midnight, if at all that day.

For $23.10, I bought a round-trip train ticket from the airport to Penn Station at 8th and 33rd (underneath Madison Square Gardens); I also got $16 as change in US dollar coins from the ticket machine. I thought we were the only ones with loonies. Go figure; it may have been an omen. Fortunately, my calling card worked and, after a long distance consultation with DJ, my Toronto roommate, a strategy for the next few hours was worked out.

Amazingly, I have never been to New York and as this opportunity came up suddenly, I was not prepared, and in any case had no spare money, and was concerned about being back at the Newark Airport by no later than 6 pm. So I did what any self-respecting homo would do -- I asked nice people passing by on the busy New York sidewalks how to get to Christopher Street. As one lad shoved a pretty green Gideon New Testament bible into my hand ("It's free! God protect you, brother! Head that way, three blocks south of 7th and 14th, you can't miss it!"), I knew someone was watching (over) me.

:: I figured that if I saw nothing else in New York this day, I ought to check out Stonewall Place and, thanks to the guidance of the green bibled street man of God, it wasn't long before I was standing in front of this historic spot. 51-53 Christopher St is where the famous Stonewall riots (more resistance and hissy fit according to contemporary accounts) took place outside the Stonewall Inn. In late June, 1969, the police chose the wrong night to harass the local queers. We were in mourning over the death of Judy Garland, eternal keeper of the flame of Oz, and this raid was one too many. Thirty-four years later, there is a lovely plaque and sculpture garden located in a parkette just opposite. (Christopher St is only two blocks long and this stretch has been renamed Stonewall Place in honour of the event. The also famous Oscar Wilde Bookshop is just down the road and a quick trip there was equally spiritually uplifting.)

(Younger readers may not know that marking these riots, which in fact occurred over more than one night, is why we celebrate Gay Pride Weekend at the end of June every year instead of more practical times like college reading week.)

As I bowed my head in silence, conjuring up in my mind's eye what must have taken place right here and trying to calm the voices in my head, I realised there actually was someone talking to me: he appeared, by his dishevelled garments, and noticeably toxic odour, not to mention blood shot eyes and sudden jerky nods of his head, to be a slightly-elevated-state-of-mind street person. Before I knew it, we'd been formally introduced to one another. Gerry was about medium height, probably about 30, curly hair, and, after a bath (or possibly two), likely quite attractive.

In any case, he soon forgot that his original interest in me was in obtaining 37 cents -- a sum to be used for nefarious purposes, no doubt -- and for the next 20 minutes or so we were engaged in a lively discussion about art, travel, politics, the New York City parks department and its logo which looks suspiciously like a rip-off of Air Canada's, life in Toronto and Weyburn, and stern advice that I refrain from "too much" alcohol.

I also had the pleasure of meeting some of his friends. These included a 30s-something str8 couple visiting from Connecticut (who seemed much less interested in random conversation and fled quickly); another chap in Gerry's vaguely alarming condition (I am speculating here); the four white statues which make up George Segal's "Gay Liberation" monument (there is more at Greenwich Village online tour); and an older stone one of Civil War General Philip Sheridan who, for reasons not entirely obvious, resides in this 1837-built parkette and not around the corner in Sheridan Square.

As the conversation waned, I recalled Teddy was in my Maxell bag, which by now I was clutching with a probably noticable hint of trepidation, and I wondered how to gracefully end this encounter. As I was considering various diplomatic Canadian-style options, events began to move quickly. Gerry frowned suddenly and, with a fiery, intense look in his eye, growled "make a wish" as he reached forward, his fingers now millimeters from my trembling Adam's Apple. "Your medallion is turned around, Alexander" he sighed and proceeded to adjust my necklace with touching tenderness. Nonetheless, I decided my nod to history had come to an end. I bid the collected characters, living and dead, adieu and sauntered back across town wondering where the possibly safer and also modestly historic Carnegie Hall might be located.

:: Manhattan, it turns out, is a big place. I later discovered the famous musical mecca was a scant 30 or 40 blocks away. I opted to stroll along a section of Fifth Avenue not too far from the neighbourhood of Penn Station. In spite of Eva Gabor's Green Acre's optimism, this end of the strip is not entirely my idea of high class -- certainly much more sex is in evidence than Saxs. I returned to Penn Station around 4:15 and, in checking with the attendant in the Continental booth which happens to be in the station, discovered my flight had indeed not been cancelled and, after downing a not-so-cheap (but well-earned) Happy Hour draught beer, I has onboard New Jersey's North East Corridor train headed back to Newark.

(Update: I also read that two lesbians were involved in a stabbing a couple of days after my New York adventure -- at the same Stonewall Inn I had stood in front of admiringly -- so my Thursday timing, Isabel notwithstanding, turned out to have been propitious. Of course, the altercation took place in a woman's washroom so it's not likely I would have been there, but these days, given the signage in gay washrooms, it's not entirely unthinkable.)

2003-09-16T22:02:00.000-04:00

What's in a Name?: Don't ask! Please tell!

:: I was minding my own business, as I occasionally do on the web, when I decided, in a moment of utmost humility, to see what might pop up if I googled "alexander.inglis". Quite a lot, as it turns out, not least of which is, well, me. (Interestingly enough, if that's all you enter and click "I'm feeling lucky" ... you still end up at my home page.) There were a number of entries concerning genealogy (another major interest of mine) and some links to the Inglis of Aberdeen, Scotland -- where my own family's ancestors came from, arriving in Toronto in the mid-1800s. So imagine my shock when, on page 14, I came across:

"Pete's hand found the older man's shoulder; the touch sent a shudder of electric energy down his spine" (Alexander Inglis)

It turns out the extraordinarily attractive young man pictured above recently wrote an essay, Sexual Energies From Head to Toe, in which he quotes directly from a section of an erotic story I wrote in May, 2000, Tasting Heaven. (I will pause, now, for the voyeurs among you -- that's pretty well everyone, right? -- to check out that last link.) From the phrase-for-today ... who knew? This adorable hunklet devotes his essay to discovering the erotic zones of the human form; by the time he reaches the shoulders, "Waking Dream" decides to quote from my only outing as an author of erotic fiction.

:: Which reminds how much I rather like the male form, and especially two men together in something that resembles romance with the anticipatory promise of some future physical interaction ... oh, heck, LUST! I know that on the basis of what I have seen (he's sexy), read (I am soooooo turned on by words) and fantasized about (his bio is elusive at best), 31 year old Waking Dream is very well named. The downside is his b/f's name is Bryan. *sigh* The good ones are all "married"!!!! *cries*

More about Waking Dream:
Names: Alain (my French name in French class, given by the teacher); Paco (my Spanish name in Spanish class as well as a nickname given by my paternal grandfather, a pet form of "Francisco"); Carlos (my Spanish name in another Spanish class, given by a Peruvian Baptist minister); Plenty Crow (my chosen Native American name in Indian Guides); ??? (a name I cannot remember, but I knew it to be my true name, spoken by an 8-foot tall dark skinned Shaman who appeared to me in a dream to answer any question I had.); Prabhu (my Hare Krishna name, given to me by the devotee who sold me a harmonium, Hindi for "King," "Lord," or "Revered Master"); Abdul (my chosen Muslim name, "Servant of the Praised One"); Dadashee (Persian pet name for "Brother," given by a close friend); Craig (my Gaelic name, meaning "craggy")
Location: nomadic; virtual self lives in cyberspace
Cultural Heritage: In the mid-thirteenth century, in the land of my ancestors, two great spiritual men met for the first time and formed an amazing bond. These men were soul mates, and their love for each other inspired some of the world's greatest poetry. Their story is told in The Illuminated Rumi, an illustrated book that is stunning to behold and to read. I cherish this book.
Interests: masculine beauty, mystical philosophy, hiking, swimming, travel, electronic music

Have I mentioned yet I am single and am ready to be snatched up? I have wonderful friends -- you know who you are -- but who will snatch me up and make me their mate in Toronto? Earth to Waking Dream: your prince, Alexander, awaits!

2003-09-16T16:04:00.000-04:00

Same-Sex Marriage in Canada: Parliament Votes

:: It's not everyday that a politican actually admits he's going to tie up the House of Commons for a stunt; but that's what Stephen Harper, plucky leader of the Official Opposition in Ottawa is doing today. Allison Dunfield, reporting for the Globe and Mail, notes Harper "said Tuesday's motion, which has no real weight but is meant to embarrass the Liberal Party, is a chance for the government to 'come clean.'" The Canadian Alliance Leader rose in the House of Commons this morning to introduce the highly anticipated motion, which says that a marriage should be a union between one man and one woman; Parliament will vote around 5:30 pm today.

And a stunt it is. A motion of this sort carries the same weight as a motion asking Israel to be nice to Palestinians. It's a sad commentary on the ongoing devaluation of public debate that "leaders" such as Harper can get away with remarks like: "Changing the traditional definition of marriage to allow homosexual unions would 'endanger actual rights that are enshrined in our tradition'". Harper also neglects to mention that the reason gay marriage has become a reality in Canada is because we have values enshrined in our constitution and in particular in the 1982 "Charter of Rights and Freedoms".

:: The reality, as Prime Minister Jean Chretien has pointed out repeatedly over the course of the summer, is that "Society evolves. It changes over time", even though as recently as 1999 a vote in the House of Commons resoundingly supported the notion of "one man and one woman" for a definition of marriage (Canada having caught a sneeze or two from America's appalling "Defense of Marriage Act" nonsense). The good news is that Parliament is only allowed to pass laws that are, well, legal. The whole point of having a constitution is to ensure that "rogue politicians" don't seize power and enact legislation based on personal whim or bias that is fundamentally against national values. So no matter how hard you try, you can't become elected Prime Minister and pass laws which, to take a topic at random, require Catholic priests to marry same-sex partners: that goes against the Charter's freedom of religion rights. Similarly, you can't enact laws which create discrimination against specific identifiable groups, including homosexuals, because you've decided it requires heterosexuality, or blond hair and blue eyes, to formalise your union in the identical way as everyone else.

The courts have already ruled on this issue in Ontario and British Columbia and have granted same-sex marriage rights to the residents there (actually to visitors, too) with the impact that all provincial government programs must recognize same-sex marriages as equivalent to opposite sex marriages (that's because they are now the same). That already covers 55% of Canadians. A court decision is pending in Quebec which is almost certain to concur, bringing the total to around 75% of the population. The federal Parliament is expected to update its laws in late 2004 but in the meantime even the Justice Minister Martin Cauchon has urged his provincial counterparts to act as if the federal definition has been amended.

It might be possible to enable a constitutional amendment in Canada similar to the US Defense of Marriage Act but it is a virtual no-go strategy. So the worst-case scenario will be that Parliament doesn't act to change the federal law until, eventually, the Supreme Court hears a case forcing it to, and similar provincial legislatures do the same. It's a strategy which is messy and long-winded and accomplishes nothing, but this is the world Stephen Harper wants us to embrace. As I started out saying, he devalues the public debate.

Flash update!
The federal government's plan to legalize gay marriage barely passed a critical first test today as MPs narrowly voted down a Canadian Alliance motion calling on Parliament to preserve the traditional definition of marriage.
At about 6 pm, the House of Commons voted 137-132 against the Alliance motion to retain marriage as the exclusive domain of heterosexuals.
The narrow victory gives the government the moral clout to go ahead with its plan to redefine marriage, but it also highlights the deep divisions in the Liberal party and could mean a rocky ride for the government's plan.

:: On a related note, I had the pleasure of attending the marriage of Wayne Steinman and Sal Iacullo, at Toronto, at noon on 27 August. They had come up from New York City, with their teenage daughter Hope, to take advantage of the low exchange rate and the new court rulings allowing for same-sex marriages; Rev. G. Malcolm Sinclair of the Metropolitan United Church of Canada did the honours in the Wedding Chapel on the third floor at City Hall on Queen Street. My roommate DJ knew them from an online list and he was asked to be the second official witness (Hope was the first signatory).

Waiting in the waiting room was another happy male-male couple; they tied the knot at 12:30 at the same venue. And, who knew? At 2 pm, in the same venue, pop singer Janis Ian and her beau (?) Patricia Snyder also made their relationship a matter of equal legality in Ontario -- though not in their homeland (security issues?). Just a few days earlier, in Victoria, BC, my online friends Alan and Steve flew up from California and got married there. And earlier in the same month, Terry and Sandy (see pic this paragraph), who met online about three years ago and live in Sudbury, Ontario, sent me pics from their recent wedding (including the kilt shot!).

Remind me again ... how does extending marriage to same-sex partners adversely affect opposite-sex marriage partners?

2003-09-15T17:29:00.000-04:00

About the Tao Te Ching: Completing the Beginning

:: For a few weeks I have been working, on and off -- some days it feels mostly off -- at a project which has sometimes had my toes curling on their own: a personal re-interpretation of Lao-tzu's awesomely inspiring and quietly wise Tao Te Ching. Although written down some 25 centuries ago, it is a marvel of contemporary insight.

One of the first translations from the chinese was made into french in 1823; it's intriguing to speculate if Beethoven might have been exposed to it; he almost certainly would have admired it. John Chalmers created the first known complete english translation in 1868 and famous ones followed by James Legge in 1891 and Aleister Crowley in 1918. Since then, famous and infamous, scholars and poets, ministers and aetheists alike have tackled their own Taos. If you hunt online, you'll find at least 35 current translations/interpolations/re-interpretations, including, soon, one by SensualPoet!

The translation challenges are immense and, in comparing closely about 20 versions of the 35 I have managed to locate, there is little consensus among authors. A glimpse into the gnarliness of it all can be found in the brief article Pathless path, nameless name: Translating Laozi by Imre Galambos. If you'd like to compare just chapter one, several english renderings are conveniently located here.

:: Today I completed part one, Tao, or the Book of the Way. Tao Te Ching means "The Book (or sacred texts) of the Way and Virtue" where "way" is something like all-encompassing Nature and "virtue" is a way of being which attempts to harmonize with Tao. Much of the first book concerns itself with trying to describe the indescribable. Lao-tzu uses about 5000 characters (these are rich chinese characters, each equivalent to a word or a paragraph densely contained within) for the entire 81 chapters; my first 37 already stretch to 4300 words. But then, I am using english. ;-)

I haven't posted my own version -- the ink isn't even dry! -- but I will do so within the next several days (probably after my return from Asheville, NC). As an appetite whetter, here is my Chapter One.

One - The Essence Of Tao
The Tao which is explainable is not the Transcendental Tao.
True Tao is felt, discerned and lived. It is seen as if out of the corner of the eye -- ever there and never there.
Real Tao is nameless because it is beyond words. Attempt to Name the Infinite Tao and its ever-present essence slips away and leaves merely the Name.
The nameless Eternal Tao begins before the beginning, even before Heaven and Earth.
The nameable Finite Tao marks the boundary which contains all things.
Tread the earth lightly, free of fear or longing, and with your Spirit you may come to know the inside of Tao.
Charge into life lustily, dazzling your senses, and by celebrating life with your Body you will feast on the outside of Tao.
Inside and outside; darkness and light; unnameable and named; though seeming opposites they make up a whole; inseparably locked together, they are one: the one is Tao.
Experience reality! Then dare to step beyond into the darkly, vaguely invisible, charcoal on gray path, and you will be, as you ever are, at the gateway to the sensed, not spoken, Darkest Mystery: Tao.

Comments welcome!

2003-09-15T15:35:00.000-04:00

Words I Love: A TS Eliot Moment

:: TS Eliot's The Waste Land was regarded as one of the best poems in English almost as soon as the ink was dry. The University of Toronto has an outstanding collection of online poetry and commentary; The Waste Land link is above.

While I was showering this morning, getting ready to meet a friend for a cup of coffee at Starbuck's on Church today, suddenly these lines popped into my head:

IV. DEATH BY WATER
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

Awesome stuff ... and leading, as it does, to incredible conclusion, "What The Thunder Said" wherein Eliot sings, lullabyes, dances into my soul, and ours presumably, in ways which provoke visceral reactions like shivers, and involuntary reactions like smiles, and spontaneous, and repeatable, "ahhhhs!" as at:

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman

I am smiling, now.

2003-09-14T17:10:00.000-04:00

Afternoon Update: People in My World

:: The biggest news of the day is that my ex-ex, Julian, is in hospital. Saturday evening he was rushed to Barrie's Royal Victoria Hospital in excrutiating pain. It turns out he had a perforated appendix; they operated immediately. Graham, his other half, sent me an e-mail this afternoon. When I finally manged to get through, he was in good spirits but very tired and in some pretty awful pain. Julian is 50; we were living together from 1979-1995 and stay in daily touch by phone or e-mail. I'll post updates as I hear them.

:: Last night, I had the pleasure of running into a sweet (and very bright) young man, Matthew Charlton whom I first met about three years ago at Zelda's, a local funky restaurant in the heart of the Church and Wellesley village. He was working in software design and development back then (at the ripe old age of 20). He's now in engineering at the UofT but that hasn't stopped him from writing music and self-publishing four poetry chapbooks. At 2 am, over a smart martini, he handed over a copy of The Cosmology of Love – musings on love and science. Some good stuff in there, not least the opening piece "Cosmology" and the centre work, "Music". Bravo, Matthew!

:: This evening, DJ, my roommate, and I are headed out to Milestone's Grill and Bar across from North York Centre to hang out for a bit with the ever delightful Kevin Ramzi Nasir (seen at left), formerly Policy Director of the Ontario Young Liberals (shhhhhh! no election talk!), a big Paul Martin supporter, and about to head to England to study for his Master's Degree in Economics at the Universityof Nottingham. Kevin rants, too, but I can't find an online link. Perhaps that's a blessing. ;-)

:: Not that it was exactly today, but I continue to mull over the fate of Emmerson Swerdfeger, my great uncle, whose pic I happened to receive from a second cousin, Donald Shaffer at the University of Northern Colorado who mentioned my ancestor in passing on his website. Emmerson died at the Battle of Amiens, France, on 18 Aug, 1918 just days after his 19th birthday. I have been doing some geneaological research for a couple of years, since looking for, and finding, my biological family. Alexander Swerdfeger? Yup, it could have been ....

For the record, I am: Alexander Inglis (1955- ), son of Gordon Barclay (1931- ), son of Miles Swerdfeger (1896-1972), son of Arthur Swerdfeger (1871-1963), son of Samuel Swerdfeger (1841-1911), son of Michael Swerdfeger (1802-??), son of Frederich Swerdfeger (1765-1849), son of Rev Samuel Swerdfeger (1734-1798). Miles changed the family name to Barclay in 1930. I am adopted; Gordon is my biological dad.

2003-09-14T09:00:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Alexander's Blog

:: Ok, so I have been plotting and scheming to create a blog for quite a while but I found the whole thing quite intimidating. And me, an ex-webmaster!

Like a lot of folks, the thrill of blogging became a reality with Salam Pax's Dear Raed posts from Baghdad. Now a celebrity, many of us waited with held breath and fear in our hearts when his posts stopped appearing after the American bombing started. (But he's alive and well and writing for the UK's Guardian. An update appears here.)

Some blogs are online rants (esp. by gen-xers or loopy politicos), and some are just peeks, diary-like, into some more-or-less ordinary bloke's life which suddenly becomes exciting because this is all, so -- well -- naughtily clandestine.

I am hoping to offer you a glimpse into this sod's boring life, plus some works in progress. (I'll try not to retell my story too many times ....)

Ciao for now