RFD Issue 73 Spring 1993 by RFD Magazine Gay

Between the Lines It’s always somehow ironic to be working on the upcoming issue of RFD a season ahead, with the cold grey outside, inside we sit anticipating the coming of spring. No seasonal change is more apparent than the one from winter with its monotone colors, to spring, where every color of the spectrum bursts forth from that very monotone. Spring is the season of renewal, new beginnings, fresh dreams. As the daffodils begin to flower, let us remember the season to come and the joy we feel when we pick our first bouquet of spring flowers.

JW3MARCH OH WASHINGTON

As winter draws to a close, a period of going within, we've had a lot of time to talk about the magazine and our commitment to making it better and better. We began hosting salons to talk about matters affecting RFD and our collective well-being. This has stimulated much thought, with renewed excitement for working on the magazine. This year is an especially significant one for us as we begin to celebrate 20 years of continuous publication with the Fall issue, #75. This offers all of us an opportunity to look back on the history of RFD , and the gay back to the land movement that the magazine was born out of. Beginning with the Fall, and the three issues that follow, we will feature “the best of RFD ,“ selecting articles and art work from past issues to chronicle our evolution. In addition, we are requesting readers who had involvement with the magazine to submit personal accounts and anecdotes of what it was like “in the old days.’ As part of acknowledging our 20th year, we are designing a new T-shirt to commemorate: RFD, 20 years, (and still delivers). We are also jumping on the environmental bandwagon by offering a shoulder bag with a pansy and the RFD logo on natural cotton canvas. These items will appear in time for the March on Washington in April. In this issue, as part of the centerfold, (a pull out section), we have the new RFD reader survey. We thought as a better way to serve our readership, we needed to know more about who our readers are. Please take the time to fill it out, this is very important to us, because it will help us to improve the magazine. Also appearing in this issue, is a twelve page feature section done by the Faeries in Urinations Capitol, a fey guide to making the most of the March On Washington In addition, we have our regular columns and articles. Enjoy! Last issue, #72, was the first one we used our new Macintosh computer; it always feels odd to step into the RF D office, i former corn crib and bee equipment storage room, to use such a modern tool. While some readers may regret RFDs switch to the computer age, which does not have its roots in the country, we here at the magazine recognize and appreciate the ease and simplicity of using such a complicated tool. As a part of the switch (to the computer), we are requesting those of you who submit material with access to a computer to send us your manuscripts on 3.5 discs (Higr Density okay). We have an Apple Macintosh llci, currently use MS Word 4 or 5, and also have Macwrite. By doing this it will allow us to better allocate out time on the computer which runs on our solar electric system. During a meeting of the collective, after completing production of the winter issue, we were reviewing our fina^ ® s. Over the past 18 months, our subscriptions dropped 1/3, while the number of magazines we published increased by 200, this lead us to conclude that more people were purchasing their magazine from bookstores, rather tnan subscribing directly from us. While it is wonderful to support your local gay and lesbian bookstores, we wst cover our production costs with bookstore sales. In other words, we need more of you to subscribe directly from us not on y you save money, it will allow us to publish an even larger magazine. With each issue we have to eliminate rnater.al because we can’t afford to publish more pages. We need to increase our subscriber base significantly and we need your help, please see the pull out subscription form in the centerfold, (opposite the survey) When you receive this issue of RFD , the March on Washington will be a month away. We will be there with props, banners and all the outrageousness we can fit in our vehicles. We will also bring our rage as we c o n tin u e > '° s® ir brothers and sisters to the AIDS epidemic. The March is an important event, it is time to take advantage of the change ir the White House, and an opportunity to show our solidarity,and celebrate our diversity a time to unite and ca< or basic human rights for queer people, because above all other differences, we are human beings, period. Gay civi rights now — end the hatred and intolerance. SEE YOU THERE!!!!

I) E P A R T M E N T E I) I T O K S BOOK R E V I E W S G a r l a n d T e r r y , OR BROTHERS BEHI ND BARS L e n R i c h a r d s o n , OR B B B P E N PA L G i l s o n R e d r i c k , GA FICTION J a n N a t h a n L o n g , TN GARDENING G r e e n g e n e s , TN KI I C H E N Q U E E N B u d d y M a y . GA LUNAR CALENDA R M o o n h a w k , GA P OETRY S t e v e n R i e l , MA S P I R I T U A L I T Y Da n L e a t h e r m a n , I N Covers hv Peter Gritt design by W ayne Sizem ore

Inside cover photo of Michael Hampton dedicated to the memories of Michael Guy Hampton & Dan Stewart

Issu e 7 3

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;eaLtir.e__ Secti on; Happy Doodle El i zabet h Ga r y Jack Larry Robert m ichael Peaches Snappy Susan Dot W ithbutter

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Ron Abraytis...................................60, 61 Gydion Baggins Acapulco................27 Mathew Aquilone.................................. 64 Peter Baker.............................................. 21 D. Dimock................................................ 64 Stephen Doonan...................................... 18 Donald Engstrom....................................23 Gavin Geoffrey D illa..... 12,1314,19 Mountain Girl..........................................29 Peter Gritt..........................................49,58 Jim Jackson..............................................32 J.R. Kangas...............................................28 Robert Kokott....................................30,66 Philip Lamb.............................................. 19 Dale Larsen.......... Inside Back Cover Dan Leatherman..................................... 23 Jannathan L ong................25,39-42,61 Glen Margo.........................................55,56 Buddy May............................................... 20 Mish............................................................65 Giovanni Mucci.......................................11 Ronald V. Palmer, Jr........................... 27 Robert Patrick......................................... 59 Andrea L.T. Patterson........................ 60 Art Polansky............................................ 52 Will Pritchard.......................................... 26 Robin................................................. 6,30,66 Eugene Salandra..................................... 53 Ben Schmidgall................................ 53,54 F.R.M. Schram.........................................27 Jerry Seitz................................................. 29 Richard K. Smith.................................... 50 Stephen Scurletis...................................... 2 Stv............................................ 8,9,10,32,51 Michael Swift...........................................28 Tasche.........................................................28 Garland Terry.......................................... 60 Christopher Thom as.............................26 Lawrence W. Thom as..........................26 Tinker.........................................................27 A. Vera.................................................62,63 Kwah Waadabi........................................ 18 L.S. Welch.................................................22 David W omack..........................54,55,56 John Wood............................................... 65

DEMONSTRATE!!!

V o l XIX,

contributors

RALLY! fL a m & ?

RFD s a reader-w ritten journal for gay men which focuses on country living and encourages alternative life-styles. Articles often explore the building of a sense of community, radical faerie consciousness, caring for the environment, as well as sharing gay m e n ’s experiences. Editorial responsibility is shared betw een the Department editors and the Managing E ditors. The business and general production is centered at Short Mt. Sanctuary in rural middle Tennessee. Features are often prepared in various places by different groups. RFD (ISSN # 0149-709X) is published quarterly for $18 per year by Short Mt. Collective, Rt 1, Box 84A, Liberty, TN 37095. Second class postage is paid at Liberty, TN and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to RFD, PO Box 68, Liberty, TN 37095. ISSN # 0149-709X USPS # 073-010-00 Non-profit tax exem pt status under #23-7199134 as a function of Gay Community Social Services Seattle, Washington.

Member: CLMP (Council of Literary Magazines & Presses) IGLA (Int’l Gay & Lesbian Assoc.) INDEXED by AltemaUve Press Index PO Box 33109 Baltimore. MD 21218

A Subscription to RFD saves you money and really helps us. SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

ANNOUNCEM ENTS ARTICLES Living On The Body Of 'Hie M ountain A C ountry Journal Entry Dime Store Sex Sexual H ealing Joy of N udism

25 Jan n ath an Falling Long 30 Robin 32 Stv 49 D on Shewey 53 Ben Schm idgall

BOOK REVIEWS

BROTHERS BEHIND BARS

C O N TA C T LETTERS

CULINARY Kitchen Q ueen Baker's Buns

20 21

Buddy M ay Peter Baker

FAERIE ARCHIVES

Goatboy

FAERIE GROUP CONTACTS

FEATURE M arch on W ashington Faerie G uide

Urinations Capital Faeries

FICTION F anner M cD ada Like an Angel

29 64

Fanner M cDada M athew A quilone

GARDENING Fairy W and R oot S h o pping With Gavco

18 19

Kwah W aadabi Gavin Geoffrey Dillard

GATHERINGS

GENERAL STORE

IN SEARCH O F ...

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

LUNAR CALENDAR

M oonhaw k

NEW S BITES

Robin

POETRY First Piece Rites of Spring U ntitled G host of Robin Kerry Polka My V ietnam The A d o ratio n Lam ent for a Forgotten C om panion Passage

26 26 27 27 27 28 28 28 29

C h risto p h er TTiomas Law rence W .-Thom as F.R.M. Schram R onald V. Palmer, Jr. Gydion Baggjns A capulco M ichael Swift J. R. Kan gas Tasche Jerry Seitz

REMEMBERING

SPIRITUALITY Searching an d Sharing O ur Spirituality

Dan Leatherm an

Dear Brothers at Short Mountain,

U & f 7 L X

Hello! What a pleasant surprise to am into RFD . The subject of RFD is right where my heart is! 1 don’t know how I’ve never run into RFD before! Well I’ve been hidden in this lonely, god-foresaken city for too long! I’m one portion of your audience: those wanting to get out to the country. It’s my lifetime ambition! Now that you have a solar-powered computer, can you use stories or drawings on disk? Well, either paper or plastic, you’ll hear from me in the near future. Bob Yourko St. Ix)uis, MO note: We will gladly accept any submissions on 3.5” disc (HD okay). We have an Apple Macintosh llci and currently use MS Word 4 or 5, though we also have Macwrite.

Dear RFD brothers, Loved the cover of RFD #71. It was a treat to see a big bear brother and one who worships one. Who is the pair? And how long have they been together? It was great to see them again in #72. As an admirer of the big belly, I want to thank RFD for the diversity of portraits. As a faery who likes to feel the big buddah and to smell his incense, it was a treat to view those ethereal pix. It’s been getting very crowded here in the chubby closet and I’m glad to hear those closet doors creaking open, or is it the sound of the boards about to bust at the seams? Are we not all brothers? And who is this Ricky of Luna Parc? Keep the photos cornin’ buddy. brother Solstice Lennox, MA

Dear RFD, I he first thing I do when my new RFD arrives is check the covers, front and back. Then I read whatever RFD has to say to me in “Between the Lines.” After that I enjoy the “Letters to RFD “ and then the Contact Letters before I begin at the beginning and proceed through the entire issue slowly, rereading what really interests me and skipping what does not. I have been doing so for fifteen years or more. I have no quarrel with the way RFD has emerged and developed over the years. I have supported the venture in the ways that I could. 1 have always liked particularly the letters sections. Now I would like to make a suggestion. In earlier years the place of origin of a letter was always included. Now they sometimes are and sometimes not. I think that whether the writer of a letter lives in the country, in a small town, in a city, or in a foreign country lends interest to what he has written. I would therefore like to see you resume the practice of giving the town and state for each letter to RFD published. I appreciated the letter from Edward W. Love, the prisoner at Lincoln, NE, published in No. 72. I hope he was making a subtle pun in affirming that one can find love through correspondence. If you have not renewed his subscription till the time of his release, please do so and bill me for the ten dollars. If he should want to write to me through RFD , 1 will make time to reply. Meanwhile, I hope he may have received some encouraging letters directly. I used to write several prisoners without problems, but now 1 write to only one, a man with whom I have been corresponding for about eleven years. If you print my letter, please just sign me, Glenn of Puerto Rico

Just received the Winter Issue 92/93 No. 72 and noticed it jumps from page 16 to page 25 and then later from 40 to 49. What is the chance of a complete copy. I really enjoyed the six pages of “Down Home Erotica”, even if you did have to censor the one photo with a heart. It is still an expression of beauty and love between two brothers! Not everyone can understand the joy, love and closeness of that beautiful act. The four photos of Billy and Mike are really beautiful! Also really was moved by the section on page 51 “Remembering Our Friends and I^oved Ones. Happy New Year, Joy, Love and Peace to all at the Short Mountain Collective. John of Luv & Peace Library Hayfork, CA note: We will gladly replace anyone’s copy of RFD that is defective in any way. We just switched to a new printer and some errors are bound to happen. Just let us know and we will send you another (no need to send back the defective one).

Dear RFD, Dear RFD Editors and Friends, I am writing to get some information and comment on the latest issue of RFD . My lover and I and a friend may be planning on going to the March on Washington in April. What we would like to know is how might we identify the RFD/Short Mountain folks that will be in the march? We would like to meet and march with you guys. We may even go to the Beltane Bash at Short Mountain afterward. Please send some information on this. Would we be missing anything if we arrived a few days later than the starting date of the 28th? 1 found the last issue of RFD to be a particularly good one! The “Down Home Erotica” photo section was excellent gettin’ off material! Bravo! There were more erotic images in those few pages than there are in the big stack of mainstream porn we have. I wouldn’t mind seeing an erotic photo section for all future issues. Every photo was a turn on. I found Dwight Emrich’s image especially sexy. I really liked the journal entries of Jannathan Falling lx>ng. Again, I was reminded how RFD hits home. It was wonderful reading the Ian Anderson lyrics. That song is from my favorite Jethro Tull album. Songs from the Wood. Jannathan’s descriptive use of words for his day-to-day activities mentioned in those entries is also reminiscent of the song Fire at Midnight from the same album I also liked the novel idea of the illustrations on pgs. 38-43 of the Victorian style hands holding modem items. Danny Schaefer Cleveland, OH

Enclosed please Find my check to renew my subscription. I am doing so because I especially enjoyed Issue No. 72. I loved “Down Home Erotica,” and hope it will become a regular feature. While others may disagree, I hope women will be excluded from this section. 1 love gay women but prefer the space to feature nude male photos. (I say this only because one of your issues featured women.) I also enjoyed “A Country Journal,” and “Summer Sexual Magic.” I would like to see more descriptions and personal experiences of gay gatherings and workshops. Also I would like to see more spiritual growth stories and especially descriptions and experiences of rural life. Issue 72 did all of this nicely. Jim Hilderbrandt Sarasota, FL

note: Thank-you, all, for the wonderful feedback about our feature section on “Down Home Erotica”, let’s do IT again. Please send us your images, black and white reproduce better, however as long as the color image has good contrast they will work okay as well. When we have enough to do another section we will. Make the most of the warm weather to come, and get out there with your camera.

Hello RFD,

Dear RFD,

In “Letters to RFD,” Issue No. 72, Jinder Tang expressed a sharply negative opinion of “Out With the Hillbillies.” I disagree with Jinder Tang, and was surprised at his characterizations of and arguments against the column. Ever since I lived in Taos, New Mexico, back in 1987, Eve enjoyed the “Out With the Hillbillies” articles in R F D , and more than that, have appreciated the mere presence of these articles in a few of the RFD issues within the last several years that would otherwise have seemed to me to be too heavily “skewed” in one direction, as though RFD stood for Radical Faerie Digest. There’s a lot of different kinds of gay guys around, and I personally enjoy seeing a diversity of material in RFD . Thank you.

I just discovered your magazine last October. Needless to say, it’s an interesting mix, to which I would like to contribute. I live on a farm in rural, northern Wisconsin, and as you can imagine, I do a lot of writing. I have enclosed a couple of short stories, that I would love to see printed in your magazine. I like hearing other people’s experiences in country living. I was especially happy with “The Bakers Buns” feature, and very intrigued by the “Lunar Calendar”. I am no astrology expert, and it would really help, if you could provide a short guide on how to use the lunar calendar. It would be a shame to waste two good pages. In any case, I will look forward to reading your winter issue. I would like to subscribe, but I couldn’t find a subscription price printed anywhere! I am happy, however, to support the lone book store in my area that carries your magazine. So. it’s a toss up.

Stephen Doonan Portales, NM note: Terry Delimont, author of “Out With the Hillbillies,” has chosen not to write the column anymore, for unrelated reasons.

David Rumsey Elk Mound, WI

Dear RFD Editors and friends,

note: In this issue you will find a sub scription form in the centerfold. And let me take this time to say we prefer folks to subscribe directly. When you purchase RFD from a bookstore, it barely covers our costs so PLEASE SUBSCRIBE!!!

Hill received my first issue of RFD a few days ago. It couldn’t have come at a better time! For I’m doing 90 days in segregation. I’ve read it from cover to cover and I enjoyed every bit of it! I want to say right now to the owners and to all the ones who made it possible for me to receive RFD at no cost thank-you and I want you to know I really appreciate it. By being in prison I have no extra money. I’m doing a 19 year sentence and being gay in prison is hard because you’re always getting fucked with by fellow inmates and especially the C/o’s and the prison staff.I'm sending my info on a separate piece of paper to be printed in the Brothers Behind Bars section for penpals. I'm looking for friendship lor it’s very lonely in here. I’m not out to ask for money or any other kind of support other than friendship. Sure hope 1 will get some responses! Again thanks RFD for the subscription.

Hello! I want to say that out of all the gay publications I’ve read, yours is the best. I enjoy each and every article, story and feature and usually read it through several times. I have met many good people through your contact letter’s and the ad's you have placed for me in your Brothers Behind Bars section. I want to thank you for not only bringing me into contact with some very wonderful people, but for brightening my days with letters, companionship, under standing and your wonderful magazine. Thank You!!

Jeff Lambert Greencastle. IN

Ron Hay Tehachapi, CA

Dear RFD,

m m m w IN SEARCH OF Are you looking for someone you have lost contact with, a gay brother who may read RFD ? Send us the information in as few words as possible and we will print it in three consecutive issues. Please refer to due dates on the information page for submissions. “ Jerem y Roberts or Jim H arp^Contact: R.P. Jilek (Angie) 904/433-7949, 605 N. Spring St. , Pensacola, FL 32501. “ An address fo r a faerie group in Great B rita in called GAMET. We lost your address but hr address for Gamut - Wild Lavender, 34 Queensdown Rd. , London,E5-8NN. ENGLAND “ H arold B lo o m g u ist, last seen in NYC in 1953. Ben Gardiner, PO Box 421528, San Francisco, CA 94142. Would like any information. “ Charles F, Rowzowski, Contact me or him: Lee D.B CasteNano #C15320, Box 5002 (D2-212), Calipatria, CA 92233. “ Joseph N apoliatano, last seen at Wolf Creek sanctuary, contact Chip C/O RFD. “ Larrv M orello. formerly of Miami and Chicago. Contact Satya, 2206 Jefferson, Berkeley, CA. 94703 “ J u d y S eid e n berq. (Sheena Spirit) of N.Y.C. Contact Satya, 2206 Jefferson, Berkeley CA 94703 “ Ron R adke. I’ve apparently lost you, in Hartford, CT. Please write me. Gavin, 4520 Ashworth Rd. Mariposa CA 95338. “ D ennis M ich el, left Washington (Olympic Peninsula) in 1986 headed for Alaska, Minnesota, or northern Rockies. He was a paralegal, contact Warren Potas, P.O. Box 97000, Kirkland, WA 98083; (202) 797-8125(voice mail D C.)

Some thoughts regarding the military ban on queers RFD receives a good many press releases from a variety of lesbian and gay political organizations, such as the Human Rights Campaign Fund, ACT-UP, P-FLAG, Lambda Legal Defense and Education f und, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and also from organizations which interest themselves in the struggles of lesbian and gay people as part of a broader concern for civil liberties in general, such as the American Civil Liberties Union. For the past few months, the preponderance of their mailings has dealt with the intensifying discussion surrounding the subject of eliminating the military policy forbidding the presence of gay and lesbian people in the various branches of the euphemistically labelled “armed services.” It is worthwhile to note that the effort to overturn officially imposed bigotry in the military occurs during a period in which the U.S. government is not engaged in any major ground war involving a large number of deaths. Would the established “leaders” in the movement for lesbian and gay equal rights be pushing for this macabre inclusion if the U.S. government were entangled in a war such as that in Vietnam a generation ago? Would we be arguing to be free to be counted among the more than 50,(XX) men and women shipped home in zippered plastic sacks? Free to participate in the genocidal and eco-cidal activities of a government eager to serve the profit interests of a handful of men running a handful of corporations? Injustice and bigotry must be challenged, uprooted, and transcended wherever it exists, and this includes the military policy against sexual freedom of choice within its ranks. However, militarism is itself a form of discriminative thinking, and derives its reason tor being from the positing of an “other”, the dichotomizing of the world into "enemy” and “friend”, “us” and “them”. For those truly interested in the elimination of prejudice and violence, the abolition of institutions of violence, such as the military, must be the the ultimate, if not immediate goal. Nothing is to be lost through such idealism, and yet much is to be gained, if only the integrity it lends to the moral force of the argument for human justice and liberation. There remains the immediate reality of people whose lives and careers are assaulted and upended when they are discharged from the military due to their sexual orientation, and young people for whom, because of their poverty and optionlessness, the military provides an income and training and other paths out ot despair. W7e must have the vision to develop new, non-military means for ascending from poverty, new ways people may honorably serve their fellow human beings. The government, with its resources, could as easily fund the education of the economically disadvantaged in exchange for community service as it

does by means of the military. Those now in the military could be offered positions of similar calibre in the helping professions or other civilian projects. We must overcome not only homophobia and homophobic violence, but all institutionalized violence as well, including the military. And we can do this by offering peace-andjustice-promoting service, and educational and professional opportunities for those who would otherwise, by force of circumstance, find themselves in the military.

From War-making and Profit to Healing and Joy Patch Adams, M.D. is one man involved in service to others. For some two decades, Adams has offered free medical care to people from his home base in the Washington, D.C. area. Through his efforts and the energies of many others there has grown up an organization known as the Gesundheit Institute. Believing that health care is a basic human right and that it should be joyful and not sombre, Patch and the Gesundheit people, all of them volunteers, are in the midst of building a 40 bed hospital and healing center on 314 acres of land in rural Pocahantas County, West Virginia. All forms of healing are to be integrated, as well as the performing arts, arts and crafts, humor, farming and nature, into this revolutionary new model of healthcare. Volunteers of all sorts are needed, including carpenters, gardeners, acupuncturists, M.D.’s, musicians, lovers, and donors of money. Get in touch with these amazing folks. The information we've received is truly exciting and inspiring. Write to: Patch Adams Gesundheit Institute 2630 Robert Walker Place Arlington, Virginia 22207 or call: Eva or JJ at (304) 653-4338

(ilobal Networking From the January, 1993 Bulletin of the International Lesbian and Gay Association come these news items: In Zagreb, Croatia, in the former Yugoslavia, a new Lesbian and Gay group has been formed. The group, LIGMA - Lesbian and Gay Men Action - is asking for financial support as well as for western publications concerning gay and lesbian people, and information and advice from groups abroad. Write to: Andrea and Amir - LIGMA Section Transnational Radical Party Radiceva 15 - 41000 Zagreb Croatia

And in the Russian town of Astrakhan, a gay men’s group has formed to carry out AIDS awareness activities, establish a penpal network, sponsor cultural events, and develop a library open to the public. The group, called EGO, welcomes all contacts from lesbian, gay, and AIDS related organizations, and is eager for books, newspapers, magazines, and posters on gay issues and AIDS/HIV Write to: Astrakhanskaya Assotsiatiya EGO P.O. Box 264 414000 Astrakhan Russia Finally, an ILGA member group in Zimbabwe is also requesting any and all English language gay and lesbian publications for its new library. They request that you address all correspondence in the following manner, only and exactly. Write to: GALZ P.O. Box 1995 HARARE Zimbabwe

Removing the Ban on a Happy Plant Although candidate Bill Clinton called for “Boot Camps" for first-time “drug offenders”, there is hope that the new Clinton Administration, decidedly more humanistic in tone than the previous 12 years of Republican Malignancy in the White House, will be open to reclassifying marijuana as a medicinal substance, perhaps even decriminalizing or legalizing it either in part or totally. The American Medical Marijuana Movement is working toward this much needed reform of the current draconian policy on Marijuana. Find out more and get involved. Write to: AMMM 3745 17th Street San Francisco, California 94114 or call: (415)864-1961 Research has proven that marijuana alleviates the nausea and pain of those with chronic or disabling illness, such as AIDS. Let’s value people above dogma and hysteria and legalize this blessed plant.

LEGALIZE

In Latvia, also newly independent, the Latvian Association for Sexual Equality has begun publishing a magazine. Logs (Windows), and its editors are actively seeking foreign gay and lesbian newspapers and other print media. Write to: LASE P.O. Box 460 226001 Riga Latvia

The news ends here with a reminder of the March on Washington on April 25. Use this historic moment to challenge not only homophobia, but the entire structure of patriarchal, over-industrialized, consumer-oriented capitalism. Let’s demand a sensual, eroticized, peaceful, back-to-nature utopia. It’s always time to love and play.

Gatherings Workshops & Contacts NATIONAL MARCH ON W ASH IN G TO N DRAG net Plans are underway for the DRAGnet radicai faerie weekend, hostessed by the Washington, DC faeries. First let us ab0ut someth,ng: gathering NOT. Repeat there is no gathering! We are However, arranging the followingFriday, April 23. Party/performance space 8 p.m. to Midnite; Satyrday, April 24, Claiming the Mall ritual, morning; Grand Faerie Circle, evening; Sunday April 25, National March, noomsh Please contact us at: DRAGnet 4710 Apl ,3 ' 2' Bethesda. J® f 14 or by telephone on 301/907b83/. We can hardly wait to get our hands on you and your pants off of you come April!!! See the feature section this issue for more information.

SHORT MOUNTAIN BELTANE B ASH Immediately following the National March on Washington, the Short Mountain Community will be hosting their annual Beltane Bash. The gathering begins on Wednesday, April 28 and ends on Sunday, May 9. Wimmin are welcome to attend This will be a perfect way to wind down from the March and to keep the energy alive!! Or come early to help prepare for the Gathering and then caravan up to the March. Contact SMS for details. a special note: If you are planning to attend, there are several things we would like you to know. If you have been to past gatherings, because of the expected large numbers, some things may be different. Short Mountain Sanctuary is accessable by a very rough, dirt, mountain-road (four wheel drive is not necessary). We have a limited number of parking spaces (25), so carpooling is important, and be prepared to move cars, after unpacking, to a neighbor’s one mile away. For those who will be living in their vehicle we have a few spots for that to happen.

one, except physically challenged Iks, Will be able to drive down to the arnyard to unload (as in the Pas^ - a0 Iary think of that before packing the ■earner trunks. Our water comes from a pring, which we have been drinking for ears we don’t have a filter, so if you ,re concerned about bacteria, you may /ant to provide your own drinking vater. We shit outdoors in a rustic 4lole crapper. _ onn We are expecting over 2uu people. Our kitchen is small, so we are requesting some patience in that regard Please bring your own plate and utensils as well as your own towels (2) one for the sauna, one for bathing. The land is somewhat fragile, with very

photos by stv

steep hills and hollers’ and we a! 6 1 sure how 200+ folks will impact it, so please be gentle as you move on the land We have farm animals that don like pets Do not bring your pets. If you must travel with them, they can be boarded in Woodbury 8 miles away. Cost for the event is $25-$/t> registration fee (to cover our land payment), plus $8/day for food^ No one will be turned away for lack of funds. We strongly encourage people to preTegilte? sowe Know how much food to buy (and have the seed money). We are looking forward to the gathering, and sharing our beautiful home with you. See you there! Please write for a

BRITISH COLUMBIA RADICAL

f a e r ie

northw est

f a e r ie

g a t h e r in g

erican Ridge Lodge is located near confluence of the Ame ican River i Bumping Rivers 23 miles eas inook Pass and Mt Rainier Nationa rk The Lodge, lies nestled in grov sumptuous firs, overlooking a large sadow surrounded by the riversi a Is of the Wenatchee National Forest, this setting faeries have gathered 1986 making it a jiritual land for all who come. The ::ini . 9h f r i1 Bnem be“ f 3 .2 7 .

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SEX MAGIC WORKSHOP The 3rd gender Daisy Chain Sex Magic Workshop will be held at Wolf Creek, Oregon from July 4-11. Since attendance requires pre-registration, as well as commitment to the workshop’s 8-day involvement, and there are several pre-requisites required, it is recommended that faeries request Calls for the event. Contact Harry Hay at 5343 La Cresta Ct„ L.A., CA 90038.

g a t h e r in g

tneirf.rsfcouH^y gather, ng o n : near Christina Lake (two hours f,9« a" e r A ,fo r ,he Summer J993, on the weekend of June AH faeries are welcome on the I the previous and following weel create and live in sacred s p a X Prep, clean up and R&R). p|eaS( bnng petsl! Contact them unde new listing . ue

nland

FAERIES

n9,orTeEXX&in sted in founding a faerie y heinland region in Germany.

SOFTENING THE STONE A Men’s Gathering and Celebration Memorial Day weekend: May 28-31 at Twin Oaks Community

SPIRITUAL

GATHERINGS

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east gay m ale

SPIRITUALITY WORKSHOP ire coming toge n v pagan participate 603,478603/673-092!, for more information.

HEART FIRE The Evolving Shaman’s Circle ^ l ar a?-S S ircle- a grouP of 9ay men in the Austin Texas area, call together other gay men (unless noted) to create a space of gay empowerment and reenchantment. This year they are hosting several gatherings: April 23-25, at Jemez Springs, New Mexico, Bodhi ' Mandala Zen Center; May 7-9, a campout in central Texas; May 21-23 at the Mountain Retreat Center Highlands, North Carolina; and June 11-13, in the Bay Area, California, Reunion of Gay, Heterosexual, Bisexual Men. For information and brochures contact: Liberty Books, 800/828-1279 or write Open Circle at PO Box 50249’ Austin, TX 78763.

Will happen August 7-13, at Ferry Beach in Saco, Maine. Planned activities include, body painting, a wiccan ritual, erotic massage and more Unplanned activities will include enchantment, mutual support, laughinq crying, exploration, dancing naked, ecstatic drumming, working on your tan swimming, dressing up, getting horny £ ? *!"? fr'e" ds and dishing. The cost’is J310 (includes conference, indoor housing & meals). Campsites available. Enrollment is limited to 30 Contact: Larry, 203/387-8447; Shara 203/787-3001; or Bob, 603/669-7157for more information.

A CELEBRATION OF COMMUNITY From Auaust 26-31 at Evergreen State College in Olympia Washington there wX be an International Gathering on Cooperative Living. The conference, sDonsored by the Fellowship for

Over the Memorial Day weekend, we will: play, teach and nurture each other. Our vision of the gathering is to create an opportunity to have fun and celebrate a unique sense of non competitive warmth and closeness among men. Workshops will be offered, but we will emphasize nonstructured activities. We will embrace and delight in each other with; drum ming and dancing around a fire; a mud pit and sweat lodge; swimming in the river; walks in the woods. We’ll make new friends and share our lives. The gathering will cost $ 10- 100, largely potluck meals and camping on Twin Oaks property. Children under 12 are welcome and may attend for free (childcare available). Please register in advance; we close registration by May 1. Contact. Matthew, Route 4 Box 169, Louisa VA 23093. 703/894-5126, FAX 894-4112. We’d love to hear from you! Bring a friend

ING OUR MOTHER EARTH , years spring gathering hosted by Midwest Men's Center will be held lune 3-6 and will feature a fu !n cetebration June hot tubbing, nmina horseback riding, tehops. playshops and medicine *el Cost including lodging, wor “ s. meals for 4 days/3 nights $125 early registration before May 3 turned away for lack o ffunds ' ’ rk scholarships available. Contac

sustainable life s ty le ^ a n d to create

WEST COAST GAY SPIRITUALITY CONFERENCE The conference will take place May^29 31, at the Nomenus Sanctua y Wnif Creek OR. This will be a rare opportunity to explore the Averse world Of gay men’s spirituality through presentations, workshops, sharings. All gay men are mvrted. Interested participants or p should contact: Gay-Spirituality Conference, 501 Ashbury St. San Francisco, CA 94117 for information

ENYGMA oromote the health and growth of the movement The cost will range from S12 $50 per day, depending on lodging and meal choices. Please contact them for more information at: Fellowship for Intentional Community, 93 Communities Gathering 8600 47712 University Blvd., Evansville, IN 47712.

f he Gay Men’s Rural Project Scotia n e q o S n '^ for ,near'n9 comP'el<°n negotiations a country housp on wh LanaSsh"rS eed It|f-S ' e 30 t ou,s'da Big Lanarkshire. s? about miles SW dis;n a n c ? 9SE F an,dT uch ,he Anyone sam e stance of Glasgow. travelling in that part cf the w n ri/m wish ,0 c o m a e an Stol ng8 c/o Na™?, Gate Restaurant, 83 Clerk St Edinburgh 8, phone +44 31 66ft h in Edinburgh, the restaurant is Vegetarian and Vegan.

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Pantheos PO Box 9543, Santa Fe, NM 87504 505/9826827 Philadelphia Faeries c/o Earth 2221 Spring Garden St #3R Philadelphia PA 19130 215/864-9922 Rheinland Faeries/Germany Geert 0228/443218 Rose of Sharon Sanctuary c/o Charles Thornton Michael Ogelsby 214 South Church Fayetteville AR 72701 501/521-7387 Sacred Faeries POB 252 Salt Lake City UT 84110 801/531-6846 San Francisco Tel-a-Fairy 415/626-3369 Events and message tape for the Bay Area faeries

FHERI ECONTACTS Arizona Radical Faeries Box 26673, Phoenix, AZ 85068 602/277-5745 Atlanta Faerie Circle 404/622-4112

Holy Faery Database (networking tool for faeries) c/o Harry Ugol/Michael Dreyer 1434 Alemany Blvd S.F. CA 94112 415/469-0625

Austin Area Faeries Casa de Estaban 12514-b Esplanade St Austin, TX 78723

House of the Dawn 112 W. Way POB 637 Yarnell AZ 85362 602/267-1203

British Columbia Radical Faeries 923 E 10th Ave., Vancouver BC CANADA V5T 2B3 604/874-7470 Michael or Lar

Kawashaway Sanctuary 3612 Chicago Ave So Minneapolis MN 55407 612/823-6996

Chicago Faerie Circle 2524 N Lincoln Ave., #461 Chicago IL 60614 312/561-8909 '

L Affaire The Beau Monde POB 3036 Pineville LA 71361

D C. Faeries Peaches Moree 1613 Harvard St NW #413 Washington DC 20009 202/588-9117 or Luciana/ Jack Harvey 301/907-6837

Leather Faeries c/o Michael Dreyer 1434 Alemany Blvd S.F CA 94112 415/469-0625

"Feydish" Computer Bulletin Board 415/861-4221 Faerie Bear Share Joe & Mike Totten-Reid 1712 Calle Poniente Santa Barbara CA 93101 805/569-1615 Fey Dirt-News and Information Line in Portland OR area 503/235-0826 Ganowungo, Western NY Jay Stratton 121 Union St Westfield NY 14787 GAYA-Gay Consciousness and Spirituality Heidelberg Faerie Circle Blucherstrasse 1 W-6900 Heidelberg Germany 49/6221-860535 Gulf Coast Mermen/Sea Faeries c/o Crazy Bear Pensacola FL 904/438-4963

Santa Cruz Fairy Line 408/335-5861 Events and message tape for the Santa Cruz area Seattle Fairy Phone 206/783-2011 event tape for Seattle area Short Mountain Sanctuary Route 1 Box 84-A Liberty TN 37095 615/563-4397 (messages)

Men Nurturing Men c/o Midwest Menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Center POB 2547 Chicago IL 60690 312/348-3254 New Hampshire/Vermont (southern) Ron 603/478-5437 or Tom 603/673-0921 NYC Faerie Circle POB 1251 Canal St Sta NY NY 10013 Gay Switchboard 212/777-1800 Nomenus POB 312 Wolf Creek OR 97497 503/866-2678 414/626-4765 (San Francisco) Northeastern Faeries (including Blue Heron Farm) POB 1251 Canal St Sta NY NY 10013 Northwestern Faeries 1510 19th Ave Seattle WA 98122 Ontario Faeries/ Fifis du Quebec Amber Fox Box 65 McDonald's Corners Ontario CANADA K0G 1M0 613/278-2744

Southern California Star Circle- Faerie Dish Rag POB 26807 Los Angeles CA 90026 Willow Hollow Ranch Route 1 Box 267 Purlear NC 28665 (SASE please)

BEDSIDE

CONNECT

NO HARMM

There is now a dating service for HIV-positive people and people living with AIDS; CONNECT is based in Los Angeles and is part of Being Alive, an organization in which HIV-positive and AIDS clients support and help each other. To be listed in CONNECT and receive three monthly newsletters, all one has to do is fill out a form and pay ten dollars -- similar to a classified ad in a gay publication or daily newspaper. The advertiser can receive responses through his or her private mail, by telephone or by having their mail received at CONNECT’S offices, 3626 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90026.

NOHARMM, the National Organization to Halt the Abuse and Routine Mutilation of Males, is a new national organization which has been formed to break the social taboo by giving a voice to a significant number of American men who feel victimized by routine infant circumcision. A consciousness raising primer available from the group educates men about the benefits of normal male genitalia and exposes the deception behind routine circumcision. The U.S. is the only industrialized nation that circumcises the majority of its newborn males for nonreligious reasons. “The American medical community has failed to prove conclusively and unequivocally that this carries any significant advantage over the intact state for the majority of males. NOHARMM, a direct action group that is a hybrid between GLAAD and ACT UP, can be reached at PO Box 460795, San Francisco, CA 94146, for more information.

INTERNATIONAL GAY PENPALS There is a unique way to start international correspondence: for a hobby, a forthcoming vacation, practicing another language or establishing a friendship or romance; that is by listing your name in the International Gay Penpal newsletter. The latest one out has 350 listings from around the globe. For more information contact the I.G.P., Ste. 320, Box 7304, North Hollywood, CA 91603, with a selfaddressed stamped envelope. GIRTH AND MIRTH Girth and Mirth of San Diego and Southwest Men At Large from Phoenix will be jointly hosting the 1993 ABC Western Conference in Las Vegas on May 21st through 24th, at the Resort Hotel, Ramada San Remo. The registration fee is $50. Rooms are specially priced for this event. GMSD is an organization for heavyset men and their admirers, and gives them the opportunity to get together to share good times. For more information, or to register for the ABC Western Conference, call their 24 hour info-line: 619/463-6939 or write GMSD, PO Box 86822, San Diego, CA 92138.

SUBMISSIONS SOUGHT P O S IT IV E S The time has come to dispel the image most of America has of people with AIDS. We are not 98 pound, bed ridden weaklings from the moment of our diagnosis until death; as the media so often presents. POSITIVES will show, and tell, that though we may be sick, we are not to be pitied or feared. Please submit photographs and writ ings about your ‘positive’ life. The truth of how we live with AIDS must be told, must be seen. Donations to help fund this project will be greatly appreciated. Photographs and writings are sought for this endeavor. Please write to: PO Box 424897, San Francisco, CA 94142 for more information.

COMPANIONS

Essex Hemphill, cultural activist and editor of the critically acclaimed col lection, Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men, invites submissions to be considered for Bedside Companions, his forthcoming anthol ogy of short-fiction by Black gay men. Bedside Companions continues to challenge the invisibility and silences that surround the lives and experiences of Black gay men. At a time when we are facing AIDS, violence, and other destructive issues within our com munities, Bedside Companions seeks to offer hope and healing and a renewal of faith in ourselves. Bedside Companions aims to chart territory beyond the coming-out stories and the political treatises on racism. This anthology intends to more closely examine home, friendship, family— immediate and extended—lovers, “brothers," and the impact life's joys and sorrows have upon these relationships. Bedside Companions seeks to acknowledge and affirm the ways Black gay men support, sustain, and love one another through these critical times. Please send original, unpublished submissions with an SASE to: Essex Hemphill, Anthology 1993, 401 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 700, Santa Monica, CA 90401. The deadline is June 1, 1993 for submissions. U N safe a journal of art and controversy UNSAFE a new zine for literary and visual art, proudly announces a call for submissions for its first issue. The sad truth: in 1993, Art as an instrument of social change is nearing extinction. For centuries, controversial literature and art have been the impeti for progress and culture, created by brave people who had the courage to question and rebel against status quo, mainstream ideologies. The voice of the minority is losing its place. Now that voice, controversial, taboo, dangerous, and threatening, has a new space to grow in UNSAFE. The first issue will be produced in Summer 1993. Writing and Visual Art of all kinds from poetry, fiction, non-fiction, plays, mixed media works, photo-graphy, painting, sketches and more are requested. For further guidelines or subscription information contact: UNSAFE, 1630 Florida Avenue NW, Suite B2, Washington, DC 20009.

THE LEAGUE OF LESBIAN AND GAY

PRISONERS

The League For Lesbian and Gay Prisoners IJLGP is a network of people both in and out of prison who are 1202 East Pike Street, Suite 1044 concerned about the special problems of incarcerated Queers. Being locked-up Seattle, Washington 98122 is a painful experience as well as frightening for anyone, but for Lesbians and OR Gay men the experience is confounded by rampant prejudice and Northwest Regional March On Washington Committee institutionalized homophobia. " 1202 East Pike Street, Suite 818 Our goal is to bridge some of the alienation which prisons create in our community. We Seattle, Washington 98122 seek to do that by promoting communication and involvement between prisoners and ‘free’ Phone (206) 632-4775 Queers. It isn’t easy. The very nature of the ‘correctional’ system works against us, making it difficult and frustrating to create and sustain nurturing relationships across the walls. Sometimes all of our caring and concern just isn’t enough. That’s why we need a network, because it isn’t just prisoners who need support, but our siblings on the street too. Don’t misunderstand. We're not talking about a one-way street here. LLGP is devoted to developing strategies by which prisoners can be involved in and contribute to the lesbian & Gay community. We believe that the waste of human potential in our criminal justice system is tragic. Prisoners represent an untapped reservoir of talent and experience which can be of great value to progressive causes and to our entire community. LLGP is a brand-new adventure! We are currently working on organizing participation in the 1993 March on Washington, D.C. If our plans work well, we hope to expand them for Pride Days, political groups, and all community events. Our long range of goals include correspondence circles, a newsletter to facilitate communication between prisoners and non -prisoners, and a re entry program to assist lesbians & Gay men who are being released to readjust and re-join our community. Needless to say you, out net-work needs all the friends, organizers, letter writers, and hanger-on we can get! It's not just about giving prisoners a ‘handout’; it’s about building a new kind of community. Join us. There’s a lot to be done. 130 Park Row\New York NY 10007 Queers Are Going To Washington, D.C. And 100,000 Will Be I^eft Behind Unless You Help! The U.S. imprisons a larger percentage of its people than any other nation in the world. The population of our jails and prisons would constitute the 11th largest city in the country and like all our cities, this one is full of QUEERS! On April 25, 1993, tens of thousands of lesbians. Gay men, Bisexuals, and Transgender people are planning to converge on Washington , D.C. It is important that our Brothers and Sisters incarcerated in the criminal justice system not be forgotten on this historic occasion. The League For Lresbian and Gay Prisoners is cooperating with the March On Washington Organizers in promoting a Proxy Participation Project to facilitate prisoner involvement and to let their voices be heard. Prisoners will be matched with Proxies on the outside willing to represent them during the March. To Make this happen, we need community support, financial contributions, and volunteers. Most of all we need you to become a Proxy for one prisoner and hive her or him a chance to be heard and to participate through you. To become involved, or to learn more about the League For Lesbian and Gay Prisoners and the Proxy Project for the March On Washington, please contact:

JOHN KEELEY 33 5 ' 8 T77T br/bu, people say I look like Elton John. I are a 12 y.o. Peter Pan in a 33 body. Computers, sci-fi, car toons. comics, history; NAMBLA, 20something, nudism, and other things 1 wish to share. Seeking a younger gay, white, Asian, or Native Ameri can for a relationship based on love and caring. All answered. *=BbB= Drawer A\ Cresson PA 16630-0010 THOMAS W CURTICIAN JR A J -20741 2T 5'9 1/0 br/br, Catholic. To be released soon. ~BbB“FSP\ POB 7A/\ Starke FL 32091 DANNY J ADAMS B29S0TT\ T-3-N-2 ; 25 bright blue eyes, a super smile! Out in 94, seeking someone sincere, openminded, a warm heart, wanting to be loved and cuddled.

ABDULL M Ben-HAMID 081397: 31 6'2 190. Of all the pains in prison, loneliness is the most excruciating. Please write! There is not much I don't love in ife. =BbB= RONNIE BRUNSON 067799\ T-3-N-10: 30 5'2 br/br. To be released soon due to my innocence. Very lonely. Please write. MANUEL COLINA 108602\ S-l-N-17: I am a young man very aware of howsociety feels about inmates. I am also a human beeing who made mistakes. Now, I am desperately seeking a friendship, someone to share thoughts with. ENRIQUE (Sinbad) DIAZ 065399: 31. Latin origin, excellent health, viceless. Bodybuilding, nature, ro mance. Seeking exchange of mind and heart. Picture upon request. All answered. IRVIN GRIFFIN 117630: 29 6 ’ 180. Athletically inclined, intelligent, romantic, zestful, charming. All letters welcome.

=IDC\P0B 30\Pendleton IN 46064 GLENN R CORNETT 6 6 7 8 \: 37 6 ' 6 200 ' br/hz. Penpals, any age.

“ BbB= «ISF\1500 W US 40 Unit 15S\ Greencastle IN 46135 JEFF ALAN LAMBERT 863437: Bi NA&W 24 6'2 168 br-bd/bu HIV- nicely hung. Dirtybike riding, stock cars racing, rock and country music, ceramics, camping, fishing, much more. Very warm, sensitive, loving and caring person, very lonely! Looking for open and honest 18-60 gav/bi for correspondence, friendship, who knows what? No head games, please. Your photo gets mine. Will answer all. ■=BbB= =IYC\727 Moon Rd Plainfield IN 46168-9400 TERRY BROWN 901920\L-Dorm\ ": 18 6'1 170 br/hz. Pen friends, please. ANTONIO L MARLIN 22230\G-Dorm: 20 5'7 135 bd/bu no facial hair. Lone ly, desperately in need of love. GREG L OWENS 860815\L-Dorm: 38 3'8 155 br/bu beard. Three years left. Seeking lasting relationship. -BbB-

TERRY JOHNSON 078187: young 5'[7 145 br/bu. Seeking friendship and possible relationship, will, answer all. WILLIE MARSHALL 056855\ T-l-N-9: B 35 6'2 orange complexion, attractive, Pisces. Many interests. Live life, moments not important! RICH C NOBLE 545389\ P-3N-1: B 34 5'7 180. To be out in 94. Seeking any intelligent, sincere, compas sionate gay man able to cope with a unique relationship. Photo appre ciated . EUGENE THOMAS 042862: B 37 6 ’2 208 pecan complexion bk/br. Reading, writing poetry, meeting new friends. Seeking sincere, intelligent, com passionate person for a unique re lationship. Photo appreciated. MICHAEL TURNER 104142: 25. Fitness nut. Sincere and lonely, looking for soulmate. All answered. “BbB= FOB 128\KSP\Eddyvil1e KY 42038 JONViHAN JOHNSON 323336\3-11-R-lS: young 5'10 140 clean and healthy, a very interesting person. I would like to hear from anyone who cares to write. =BbB= P0B 4 >699\Lucasville OH 4>699-0001 MICHAEL COLOMBO 170/3()\ : 79 185 br/gn. Many hobies and interests. To be out soon, hoping to find someone special, who wants someone special in return. Will answer all. ROBERT HATCHER A204117: young 5 ’7 150 br/hz passively pretty straight acting. Working out, outdoors, music and traveling. No hang-ups. A lot to offer to the right guy to teach me about intimacy and life. TONY HLiNRICH 229555: 27 155 5'8 very handsome. To be out in 93, seeking a caring, honest, loving person for friendship, maybe more. Looks, age, don't matter, it's what's in a person's heart which counts. Please write soon. “BbB-

-WCC\P0B 473 Westville IN 46391-0473 ORLANDO BRASHER 8/7861: B 7/ br/br. Seeking friendly, honest correspon dence. No fakes, please. BbB 1MC.C\P0B A \Oakdale IA 32319-0001 JAY THOMAS-WIDMER S0&&54A: 73 >’10 180 rd/bu. Reading, writing, prison reform (imagine that!!), collecting queer books/magazines, AIDS educa tion. queer prisoners' movement. No money, no sex, just correspondence. It won't hurt, drop a line. I'll write back. Age and appearance not an issue with this one!

“ BbB= «=P0B B\St Cloud MN 56302-1000 JAMES REED 115252: 33 br/br. Horse back riding, winter sports, watching TV, kids, traveling. Seeking males or females, any age, who don't, mind my being in prison. -BbB =FCC\1012 W Columbia St Farmington MO 63640 T A M E S G R E c 0 “TF8589\lC-7: Need sons one on the outside to correspond with, possibly a relationship when I 'm free.

=JCCC\P0Box 900 Jefferson City MO 65102 DANI EL APRIL 183701: 20 5'7 150 br/ hz-gn clean-shaven look 12 y.o. I need someone and will give my all ti get that person. All replies answered as long as you are serious; I’ve been hurt too much for my age. JOHN JOHNSON 156656\ 5C139: B-A 24 6'1 185 bk/br light, skinned muscular. To be released in 1993. Serious, relationship-minded man. No head games. -BbB” ”0CC\Rt//2 Box 1-P Fordland MO 65652______ __ EDDIE JARVIS 38311: 39 (looks 29) 5'10 160 bd/bu thin in good shape. To be out in litte over a year. Seeking anyone anywhere, especially in the St.Louis area. -BbB= FOB 260\Lexi ngton OK 73051________ TOMMY DUTTON 135732: 27 bd/bu. Very lonely. Will answer all. ~Rt 2 Box 4400\Gatesvi1le TX /639/ DARRYL W BELL 611583: B Tight skin 27 5'10 130 handsome, emotional, quiet. Sports, traveling, a lot more. Correspondence with anyone, any age or race. -BbBUSP YACF Star 2\P0B 7>0\ Draper UT 84020 KEN CANEIFI.I) 164l)3\D 3 T: Iris), 4 > 6 170 br/bu mustache, husky, wellendowed, HIV-. Release June 94. Seeking liferna te. WYATT CONNOLLY 2084/\D-6-B: lrish/Ind Bi 21 6'1 140 bd/bu mus tache , slender, well-endowed, HIV-. Parole March 93. Seeking lover/ friends. FOB 409000\1one CA 93640 GI LBERT J LOPEZ 87654\C-14 -1280L: 52 5'7 145 br/br light complexion, very healthy and younglooking, bilingual. Two years left. Ph rt it s , musi c , dancing, nice clothes and cars. Jack of all trades, can do arty work. Seeking a penpal with a good person ality, sense of humor, good, clean fun. 1) LYNN F49951 : 74 f> 140 auburn bd/bu, feminine body and qualities. 1 like girls and boys. Seeking a permanent relationship with a stable couple or single. Can be submisse with the right person. Known as "Stacy." MARTIN V MARTINEZ E38486\B-10-134: 29 5'3 130, Hispanic, to be released March 94. Seeking an honest and understanding person to teach me those special feelings only someone like myself will understand. Able and willing to travel for the right person. FOB 29\Represa CA 93671 EVAN M WATT D -85665\C?-710: Lonely? Me 2. Currently incarcerated, but: getting close to go. Looking for new friends and options. Will answer all. -BbB-21 99 Ka me hame ha Hwy Honolulu HI 96819 BILLY "HAMMOND .30749083": 30 133 br/bu. Old cars, motorcycles, movies, more. Will be moving back to mainland next year. Seeking penpals 18-30. Note! If letter gets returned to sender, please remail c/o Billy Hammond\/272 Tanager Dr\Rapid City SD 5/701

Suggestions and guidelines for responding to penpal ads. The purpose for the penpal listing is to offer the community at-large the opportunity to relieve the pain and loneliness that most inmates endure. When responding to ads, be especially wary of any requests for loans, and do not cash money orders (they are easy to alter). Readers should embark on a dialogue with an inmate with one expectation: giving uncompromising help to the inmate. Be cautious about entertaining the fantasy of finding a lover. RFD denies any assurance of truthfulness in the contents of such ads, and will not assume any responsibility for losses or damages. Readers are encouraged to respond to the ads, but at their own risk. ______Inmates can submit their ‘ads’ as short as possible to RFD, PO Box 68, Liberty, TN 37095. The coordinator reserves the right to edit ads according to his judgement.

-POB 514\Granite OK 7354/ MIKE KAMMERZELL 161115: 31. Up for parole in 8/93 but no place to go to. I'd love to live with some kind and warm person who cares enough to help me. I can do housekeeping, janitor or farrawork. Please give me a chance. Please write soon! -BbB“OSCI\3405 Deer Pk Dr SE Salem OR 97301-9385 MICHAEL SHERMAN /415024: bi 6 ’1 185 bd/br. Active, attractive, creative, financially stable. Enjoy reading, outdoors, cozy winter days/nights indoors. If you're looking for fun, humor, sincerity, try roe! «BbB~ ~OSP\2605 State St Salem OR 97310-0505 STEPHEN DANF0RTH 4980971: 35. This is an SOS to all kind-hearted souls in the free world; I've been here for 15 years. Please write! DAVID DRENTH 6618868: 19 5'7 135 bd/gn. Seeking mature, older gentle man for correspondence, companion ship, possible relationship upon release in ten months. Photo not necessary• but helpful. All repli es answered.

Notes: Inmates are listed in Zip Code order within the same Zip Code, alphabetically by last name. All inmates are supposed to be gay unless specified otherwise. W=white, B=black, NA=native american, A=asian/ age in years/ height/ weight in pounds/ color of hair/ color of eyes: bd=blond, bk=black, br=brown, bu=blue, gn=green, hz=hazel, rd=red, gy=gray.

STEPHEN "Tracy" FEASEL 5159402: 32 bd/bu healthy, mature, lonely. Write poetry and short stories, read a lot. I am not an intellectual, monst e r , simplicity is my motto. If you wish to lift your and mv spirit, please write! BO J RAMB0 7477978: 23 5'8 160 br hard body. Release date 2/9/94. Seeking compassionate, caring older man for possible relationship. Some people here are lakes, but 1 m not . You won't be disappointed! Will trade photos.

NO TICE: For the sake of saving printed space, inmates’ addresses are given ONCE per facility.

The General Store serves much the same function as a bulletin board at your local Natural Foods Coop or grocery, if you have a service that you think can be of use to RFD readers or a need that could be met, please send it to us here at the magazine. BUTTER WORTH FARM There are still various opportunities for living at or near Butterworth Farm, about 75 miles NW of Boston. Two houses for sale in the SI 10,000 plus range. One house for rent in the range of $700 a month. A rustic cabin (no electricity) available rent-free but needs some repairs. One very large house that needs a conscientious caretake-gardener, perfect opportunity for a free-lance artist or writer — owner travels a lot on business. Interested people should write a short note and enclose a phone number and best time fo call. Contact: Allen Young, RFD 2 Butterworth Rd., Orange, M/ 01364.

GAY SPIRIT PENDANT Ah original design, the spiralling triangle symbolizes our unique and joyful participation in the spiral dance o f life. Handcarved in beef bone or ebony and hung from a

FAERIE CROSS Staurolite A natural cross... dark-colored mineral crystal formation. Mined in Northern New Mexico. Legend: When the faeries heard of Christ’s suffering on the cross... these are the tears they shed. Also Native Americans use them for their magical properties. Comes with a black silk cord. Ready to wear, approximately 1”. Cost is $25. Order from: Joe Lembo, Box 9543, Santa Fe, NM 87504.

waxed flax cord. --------------------------------- T O ORDER -------------------------------U SS50/C A N S60 for pendant, flax cord, velvet pouch and post age. In US, money orders only made payable to: Will Pritchard, 6 0 2 -3 7 5 Main Street, Vancouver, BC Canada, V6A 2S9.

I hope all of you made it through the winter all right. For the most part, it was a mild winter here in the south. The rest of the US really had some weird and/or severe weather. Thank goodness that's all behind us now. I don't know about you, but I'm ready for spring. It's the beginning of a new season and time to think about working in the garden and that wonderful smell of Mother Earth when she's just been tilled. Of course, if you live Down Under, then you chaps are just ending your growing season and concentrating on your harvests. Isn't diversity wonderful? I hope this has helped give you some understand足 ing of how this calendar works and you'll use it whether on a farm or just a window box garden in an apartment. So, get g r o w i n g l M H H V S I H H H I l geos o n to a Slow start. On the evening of the 5th at sunset, you'll see the almost full moon to the right of Jupiter. As the evening progresses, it will move closer and closer to Jupiter and will conjunct Jupiter the early morning of the 6th at 2:01 AM EDT. The morning of the 16th the moon will be above and to the right of Saturn before making the conjunction later that day. The morning of the 18th, Mercu足 ry and Venus will conjunct. The actual conjunc足 tion takes place at 8:29 AM EDT. Just before dawn, Venus will appear above and right of Mercury. For those of you in the western half of the US, you should get to see the actual conjunction. The next morning, on the 19th, the waning crescent moon will have moved in to join Mercury and Venus. It will be above and to the right of them. Two days later, on the 21st, the Lyrid meteor shower will be going on. since this is the day of the new moon, the sky will be very dark so viewing should be great. The meteors will be coming out of the south at a rate of 10-15 an hour and they will peak about 5:00 AM EDT. We end the month with the crescent new moon conjuncting Mars on the evening of the 28th^_The moon will be below and left of Mars. May starts off with the waxing moon conjuncting Jupiter the evening of the 2nd. The moon will be below and right of Jupiter. The early morn足 ing of the 4th the Eta Aquarid meteor shower will peak about 5:00 AM EDT. Luckily, this will be about moon set and they will be coming out of the southeast at a rate of 10-40 an hour. The morning of the 14th, you'll see the waxing moon conjuncting Saturn. It will be above and left of Saturn. The morning of the 17th the moon will be conjuncting Venus. The moon will be above and right of Venus. The morning of the 21st there is a partial eclipse of the sun. The

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eastern half of the US will be left out of thisl one. The central and western states will get tol see this one. In San Francisco, the maximum! eclipse will occur at 5:55 AM PDT and will end at 6:40 AM PDT. If you're up at sunrise, itl should be a show worth watching. The evening of I the 26th the moon will conjunct Mars. The moonl will be below and right of Mars at sunset. As the evening progresses, it will move into align ment and make the actual conjunction to Mars atl 11:51 PM EDT. The evening of the 29th the moon will be conjuncting Jupiter for the second timef this month. It will be below and right of Jupiter.

T m T g e t s o f f to a g r e a ^ t a r M o t l ^ ^ o t a T eclipse of the moon on the 4th, but once again, it will be the west coast of the US that gets to see this spectacular show. The beginning of the umbral phase will be visible from the Hawaiian islands, southern Alaska, extreme western Cana da, and the western US. The end will be visible from the Hawaiian and Aleutian Islands. The moon enters penumbra at 3:11 AM PDT; totality begins at 5:12 AM PDT; the moon leaves penumbra at 8:50 AM PDT. Sounds like Hawaii is the place to be for this event. The morning of the 10th the moon will conjunct Saturn. Just before dawn, they will be almost directly overhead. The moon will be above and to the right of Saturn. For those of you on the west coast, you'll get to see the actual conjunction, which happens at 4:37 AM PDT. The morning of the 16th the waning crescent moon will be conjuncting Venus. The moon will be above and left of Venus. The evening of the 23rd the crescent new moon will be conjuncting Mars. It will be below and to the right of Mars. The evening of the 26th the moon will be conjuncting Jupiter. The moon will be below and left of Jupiter.

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The best days for planting above-ground crops in April are 3, 4, 5, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, and 28. The best days for planting below-ground crops are 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 17, and 18. The best days for above-ground in May are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 29, 30, and 31. The best days for below-ground are 6, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, and 20. The best days for above-ground in June are 1, 2, 3, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, and 30. The| best days for below-ground are 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, and 18.

Well, I guess it's cime for me to sign now. Good luck with your gardening and have gentle rains and warm nights. Take yourselves and our Mother and may love wind beneath your winijs.i

off fori may youl care of be the|

q A K V E H JX q

Fairy W and R oot

by Kwah Waadabi While researching the herb Chamaelirium Luteum. a plant I was using in an herbal formula for infertility, I came across several of his older folk names. These appellations intrigued me. How we and the ancestors of our tribe label the variations of life hold much power for us. A power in which we can choose to reweave our wholeness. Popularly known as False Unicorn Root, a name that already bespeaks the magic of this plant, he was comfortable with these names also: Fairy Wand, Stud-Flower, Blazing Star. These name characterize, perhaps, qualities of this plant that may have been lost. Let us try to uncover and piece together the mystery of this forgotten plant ally of the fairy tribes. Fairy wand grows in the eastern North American coastal plains where he stands erect like a beautiful soft, furry phallus of blue hue. In the wind he gyrates to and fro, pleasurably sensing the touch of some welcome visitor. The herbal materia medicasâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; suggest the root of this plant is used to assist in balancing the female reproductive system. With a variety of other herbs it can be used for menstrual irregularities, fertility and as a general tonic. Yet one seldom finds reference to this plants use for men; why? if we use the doctrine of signatures, an idea that holds that a plantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (or other natural beings) function is characterized by her form; Fairy Wand or Stud-Flower, being phallus shaped must assist in nurturing the male hormonal system; Particularly, the prostate, testicles and therefore the penis. How can Fairy Wand assist the faerie people? The roots of Stud-Flower will strengthen the actions of the male glands; as a strong bitter he can balance the anabolism of the liver; he treats urogenital weakness and is a restorative to the kidneys. He supplies helpful earth elements in small portions: Copper, Sulphur, Cadmium, Cobalt, smaller amounts of Zinc and Molybdenum. As a strengthener of fairy wands combine these herbs: 2 parts Fairy wand Root 2 parts Saw Palmetto Berries 1 part Jamaican Sarsaparilla 1 part Damiana 1 part Licorice 1/2 part Ginger

As a tea drink 1-2 cups a day. To prepare for the day, place 1 Tbsp. of the herb in 2 cups of water; bring the water to a boil, then turn down and let simmer for 30 minutes. Drink as often as you like. Be sure, when preparing the tea to place the herbal mixture in a covered pot, preferably constructed of glass, ceramic or enamel. If you do not have these, use stainless steel, but never aluminum. Fairy Wand root is an ally that can be placed in ones bath or in a faerie pouch or pocket. Make sure your skirt has pockets! Fairy Wand root will offer the strength of history and the dreams of the present and future; let him speak to you. To purchase Fairy Wand root (or Stud Flower root, if you will) go to your local health food or herb store. Ask for False Unicorn root and get as much as you like. If you have a difficult time finding him call or write me. Surely the way we throw sperm around these days we can use this patron of restoration! Kwah Waadabi is an afrikan faerie and herbalist who lives and practices his craft in the Montpelier area of Vermont. He can be reached at the Osaanyin Herb Co., P.O. Box 964, 104 Main St., Montpelier, VT 06001 802/223-0888.

Shopping W ith Gavco

by Gavin Geoffrey Dillard Darlings, Greetings from Yosemite! I’ve been meaning to write you a proper article for the longest time, but it just doesn't seem to be getting done. And now, alas, I have so many things to discuss- advertise if you will - that I’m certain will be of indubitable interest to all of you. So I’m going to try the friendlyletter approach, and hope that our fair editors will bear/bare with me: For those of you in the outbacks who may not know, there is a marvellous herb known as “Chinese Bitter Melon” that is desymptomizing many people with AIDS. This is a very attractive cucumber-like vine that has been used throughout much of Asia since time immemorial as a remover of benign and malignant tumors. There is much paperwork already on its wondrous properties, which explains all the things that I am not qualified to disclose. And, as usual, the FDA is in a panic over the fact that both leaves and “melons” are readily available wherever there are Asians for as little as a dollar a bundle. I am afraid that they may try to make it illegal. So, for brevity’s sake , let me just say that I am doing what I can to stockpile seeds for next spring. Send me a couple of bucks and an address and I will send you as many seeds as I am able, along with the most current print-outs on statistics, use and dosage. The seeds should be treated like any cucumber, started inside where the summers are short, supplied with plenty of water and full to half sun. The stuff tastes yicky, but not as bad as regurgitated pharmaceuticals. And I’m certain it has as many beneficial side effects as does wheat grass juice. Send the requested to GAVCO, 4520 Ashworth Rd., Mariposa, CA 95338 (Requests accompanied by nude photos will get immediate attention...) Second, I have discovered an incredible (like, unbelievable!) source for psychotropic plantlife (legal), from bonafide Ayahuasca vines and mescaline-bearing cacti cuttings, to psychedelics that grow in your own back yard that you never even knew about (Illinois bundleweed, Scotch broom blossoms...). They don’t advertise this as a drug catalogue, so be cool, but send a check for two dollars to: “...of the jungle,” PO Box 1801, Sebastapol, CA 95473. get it in time for spring planting. And one last item, there is a wonderful new organization known as “Farm Sanctuary” that has created huge farm animal refuges in both northern California as well as upstate New York. If you write to Lorri there, you can request an application for adoption of rescued veal calves (grow your own ‘shrooms!), horses, ducks, chickens, rabbits and many other friends. Obviously these are animals intended to be pets, not eaten. So if you have room, the love, and would like to cop some fur, this is a great way to make friends. That address is: Farm Sanctuary, PO Box 150, Watkins Glen, NY 14891. Remember that one out of every eight sheep is queer... And otherwise, I’m about over this eremitic lifestyle and up for a healthy cop of fur myself. So, tall, lean and hairy, if you know you’re gonna be heading near Yosemite, drop me a card a head of time - you’ll always have a face to sit on. Kisses where ya pisses,

S o J. While the resjx)nse wasn’t overwhelming, here are a lew offerings for the RFD seed swap section. If you would like to respond, please enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope with all inquiries. available from: Gavin Geoffrey Dillard, 4520 Ashworth Road, Mariposa, CA 95338. ’Oriental ‘ Poppies, red and purple. Colorado Columbine, blue species. Faerie Britches Columbine, pale lavender. Hollyhock, assorted colors. available from: Stv, PO Box 68, Liberty, TN 37095. PERENNIALS Blackberry Lily (Belamcanda)- 24”. Iris-like foliage to which it's related. Has orange 6 petal spotted flowers. Fruit, when ripe, looks like a blackberry and is pretty in dried arrangements. Purple Coneflower (Echinacea Purpurea)-36". Masses of purple flowers with orange pincushion centers. If not deadheaded, will self sow freely. Goldfinch love the seed. 3 year roots can be divided and some made into tincture. Angel’s Trumpet (Datura)- 36-48’. A tender plant, that dies back. With large, fragrant, white flowers that you can watch open at dusk. A beautiful speciman, perfect for moon gardens. 7x>ne 5-10 Hollyhock (Althaea)- plant 18’ flowers to 8’. Mixed single colors, mauve, red pink to white. An old-timey cottage garden plant, beautiful in clumps or as a single speciman. Often a biennial that ifallowed freely self sows. St. John’swort (Hypericum )-24”. This is the herbaceous variety not the shrub. I use the leaves to make a tincture which is used by People Living With AIDS. As well the leaves in rubbing alcohol make a wonderful, soothing formula that relieves itching from insect bites. The leaves, in olive oil, benefit bruises and skin problems. ANNUALS Cornflower (Centaurea)-30”. Mixed colors. Needs to be dead-headed to continue flowering. Self-sows. Multi-flowered sunflower- 4-6’. A branching sunflower that has some variation in color from pale yellow flowers to bronze stripes on yellow. Angel’s Trumpet (Datura)- 36-48”. Similar to perennial, smaller flowers. Self-sows when ground is disturbed.

occasion. Get a small loaf of french/italian bread. Split it in half. Then seal it up in a bag. Cut up some thin slices of onion, bell peppers (red, green, or yellow), grate some carrot, thin slices of zucchini or yellow squash, and sprouts. Put all of this into a container. In another container you'll need some oil & vinegar/italian dressing. Make the sandwich just before you leave for the march on Sunday morning. Put all the veggies on the bottom half of the loaf of bread. Pour most of the dressing over this, saving a little to pour on the top half of the loaf. Add slices of cheese and put it together. Seal it back up in the bag and pack it. By the way, don't use mayonnaise— use mustard.

Greetings, How are all of you? I hope Mother wasn't too harsh on you this winter. But, now that's all behind us. Spring is here and it's time to turn our thoughts to Washington and the upcoming March. I don't know about you, but I plan to be there. This is a great time in gay history and I plan to be a part of it. one thought that has occurred to me is the fact that there may be upward of a million of us to de oend on the city. I don't know if the resta irants and markets of Washington will be able to supply the needs of that large an influx of population or not. I am not taking any chances. I'm going to have my food and water in a backoack. Water will probably be scarce. Be sure i.o carry some of your own in a water bottle or canteen. If you find a supply, you can always refill it. I thought I would give you some ideas for some nutritious, sustaining food that is easy to prepare, will keep for a day or two without refrigeration, and be easy to carry in a back pack.

Another idea I had was a cream cheese spread. You can dice and/or grate veggies and add them to softened cream cheese and make a wonderful spread. Don't forget to add some of your favor ite herbs, also. Something else I had thought about was baked tofu. One of the health food grocery stores here in Atlanta carries packages of it. It's really quite good and is in a good marinade. You could bake your own, if you wanted to. Cut tofu into thin slices and marinate in barbecue, sweet & sour, or any kind of sauce or dressing. One of my favorite marinades is tamari, garlic, sesame oil, and green onions. Take the slices out of the marinade and put on a greased baking sheet. Bake in a 300°F oven for 2 hours. Cool and pack in zip loc bags with a little of the marinade. You can eat it out of the bag, put it between crackers, or make a sandwich out of it.

Some thoughts I've had on packing all this stuff is for starters, line your back pack with news paper. It could be a comfortable seat later. Then put in a plastic bag. Put your dairy products, cheese, yogurt, etc., on the bottom. Then put in fruit, nut butters, hummus, etc. If you have a small blue ice, put it in and close the bag. You can put the water bottle in beside it. Finish filling the back pack with crackers, bread, nuts, trail mix, etc. Close it up and head for the mall. Some of the things I've suggested packing can be bought at the market like nut butters, crackers, bread, cheese, fruit, and even trail mix. Of course, if you're creative, you can make up your own mix. An idea for a sandwich is a vegetarian hero or hoagie. I would not advise using meat on this

continued on page 22

If the BREAD DOES NOT RISE ENOUGH, there could be several reasons for this. [A ] Yeast is old, dead, or improperly prepared ( Fresh yeast is gray, crumbly, and smells 'yeasty'. If it is brown throughout, forget it. Prepare dried yeast according to the above inÂ structions. Colder water will not activate it and much warmer water will kill it. Allow it to foam a bit to insure that it is alive and kicking. ) [B] Too much salt ( This will be obvious by tasting. Unfortunately, not much you can do about this one. ) [C] Not enough time ( Patience, patience. ) [D] Not enough gluten development ( Follow my instructions in the last issue. Knead the dough for 10 - 15 minutes. Time yourself. Dough should spring back when lightly depressed. Use flour that is intended for bread. Flours other than wheat take more practice. Start with all wheat, preferably white, to teach yourself what a dough should do. ) [E] Dough is too cold ( While the finished dough should be 70 - 80 degrees, it needs a warm draft-free place to rise. ) [F ] Excessive amounts of fats &/or sugars ( Yeast has a harder time working when doughs are very sweet or rich, which means you need more yeast in these types of doughs. ) [G ] Wrong amount of veast ( Remember that you need double the amount of fresh yeast as dry. ) [H] Pans too small ( The dough should fill the pans about 2/3rds full. )

Welcome to Spring, my culinary companions, and to the third installment of The Baker's Buns. How did your bread turn out? Was the information in my last column of any assistance? Well, if your loaves turned out less than satisfactory, read on. In this issue, I will cover the most common problems that a baker encounters in making his bread and their solutions. This will not be exhaustive as there is not enough space in this mag to cover all possible faults but you can write to me with specific problems as, one person did, and I will include your letters as space permits. We'll look at that letter at the end of this column. One important bit of information: I remember one particularly ambitious day early on, ere the advent of my professional career, when I decided to bake 7 loaves, all from difÂ ferent recipes. What fun I was having until, upon removing the loaves from the oven, I discovered that all of them were "flops"! Quote, unquote flops for I discovered that even though they did not measure up to my high standards, everyone enjoyed them nonetheless. First solution: Nothing is ever as bad as you might think it is!! We 1 2 3 4 5

Moving on, let's look at the causes of LARGE HOLES IN THE BREAD. Most commonly: [A] Too much dusting flour when forming the loaves (If the surface of the dough is dry or floured, it cannot stick to itself when rising, hence holes form. Use a minimum of flour and do not use oil to form loaves. ) [B] Improper forming of the loaves ( In addi tion to the above, the loaf must not have air pockets and be tightly formed. Any bread book will instruct you how to form bread. Lacking that, roll the dough out a little less wide than the pan and nearly twice as long. Roll it up, seal the edges, and place, seam side down in the pan. ) Other, more rare, possibilities: [C] Too little or no salt [D] Water is excessively hard [E] Dough is too dry or wet

are going to look at these common faults: - Bread doesn't rise at all or too much - Bread doesn't rise enough - Bread has large holes in it - Top of bread separates from the crust - Lack of flavor

The most common fault is that the bread did not rise properly. If your LOAF DID NOT RISE AT ALL, then chances are that you forgot the yeast. To test his, take a pea-sized ball of dough and drop it in a glass of warm water. If the ball does not rise to the surface in about 10 minutes, better look for that lost yeast! Prepare the fresh yeast by dissolving it in a small amount of water or, if you are using dried yeast, dissolve it in a 1/4 cup of 115 degree water per package with a drop of honey. Make sure the yeast foams. Take the dough, cut it up into pieces on the board surface and knead the yeast solution into the dough. It's a bit gloppy but persist. Remember, though, that you already kneaded the dough fully, so this is above and beyond. Be careful not to overknead. You will have to add some flour but tot too much! Proceed as normal as if you had Dust finished making the dough.

Shelling refers to the SEPARATION OF THE TOP CRUST FROM THE BREAD UNDERNEATH IT. [A] Bread put in the oven too soon ( Slightly depress the dough with a finger or two. The impression should remain in the dough. ) [B] Oven too hot ( Start baking at 400 to 410 degrees for 10 - 15 minutes. Reduce to 375 to 385 till finished. Check oven temperatures with a mercury or spirit thermometer. ) [C] EXCESSIVE DUSTING FLOUR OR (ANY! OIL USED IN FORMING BREAD ( See above. ) [D] DOUGH IS TOO STIFF AND DRY ( Some things are better stiff, but bread dough is not one of them! Why is BREAD CRUMBLY AND UNSLICEABLE? [A ] Flour does not have sufficient gluten ( Pastry and cake flours are not suitable for making bread as we know and like it. Also, not all whole wheat flours are created equally. Protein content of whole wheat flours varies considerably. Additionally, the coarser the grind, the more difficult it is to obtain good gluten development. I f you use non-wheaten

If your BREAD RISES TOO FAST, you forgot the Tasting the dough will reveal this problem. The remedy is to dissolve the salt completely in a little water and proceed as above.

flours or meals, start with small amounts to teach yourself how a dough should come out. ■) [B] Dough was not sufficiently kneaded ( A smooth, satiny, somewhat bouncy dough is what you are looking for. ) [C] Dough was allowed to collapse before punching ( This is a definite no-no. The dough should double, but under no circumstances be allowed to collapse of its own weight. Subse quent risings, after the first, are a little less then double. ) [D ] Dough was too dry to begin with [E] Loaves were allowed to rise too much in the pan ( Overproofing, i.e. overrising simply causes the dough to separate so much that it cannot hold together. The bread will rise a bunch when first put in the oven, which is called oven spring. ) [F] Oven temperature too low ( See above. ) [G] Dough is old ( This mean s that it has been given too many risings, too long a time between making the dough and baking it off, &/or it was overrisen. )

ALL of the starter. Allow to sour for 4 - 5 hours, then remove some starter for next time. Keep the starter covered in the refrigerator till the next use. Add the salt and finish as for regular bread. Sourdough takes a while to rise. Rising times will vary but if the bread is ok . Write with your questions to: PETER BAKER P.0. BOX 554 N.Y.C.,N.Y. 10025 Happy Baking, Batty Bwoys ! !

Finally, there is that wonderful old stand-by of all faeries everywhere— hummus. I think there are as many variations of the basic recipe as there are faeries. No two people make it the same. Every time I eat it, it's a new experi ence. This recipe makes close to a quart of hummus which will easily feed two. As far as variations, let your imagination run wild. You be a purist with the basic traditional recipe or you can add in whatever veggies or herbs you want to, such as parsley, cilantro, dill, basil, curry powder, coriander, cumin, green onions, grated carrot, green or ripe olives, peppers (sweet or hot), or anything else your little heart desires. HUMMUS

And finally we come to the last fault we will deal here, namely, the BREAD LACKS FLAVOR. This includes the bread having off flavors. [A] Lack of salt ( Most of us prefer bread with salt in it. In addition to controlling the yeast, salted bread doesn't taste 'flat'. One tablespoon for every quart of water is a good amount. ) [B] Rising times too fast or short ( Yeast secrete a panorama of enzymes, not all of which are understood. Some of these enzymes have 'mellowing', denaturing, and developmental effects on the proteins in the flour. These enzy matic reactions are largely responsible for the flavor of bread. A decent rising time insures that they have enough time to work. ) [C] Dough temperatures too hot ( Dough should be about 75 degrees. Hotter or cooler temperatures impede the reactions desciibed above. ) [D] Ingredients have off flavors ( Bakery ingredients have a tendency to absorb off odors and flavors. Store accordingly. )

2 c.

strained cooked garbanzos/chick peas (reserve the liquid) 2/3 c. tahini 3/4 c. lemon juice 2 pressed cloves garlic or to taste salt (optional) Put all the ingredients in a blender or food processor and process until fairly smooth. If the mixture is too thick and dry, add some of the reserved liquid off the peas and thin to the desired consistency to spread on crackers or bread.

Turning now to the letter I received, Mountain girl from Maryland writes: Dear Mr. Buns,Mr. Baker, Thanks for all your information in the recent issue about bread; I learned a lot. 1 - I've been making sourdoughs ( flour,salt & water ) for a while, but I can't get a consistent bread. How long do you let the starter build, and what is the ratio of starter to loaves? Also, optimal rising time seems to vary greatly. 2 - When I form yeast dough into Italian-looking loaves, they spread out too much on the final rise. What can I do? Save me! Taking the second question first, the reasons the dough spreads out too much could very well be a - improper forming. See above. Other possible reasons include: b - flour doesn't have enough gluten or not enough gluten development, c - over proofing on the last rise, d - rising area too wet. However, most regular bread recipes will flatten out when shaped this way. Italian bread is made from high gluten flour. We will cover sourdoughs in one issue. The starter should be made at least one week in advance. For bread, make a sponge using all of the water, part of the flour, and NO SALT. Add

Well, I guess that's about it for this time. I hope I've given you some ideas for a very neces sary part of this upcoming event. I hope to see all of you in Washington. If you can't be with us there, then ask Mother to send us blessings

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0 a0 k e ie s s © t - S ’- WELCH

SPIRITUALITY

SEARCHING & SHARING OUR SPIRITUALITY: mennonites, faeries and matthew f o x BY DAN LEATHERMAN

As RFD's new 'Spirituality Editor.' I should first intro duce myself and the assumptions/questions I bring to this task. Once a political science professor, married and father of four, I've been a US mail carrier the past 21 years, divorced and out of the closet for twelve, and with my lover Len for six. Though raised Mennomte. I've always respected and learned from others—mainline re ligions. gay Christian groups, neo-paganism, etc. Lens Wiccan priestess did a hand-fasting for us in a joint commitment service which “hets" and gays of many di verse spiritual views attended. So. in work, faith, and love. I've iooked at both sides now.' Burnt out" by a decade of full-scale gay activism, I'm now trying to renew my own inner spirit. Three things are helping 1) RECLAIMING MY MENNONITE ROOTS-I'm finding surprising acceptance in a small local church ready to dialog' on formal membership: 2) JOINING THE RADICAL FAERIES-I'd read RFD off and on for years, but only attended my first gatherings in 1992 (MichiganJune: Short Mountain-October) where I found joy in harharmonious celebration with “people like me 3) THE CREATION SPIRITUALITY OF MATTHEW FO X-the Domini can scholar the Vatican is trying to oust who sees in the . mystical strains of ail major faiths, including ancient paganism, a common sprituality we must recover to in- ; sure global peace, justice, and eco-survival. Fox bridges the Mennonite/Christian and Faerie halves of my psyche! To me. spirituality' is both broader and deeper than the common view of religion' as a system of beliefs about supernatural beings/forces and rituals to help us relate to such. It covers anything affecting ones inner spirit— the creative energy, zest for life, and sense of meaning,

(S3 SO

belonging, and wholeness needed for full personhood— plus the consequences of how it develops. RFD, minus this column, is still a spiritual journal, and an atheist may be more spiritual" than many religionists.

When philosopers refer to life s morai/rationai levels' as spiritual and see them as superior, even opposed, to the material body/sensory ievel, spiritual athletes may squelch not only carnal desires, but emotions and intellectual questioning in favor of passively contem plating or obeying the Divine Ironically, they would be the least spirited."

A curious (not critical) friend I met there keeps asking why I still call myself a Christian. I've reflected much on that. Holding no brief for any organized church, I’ve always found Jesus more a helpful guru than a "personal Savior Like Thoreau. asked on his deathbed, “Have you made your peace with God?" I can reply, “We've never quareled Even when most alienated from church and society. I ve kept believing ‘ Jesus Loves me" and Jesus Never Fails." Gay Episcopal priest Malcolm Boyd takes Jesus to a gay bar without embarrassing anyone. Wouldn't he feel even more “at home" if I brought him to Short Mountain? No stranger or enemy to him, Gaia is neighbor, friend, coworker—even Mother?! "Consider the lilies of the field . ."the birds of the air”. . ."the sheep of the pasture' and Unless you become as little children [playful, adventurous, honest, loving, trusting], you can not inheirit the kingdom" [i.e., you're not ready to live in a Shalom Sanctuary], Whatever my future label, I’ve still much to learn before I become a “Jesus graduate"!

Can we rather see spirituality as the breath/blood that flows through all of life s dimensions--giving meaning, continuity, integrity, balance v ita lity -d is tin c t but not divorced from (or higher than) the rest of life? Body, mind, and emotions would not then be merely necessary (devalued) tools to express spirituality on this mundane plane, but good in themselves to be enjoyed and shared with integrity and mutual consent As on any other facet of life, we rightly prize and pro tect our spiritual autonomy, but aren't the values that draw us together essentially spiritual ones—freedom in community, fortitude and discipline for simple living; concern for Earth and all her creatures; courage to be nonconformists, protesters, even to opt out of society when necessary; the urge to re-sacramentalize (cele brate) all aspects of life? From where do such values emerge-gay culture, neo-paganism, men's movements; some blending of these, a uniquely Faerie spirituality; or elsewhere? Whatever source(s) we claim or spiritual path(s) we choose, we honor/respect others choices.

To help its adherents get in touch with the “holy” [from Ang.-Sax.= health/w holeness"], all religions or spiritual paths tend to create sacred” [Lat.=“set apart"] places, times, persons, objects, rituals, and rythyms of depriva tio n /in d u lg e n c e —fa s tin g /fe a s tin g ; re s t/w o rk ; silent/ vocal; solitary/group; abstinence/orgy. What specifics have you tried? What works (or not) for you? Why? Though we each choose our own path through the forests, across the meadows, and along the streams of life, some of us can walk awhile together, or call out to each other in delight when we discover something exciting—or for help if we stumble, fall, or lose our sense of direction. We can also gather periodically in sanctuary and in this column for show and tell— to share specimens, scars, and stories we've collected Two or three of you have already said you'd like to write something on spiritual ity. Any others interested, please send us your creative efforts. Fellow boy scouts, let s go for a hike! Fellow pilgrims, Bon Voyage!

I resonate with many of these values because they are part of my own heritiage. Many modern Mennomtes are discarding them, but happily Faeries and others are re cycling them in new ways for new issues. When pain and anger from our past subside enough, reclaiming its relevant good can help healing/growth. Our New York Jewish brothers building a Succoth for the full moon ritual at the October gathering was a moving example that made part of their heritage meaningful to all of us.

•' -‘/V. v% ^' 'jj A JL ^ Here are some passages written last year at this time when I was experiencing my first spring at Short Mountain. I was lovers with a fellow from NY.C., which, of course, made for incredible commutes.

2.7.92 Dear Love, Stayed up late playing guitar, reading the mail t h a r j j came on the midnight express. It didn’t seem that long after I fell asleep H that a chicken woke me. She was cackling non-stop for twenty minutes, but it took me a while to figure out what the noise was. I knew something was wrong, a chicken squawking like that. I figured it was a snake of an opossum in the chicken coop, something. So I threw on my clothes and ran down there, my eyes still smarting from sleepiness. It had only just gotten light out. All the chickens were inside the coop except for one, the one that was causing such a fuss. She was flying up against the coop, near where one of the roosters were. There were no varmint around. We normally have a couple chickens that run free (it's hard to get them all round-up) so I couldn’t figure out the problem. I scrutinized the situation and came to figure out that she was wanting her rooster who was just on the other side of the chicken wire. She was looking to get laid but she couldn’t get to her man. So I said to her, “Honey, I know how you feel,” and opened the door to let the of them two mingle.

12.25.91 Morning, and the bread from last night, stored safely in plastic bags, and then in another paper bag, all placed in the keep, had (Surprise!) a mouse in it. It was given to the newest of our residents, Ouija, the tiger-striped cat, to play with all afternoon. Someone is milking the goats and feeding them, and I amuse how we care for the animals that serve us and let prey the ones that don’t. 2.2.92 A chain saw buzzes. Downstairs, people mumble a conversation. Some chickens laying eggs. They make that bok-bok, bok, bok sound, getting really excited. Hearts. One of those organs that work in the dark, never getting a break for a moment. The heart in the mouse up in the wall right here is beating just like mine, only faster.

2.1.92 Dear Love, I exit the sauna and go onto the back porch of the bathhouse, body steaming, naked. The sky's light is receding, it is closing into night. My mind is a thin line, the blood all confused as to what it should do, and so I hold the porch rail, gaze out over the hollow, and wonder where you are at this moment.

12.29. 91 Home, this home, my home. These lights burning, these dirty window panes fogging, this desk— raised and makeshift— a trenched outpost for this clicker of keys on a dark starless night. 5.17.92 Something seems tight, something seems unmoving. But, 1 open the window in front of my desk and all is released. I stop thinking and simply open myself to the day, the sprawling hills, the dense green that thickens like arrow root in the rising heat; maples, poplars, leaves of the so-Whitmanish grass. 2.1.92 January has ended. The days grow longer, full of more light and that should make me happier but instead I grow impatient. The days become harder to fill here in this little sanctuary. I nibble brownies and my mind stays a pencil thin drawing of itself. I take a walk in the woods past the penis tree, to the second ravine and descend into the hollows. Sunlight pours down, following me. All sensations have surfaced to every moment of my skin. I lift and move rocks in the stream bed, I pile sand; I make a small damn to form a shallow pond in the stream. After a coolish winter. I want only to take off my clothes and be naked. I do this and lie on a bed of leaves, stretching and feeling my body touch the surface of the earth. Straight above, tree trunks loom, their branches an infinity of nerves in the fleshy sky. I release, the whole valley an open gust of wind. Then I enter the pool 1 have made and splash myself clean with the ice-ish water, my feet throbbing, ecstatic, numb. As I get out — I could only stand a moment — dry leaves stick to the bottom of my feet and my skin tightens cold as I put my clothes back on. Then I walk along the fallen trees which bridge themselves across the ravine, and go from tree to tree, rarely touching water or land or stone. 4.6.92 4.6.92 Here, being only around new friends and so far removed from old friends that I know from my past, I find my old self crumbles and a new self develops. Sometimes it is hard to connect the two worlds of where 1 live and where I lived. When I went to N.Y.C. to visit my lover, the intensity of the city — the crowds, the treelessness, the lack of space — was so disturbing. I just started ciying in the street. My lover, from the city, did not.understand (there is no way that he could) that 1 was overwhelmed by the stimulus after living among poplars, locusts, goats, in a place where I will know everyone I see when I walk outside my room. 5.15.92 It’s probably midnight here. I am in bed writing by lantern light, the weather already warm enough to leave the windows open and let the constant practicing of the whippoorwills come in. I believe everyone has gone to sleep. It is a rarity to have this solitude. 1 get up and go outside: full moon with silky halo, fog rising out of the hollows. I dance in the moonlight alone, make love to myselt at the edge of the woods.

4.9.92 We prepare for another gathering of over a hundred folks, anticipate the birthing from our two goats Psyche and Sensai, and slowly stock up on wood for our wood stove. 4.5.92 Dear Mark, I am so happy you are coming—ecstatic. I woke this morning and drank up the blue, blue sky. I recorded my dreams and thought about the upcoming gathering, which made me think of " your letter. I was amused by your request for a tent, figuring you would probably find lodging here on your own (hint, hint). The first time I came here 1 was tentless and it proved to be a great advantage. 5.11.92 After the gathering I drove with my lover back to New York and took a bus home. Returning to this little mountain, after the short trip to Gotham city: the whippoorwills sounding loud; the brush, thick a m o v in g of scent as I round the bends on the steep road up the mountain; the creek beds already dry; insects flourishing; but still a subtle breeze, the weather fair. The back porch evenings and afternoons are easy, willing, conversant. Tonight’s cook made pizza, a visitor brought beers, and after dinner we took turns churning a batch of honey-vanilla ice cream — the first of the season. Gorged, plump, content (and perhaps a little drunk or stoned) folks whittle away the night. I ascend the creaky, wooden, cabin stairs into this little enclave of a room, to be alone. I attempt to clean the space and collect my thoughts after the whirlwind of a gathering. 5.4.92 The last of the gatherers have left, after two weeks, and it has been nice, especially with some women here. Words converge, words disperse, do they really tell you much at all? I am writing but I know the truth will be where the writing stops, after the last word, in the swell of silence at the end of the page. When the mantra of words suddenly ceases, I am left gliding on the air. like a car going over a cliff, or perhaps a car suddenly in flight. Writing is pointing a finger; if you stare at the finger, you will never see the thing being pointed out.

YO'ETFY FIRST PIECE b y C h ris to p h e r Thomas It was a magnificent bed, four thick and oval posts tended something phallic above our heads, held the lamps we lit so willingly to undress it all. How I wish I could mold that dream to my hand, rekindle the thick lavender smell that settled between us when mother and her laundry stomped down the hall, and we clung to bulge and thigh, vocal chord deep in what we'd learned from strangers, legs thumping softly on the floor, the world turning on its back once more.

RITES OF SPRING b y L a w re n ce UJ. Thomas Go down with me now, down before grasses green before mandrake rootlets swell beyond ecstasy beyond encompassment, perfusion, lo flown, together, now when green forthcomes, when green impends, foretokens profuse fulfillment; green promises, stimulated, excitation. Fern:;, now Just fiddleheads, unfurl still succulent. Now creepers reach with tentative tendrils caress tenderly trunks of trees with bare branches. Now you must go with me, now among mushroom caps ready to swell touched with faint dampness, dew droplets of fresh morning's taste, subtle as nectar that overflows like milky warm light aslant through young branches and stirs dormant Juices to circulate systems, to issue through stems, vines, veins all atingle in anticipation as sun fingers stroke young stalks so sap rises to burst buds on branches extending. Now arbutus seduces, bedded in blankets of needles, under covers of leaves while violet's breath teases. Watch with me now young lilies emerge. Linger alongside languid rivulets with redbuds reflected in pristine nubility underneath skies of pale blue enticement lightly painted in finger-curl clouds that beckon, bird flights that lure. Go with me now to the woods.

untitled b y F.R.M . Schram We all thought it was only A three-way race— Heart, lungs, and bone marrow— For who would do you in. You laughed a modest hope, Wanting only to make a Beautiful corpse From your handsome body. Then a dark lesion Told us there was another runner. The others had to pick up the pace For one of them to win.

GHOST OF RODIN

KERRY POLKR

b y Ronald U. Palm er, J r.

by Gydion R a g gin s-R ca p ulco

YOUR COLD, METAL THUMB IS A GOD IN MY HAND. YOU COULD BE MY FATHER IF YOUR MOUTH WERE LESS TRAGIC. SWEETLY STRETCHING IN THE LIGHT, YOUR BULGING BELLY CURVES. YOUR LONG, TARNISHED BEARD IS A FAMILY AGAINST MY FACE. YOU COULD BE MY LOVER IF YOUR MAMMOTH FEET WOULD LIFT, PENIS RISE.

(2/4 BERT)

He was going up. I was going down, of course. Escalator values should not be underestimated. We held eye contact for that gay second extra, when Queer recognition flashes like the instant of moonrise. He stopped above, staring flaming faggots, 'til I smiled. A pink triangle smile with soft, three-cornered lips. The Dance begins— he leads, I trail in the wake of his body heat fanned by the wings of his eagle tattoo. He demonstrates the Beat— Step, Hop, Slide. A born dancer's grace gifts his movements and awakens in me a sympathetic rhythm. Pressed close we move tq.the music of the city's dreaming— Brisbane's midsummer fugue. The Dance ends after liquid fulfillment. We part with a kiss, soft lips confirming our private abstractions. Alone on the Dancefloor, my only regret is— I could go on Dancing.

MV UIETNHM b y M ich ael S w ift The fierce and very Roman generals Bugger the beautiful, sibilant artists In a muted, modern manner, Beyond camera range, with precision, And everything is as before In the stillness of this Brookfield valley, Its perfection of country peace Marred only by distant cries Of jets approaching from The terrible, lewd capitals.

THE RDORRTION b y J.R . K a ny as First stall on the right as you enter the side door— that man has, surely, the best potatos in the market, make exquisite vichyssoise (muck-grown, he says), and what's more h e 's got a son (sports the dandiest cowlick, bib overalls, and brawn his buttons barely contain) whose face makes our lives look so poor, can't help but stir angels and saints (God knows how much of heaven) who, radiant with bliss, would doubtless chuck all for two hours with him, endure hell for that rapture.

LAMENT FOR R FORGOTTEN COMPANION b y Tasche To think a hundred years ago I knew your eyes— Those open doors of love and trust through which we'd pour Each other's hearts, the hurts, the gentle healing light... I've sometimes seen them like a dimly fading dream In memory's indifferent dawn; your touseled hair Bequeathed to me the faintest hint of touch, just brushed Like breath upon my brow or fingertips, asleep; I know you as myself sometimes— the things I've heard From others' lips, I know you'd said in murmured days And nights of solid, tender thoughts put into words; Your laugh within me sometimes when I smile; and then The nights I wake abruptly, senses filled with scrubbed And earthy smells that linger from your strong embrace Which always drew me, after passion, into dreams; And now the days and nights of waiting. As I seek, Remembering but fragments of our other past, I ask you: Have your memories been just as close And dimly full of me, as mine have been of you? Perhaps, by holding to our dreams of distant time Together, we can cause our lonely paths to meet And join our hands and mated souls again in peace.

IFair hh ®ir M <e 30) si dl & by Mountain Girl Me and the boys take it slow. No need to rush, even in the spring. You’ll just bust a gasket. Or end up planting groundhogs or something. One time we were digging seed rows for the com and get a bit earned away. Must have dug about a halt foot deep or so. Started pulling up ears and bits of face. Had to cover it over and make it smooth again. Worst part about it is you get blood on the kernels you’re planting or else a couple months later you get fingers starting to sprout up. First thing to know about planting is, of course, to check the machinery. We check the tractor over good because you never want anyone finding out what you are doing; never give your secrets away. One time Jimmy found three microphones on the tractor — the whole thing had been wired! They were after our sowing and plowing schedules, I reckon. That time Jimmy and I just left the bugs on the tractor and started it up in the rain, around November, and let it run a day. I know that confused the hell out of them. I hen, come spring, we took those darn things off and plowed like normal, til sunset. Now, of course, we just spray the machinery with pesticide. Kills all them bugs in a couple of minutes. That saves us a lot of time, so we can sit around and do laundry, play cards, build up our arsenal. Once the tractor's clean, we plow the field, making a pattern of concentric circles. Used to be that we spiraled inward, but then we d always get stuck in the center. Now we know better, but sometimes we end up on the wrong side of the field and have to take the ht-way home. But, of course,- they got smart on us and put up those minimum speed limit signs. 45 miles an hour. Now, we’re only ever on the hi-way for fifteen minutes, so when ever we get stopped we tell the officers that we were planning to come back on with our motorcycles and make up the difference by going 75. Course the wwst thing about plowing the field is getting stuck in ^the rain, especially a lightning storm. It'll send a shock through you 'that’s strong enough to cure a schizophrenic. And even it that don t happen, the tractor tires still get stuck. You’ll chew up half your field so it look like food they serve to the toothless. And, tractors don t have roofs or umbrellas, or portable radios, so you'll be bound to get all wet. Best thing to do to avoid the rain is to predict the weather. We follow the first seed catalogue of the season. By turning to the page that corresponds to the day of the years (like 54, for February 23) and

looking at what kind of seed they’re advertising you can pretty much guess what kind of weather you'll be having. If it s juicy tomatoes, you can count on rain. A head of lettuce and you figure just an overcast sky. Asparagus, turnips, radishes, carrots, and there ain’t a thing to worry about. Of course, if it’s flowers, it’s going to be snow. Hell, it works better than the t.v., which we haven t plugged in tor years Still, you know, that t.v. set is dam entertaining. W'e watch it a couple hours a night after dinner, me and the boys. Funny how one of us will get to laughing, staring at that blank screen, and pretty soon, we’ll all be laughing, practically falling off our buckets. A lot of entertainment value, that Lv. Course, I couldn t say exactly how many laughs for dollars, cause we traded it in for our uncles cornea. I hey ^ said it was worth something at the hospital when he died, and it wasn t really hard finding a pawn shop that was willing to work up a deal. ..

. r \ ""K o Y w i

. . . she was resting on a deep bed of wheat straw in the standard-sized shipping box we had brought her in with the day before. Bom on Sunday just an hour after noon, the second and listlessly smaller of the two kids bom to a young, first-time mother, she was dead by dawn of Tuesday. Now I was carrying that box down the trail curving along the top of the finger of land with steep sides that is called the Medicine Wheel Ridge, the mid-morning sun shining quietly and without haste, Stevie at my side. The naked winter forest was listening for Spring. When we got to the old fallen chestnut, a casualty of the terrible chestnut blight that rampaged through this continent earlier this century, we set the box down and remembered that the past three seasons had seen the laying away of several animals in this, our usual spot for the final rest of our departed animals. Old Rosie the cat, who had moved to the mountain from Manhattan in the ‘seventies and had always maintained a brusque and cantankerous metropolitan demeanor, died back in June and was dismantled within 36 hours of her open-air burial by an army of large black bugs the likes of which I had never seen before. Solenoid, a grandmother goat of sweet disposition, succumbed shortly thereafter to Bloat, an unpleasant illness involving a staggering ballooning of her flanks and copious amounts of thick green vomit. The puppy, Not, we buried this fall at the base of the old hollowed chestnut, encircling the grave with stones and planting 7 acorns atop the mound. Now here we were with our newest baby. A couple of weeks ago, after I returned from spending the two weeks surrounding New Years in Chicago and Madison, Sappho, our eight-month-old grand-daughter of Solenoid, seemed sick to us and bloated looking. Wondering if such ailments ran in families we took her to our veterinarian down in Woodbury. He poked around, discovered a slight temperature, and announced she was pregnant, with an imminent delivery date. Since no billy goats live within over a mile from us, we realized that her cousin, Peter Pan Fry, bom at roughly the same time as she last Spring, must have precociously performed the task

before being shipped to a neighbor’s farm as breeding stock. Folks here had worked with the sure assumption, uncontravened for some 9 years, that boys aren’t procreative until 5 months of age and girls not fertile until / months of age. In an instant we learned otherwise. Not quite 2 weeks passed and our pregnant teenager was a teenage mother. Both births went smoothly, within 15 minutes of each other, with plenty of baby bleatings and wobbly surprise at being thrust into a brand new world. But it was evident that the second-bom, bearing the beautiful black-and-white colors of her french alpine grandfather, was smaller, weaker, and sickly in comparison to her all-white saanenIooking brother.

Sappho proved to be an exemplary mother, patiently tolerating our prolonged efforts to teach the frailer baby to suckle on her teats. The brother learned rapidly but our girl wished only to collapse or sway, head hanging low. There seemed to be hope on a few occasions of both bottle feeding and teat sucking when the suckling instinct seemed to rise for a few moments, but ultimately the head-strong goat spirit never flamed forward within her. But not for lack of cuddlings and strokings and encouragings. I myself had draped an old pillow case over my purple sweatshirt, cradling her atop my heart as I laid on the floor, my head propped up on a bolster, while the wood stove ticked and whispered as it held the winter chill from the room. Yet in the end she wanted only this: to nap softly next to others, me, her brother, or my fellow communards, and pass quietly through here on her way from the last life to the next. She passed peacefully to other places during her sleep on the second night of her brief life. Sappho, who had stood braying at the gate to the walk leading up to the cabin every time we brought the little one in to re warm her after our attempts to teach her to nurse, was still agitated and bleating this morning as we woke with the dawn to check on the slumbers of the baby. We were not truly surprised to find that she had died, but our earnest hopefulness was nevertheless humbled. When we carried the box outside and thought to allow Sappho a last look at her offspring, she seemed to sense the truth without looking and fell silent, refusing to come near. 1 was glad to have Stevie with me on our little procession out into the woods. After the box was set down, we took some of the straw and made a little bed for our friend and laid her upon it, covering her with the remaining straw but leaving her tender head uncovered in the beams of late-January sunshine floating down through the branches above us. It was sad to leave so new a baby alone here with the elements, and yet such are the realities that cycle through one’s days I We walked back toward the gardens, talking of the blackberries we w ill be planting and surveying a new sight for the asparagus plants we’ ll be getting this week. When I got back to the barnyard, the bouncy new baby boy was tottering about in the sun, shaking his ears now and again, tipping and catching himself from tipping again, over and over familiarizing himself with the possibilities of his new body still less than 48 hours old. He’d wander briefly from momma Sappho’s side and then bound back to her warm underbelly where hangs always the gift of comforting milk. As for Sappho, her searching brays for the missing baby had diminished, and she was eager to walk over and smell my gloves, my hands, where lay detectable to her the scent of her baby. She didn’t want to stop looking me in the eyes as I kneeled down to explain to her and stroke her young neck. But eventually she wandered off to a spot in the sun, baby boy bounding behind, and returned to her own daydreams and slow musings, eyes half-closed, as she resumed the chewing of her cud. I breathed deep and stood up, pulled my jacket collar up against the bright breeze, and walked back to the house to restoke the fire and retreat to my writing. 31

D IM E S T O R E S E X by Stv On a recent visit to my favorite shopping mall, I was walking around waiting for Macy’s to open; in passing the Woolworth’s, I noticed it was open. I ducked in to see if there was anything I needed to pick up. While looking at their house plants, my bowels let me know 1 had to shit. Checking with customer service, they directed me to the men’s room with a token to let myself in. ‘A token, how odd,’ I thought to myself. After letting myself in to the small, one-urinal, onecommode bathroom, I sat down to meditate in peace. A few moments passed when all at once I was startled by the door opening, a handsome 40-something man walked in wearing snake skin cowboy boots; since the commode had no door, there I was caught with my pants down. He briefly looked my way as he walked to the urinal, looking over his shoulder as he stepped up to it. Needless to say, the sirens went off in my head, “He’s cruisin’ you.” Wanting to accommodate such an opportunity, I started to make small talk trying to encourage him. (Like he needed it!) "Are those snake skinned boots?” “Yup.” “They sure are hot.” By now 1 was through shitting, so 1 was beginning to wipe sticking my hand between my legs, exposing my cock. It was at this moment that he turned from the urinal without putting his cock away; he was stroking the largest, uncut, beer-can cock I had ever seen. Even though I was wiping my ass — not exactly sexy (to most folks) — my cock jumped to attention at the same time my heart skipped a few beats. I finished up and he said "do you like to fuck?” I said “sure.” Although 1 didn’t have a condom on me. I told him this. He said it was okay. I hesitated, wondering if 1 should fuck him. 1 thought to myself that he is the one at risk, so 1 decided to. mv ™ V !1it\sert?d now ^fmi' n§!d cock, with only spit as lube, it became apparent that I wasn’t his first partner of the day As I started to pump my nipples whUe he'was S ' o ™ m ^n in g m ptasSfe" ghaen,n8my eartier ob* ™ .,o n . I was now totally aroused, playing with I began to work my cock around his hole shoving all the way in then pulling almost entirely out, then driving in deep. 1 was really turned on. Remembering my buddy s cock, I reached around and held on to it while I rode his ass. The whole scene was so totally hot, 1 knew my balls would explode at any moment. As 1 got close to coming I said, “I’m about to shoot my wad.” He said, “fill me up with it.” Hesitating, I thought, ‘It’s his body and his choice,’ so with one massive thrust up to the nuts, holding on to his cock, I filled him with my hot load, spasming all the while. K £ After pulling out. I washed up and peed while he dressed. He carefully stutted his still semi-hard cock down his legs, making quite the bulge. I grabbed it one last time through his pants leg, so I could remember the biggest cock 1 had ever seen As he walked through the door, I finished dressing. Then I stepped out into the store, back to the nursery department, and bought an African Violet with a smile on my face. As the day proceeded, and the glow wore off, this haunting feeling came ove me. I he reality of the situation struck me. I had just engaged in one of the most unsafe sex practices there is: anal penetration, without a condom, to the point of climax. No amount of rationalizing could alter that fact, or exempt me from my responsibility in the encounter. Even thinking, “Well it was his body and he was okay with my cumming inside him.” guilty N° h° ney’

J im J a c k so n

tekeS two to en8a£e in unsafe sex and you just did. I felt very

As more and more of my close, dear friends become sick, and then die I again realize my commitment to them and to my brothers I sex with to practice health' sex. I am writing this to those of you who might find yourselves in a similar situation as I was in. l oo many brothers and sisters are dying in the prime of their lives think of them before you engage in unsafe sex.

. A p r i X___2 3 FAERIE

19 9 3

SPACE(D)

8 pm - 12 midnight Market 5 Gallery 7th and North Carolina Avenue, S.E. Metro:

Eastern Market (clones

(/)

b ft

mid

p u m p k in s

$ 3 - 5 donation requested (no one turned away for lack of cash) • an evening of faerie family re-union and premarch mirth

jjK p r y r

ft W

o-t

• performance/events throughout the evening or as available; all levels of talent and chutzpah welcomed !*

< > ft w

Saturday, April GRAND

24,

FAERIE

• bring something small, light in weight, and charged with energy to add to the March banner • a barrier-, smoke- and alcohol-free space

1993 CIRCLE

5:00 P.M. <

"A circle of fabulous proportions" - bring a cush for your tush...

The Ellipse, across from the south side of Biliary's new place

Contact Short Mountain for details

DRUMMING CIRCLE

AND

DANCING

9:30 P.M. Dupont Circle Fountain

Sunday „ April the

25,

mother

1993 of

all

marches

Meet at 10:00 A.M. on the Ellipse Check official guidebook for precise Ellipse location March steps off at 12:00 noon

to S1<3n up to perform or to get under the limelight, call or write: Peaches Moree, 1613 Harvard St., NW, #413, Washington DC 20009, Tel.: (202) 588-9117

OUTDOOR SCULPTURE IN WASHINGTON, SOME OF IT HOMOEROTIC, SOME OF IT JUST.... • DUPONT MEMORIAL FOUNTAIN - hunky sailor with sailboat over crotch - Dupont Circle

• THEODORE ROOSEVELT - the statue screams Stalin, the park is moist and green - on the eponymous island, accessible via Virginia or canoe • QUEEN ISABELLA I - bold sculpture, baaad queen 17th & C Streets, N.W.; do check out the nearby XOCHIPILLI, Aztec God Of Flowers • SEEBEE MEMORIAL - sailor with hot nipples offers chocolate bar to little girl - memorial drive approach to Arlington Cemetery, on right

• BOY SCOUT MEMORIAL - see what this group is really about! - 15th & Pennsylvania, N.W. •

MAN CONQUERS TRADE - and

sometimes he likes it rough... - 6th & Pennsylvania, N.W. •

GENERAL WINFIELD SC O TT'S HORSE - the only de-

• ARTS OF PIECE, ARTS OF WAR - huge bronze hunky horseback boys with big pedestals, gift of Italy - either side of the Memorial Bridge near Lincoln Memorial, D.C. side • THE AWAKENING - gentle giant rising up out of the earth, at confluence of two rivers - East Potomac Park (car, bike or long hike)

gelded mount in town Scott Circle, 16th & Massachusetts, N.W. •

DR. SAMUEL HAHNEMANN -

aka "the father of homeopathy" - 15th & Massachusetts, N.W. • KAHLIL GIBRAN - pretty little sitting area, too - Massachusetts Avenue at California Street, N.W., near British Embassy •

ALBERT EINSTEIN - his head in a grove, the place to be in '93 - 22nd & Constitution Avenue, N.W. • HARVEY MILK MEMORIAL - to be unveiled Saturday, April 24th Congressional Cemetery, Potomac Avenue at E, S.E. (Metro: Potomac Avenue, consult the station's area map). Near the memorial across the footpath: LEONARD MATLQVITCH'S pinktriangled tombstone and J. EDGAR HOOVER'S grave, with his lover CLYDE buried just outside the Hoover family plot • SCALLOP SHELL FOUNTAIN thirteen Italianate shells descend the landscaped hillside, lovely spot for an intimate daylight conversation - in Malcolm X Park, 16th between Euclid & W Streets, N.W.

NUNS OF THE BATTLEFIELD -

'nuff said - Rhode Island Avenue at Connecticut, N.W. • MALABAR - cool, elegant stone and water piece for fans of Forster courtyard of the National Geographic Building, M Street between 16th & 17th, N.W. Stop in and ask when the Society will be running their "Faeries in the Wilds of North America" feature....

CANADIAN EMBASSY CUPOLA great public echo chamber overlooking the march route, "2-4-6-8, don't assume a Mounty's straight!" - 4th & Pennsylvania, N.W.

• TARAS SHEVCHENKO - for those who prefer their men in chains - 22nd and P Streets, N.W., across from P Street Beach and Queer Lawn Club

Listed below are less expensive restaurants, many of tnem popular with the queer crowd. So put on your fashion statement and have a great meal!

DUPONT CIRCLE AREA Dupont Circle Metro FOOD FOR THOUGHT 1738 Connecticut, NW 202/797-1095 Homemade hippie food, vegetarian dishes, entertainment

many live

KRAMER BOOKS & AFTERWORDS 1517 Connecticut, NW 202/387-1462

Bookstall and popular for late brunch

restaurant, nights and

$ PAN ASIAN NOODLES/GRILL 2020 P Street, NW 202/872-8889

ADAMS-MORGAN/18th STREET Dupont Circle/Woodley Park Metro

Interesting, well-prepared southeast Asian cuisine

JULIO'S 1604 U Street, NW 202/483-8500 $ ZORBA'S 2 20th street, NW 8555

Great pizzas and hummous. Moderately priced. Very busy. Indoors or out.

202/387-

Cheap Greek, and you don't have to use a condom $* STRAITS OF MALAYA 836 18th Street, NW 202/4831483 Well-prepared Malaysian food, the kitchen will adapt most recipes to eliminate meat, friendly service, indoors or out. EL FARO 18th Street, N.W. tasty Salvadoran food, try the ceviche and tropical beverages; salsa music gay spot after 9:00 p.m.

UNION STATION - Union Station Metro $ There's a pretty good food court in the basement. Try the stir fry. Get your souvenir shopping finished and buy a train ticket while you're there.

$ MIXTEC 18th & Columbia Road, NW Lively Mexican food in a lively neighborhood

17th STREET CORRIDOR DUPONT CIRCLE1

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» ANNIE'S PARAMOUNT STEAK HOUSE 1609 17th Street, NW 202/232-0395 Beef and boys. Have a salad here and pick up a clone. Not all that cheap. At least they appreciate good accessories. $▼ BOSS SHEPHERD'S 1527 17th Street, NW 202/328-8193

DOWNTOWN - Metro Center or Smithsonian Metros, near mall area SZECHUAN GALLERY H Street, N.W. (METRO: Gallery Place) One of DC's best, located in a small but interesting Chinatown

Cheap pastas and sandwiches. Daily 1/2-price specials. Popular with gays and non-gays. Don't get the primavera.

$ t CAFE LUNA 1633 P Street, NW 202/387-4005 Tasty, inexpensive pastas & sandwiches, popular with the queer crowd, art exhibitions on the walls, be sure to see the men's room, outdoor dining, it'll be busy

$ OLD POST OFFICE 12th & Pennsylvania, NW The food court is on the lower level. Lots of quick food places, most cheap, many quite good. Try the Indian Vegetarian booth with their $1.25 samosas, spicy curries, and yoghurt drinks. $ THE SHOPS AT NATIONAL PLACE 13th & F Streets NW The food court is on the upper level. The usual mix of hamburgers, pizza, and Chinese.

▼ LA FONDA 1639 R Street, NW 202/232-6965 Wanting something from south of the border? Good Mexican food, moderate prices, and friendly service. $▼ POP STOP 1513 17th Street, NW 202/328-0880 DC's version of the San coffee bar. Latte, Italian ices, sweets. the music, the young restless, pick up a inside or out.

CAPITOL HILL - Eastern Market Metro HEARTLAND

Fran cafe, Enjoy and date,

$▼ TRIO'S 1537 17th Street, NW 202/232-6305 When you're hungry for instant mashed potatoes, Velveeta cheese, and hair spray, come to Trio's. Elderly waitresses in beehives and polyester print dresses will remind you that canned spinach is good for you. And it's cheap, cheap, cheap. Inside or out.

All-American cooking in a patriotic neighborhood. Macaroni & cheese, meat loaf, apple pie, you get the idea. JULIO'S 801 Pennsylvania, SE 202/546-0060 More great pizza, plus a great brunch. v MR. HENRY'S 601 Pennsylvania, SE 202/546-8412 Popular gay establishment with sandwiches. It gets a bit crowded and smokey, but sometimes it's nice to be the sandwich filling.

( V * - * '• •

Faerie Tour of Capitol Hill This little detour has several interesting sites in cluding the Eastern Market on 7th Street and the Marine Barracks on 8th Street. A word of cau tion, these marines have been involved in many incidents of bashing. This area of Pennsylvania Avenue is a commercial strip that includes a cou ple of Gay and Lesbian bars. Consult the Wash ington Blade bar listing for additional social insti tutions in the area.

(Warning, watch your purse. This is not recom mended tor after dark unless you are with a whole bunch of faeries.) Most public building have restrooms. In this part of town, the com mercial area along Pennsylvania Avenue has several bars that also have restrooms. Take the Metro Red Line to Union Station. Go into the Great Hall and gawk. Look closely at the Greek god like statues. Underneath their shields they have no Calvin Kleins-just fruits for the womb. This is perhaps one of Washington’s biggest coverups. This building has restrooms on the main level and downstairs on the Food Court level. Food Court has cheap eats (well, cheap by Washington standards).

Well, back from the detour, march back up Penn sylvania Avenue to Second Street. Cross Seond Street and veer left on Independence Avenue.

On your left is the Madison Building, part of the Library of Congress. Continue down Indepen dence. On your left are the Cannon, Longworth, and Rayburn House Office Buildings. The one that looks like on overblown example of mis placed granite and marble (the last one) is the Rayburn building. Walk around the building for a few minutes to enjoy its well-defined sense of democratic taste. This is the home of the com mon man. You might want to visit your congressperson, too, and lobby for Gay Rights, as well as ask for tickets to the visitors gallery in the House of Representatives.

Walk out of the front of the station to the Colum bus Memorial Fountain. This scene of under stated recognition of an obscure Italian pillager can only be fully appreciated after the ingestion of consciousness-altering substances (like U.S. history books). Sculpted by Lorado Taft in 1912. Many roads lead off the circle. Find Louisiana Avenue, walk one block to North Capitol and start walking to that big domed building. You are walking through Capitol Hill Park. One guide book states this park "is one of the favorites of many congressional aides, particularly the youn ger set....’ The other favorite of young congres sional aides is the Longworth Building mens irooms. The tacky concrete bunker with bells is the Taft Memorial Carillon. I think it was donated by the people of the Netherlands. This is a wonderful obscure monument that you can ask people to meet you at, 'Just meet me at the Taft Memorial.' Continue to the Capitol grounds. To the left on the northwest corner of the grounds is the Capi tol Grotto, designed by Frederick Olmstead, and now part of the municipal waterworks. Well, this is it, OUR NATION'S CAPITOL. Actual ly, it is worth seeing. You do not need to be in a tour to see the building, although the tourguides do provide lots of interesting information. The Statuary Hall is interesting just to see the concept of HERO in stone. If you want to see either the Senate or House in action, you must contact your congressperson's office and pick up a ticket to the vistors' galleries. Also if you can arrange it, take a ride on the Senate subway. It’s the world's most exclusive metro system.

After leaving the Rayburn Building, cross Inde pendence Avenue, and walk to the corner. Across the street is the Botanic Gardens. This is a must see for plant lovers. Actually a couple of Next, a building Not To Be Missed. The Library faeries were eaten here by a giant man-loving of Congress is the next building down First ladyslipper during the 1987 march. The spot is Street. Before entering the building, carefully marked with a plaque. This is a nice exhibit that study Neptune and the Sea Nymphs frolicking in is out of the beaten path of the usual Maul tour the fountain. This fountain was designed in the ists. days when anatomy was correct, and so was Greek mythology. The building was decorated As you leave the Botanic Gardens, took toward by a faerie on very good drugs. Ornate is plain the Capitol. See the Giant Stairway to the Stars? speaking in this building. No detail is left unde That's called the Capitol Steps. Here is a good tailed. Take pictures and write home to Momma photo op so that the folks back home will actually believe that you went to Washington. Try some about this! interesting poses with this imposing backdrop. Walk to the corner of First and East Capitol, then Be imaginative. Carry bail money. left on East Capitol. When you cross Second Street, the building on your right is the Folger Shakespeare Library. All you Bard fans, check it out. Walk back to Second Street. Turn south and walk behind the Library of Congress down Sec ond to Pennsylvania Avenue, if you want, you can turn left on Pennsylvania and walk up Penn sylvania several blocks to the Eastern Market Metro (Blue/Orange) stop between 7th and 8th streets.

Leave the Capitol grounds along Delaware or Maryland Avenues. On Constitution Avenue across the street from each other are two historic homes, the Mountjoy Bayly House (122 Maryland Avenue) and The Sewall-Belmont House at 144 Constitution. The SB house was almost torn down for a parking tot. This house is now owned by the National Women’s Party and is open to the public. Now, walk back toward the Capitol on Maryland Avenue, and turn left on First Street. That big building on your left is where the Supremes re cord their greatest hits. You can probably come here to participate in demos and other direct action. By the way. Capitol Hill has its own police force, the Capitol Police. These are feds, not locals.

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drumming and dancing and stirring up dust, looking all wild and different and a lot more interesting than the speeches that you couldn't really hear anyway. So - like the brilliant orange and black butterfly that suddenly appears in the clearing against a background of green, be there on April 25th with your bells on and your bangles shaking!

Call 9 1 1 immediately if you are seriously threatened or are the victim of actual or attempted violence. This establishes a record of police notification and responsibiltiy to act, may result in the offenders being held accoutable, and may help prevent violence against others. Be sure to get the names and badge numbers of any police officers you have contact with, for both positive and-negative interactions. Call 4 5 2 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; * 7 4 4 8 immediately to report anti-gay/lesbian violence or harassment. Many urban gay men and lesbians carry loud, piercing police whistles when they're out on the streets, especially at night. The following suggestions are based on a campaign called "Whistlestop" conducted in Washington by GLOV.

Some telephone numbers to keep handy during your stay in the (perhaps) soon to be 51st state. All area codes are (202) unless otherwise stated. 1993 MARCH ON WASHINGTON

628-0493

GAY/LESBIAN SWITCHBOARD

628-4667

GAY/LESBIAN HOTLINE

833-3234

EMERGENCY POLICE FIRE AMBULANCE

911

WEATHER

936-1212

TIME OF DAY

844-2525

GAY MEN AND LESBIANS OPPOSING VIOLENCE

452-7448

637-7000

WHITMAN-WALKER CLINIC

797-3500

- AIDS/HIV related service provider 797-7000

WASHINGTON BLADE - gay weakly - fairly comprehensive resource guide for DC area homo happenings

462-6969

LAMBDA RISING - gay/lesbian bookstore & literate cruising zone

775-8218

LAMMA'S - wimmin's bookstore & literate cruising zone

456-1111

the white house - "Presidential Inquiries & Comments Office" (careful, grrrls, they tape these!) U.S. CAPITOL CONNECTIONS

31.

224225-

3121 3121

(703) 938-5196

Some have found CAPITAL RESERVATIONS (1-800-847-4832) helpful in locating lodging space in or near D.C.

METROBUS INFORMATION

DIAL-THOUGHTS-OF-A-SAINT

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- please report anti-gay/lesbian violence and/or harassment immediately

- Senate info - House of Representatives info

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S E X U A L

H E A L I N G

Joe Kramer Sings the Body Electric By Don Shewey " M o s t Western sex is necrophilia -- one dead body having sex with another dead body," Joseph Kramer told the UC Berkeley crowd. In contrast to the Chinese concept of sex as energy -- ching-chi, a life force that through continual charging can take you to high erotic states and keep you there for hours at a time -- he said, most Western men's erotic experience is "balloon sex: you tense your legs, squeeze your chest, and blow up the middle 'til it pops."

W h a t is "sexual healing," anyway, besides being the name of Marvin Gaye's last great record? Partly it has to do with healing the wounds to the spirit and the flesh caused by sexual abuse, addiction, and AIDS. But it also has a lot to do with acknowledging that the fun and the pleasure, the vitality and the divine mystery of sex have nourishing properties in and of themselves -- a message that can easily get overwhelmed in a culture where "sex appeal" is routinely exploited to sell products but sexuality (read: actual fucking) is usually discussed only in the context of abuse, addiction, or AIDS transmission. The sex negativity of the culture creates its own damage and alienation. For some people, their sexuality -- their juiciness, their comfort with their bodies, their talent for intimacy -- is a gift they’ re not asked to share often enough; when they act on it, they run the risk of being viewed as pathologically compulsive, promiscuous, or somehow perverted. How often do we encounter public discourse that treats sex as something other than a sin or a joke?

Then someone in the audience called out, "This is a great lecture. When’ s the lab period?" A sex lab period! He'd never thought about it. But Kramer, a professional masseur who'd divided his adult years between training with the Jesuits and investigating "high erotic states" among Manhattan's sex piers at the height of the post-Stonewall gay subculture, was up for it. He quickly invited any interested men to come to his house the following night for a session that would involve nude oil massage. Twelve showed up. "I was really nervous. What to do?" Kramer recalls. "Then I thought, 'Oh, Joe, you had five hours of sex a day for four years in New York City -- what do you mean, what are you going to do?'"

Kramer's on a mission to change all that, with, among other things, his two-day, all-nude, hands-on workshop called Celebrating the Body Erotic for (as Kraiper puts it) "pioneering gay, bisexual and non-gay men." (Kramer hopes eventually to do workshops with both men and women, possibly with his friend Annie Sprinkle -"the only woman I've had sex with in 15 years.") "You will relearn sex as sacred, playful, non-addictive, non compulsive, and non-stop," he promises participants. In 1988, Kramer taught the course himself 15 times, mostly in Los Angeles and Oakland. Last year he and a faculty of five gave almost 40 workshops in 17 cities across the country and abroad (including Amsterdam and Berlin).

"We had just three hours," Kramer continues. "It was tribal. We had a fire going. Everything was structured -- breathing, genital touching. Sometimes six people stood in a circle and the other six knelt before them touching their heart and genitals, and then the men in the middle would move to the next man. Nobody came the whole evening. But at the end four of the men said this was the highest erotic experience of their lives. "This, surprisingly, did not make me feel good,”he adds. "It made me feel sad because I started to realize how paltry sex was in most people's lives. All that happened was they got out of their rut, and it was, like, 'Wow!' I started to understand how easy it is just to set up environments that can pull people out of wherever they are and let them play in another realm. I said, 'This is what I want to do."'

I've noticed that many people recoil from the merest description of Kramer's workshop. It brings up all kinds of body shame, religious guilt, intimidation. "I don't like even my doctor looking at me naked," wrote a young reporter who interviewed Kramer last year for Au Courant, Philadelphia's gay weekly. "I couldn't imagine getting naked in a well-lit room in front of a group of equally naked men...It wouldn't be worth the stress." Others snigger and dismiss the workshop as some kind of two-day circle jerk.

Inspired by that first sex lab period, Kramer created the Body Electric School for massage in 1984, and began his life as a sexual healer. 49

Personally, I was hoping it would be a two-day. circle jerk. I somehow managed to get through eight years in the Boy Scouts without ever encountering that boyhood ritual. And when I showed up for Celebrating the Body Erotic, I couldn’ t wait to get naked. After all, I've spent more than a decade working out at the gym. But then I’ m a card-carrying member of not only the YMCA but also the New York Jacks, the genial gentlemen’ s club where erotic exhibitionists and J/0 enthusiasts have been meeting for 12 years. To my surprise, Kramer's workshop turned out to be less of an erotic experience than a spiritual awakening. (For the purposes of this discussion, let’ s separate spirituality from organized religion.) By introducing tantric, Taoist, and Native American ritual practices -including conscious breathing, shamanic drumming, continuous eye contact, simultaneous heart-and-genital connection, and building ecstatic sexual energy without ejaculation -- Kramer places within a spiritual tradition the discussion of exchanging body fluids usually confined to safer-sex manuals. Not that he would characterize his work as AIDSprevention education per se. That makes it sound too much like those bland, sexually squeamish but eminently fundable seminars in "negotiating social skills” that organizations like GMHC offer and Kramer dismisses "scurvy for the soul." Nonetheless, if AIDS brought a shift in consciousness about sex, pleasure, life, death, and the spirit within all these things, Kramer’ s workshop permanently altered the way I have sex -- motivated not by fear of AIDS but by desire for change. It made me realize that not just my aging body but my soul wants more from sex than just getting it up and getting it off as quickly as possible.

On the other hand, Kramer doesn t let his unabashed spiritual approach to eroticism settle into cant or New Age mumbo-jumbo. At the end of the first day of the workshop, he introduced an exercise that he said was inspired by listening to one of Marianne Williamson's lectures on A Course in Miracles while driving. "I wasn't paying too much attention until suddenly she said, 'God is but love.' Only this is the way my mind works: I heard her say 'God is Butt Love.' And I thought, 'Yes!'" And he proceeded to give instructions for the most popular ritual of the day: two men covered with oil stand with their backs to a third man and massage him all over with their rear ends. God's Butt Love, We Deliver. Much of Kramer's work emphasizes massage as a way of restoring a healthy attitude toward sex and intimacy among gay men threatened by or afflicted with HIV disease. It’ s no accident that he named his school after Walt Whitman. A major part of Whitman's legacy comes from the years he spent during the Civil War nursing the wounded and dying -- an all-too-common experience in San Francisco over the last decade. Kramer formed the first AIDS hospice massage team in the United States, and both his teaching and his private practice revolved around touching people with life-threatening illness. "From very early in the epidemic, the major thing I saw was men terrorized," he says. "Not just in fear, not just in depression — those were states that all kinds of human beings had. I never saw so many people in terror in all my life. Terror just shuts down everything. Psychotherapy takes a long time to deal with terror. But breath work and massage and touching and caressing is like spring thawing out the ice." Besides fear of AIDS, though, Kramer's classes also focus on healing the unsatisfactory socialization of American gay men in general. While a few major cities have gay community centers that offer a wide range of social activities, many gay men still meet friends and partners in bars and bathhouses, environments that require great physical attractiveness, superior social skills, and/or extraordinary tolerance for alcohol and rejection to achieve sexual success or self-esteem. For nude gay men to interact in broad daylight, making eye contact and concentrating on the connection between their hearts and their genitals, is practically revolutionary. W h a tever you might imagine a sexual revolutionary would look like, Joe Kramer is not it. Tall, bespectacled, bigbellied and pink-cheeked, with reddish brown hair and mustache trimmed in a very proper Chamber of Commerce style, he looks like nothing more than an elementary school principal. Which, considering his background, isn't that far from the truth. Born and raised in St. Louis, Kramer grew up in a devoutly Catholic family. His parents went to Mass every day -- "probably still do," he says -- and Joseph himself, the oldest of six children, went to Catholic schools from first grade through university. Still, he was a sexual radical from early on. "I loved to masturbate," Kramer says in an interview during one of his trips to New York. "I think the Catholic church helped me there, because it was a mortal sin to masturbate. I didn't want to go to confession and tell the priest I masturbated six times yesterday or 25 times last week. I figured after coming I would just keep going, so it would only be one mortal sin. That's how I learned multiple orgasms. "The other thing that repressiveness of Catholicism did was it brought God and sex together in my mind. God cared every time I had sex. It made sex not just some paltry thing, but God of heaven and earth was concerned about me touching my little penis from the time I was five on. Later, once I got rid of the guilt, I realized that the God space, the religious space in me was intimately tied up with sex."

children to paralyze rebellion and to inhibit critical thinking. The American government considered him a dangerous quack and arrested him for shipping an "orgone box" across state lines. Reich claimed the device (really no more than a lined wooden box big enough to sit in) could, among other things, cure cancer by containing and concetrating healing energy. His books were pulled from libraries and burned, and Reich was sentenced to two years in jail, where he died in 1957.

Kramer attended an all-boys Jesuit high school where he says he learned about male bonding. "There wasn't a hint of homosexuality, but there was tremendous male intimacy. The Jesuits taught me to love myself and to love boys. Part of it was making the homophobia very low, so touching was okay. I really felt weird with my body and my orientation until I was 14. That homoerotic high school experience made me want to be a Jesuit. This was 1965, four years before Stonewall. The only other option I knew about homosexuals was there were homosexuals in prison. If I could just get into prison! But I was too good a boy to do anything bad. So I joined the Jesuits and trained toward being a priest for 11 years." For seven years he studied mathematics, philosophy, and theology while maintaining his celibacy. Then in 1972, while taking classes at Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union, he found himself sitting for hours a day in Sproul Plaza, the headquarters for the free speech movement in the '60s, watching the students, the street singers, the preachers, the politicos, the Hare Krishnas and the Moonies. "In New York I think there's toleration of diversity, but in Berkeley there was celebration of diversity. And I realized I was diverse, I was a gay man, and I was not celebrating my diversity." He continued his theological studies for a few years until it became clear that he didn't want to be a Jesuit. "Vatican II had just happened, and Pope John XXIII’ s whole thing was 'Open the windows of the Catholic church.' There was a lot of emphasis on love and following your heart. So that's what I did." His heart took him to New York in 1976, a time when gay liberation had met the sexual revolution head-on. "I moved from a monastic tradition in seminary life to a sex monastery," Kramer recalls fondly. "Everybody was having sex everywhere. And when I went into sex, I wanted to drink life to the lees. Later, when 1 studied Reich, I realized I was doing Reichian therapy. It wasn’ t compulsive, addictive acting out. I was vibrating out all the dead spots in myself. And everybody else was, too. This is where I learned tantra. Because it wasn't about coming, it was about being in the erotic vibration and staying there." Of course, tantra don't pay the rent. Kramer took his most marketable skills -- his Jesuit training -- and got a job teaching at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, an elite Catholic girls' school on the Upper East Side. "By day I was teaching girls Roman Catholic theology, and by night I'd be in the basement of the Anvil or the Mineshaft. Actually, for me it was Man’ s Country and the piers and 12 West." Although he joined the board of directors of Dignity (an organization of gay Catholics) and gave talks in support of the New York City gay rights bill, the school didn't know about his homosexuality -- until he took his lover to a party and word got back to Cardinal Cooke, who conveyed his displeasure to the school’ s headmistress. "They fired me. I wanted to fight it. There was no gay rights bill. Even when the gay rights bill was passed, Catholic schools were exempt." Kramer went back to Berkeley to complete his degree, changing the focus to sex and spirituality. Besides studying acupressure and conscious breathing (also known as rebirthing, or holotropic breathing) to raise energy in the body, Kramer's scholarly interest brought him to the teaching of Wilhelm Reich. One of Freud's star pupils, Reich became a true revolutionary through his insistence, in works like The Function of the Orgasm (published in 1926!), that "those who are psychically ill need but one thing -- complete and repeated genital gratification." Even more threatening than his championing of sex as therapy was Reich’ s political perspective: that authoritarian societies intentionally suppress the natural sexuality of

Stv

Not overlooking the political parable in Reich's story, Kramer saw that Reich was one of the first Westerners to share the Eastern view of health as energy. Steeped in these teachings, Kramer began to explore a massage practice, then a school, that would specifically connect conscious breathing with eroticism.

,fCelebrating the Body Erotic”packages the various talents Kramer has accumulated over the years: spiritual counselor, ritual priest, educator, gay historian, Fire Island disco bunny, marathon masturbator. Probably the most important skill that comes into play is his ability to handle terror. Coaxing 20 or 30 or 40 strangers out of their clothes and into giving up established patterns of sexual behavior -- not to mention paying $250 for the privilege -- requires a certain amount of finesse. I've been through the workshop several times (both as a paying customer and as a paid assistant, supporting Kramer as temple dancer and sacred DJ), and I know that the class attracts many veterans of the New York Jacks, the Radical Faeries, S&M clubs, and other explorations into what one Kramer graduate calls "the post-monogamy lack-of-scarcity approach to group sex." But on the whole each workshop winds up with such a wild mix of characters that it looks like one of those World War II submarine movies. The first time I take it, the class includes a physician's assistant who works as an HIV counselor for drug addicts at Harlem Hospital and a man with AIDS who's just been through a scary bout of toxoplasmosis; a Canadian conceptual artist and an Off Broadway stage manager; a half-Filipino, half-Mexican restaurateur and a daily newspaper journalist (my lover of 13 years). No matter how young, how old, or how brazen, though, when we form a circle that first morning -- still in our street clothes -- we all feel those junior- high-dance emotions: shyness, anticipation, sweaty palms. We've all come in off 14th Street through the grim lobby, climbed the stairs to this funky second-floor dance studio, and shed our coats and shoes. Now we stand uneasily looking around the room, rehearsing our mantras of body imperfection (I'm too fat, I'm too sweaty, my dick isn't big enough) and counting the cuties and the trolls (I hope I get to be with him, I don't want him anywhere near me).

This is where Kramer starts to work his magic.-He immediately gets people breathing together, for relaxation and bonding. He casts a spell with language, clearly stating intentions, naming fears, and drawing guidelines: don't worry if you have an erection or not, the goal for the class is to build erotic energy without ejaculation, buttplay is off-limits for hygienic reasons. Working with facing concentric circles, changing partners frequently and randomly, he gets participants tb breathe, stretch, warm up, make eye contact, place hands on hearts, learn each other's names, and practice saying out loud "That feels good" and "Please stop." Looking in other people's eyes, windows of the soul -- does anyone ever get to do that to their heart's content? I was taught it was rude to look at people directly. Reich always began his therapy working on people's eyes and wouldn't go any further until he could get them to release the blocks held there. After a morning of swimming in one pair of eyeballs after another, trust has been established, and the rest of the rituals -- the undressing, the oiling, the touching, Butt Love -- are a breeze. The climax of the workshop comes on the second day with Taoist erotic massage instruction, where participants take turns massaging and then being massaged by seven different men, one at a time. This ritual gives concrete practice in extending orgasmic sexual pleasure (using 20 or so strokes other than the basic up-and-downthe-shaft-til-he-squirts). For an alternative to ejaculation that would satisfy the Western urge for climax, he borrows from contemporary Taoist master Mantak Chia an exercise called The Big Draw. After an extended period of breathing and continuous cock massage, you take a deep breath, clench all our muscles from head to toe, hold the breath as long as possible, and then release it. The combined flooding of breath and erotic energies can trigger a full-body orgasm with profound effects. Some people hallucinate, weep, or have physical contractions that look for all the world like grand mal seizures. Some just feel a pleasant tingling in their hands. The vigorous breathwork frequently brings up a deluge of emotions. For some this means mean total joy. For me, it was quite the opposite. The Big Draw produced no big physical effects but only made me realize how inmy-head I'd been for the whole thing: remembering the sequence of strokes, listening to the instructions, judging each masseur on his technique, my critical nature compounding my good-Catholic-boy follow-the-rules upbringing, thinking, "No, you're doing it wrong, hands off the body when you breathe on me, slower circles, not that leg the other one," etc. Then I felt sad and depressed and angrey because I'd screwed myself out of the experience. As my final masseur wrapped my sheet around me and some seraphic music began to play, I felt like I was experiencing my own death and began to cry, grieving over my lack of generosity to myself. That inevitably connected with a seemingly bottomless pool of grief over friends whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ve died of AIDS, and I found myself sobbing. I discovered, quite unexpectedly, that by trying to cultivate only positive emotions I had created a logjam of grief that blocked me from feeling almost anything, including sexual arousal. And once I let it out, suddenly the spectrum of emotions spread out like a peacock's tail, and I felt cleansed, exorcised, light enough to levitate.

The Taoist erotic massage ritual also serves another, more down-to-earth purpose that goes to the heart of Kramer's work on erotic spirituality. It breaks down the tyranny of types (men, especially the gay tribe, are just as susceptible as women to The Beauty Myth) by allowing you to look, as if in a mirror, at the range of answers to the question, What is a man? During the ritual, the varieties of manhood are laid out before you like specimens on the table. Each one is different, and you learn each particularity: the hair pattern, the size and shape of the balls, the belly button, which dicks are spotted or red or thick or stiffen fast or not at all. And you observe how they work, how they receive sensation in the form of pleasure, pain, or pressure (sometimes hard to distinguish). This one loves to have fingernails scrape his nipples; for others, nipples are a waste of time. One man asks to have his balls fondled, rubbed, tugged away from his body; another prefers you never touch them at all. Brisk? Slow? Concentrate on the "magic wand" and all else follows? Open the chest and emotion flows? You see each manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; s history in his body -- the layers of fat, the hours at the gym, the surgical scars, the intentional piercings and curious, dainty tattooes. What makes them laugh, moan, shout with pleasure, sob like a baby. By the end of the day, you look around the closing circle and see not cuties and trolls -- and certainly not necrophiliacs. This landscape of bodies can't help reflecting your own divine possibilities, calling to mind Whitman's refrain: "I am large, I contain multitudes."

dote: In October of 1992, Joseph Kraaer sold the Body Electric School to his longtiae associate Collin Brown. Body Electric faculty $esbers continue to teach Celebrating the Body Erotic in cities around the country. Soae upcoiing dates are: Philadelphia (March 27-28), Oakland (March 27-28), Phoenix (April 3-4), New England (April 10-11), Minneapolis (April 1718), New York City (April 17-18, 19-20), Washington DC (May 1-2), Atlanta (May 15-16), Houston (May 15-16), Seattle (May 15-16), Los Angeles (May 22-23).

For the complete schedule of these and other Body Electric workshops, write to the school at 6527A Telegraph Ave., Oakland, CA 94609-1113 or call 510-653-1594. This article originally appeared in the Village Voice April 21, 1992.

joy of

nuDism by Ben Schmidgall

I have been a nudist all my life, I was raised on a large farm in a sunny state, where summers are warm and seasonally dry. I remember spending almost entire summer vacations without once putting on clothes, except of course for work-boots. I never asked Dad when he first started working .the farm naked. Nor why. I have boyhood mem ories of other local farmers who, when they joined us at haying or harvest time, stripped with us - a whole bunch of balls-naked guys in the fields. I remember this enjoyment of my youth and to this day I still take great de light in being naked with naked guys. We nudist have a common philosophy, namely the acceptance of the nude body as normal and the right to express this belief in a natural and non-sexual setting. We farmers truly enjoyed nakedness and healthy, nude living. Although nudist clubs strictly for men are only a few years old, nudism is not a radical nor new idea. In ancient cultures non-sexual, social nudism was commonly practiced.

We farmers did not worry about skin cancer. Unknowingly we were safe. Modern knowledge about sunbathing-damaging-the-skin tends to underplay the fact that a no-fat diet of vege tables, grains and fruits, such as was ours, when combined with exposure to sunshine pro duces vitamin D in the skin, lowers blood pres sure and increases energy, strength and endurance.

In Ancient Greece athletes were always fully nude. They had pride in their beautiful bodies. They proudly displayed their muscular ity in the stadium. Since they were cocknaked, spectators went to see not only a sport competition, but also a contest in the physical beauty of gorgeous, sexy hunks. When the ath letes wrestled, the spectators drooled while looking at the ripples of muscles, the slaps of dicks, the bouncing balls and the twitch of a wrestler's asshole. Due to the highly sexual atmosphere with so many stunning hunks all exerting themselves to the utmost of their abilities, guys would be stimulated by each others. Erections were common sights in the stadium. Those were indeed the golden days for exhibitionists and voyeurs I

One outcome of my boyhood nudity has been a continued appreciation of an all-over tan. I remember an instance I was being attracted to the tanned chest and shoulders of a handsome hunk, working the row next to me in the vine yard. When we reached the end of our rows I could see he was as fuck-naked as I was, but newly so. The livid paleness of his lower body with its splotch of dark crotch hair against the whiteness of his flat, muscular stomach was a contrast as stark as the pallor of his welldefined butt against the sun-bronzed chest and muse]e-ridged back.

The Roman sex slaves were not completely nude. They had their naked beauty decorated with cockrings, studs and nipple-rings. Aspiring gladiators who were often goodlooking studs with low-slung balls, were selected to excite the crowds, not only with their fighting skills, but also with their sensuality. Raw power, muscular definition and genital develop ment could be compared while the naked guys were fighting, their cum-bloated balls bouncing with every movement.

How well do I remember the farm-hands. They were fully nude most of the time. The only time they put clothes on was when they were about to drive to town for beers. And some times they even drove naked, As a young boy I was already intrigued by the penis. The ballsnaked farm-hands gave me ample opportunity for candid and uninhibited appreciation of the beauty and mechanical perfection of male sex organs, for the farmhands had the habit of stroking themselves during the breaks. They had roaring hard-ons but they never ejaculated, at least not in the fields. What they did in the bunk-house is a different story.

More recently our forefathers practiced nude swimming. By the 1840's, nude swimming was popular on Europe's beaches. In the U.S.A., John Adams, the man who proposed the appoint ment of George Washington, was known to take time off to swim fully nude, publicly, in the Potomac River.

I enjoyed looking not only at the penis, but at

the whole scrotal configuration, which is con stantly changing. Like the nipples, the male sex organs have deeper tints than the customary washed-out pink skin, which covers most of the body of the Caucasian male-body. The farm-hands knew I admired their bodies and they loved it. They often stood half-erect real close to me so that my eyes could follow the curves of the veins which begin at the base of the warm-to-the-touch cylinder and move in intriguing lines down the shaft toward the gentle ridge of the head of the penis, after which they terminate in a bud-like festoon of capillary-laced skin, in whose throat can be glimpsed the miniature lips of the urethral slit which punctuates the most silken bit of skin of the uncircumcised male. It covers the head of the penis and its iridescent tints come, first gently then ragingly, into view during the process of tumescence. One farm-hand was circumcised. His iridescent silk covering was in constant display. His beautifully-designed and handsomely-decorated tube would dangle languorously against, or on occasion, rear triumphantly above the softskin-draped curves of the full-of-promise pouch. In nude company the full exposure of manhood is a psychological experience for which the Gay guy is inherently aesthetic. Being naked with naked men is wonderful!

Ben Schmidgall has been an avid nudist since the age of seventeen. He has been an art school model for the last 35 years. He promot es the a l t e r n a t i v e (nude) lifestyle by writing articles on this subject.

Gays do not feel refreshed upon leaving a theater where nude boys have danced, because one-sided nakedness does not permit a shared experience. In gay nudist clubs the tease is removed, replaced by something wholesome. It may be that voyeurism and exhibitionism, both viewed negatively, are wholesome when paired. This may be the reason for the expansion in the number of male nudist clubs in the U.S.A. and Canada. Those who belong are seriously com mitted to the enjoyment of social and recrea tional activities that mandate nudity and hold sexual and non-sexual drives in balance, while maintaining a normal social attitude against exhibitionism and inappropriate sexual activity. Gay Liberation has made great strides in public acceptance of the Gay experience. Even politi cians now come out of the closet. There is a gradual acceptance of nude beaches, along with increased use of nudity in movies and adver tising. Women's Lib has achieved success in liberating the female breast. Gay Lib must take efforts to similarly liberate the penis. In this campaign as their numbers increase, Gay male nudist clubs are leading the way, For information on male nudist U.S.A. and Canada contact:

clubs

the

T N E (The Nude Exchange) P.0. Box 1624 North Highlands, CA 95660-1624 and SWON (South Western Ontario Nudists) c/o Benson Sutter 1209 Richmond Street, Apt. 803 London, Ontario, N6A 3L7 Canada

But what was the wild throng that stood hand in hand about the May-Pole? It could be, that the Fauns and Nymphs, when driven from their classic groves and homes of ancient fable, had sought refuge, as all persecuted did, in the fresh woods of the West. These were Gothic excerpts from monsters, perhaps of Grecian ancestry. On W rthe shoulders of a comely youth, uprose the J?{ t) YHR branching antlers of a stag; a second,human in all other points, had the grim visage of a wolf; a third, still had the limbs and trunk of a mortal man, showed the beard and vener J$AY Y 0LeB? able horns of a HE-GOAT. There was the like ness of a bear erect, brute in all but his OF hind legs, which were adorned with pink stock s ings. And here again, almost wonderous, stood a real bear of the dark forest, lending each ^B R R Y of his fore paws to the grasp of human hand, and as ready for the dance as any in that cir cle. His inferior nature rose half-way, to ^O B N T meet his companions as they stooped. Other faces wore the similatude of man or woman, but distorted or extravagant, with red noses pend ulous before their mouths, which seemed of awful depth, and stretched from ear to ear in an eternal fit of laughter. Here might be seen the Savage man, well known in heraldry, NATHANIEL; hairy as a baboon, and girdled with green leaves. Many of this strange company wore ‘JjAWTHORNE fools-caps, and had little bells appended to their garments, tinkling with a silvery sound, responsive to the inaudible music of their gleesome spirits. Some were of soberer garb, yet well maintained their places in the ir RIGHT were the days at Merry Mount, when regular throng, by the expression of wild rev elry upon their features. Such were the colon the May-Pole was the banner-staff of ists of Merry Mount, as they stood in the broad |that gay colony! They who reared it, should their banner be triumphant, were smile of sunset, round their venerated May-Pole, to pour sunshine over New England's rugged hills, and scatter flower seeds though out the soil. Jollity and gloom were contending for an empire. Midsummer eve had come, bringing deep verdure to the forest, and roses in her lap, of a more vivid hue than the tender buds of spring. But May, or her mirthful spirit, dwelt all year around at Merry Mount, sport ing with the summer months, and reveling with autumn, and basking in the glow of winters fireside. Through a world of toil an care, she flitted with a dreamlike smile, and came hither to find a home among the lightsome hearts of Merry Mount. Never had the May-Pole been so gaily decked as at sunset on midsummer eve. This venerated emblem was a pine tree, which had preserved the slender grace of youth, while it equiled the loftiest height of the old wood monarchs. From its top, streamed a silken banner, colored like a rainbow. Down nearly to the ground, the pole was dressed with birchen boughs, and others of the liveliest green, and some with silvery leaves, fastened by ribbons that flut tered in fanastic knots of twenty different colors, but no sad ones. Garden flowers, and blossoms of the wilderness, laughed gladly forth amid the verdure, so fresh and dewy, that they must have grown by magic on that happy pine tree. Where this green and flow ery splendor terminated, the shaft of the May Pole was stained the seven brilliant hues of the banner at its top. On the lowest green bough hung an abundant wreath of roses, some that had been gathered in the sunniest spots of the forest, and others, of still a richer blush, which the colonist had reared from English seed. Oh, people of the Golden Age, the chief of your husbandry, was to raise flowers! D avid W om ack

i^ C H I V E y >

Glen Margo Within the ring ot monsters, appeared tne two airiest forms, that have ever trodden on any more solid footing than a purple and gold en cloud. One was a youth, in glistening ap parel, with a scarf of the rainbow pattern crosswise on his breast. His right hand held a guilded staff, the ensign of high dignity among the revelers, and his left grasped the slender fingers of a fair maiden, not less gaily decorated than himself. Bright roses glowed in contrast with the dark glossy curls of each, and were scattered round their feet, or had sprung up spontaniously there. Behind this lightsome couple, so close to the MayPole that its boughs shaded his jovial face, stood the figure of an English priest, canonicaly dressed, yet decked with flowers, in heathen fashion, and wearing a chaplet of the native vine leaves. By the riot of his roll ing eye, and the pagan decorations of his holy' garb, he seemed the wildest monster there, and the very Comus of the crew. "Volitaries of the May-Pole," cried the flow er-decked priest, "merrily, all day long, have the woods echoed to your mirth. But this be your merriest hour, my hearts! Lo, here stand the Lord and Lady of May, whom I, a clerk of Oxford, and high priest of Merry Mount, am presently to join in holy matrimony. Up with your nimble spirits, ye morrice-dancers, green men, and glee-maidens, bears, wolves, and HORNED GENTILMEN! Come, a chorus now, rich with the mirth of Merry England, and the wilder the glee of this fresh forest; and then a dance,to show the youthfull pair what life is made of, and how airily they should go through it! All ye the love the May-Pole, lend your vour voices to the nuptual song of the Lord and Lady of the May !" This wedlock was more serious than most af fairs of Merry Mount, where jest and delusion, trick and fantasy, kept up a continued carnival. The Lord and Lady of the May, though their tit les must be laid down at sunset, were really and truly to be partners in the dance of life, begining the measure that same briqht eve. The wreath of roses that hung from the lowest green bough of the May-Pole, had been twined for them, and would be thrown over their heads in symbol of their flowery union. When the priest had spoken, there-fore, a riotous up roar burst from the rout of monstrous figures. I « « ft «

Unfortunately, there were men in the new world, of a sterner faith than these May-Pole worshippers. Not far from Merry Mount was a settlement of Puritans, most dismal wretches, who said their prayers before daylight, and then wrought in the forest or the cornfield, till evening made it prayer time again. Their weapons were always at hand, to shoot down the straggling savage. When they met in conclave, it was never to keep up the old English mirth, but to hear sermons three hours long, or to proclaim bounties on the heads of wolves, or the scalps of Indians. Their festivals were fast-days, and their chief past time was the singing of psalms. Woe to the youth or maid en, who did but dream of dance! The selectman nodded to the constable; and there sat the light-heeled reprobate in stocks; or if he danced, it was round the whipping post, which might be termed the Puritan May-Pole. A party of these grim Puritans, toiling through the difficult woods, each with a horse-load of armor to burthen his footsteps, would sometimes draw near the sunny precincts of Merry Mount. There were the silken colon ists, sporting round their May-Pole; perhaps teaching a bear to dance, or striving to com municate their mirth to the grave Indian; or masquerading in the skins of deer and wolves. Often, the whole colony were playing at blindmans bluff, magistrates and all with their eyes bandaged, except a single scape-GOAT, whom the blinded sinners pursued by the tink ling of the bells at his garments. Once it is said, they were seen following a flower decked corps, with merriment and festive mus ic to his grave. But did the dead man laugh? In their quietest times, they sang ballads and told tales, for the edification of their pious visiters; or perplexed them with juggling tricks; or grinned at them through horse col lars; and when sport itself grew wearisome, they made a game of their own stupidity, and began a yawning match. At the very least of these enormities, the men of iron shook their heads and frowned so darkly, that the revelers looked up, imagining that a momentary cloud had overcast the sunshine, which was to be perpetual there. On the other hand, the Pur itans affirmed, that, when a psalm was peal ing from their place of worship, the echo, which the forest sent them back, seemed often like the chorus of a jolly catch, closing with a roar of laughter. Who but the fiend, and his bond-slaves, the crew of Merry Mount, had disturbed them! In due time, a feud arose, stern and bitter on one side, and as serious on the other as anything could be, among such light spirits as had sworn allegiance to the May-Pole. The future complexion of New Eng land was involved in this important quarrel. Should the grisly saints establish their jur isdiction over th gay sinners, then would their spirits darken all the clime, and make it a land of clouded visages, of hard toil,of sermon and psalm, forever. But should the banner-staff of Merry Mount be fortunate, sun shine would break upon the hills, and flowers beautify the forest, and late posterity do homage to the May-Pole! After these authentic passages from history, we return to the nuptials of the Lord and Lady of May. Alas we have delayed too long, and must darken our tale too suddenly. As we glance again at the May-Pole, a solitary beam of sunlight is fading from the summit, and leaves only a faint golden tinge, blended with the hues of the rainbow banner. Even

some rogues in stocks to rest themselves, so soon as Providence shall bring us to one of our own well-ordered settlements, where such accommodations may be found. Further penal ties, such as branding and cropping of the ears, shall be thought of hereafter." "How many stripes for the priest?," inquir ed Ancient Palfrey. "None as yet," answered Endicott, bending his iron frown on the culprit. "It must be for the Great and General Court to determine, whether stripes and long imprisonment, and other grievious penalty, may atone for his transgressions. Let him look to himself! For such as violate our civil order, it may be permitted to show mercy. But woe to the wretch who troubleth our religion!" "And this dancing bear," resumed the offic er. "Must he share the stripes of his fellows? "Shoot him through the head!" Said the en ergetic Puritan. "I suspect witchcraft in the beast." "Here be a couple of shining ones," contin ued Peter Palfrey, pointing his weapon at the Lord and lady of May. "They seem to be of high station among these mis-doers. Methinks their dignity will not be fitted with less than a double share of stripes." Endicott rested on his sword, and closely surveyed the dress and aspect of the hapless pair. There they stood, pale, downcast, and apprehensive. Yet there was an air of mutual support, and of pure affection, seeking aid and giving it, that showed them to be man and wife, with the sanction of a priest up on their love. "Youth," said Endicott, "ye stand in an evil case, thou and thy maiden wife. Make ready presently; for I am minded that ye shall both have a token to remember your wed ding-day !" "Stern man," criedthe May Lord, "how can I move thee? Were the means at haind I would resist you to the death. Being powerless, I entreat! Do with me what thou wilt; but let Edith gountouched!" "Not so," replied the immitigable zealot, "We are not wont to show an idle courtesy to THAT sex, which requireth the stricter dis cipline. What sayest thou, maid? Shall thy silken bridegroom suffer thy share of the penalty, besides his own?" "Be it death," said Edith, "and lay it all on me !" Truly, as Endicott said, the poor lovers stood in a woeful case. There foes were triumphant, their friends captive and abased, their homes desolate, the benighted wilder ness around them, and a rigorous destiny, in the shape of the Puritan leader, their only guide. Yet the deepening twilight could not altogether conceal, that the iron man was softened; he smiled at the fair specticle of early love; he almost sighed, for the inevit able blight of early hopes. "The troubles of life have come hastily on this young couple," observed Endicott. "We will see how they comport themselves under their present trials, ere we burden them with greater. If among the spoil there be any garments of a more decent fashion, let them be put upon this May Lord and his Lady, in stead of their glistening vanities. Look to it some of you." "And shall not the youth's hair be cut?" asked Peter Palfrey, looking with abhorrence at the love-lock and long glossy curls of the young man.

that dim light is now withdrawn, relinquish ing the whole domain of Merry Mount to the evening gloom, which has rushed so instant aneously from the black surrounding woods. But some of these black shadows have rushed forth in human shape. Yes: with the setting sun, the last day of mirth had passed from Merry Mount. The ring of gay masquers was disordered and broken; the stag lowered his antlers in dismay; the wolf became weaker than the lamb; the morrice danc ers tinkled with tremulous affright. The Pur itans had played a characteristic part in the May-Pole mummeries. Their darksome figures were intermixed with the wild shapes of their foes, and made the scene a picture of the moment, when waking thoughts start up amid the scattered fantasies of a dream. The leader of the hostile party stood in the center of the circle, while the rout of monsters cowerded about him, evil spirite in the presence of a dread magician. So stern was the energy of his aspect, that the whole man, visage, frame and soul, seemed wrout of iron, gifted with life and thought, yet all of one substance with his head-piece and breast-plate. It was the Puritan of Puritans; it was Endicott him self ! "Stand off, priest of Baal!" said he, with a grim frown, and laying no reverent hand up on the surplice. "I know thee, Blackstone! Thou art the man, who couldst not abide the rule evenof thine own currupt church,and hast come hither to preach iniquity, and to give exsample of it in thy life. But now it shall be seen that the Lord hath sanctified this wilderness for HIS people. Woe to them who would defile it! And first for this flower decked abomination, the alter of thy worship!" And with his keen sword, Endicott assaulted the hallowed May-Pole. Nor long did it resist his arm. It groaned with a dismal sound; it showered leaves and rose-buds upon the re morseless enthusiast; and finally, with all its green boughs, ribbons, and flowers, sym bolic of departed pleasures, down fell the banner-staff of Merry Mount. As it sank, tradition says, the evening sky grew darker, and the woods threw forth a more somber shadow. "THERE," cried Endicott, looking triumph antly on his work, "there lies the only MayPole in New England! The thought is strong within me, that by its fall, is shadowed forth the fate of light and idle mirth makers amongst us and our posterity. Amen, saith John Endicott!" But the votaries of the May-Pole gave one groan for their idol. At the sound, the Pur itan leader glanced at the crew of Comus, each a figure of broad mirth, yet at this moment, strangely expressive of sorrow and dismay. "Valiant captain," quoth Peter Palfrey, the Ancient of the band, "what order shall be taken with the prisoners?" "I thought not to repent me of cutting down a May-Pole?" replied Endicott, "Yet now I could find it in my heart to plant it again and give each of these pagans one other dance round their idol. It would have served rarely for a whipping-post!" "But there are pine trees enow," suggested the lieutenant. "True, good Ancient," said the leader. "Wherefore, bind the heathen crew, and be stow on them a small matter of stripes apiece, as ernest of our future justice. Set

"Crop it forthwith, and in that true pumkinshell fashion," answered the captain. "Then bring them along with us, but more gently thar their fellows. There be qualities in the youth, which make him valiant to fight, and sober to toil, and pious to pray; and in'the maiden, that may fit her to become a mother in our Tsreal, bringing up babes in better nurture than her own hath been. Nor think ye, young ones, that they are the happiest, even in our lifetime of a moment, who mispent it dancing around a May-Pole!" And Endicott, the severest Puritan of all who laid the rock foundation of New England, lifted the wreath of roses from the ruin of the May-Pole, and threw it, with his own gauntleted hand, over the heads of the Lord and Lady of May. It was a deed of prophecy, as the moral gloom of the world overpowers all systematic gaiety, evan so was their home made desolate amid the sadened forest. They returned to it no more. But as their qarland was wreathed of the brightest roses that had grown there, so, in the tie that united them, were intertwined all the purest and best of their early joys. They went heavenward, sup porting each other along the difficult path which was their lot to tread, and never wasted one regretfull thought on the vanities of Merry Mount.

Merry Mount is a jewel of our history. Our roots run deep into our earth mother, and though our blossoms are hacked down by some cruel hand from time to time, we always reemerge, bringing our rainbow hues in the wake of receeding stormy darkness. Our stuggle with the forces of "moral gloom" is as real today as it was in the time of Edgar and Edith. The shadows of abasement and des olation still linger. There is progress, and on that certain Holiday in November, we can at least give thanks that the Puritans, with their whipping posts, branding iron, and shears have dissipated over time into less severe forms. This speacial edition of Faerie archives, I dedicate to Eddy "Violet Flame". He "ascend ed just a short time ago and will dearly be missed by all of us. I will always think of him as the Lavender High Priest of May, and one of the most glistening spirits to every trod lightly on the soil of Merry (or is it Mary), Short Mountain. Blessed Be, GOATBOY

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If anyone would ask me what piece of temporial knowlege or experiance have I managed to retain from those dreary high school years, the answer, straightaway, would be the read ing of The May-Pole of Merry Mount. The images from its pages, awakened and nurtured my Satyr consciousness, and a yearning for such a place to truly BE. It would be many years before I would find that the seeds of Merry Mount, dispersed by the winds, had found places far and distant, to take root and flourish. Places like Short Moutain, now my home, and Wolf creek and others. Places, where those out in a world of toil and grey ness can come and for if but a while,mingle with beastly and lightsome spirits, and dance round the May-Pole in the embrace old Mirth and Gaiety!

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Oh, let's go fight in a war. That's where the real men are. Their y / fathers slap into them all their lives. "You're \ / not a man 'ti l>etr6eat youM vivfcsjvA nd murder a man with grins or knives O f big borhtjs from afar. Oh, let's go fight in a war. Nv I Oh, let's alLget in the service^kliistift reveal that you\e nervous.

Bend over j(nd take the dopt^Ps pokes<tHd all the initiation strokes While laugning at all the laggot jokes To prove that you’re realb imperv'ousi Oh, let’s all get in the-service. \ ] )h, let's all prove that we're norm al The methods are r p lly quite formal: Siiuare your shoulders and walk:iike oxen. I M a bar for a ring to box in. Spray aHqn races wjtn fatal toxin, And all the guys in th\dorm 'll ConcecIeThafyou're wonderfully normal. Hey, dem fag-bashers, we'll loin 'em.Togdy supporters we'll toin 'em >^eT moider da fo^WCedem heros o f Hogan's, KickgtRTk-ass-widmir doity brogans, / \ And i f dey yoin for battle-slogans, We'll oin our laurels and coin 'em. Hey, we beat'em; let's join'em.

EN LIST ED M EAT. Edited by Winston Leyland. Gay Sunshine Press, Box 40397, San Francisco, CA 94140. 158 pgs. $12.95 soft. Reviewed by Ron Abraytis I m a hot blond, it was a cold night, and my brain-meat was throbbing for something to read. Ya know what I mean? So when a box arrived from Gay Sunshine Press, I ripped that sucker open in a frenzy of antici pation. Inside was Enlisted Meat, described as “an in-depth collection of true military sexual experiences.” I thought, someone at Gay Sunshine Press had really pulled a boner; I don t review this kind of book. But since my eyeballs were popping out of my skull for a little of the o f left-right, left-right, I gave it a try. The first story took me by surprise. A sailor alluded to his “seaman’s semen. Maybe it as a sucker punch, but I fell like a ton of bricks. It was alliteration. It was homonym. Ad it was a damned clever pun. I could al ready feel the cranial fluids pumping through the old hypothalamus. I had to read more. Before I knew what was happening, I came across a quirky mixed metaphor: “My tongue tap danced its way across his dickhead, prodding and lapping into the secret folds of his cock, strumming the chords of his pleasure and mine. Tap dancers don’t strum chords, much less prod or lap. And if there’s one thing I can’t resist, it’s mixed metaphor. I was quickly progressing from idle curiosity to... something far deeper. Then I was slammed by literary allusion. The writer said his penis pulsed and twitched and bobbed and did everything buy quote Chaucer. My 3.78 pounds of gray matter (unlobotomized) was turning somersaults. My glasses steamed up as the author pummelled me mercilessly with al literation:^ purple, passion-pointed tits”; “soft, slack, silken skin of his dickhead ; ^ the tight, tender tissues of my throat”; “stained but still stiff stud stick. Little did I dream that this was but a prelude for the asso nance to come.

dear M: letters from a gentleman o f excess. By Jack Pollock. St. Genis & Associates, 5175 Diamond Heights Blvd HI2 1 San Francisco, CA 94131. 308 pgs. hardback.

I was in trouble. I tried to put the book down, but before I could, I dis covered a really cute parallel construction: “1 half expected to have the police pounding on the door—but fear of an official audience didn’t keep me trom pounding away on my own.” I nearly popped my cerebral cor tex right there.

Reviewed by Andrea L.T. Peterson Canadian artist Jack Pollock in this autobiographical work presents not only the portrait of a man whose remarkable odyssey spans decades as well as continents, he also gives a detailed outline of “the crazy world of art as it was in Toronto in the 60s and ’70s.” The tale resembles the re cent biographies of two other great gay artists, filmmaker Pier Paolo asolini and philosopher Michael Foucault, who indulged compulsive and excessive sexual tendencies. But unlike them. Pollock’s life has not ended in self-destruction.

Suddenly I was face-to-face with Homeric metaphor: “My lips reaped the bumper crop ot skin from his crankshaft and added that harvest to the bounty that already crowned his head in a cock-biter’s cornucopia.” I thought to myself, that sentence is built like a Frank Lloyd Wright shithouse. I was pleading, “Oxymoron! I need Oxymoron!” but with a “thwack” and a smack he gave me onomatopoeia, and then more onomatopoeia, and then more onomatopoeia with “stiff breezed hissing through thousands of pine needles.”

While countless noteworthy works by men living with HIV have ap peared during the past tew' years, dear M. previously available only in t anada. is in a class by itself. Pollock— known for his artistic expertise as well as his flamboyant, excessive lifestyle— "over three years obses sively committed my thoughts, fears, and philosophies in a torrent of letters to his therapist, “M”. The result: a brutally honest—hilarious one moment, desperate the next—expose of his own life and times. The thread woven throughout dearM. and the thread that will tie readers to Pollock is Pollock s pronouncement and frequent demonstration through example that we are all. I here is a universality. Each is unique, yet the experience of being human is common to all.

When I finally got up off the floor, I felt dazed and sated. But I knew in my heart that I would soon hunger to review another one of these books, and still another. I just hope they don’t affect my cocksuckin’ writin’ style.

Pollock lost The Pollock Gallery in Toronto, the last in a series that he w V in , owned, operated, and brought to positions of great prominence Canada, as abruptly as he lost his health in 1983.^ Broken in body and spirit, resigned to the fact that his affair with drugs, the fast lane, and wild living had caught up with him, he retreated to the south of France to die. He didn’t die.

Rather, he did some of his most remarkable painting in Gordes, his C amelot, where I think I finally came to terms with me__ I live and work. I am who I am. I regret little, and I am thankful for all.” Pollock is without a doubt correct when he claims that, in his case, surely the truth is stranger than fiction. “ The truth unvarnished and raw—is almost impossible to believe. I didn t believe it all happened to me. But it did, and I suppose [it J continues to be a circus of unrealistic proportions. T hings haven t just happened to me; they have exploded, detonated, blown up.” And so, it seems, they have.

J J * ,, C AY m m r !aea P ^ n ° 10022. 1992. 220 pgs. $30 hard.

SEXBy Dr Charles HarperColiins,10 53rd S ,..

^ Reviewed by Garland Terry Fifteen years after the first Joy o f Gay Sex reached even America’s hin terlands with its sex-positive, beautifully-illustrated advice on the more practical details of gay lovemaking, a new edition appears with even more pics, more reathtaking drawings, and updated safe sex considerations. , f org inal co-author, Dr. Silverstein, has teamed with novelist Picano o frankly and honestly discuss (in alphabetical order) everything from wrestling0 daddlCS l° effeminacy t0 piercing to tops to types to wills to The New Joy focuses on the three areas of: practical sex advice, relationship concerns, and lifestyle issues like health care and partnership agree ments. Missing in comparison to the ’77 edition is the old celebratory, even promotional, words on subjects like Hallucinogens, One-Night n at?, C°nsci°usness Raising—as if these things were no longer ™ ™ derab? Now added’ however, are many more health ems, p us kinky or S/M topics, perhaps showing a more severe

dear M is the testimony of a man who survived years of drug addiction, open heart surgery, and, to date, HIV+. It will no doubt bring tears to readers eyes, laughter from their bellies, and even a bit of wisdom to those open to receiving.

and senous gay attitude also evidenced by the authors' introductory words about the former edition: “We found attitudes that seemed exces sively high-spirited, even rah-rah in their boosterism.” Well, isn’t that what “joy” is all about? There is something informative and controversial for all. As Picano says, “The biggest challenge was deciding what not to write about.” The au thors try to give men balanced information about the risks in different ac tivities rather than lay down some “totally safe” laws, noting once that HIV is only the suspected, not the proven, cause of AIDS. Readers of the earlier edition will notice a lot more information about younger gays, in terracial love, and the-S/M world. Those who remember the incredible drawings of “everyday” men making love will also admire this new batch by Deni Ponty and Ron Fowler. But overall, the New Joy does not hit the expansive high note of the first Joy, when gay liberation was newer and more optimistic.

THE COLOR OF TREES. By Canaan Parker. Alyson Press, 40 Plympton St., Boston, MA 02118. 221 pgs. $8.95 soft. Reviewed by Ron Abraytis Men in T-shirts. Men in jeans. Jeans unbuttoned, half unzipped. Men in low-top tennis shoes and no socks. Men bare-chested, sandy-haired. Men in corduroy, men in black silk, men with crew cuts playing lootball. Men in sweatshirts, men in locker rooms, men in jock straps studying their toes. Men bent over, men crowding the hallway, men running up stairs calling after friends. Men sitting on beds in boxer shorts. Legs crossed. Feet flexed. Arms akimbo. Eyes flashing. Long tall men with baseball caps, unshaved men in v-neck pullovers. Cashmere coats over cotton shirts. White denim and blue eyes. Peter Givens falls in love w ith every man he meets. And so do I! Peter is the main character in Canaan Parker’s novel, / he Color oj 1rees. His love for each man takes on a different form. He’s in love with one man musically, with another socially. He loves this man athletically, that man aesthetically. With one he consummates his desire through a guitar duet. With another he achieves union by discussing trigonometry or argu ing about poetry. With still another man they express their mutual love by playing tennis. With most, the love takes the form ol worship. I he ( olor of Trees is a sacrifice to the all-consuming beauty of men, a prostration ot desire, a celebration of calves and legs and thoughts and grimaces and smelly underarms and sweet, sweet breath and tousled hair and frayed cuffs and sweaty thighs and... and... Men!!!! Lest you get the wrong idea, let me tell you that 1he Color of Trees is a warm, bittersweet reminiscence of growing up in a boys boarding school. Canaan Parker is a young block author and Peter Givens is a young black man from New York’s ghettos, given a full scholarship to an exclusive prep school in New England. / rees records his observations of the new world he has entered, full of rich white boys and material opu lence. This is a love story between the bookworm Peter and 1 J., the flamboyant, irrepressible Huck Finn in the room across the hall. We see their first meeting, their first lovemaking, the first fight, their final reso lution, all presented with detached irony, sweet sorrow', and a sensitivity so deed and comprehensive that it’s absolutely astonishing. For example: “I curled myself in my bedspread and listened to the sound of French horns that was hidden in T.J.’s voice. Most ot the white kids at school spoke with some element of that sound, a slight brassiness buried in the overtones, something unique in the construction ot the throats and other cavities of young Caucasians. In T.J., the horns were especially shiny and golden, the tone somehow both smooth and sharp. In all the thousands of books I’ve read in my life, not one has ever al luded to the French horns in a man’s voice, and yet I knew that sound immediately. In the past few days, I’ve been hearing entire symphonies when I listen to men talk. The notes on the back cover of Trees try to give the impression that this is a story of culture clash, poor black boy confronts rich white school. I he truth is, this aspect is hinted at and touched on, but never developed. Just the opposite; several characters, black and white, criticize Peter for fitting in so easily, for assimilating into the “white” culture and losing his black” identity. Parker could have written about race differences and divided loyalties, but he didn’t. This is a book about desire and fulfillment.

And what desire!—”1 remember mostly legs- T.J. and Sean had the best, along with Billy Green—and the golden fleshtone, a natural-look ing, light bronzing of the skin that stopped short of redness and faded gently at the curved edge of the muscle to its pale, native color. In that first Indian summer, cutoffs were a delightful discovery, as were boxer shorts indoors year-round.” And: “I especially liked his hair. It was cut moderately short, an inch or so past crew cut length, and shaded a sandy brown—the color of trees. There was just enough play in the brown strands to accent the movements of his head, bouncing as he pushed, drooping over his face as he peered under the bed, and then flopping across his forehead as he reared back for a breather.” Parker is able to relate the feel of boarding school w ith a minimum ot words. He describes the boys on Peter’s floor, each stigmatized and cat egorized: “‘Femmo’ Davis had regrettably admitted he like ballet; ‘Horseballs’ Acheson had short black hairs growing from his nose; ‘Captain Zero’ suffered from an unflattering crew cut, generic facial fea tures, and an exaggerated faith in the Republican party... Frog, a sullen Second Former with glasses so thick they looked like framed shale, and whose mouth seemed as wide across as his hips.” (Aren’t you glad you no longer have to put up with harassment like that? Aren’t you glad that you can walk into a Gay bar, and no one cares what you’re wearing or what your hair looks like? No more “fashion police, no more being judged on mere physical attractiveness! God, it s great to think of all the differences between a Gay bar and a bunch of vain, inse cure high school students each striving to lx* the coolest!) And don’t even get me started on the scene were Chris (Is he Gay:' Is he straight? Is he just real confused?) enters the r<x)in where Peter and Keith are studying. Stoned and wearing jockey shorts, Chris proceeds to lay across the bed and tease Givens: “Chris turned on his back and beat on his stomach like bongo drums. He snapped the elastic band on his underwear with his thumb, then snapped it again harder, then again, raising the elastic band inches above his waist.... He pulled at his balls again, and ran his fingers under the bottom edge of the shorts. 1 hen he hooked the two front flaps of his underwear with two fingers each and pulled the flaps apart.... As Chris explored the suggestive potential ol boys’ briefs, I almost forgot that Keith was in the room.” I’m sorry, this review is now over. I have some urgent affairs of state that I simply must attend to immediately! IlOW IT) DREAM. By Steven Riel. Amherst Wntrs & Artists Press, Amherst, MA 36pgs. $8.(X)soft Reviewed by Jan Nathan Long Some of you may know Steven Riel as RFD’s poetry editor; others may be more familiar with him as the author of that well-honed, lyrical, short story, Our Father, which appeared in RFD last summer (issue £70). (To be honest I did not recognize his name when his story came here to RFD to be considered. Yet I liked the story so much that I wrote him to tell him so and asked how he had heard about the magazine. He kindly wrote back and informed me he had been RFD’s poetry editor for five years. As embarrassing as the story is, it points to my genuine, unbiased admiration of Riel’s writing. So it was with equal pleasure that I read his first book of poems, How to Dream.) How to Dream is a small collection — just over a dozen poems — however there are enough memorable moments of image and vision in it that it is bound to stand out on my shelf of chapbooks as one that is worthy of pulling down and reading again and again. Riel has clearly been writing for a number ot years, and it is surprising that he has not had more in print. He has carefully searched through the dosetsofour language and assembled fine ensembles of words that show off both long-lasting craftsmanship as well as a currency ot style. Riel seems to take us on a journey, into the past and into the future, often times simultaneously. He has a way out of the often repressive past that nonetheless involves the past, a poetic foresight boin of hindsight.” It is a form of reclamation in which he complexifies the images of his past and dreams of new ways which they can be a part of his world. As he states in the title poem he has an experience, (dancing with men during a men’s gathering), in which he becomes certain thal it was the world that needed changing. & not my dreams. .

Riel grew up, it seems, in a small conservative town where a Catholic school boy like himself, his sexual identity already budding in the most awkward ways, is outcast: I wore purple & got good grades, held my lxx>ks & crossed my legs the wrong w a y . . . (from

M o r is o n , M a s s .)

Vet he does not simply want to give up his past, to simply say it is something he has grown out of. In fact he tells us. again in “How to Dream,” You couldn’t know me, really, & not have seen cream sunlight streaming through Saints Peter & Paul in the apse o f our church; the naive portraits in my room

However, it is clear that Riel has traveled through many terrains since his childhood, gathering his experiences and images, and transforming them as he goes. Riel is interested in confronting the past, and ideally transforming it. This is evident from the very beginning, with the curious poem “Old Maid,” an ingeniously ambiguous description of some people playing that card game. To me. Riel is analogously pointing out the position that we, as gay people, hold in “this unsettling game” where everyone is “hunting for matches” and the “unmarried aunt" is the “single thing we have shunned.. . ” It is characteristic of Riel to take the minute and mundane, draw from it a whole social structure, and by doing so expose it. What is missing from this poem (unlike the others) is a sense of transforming these images into something we can reclaim.

LONG

However, in “Prothalamion,” a poem that describes what a same-sex wedding would be like if all the family were present and openly embracing the couple, Riel does just that. He is playful and yet unforgiving: The honeymoon in Jamaica they’d pay for Instead o f writing us out o f their wills would wait until w e’d have our fill o f this paradise. They’d throw rice instead of advice.

Several of the poems center heavily on the problems current in his modem world: AIDS, homophobia, decay, and the unexamined rush of progress. In his eerie, perceptive piece “Bird’s Eye View” (written on the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Japan) Riel documents a wasteland that is far more personal and concrete than Eliot’s famous poem. Die title refers both to the literal view point of a bittern, scavenging through debris, as well as to Riel’s clear, omniscient prospective of America's unarrested growth: Through this shrewd bird’s ancient gaze, I measure every step w e’ve taken since the Pilgrims came; every carrier pigeon, wild turkey shot down; every buffalo slaughtered, anti no thanks given; every treaty with the native people broken.. .

P O E M S

I BY

R U D Y

K I K E L

LONG D IVISION. By Rudy Kikel. Writers Block Publishing, P.O. Box 6337, North Augusta, SC 29841. 70 pgs. &8.95 soft. Reviewed by A. Vera BE FOREWARNED: Rudy Kikel’s new offering of poetry is, for both author and reader, the most grueling, rigorous, unforgiving sort of autobiography. You had best have a passionate desire to revel in the deep muck of scrupulous self-examination before treading on this quivering ground. BE FOREARMED: If you have not yet done so, acquaint yourself with his 1984 Sea Horse Press collection, Lasting Relations. Get a feel for the dense, shiplapped ideas he threads along his spaghetti-string sentences; the spikey, hyphenated interior dialogue with which he irresistably and continually breaks up those sentences; and the restrictive, almost crabbed forms he so often chooses to push his expansive thoughts against.

This list of atrocities leads Riel to realize that “only scavengers have survived our arrival," scavengers such as the bird he is viewing. But Riel is also able to both at once “mourn and move beyond this devastation,” because, as he admits unflinchingly, the bird, which has learned the defenses it needs to survive in such a decaying world, is really “just waiting for us to disappear."

NOW YOU ARE READY to be immersed in Rudy Kikel’s glorious microcosm of self-discovery. Still, be prepared for a bumpy ride. With little micro-truths going nova about you and 70 pages of unabridged honesty to traverse, frustration may arise, but less and less as you proceed. Soon you’ll begin to trust this troubled terrain as a route to higher and more solid planes.

These poems, it is clear, are not always quiet, not always kind. In “Walking Underwater,” a poem about a visit to a town abandoned because a dam was being built, Riel makes the most subtle and moving metaphor between the rising and falling waters that plague the town’s buildings, and the bouts of illness those with AIDS endure. In a world overseen “. , .by some flip-flopping god.” Riel asks “.. .Why Why Why/ do the young sicken & fall before the old”? As bleak as these images seem, it is the sign of a true writer — one who is worth listening to — to perceive and record the harshest images of our time.

Long Division is decidedly mathematical in structure. The book is composed of five sections, all, except the penultimate, being cycles of nine poems each. Each individual poem in the commonly-designed cycles is composed of nine quatrains. Within this astringent field, surveyed into orderly rows of narrow city lots, Kikel goes about charting the emotional minutiae of his voluble inner life.

Nonetheless, Riel is not, overall, apocalyptic. There is much room for hope, many chances to escape the limits of the past’s language and prevent the future’s futurelessness; and, his proscription for dreaming is an inclusive and visionary one. After you have read it, this small book of poems will still stand out on your shelf, inviting you, haunting you, perhaps even keeping you awake as it instructs you how to dream.

The first cycle, Erogenous Zones, is a chronological progression through his street addresses from infancy to the recent past. In each locale we are shown an erotic snapshot from that period of the poet’s life. Kikel creates a meditative distance from these early experiences by addressing his former selves in the second person. He appears to have led a familiar fey childhood, intelligent, introverted, discovering nascent sexuality as a means of escape from the narrow confines of firstgeneration family life in Brooklyn.

...you draped yourself in your mother’s sheets and, in the court created by her bedroom mirror, played a teasing Salome to your own beholding Herod...

We follow him through college-age involvements with two separate pathological liars (Why these choices, we begin to wonder), a brief expatriate season in Paris and two decades of his maturing years in Boston which are compressed into three poems that end in “guarded/ Rilkean solitudes” and his resignation that “this long read - a love / me. - would probably not be yours.” The second cycle. You, Me, and Mootsie, describes the emotional recrudescence of the author. Kikel uses the saga of his adopted, lost and re-discovered cat as contrapuntal metaphor for a long, agonizing, 'on-again-off-again romantic relationship with a friend nineteen years his junior. The younger man persists in romantic pursuit despite the poet s Phantom Concerns over their varying ages and experience. These poems achingly deconstruct and analyze this reluctant waltz of approach/avoidance. You and Me: Concluding Remarks presents the author and his friend earnestly struggling through Tried Routes and Untrue to keep their relationship alive. There are accusations, recriminations and seltdeprecations, none of which are spared the reader. In some passages Kikel's language becomes so convoluted as to border on self-parody.

That someone better than yourself you may lose me to may be who you are in the process of becoming - and 1 of learning to discern - and who I m a y discern if I continue to grow more bold, less fearful o f intimacy, less shallow, more capable of detecting THE GOOD when I encounter it - b e t t e r in a word, myself.

Yet, with careful deference to the poet's halting lyricism and attention to his helpful italicization, even such abstracted discourse results in clear and satisfying, even elegant communication. Concluding Remarks concludes with a Pyrrhic victory for the author, who, relationship defunct, can at least be comfortable on those rare social occasions when he runs into his former lover, because “you just / don’t push my buttons anymore.” Backward Glances, the title of the eccentrically-formed section, clearly refers to its collection of reminiscences, primarily from childhood and adolescence, but could also point to the apparently earlier composition dates of this material. There are some deliciously poignant and lifeaffirming narratives here: confessing impure thoughts to an out-ofparish priest, saying farewell to his coming-of-age crowd and an extended missive entitled Everybody’s Joe Brainard and Mine, wherein we are allowed to feel privy to private conversations of the contemporary gay literati. These pieces flow with the pace of straight ahead prose and, although just as complex, afford a respite from the more morosely demanding sections which came before. The final section, Parts, reverts to the nine-quatrain form but maintains a consistent lightness as Kikel directly addresses selected portions of his body with gentle musings. Most noteworthy in this anatomical list is My Anal Sphincter, wherein he proffers possibly the most-currentlycommon but politically-incorrect justification for being “tight-assed. The last part listed stands out as the sole uncorporeal item, My Soul.

As might be said of all poets, the soul is the true subject of all Kikel’s work, the soul which for most people must be tracked down, maneuvered toward and never totally known. Some may dismiss his meticulous sturm und drang as bourgeois privilege and diametrically opposed to soulful aspirations. But we who must pester beneath assumptions, forever stuck in the existential second-bests of inter personal politics, know they are one and the same. And Rudy Kikel speaks the language of the soul with the elegant precision of a mathematician.

RECORDINGS Will Sings Sondheim. by Will McMillan. $10.00 On DAT Cassette from Westwood Music 8 Westwood Road Somerville, MA 02143-1518.

Reviewed by A. Vera When Will McMillan publicly performs his Will Sings Sondheim show, he first appears as a tuxedoed male but. as the evening progresses, also manifests some highly engaging female personas. Even lacking that chameleon display, listeners to his identically-titled DAT cassette will experience an equally theatrical event. Mr. McMillan is a chanteur, a vocal actor who approaches each piece as a dramatic production, creating a unique characterization to embody the sting’s narrative content. In choosing to interpret the work of American musical theater’s most complex and contemplative composer/lyricist, he is guaranteed a rich vein of multi-layered emotions to mine, and he sets about it with considerable elan. Beginning with More, an extended call to unbridled excess, McMillan attacks his consonants with such an agressive snarl that he might reasonably be admonished for so readily accepting the lync’s advice to “never stop at plenty." Still, that’s what the song’s about, and his straight-ahead enthusiasm meshes well with the witty catalog of conspicuous consumption. Anyone Can Whistle arid Losing My Mind are performed simply and admirably, with just the right respective touches of innocence and wistfulness. Not While I ’m Around and Pretty Women are presented without a pause between, and both are rendered with the breathlessness of young passionate obsession, prime examples of McMillan’s fine delineation of character. What Can You Utse is the most recherche piece on the album, displaying the singer’s breathy baritone vibrato to good effect. Serui In The Clowns, de rigueur in any Sondheim collection, is kept fresh with just the right touch of bemusement, and here offers up a rarely-heard additional verse. Happily Ever After and Good Thing Going, two world-weary pieces with engaging melodies, precede a full-out finale of I ’m Still Here, the topical tour-de-farce that celebrates survival with style. Will McMillan has the skill and intelligence to acquit himself well with this sophistocated material. He can drop a half-chuckle in the middle of a phrase that tells us at much as the words themselves, and set against Steve Sweeting’s yeoman accompaniment, his vocal quality effectively evokes the bittersweet milieu of Sondheim’s psychological universe.

Book reviews are implored from our readers. Include your di rect impressions, quotes and examples, and the relevance to faeries, natureboys, shamen, wild creatures, and cogniscenti; the publisher, date, and address; the pages and price; and your address to get a free RI D.

wishful little thing that we hope will hopefully save the heads of you and yours alike and your life with them. Try it.” It saved his life, rather than a daily drink from a tube in his chest which was the alternative, a real drag and a real problem and an outrage, and now this little experimental pick-me-up, they use it for jock-itch and like fungi, is saving others. And that was the last visit to the hospital except for the cat scan cat scan scan scan and spinal taps and blood tests and three cups of tea sells. Cocktails, cocktails for every one, a cocktail o f drugs and pills and now something else to inject nothing like the sweet vermouth of heaven your junk but a killer of a killer that makes those jelly-colored tectonics on your arm back nose and temple hopefully go away and maybe your hair will go away too at least o f that we are more sure. Sure. So it’s been years now, just two, let’s not over-dramatize, and you are still here, the party we had proved it, everyone fucked up on acid punch to celebrate, everyone fucked up. Everyone beautiful, you running around

D. Dimock

this boy rose like flowers up through a blue sky to where the shit grows. He received much shit and pulled him self through it and is still pulling him self through much of it but is glowing today like the angel he is, the tarnished angel, sweet in his disastrous trust o f him self and the world and how it did him wrong. He was bom Catholic and lived Catholic and many Catholics will tell you that he will die because our god is Catholic, a lying contradictory hypocrite of a big farting old man god. But our angel grew up a Catholic boy. Catholic school, church, sang in church and banged the tambourine against his slender boy hip every Sunday, day by day, turn turn turn, blowing in the wind and played the piano and abandoned it. A crossing guard, the captain, the belt and badge he wore with pride, his and his m other’s, and his father’s busy with the work to keep them all and their family alive. And he had big teeth, bright big beautiful chicklet teeth and freckles and silk for hair this angel. He was a leader o f his little brothers. He swept out the basement with a fury on long Friday prepubescent nights when t.v. was nirvana and Saturday even better among the mountain of blankets that was cave, grotto, womb. He grew up slowly then quickly. He grew up to many girls who were his friends and sharing things and playing the trumpet, locking his beautiful lips inside the come and singing again and singing through that horn his freckles reddening his crossed eye crossing from behind his glasses, when older and gay and vain contacts. And then dancing in high school. Dancing dancing dancing, and beginning to live, to live at night, to be a man, to be a boy among men. The sweet angel boy. Mr. Ice Palace, beauty surely won out that year over sneering clones. He still shy, still sneaking home at seventeen, at four in the morning to sleep and to get up and dance the next day and to sweep out the back yard and to tan and freckle more on the garage roof. And suddenly he made the decision to be a man to sell his boyhood to sell it to small poultices and powders and solutions, selling his dreams to dreamstuff. And for years he was a star, no angel but a star, burning so brightly, white hot and sharp and fierce. Losing and finding and getting and getting rid of. High and low and always crawling home now at six in the morning then out again that night. Big now with arms and chest and bright now. Hepatitis at one point. The clap so much they call it applause. The junk, who knew? Who knew? They all knew. For a year or two or seven. This little bit of heaven. Then the nest, the Friday-night nest of family clean basements and tidied up attics of grandparents left-over furniture and mass cards, gradually dissembled and college and life broke the eggs and called away the little ones and he was certainly no longer a little boy or a boy at all or even a star now for the junk was living up to its name. So he bade it a slow half-hearted now-and-then farewell, and they sighed Thank God and got on. But the cough. The cough cough cough. And the hospital. PCP/ICU. His hand, smaller than I’d remembered it or softer for I’d never really held it, held mine from behind his foggy oxygen mask and said thanks tor coming and the vein sliding sliding and he shitting on himself and the damn cough. But soon he was out home again wrapped up in coats in the car and mother upstairs saying prayers and the father watching football games, an attentive ear tun ed, tuned toward the basement door where he lived so that chicken soup could be made and the device, one hundred twenty dollars, that smashed up some substance into something that became air to keep your lungs alive and you with them. A season barely passed, then the headache. That night,"W hy is no one home tonight?” I asked. And then a phone call. Angel has a headache, swelling from the inside out. No amount of tylenol could do anything, nor M a's heating pad A computer saved his life. It said “Yes you can receive a

the headless chicken making sure there was beer and chips and joints to make us happy doing the clean sweep for it was your affair and. like everyone, were you thinking it might be your last? Lots of beautiful boys there, smooth beautiful boys, angels and you again were an angel. And all those nights when you were gone and I was algebra came together and I saw your nights there, nights filled with beautiful boys, looking alike and smelling fine and Oh, I was your brother. I grew up another bit that night. I’ll admit, and it frightened me. So close everything was, you who were never around but for the beer and chips and joints, and the bodies of those beautiful boys and heaven so close and hell with it and the days o f sweeping out basements and backyards and Oh was 1 your brother and your friends now mine and Oh I was you brother and still am, I correct my tense this party. Oh I still am. f/c f/o /j b y 64

A Z a Z Z b e a / s Z q t/Z /o r te

Remembering Our friends and Loved Ones JtARWlH

(to frie n d s ) ^ D D I R (to fa m ily ) ■ V T O T C B T F L A M T *

(to a n )

MARTIN EDWARD VOLD March 30, 19 5 4 — January 29, 1993 for Winter Solstice 1991 Martin announced his name change “Violet Flame”to family and friends with this poem: Once upon a time, in the not too far away Land of the Faeries, a little boy named Eddie came to live. The paths of knowledge were easy, and he soon grew up to be responsible Martin, Reverend Responsibility in another tale. While playing in the Gardens of Earthly Delights one day a Doctor Doug lead him the way to love singing. Could 1 Have This Dance for the Rest o f My Life? So they danced and sang, heart to heart, until one day, Doug flew away to the light, leaving Martin sad and all alone. Feeling very tired, Martin took his broken heart, and went to sleep in the Forest of Simplicity and Solititude.

ADIEU RANGER RIC

little did I k now legs en tw in e d years ago rainbow colors all around your flesh firm strong face u n lin e d hair bright and lo n g little did I know em erg in g fairy p eace spirit o f circles an d h o o p s fam ily, clan and tribe th e fire rekindled gen ero u s a ctio n crazy w isd o m ex a m p le

One day in recent time, magical faerie dust sparkled upon his soul, creating Violet Flame. Awakening with the trees, he discovered himself living in a round hut along a path in sanctuary.

little did I k now first HIV scare n o t yet o n e w ith buddha's im p erm a n en t n o b le truth your arm s that h eld m e b o d y sou l germ s th e sam e n o terror - o n ly th e m o m e n t

Creating bliss, mainting balance, playing with other faeires and feeding the chickens, Violet Flame is blessed and content Purple scarves fly in the wind! Rainbows play with the moon! Violet Flame sparkles in Fairyland!

little did I k now ch a n g in g boy in to m an th e im p act th o se w ords an d sm iles n o w passed on g e n e r a tio n s c o n tin u e to in h erit th e earth

and shortly before h is death, Eddie wrote: I imagine myself walking in a heavelny garden where I joyfully pick flowers that brighten my soul The flowers are my teachers, books and guides. The bouquet I make is my own unique spiritual practice.

little did 1 k n ow sayin g g o o d b y e so so o n dear u n c le brother ranger friend try in g to rem em ber secrets o f th e m o u n ta in god d ess w ith w h o m y o u dan ce m o o n lig h t reflectin g o ff h alf-d om e

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Joh n W ood 14 D ecem ber 9 2

M A N F R E D IBEL Dear Manfred, I had been having a difficult time writing your obituary, uncertain how to make my recollections of you, so very personal to me, into a more objective statement of your life that others could read. For you do not belong to me alone, but to all of those who you touched, charmed, and inspired. I shared my quandary with Gabby while we were readying to leave the bath house after the community’s traditional Wednesday gathering for sauna and hot showers, the bath house to which you devoted much labor and brought such divine revelry with your love of beauty and sensuality. He suggested I write you a letter, and that the path would become clear and have meaning for others. So, feigning no objectivity, I speak to you directly from my heart, and hope that others who knew and loved you will find herein some words with which they may find resonance. I remember being exhilarated by your entrance, one cold October night over 5 years ago, into an old homesteader’s log cabin kitchen bustling with the after-dinner tidying of my new-found playful family. The world was warm in that room, glowing with the light of kerosene lamps. The door clattered open and, amid the animated chatter, voices called out, “Manfred!” Eyes brilliant and arms victoriously outstretched, you proclaimed, “Allright!” And the hugs began. In that voice which was to become so familiar and beloved to me, you greeted everyone you knew, and then embraced the newcomers, including me. “My god Stevie, beautiful as ever! Linda, it wouldn’t be a gathering without you! Gabby, how are you my dear!? Allright!!!” I was charmed. Lucky for me that we became good friends almost immediately. And joyous to me that our dear friendship was to be blessed with 5 years of regular rendezvous in Tennessee, San Francisco, and Key West, and a rich correspondence and many telephone calls. In this moment I feel stolen from, that no letters will come from you.that the phone will not ring to find you there, that we will not be hugging each other again on this earth. But, do you know, that I can still remember exactly the way your hands feel in mine, the exact size, the width of the fingers, the texture ot the skin, the shape of the knuckles, the warmth and craft in them? I miss the vigor and passion of your presence, the vitality with which you charged your days, the creative productivity you shared with the world. When I was younger, seeking guides on the path of the Tao, teachers ot true beauty and sublime acceptance, you entered my life with a wealth ot learnings, with a lust for living, with a devotion to the Spirit, and music, and art, and intellect You helped me find clarity during times of confusion, joy in times of despair, silliness in times of selt-doubt. Through both your words and your actions I was inspired, and I learned. Recognizing your own imperfections, you allowed me to combat you, lovingly, when I needed to. Mutual respect allowed us to be both honest and loving with each other. You espoused a buddhist teaching known as “leave no traces”, the suggestion to live in such awareness and gentleness that the world, except perhaps tor being the more beautiful, would be undisturbed by your presence and passing. But traces of you, some of which I can name most easily and others which I can not quite describe yet know are there, remain with me. giving me strength and courage and delight I hese beautiful traces shall live within me for the rest of my life and be shared with everyone I meet. I count myself among the blessed for having known you, for having shared with you , for a time, a vibrantly spirited camaraderie. 1 The world must love and miss you, Manfred. I know that I do.

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Feel free to include a black and wh ite photo for printing with your letter, and we will try to inc^ KtD assumes no responsibility for claims made we urge all respondents to exercise caution, < any financial dealings.

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D ear Friends: i am reaching out to all country brothers who, like myself, are sur viving aids. During the decade since my diagnosis I have experi mented with a number of differ ent lifestyies-none of which has been completely satisfying. W hile anurbanenvironment canprovide many of the resources that are essential to our continued well being, thehealingpower of woods, mountains, clean air and water cannot be overstated, i have lived both asahermit, alone on amountaintop, and as a city boy, one of m illions. I am currently some whereinbetween-myheartcalling me back to the country, my head stormy with clouds of doubt, lam certain that there are many others out there who are struggling with this dilemma-howto create asafe, supportive space inarural environ ment that canprovide for the spe cific emotional, spiritual, physical and medical needs of those of us who are living with aids, i would highly value any insight, advice or correspondence from those who |have foundorcreatedsuchaspace or those who, like myself, are still searching, peace.

g v u m o u u u jjj

Of all things that really matter, having an open human heart, a good soul, sensitivity and sensibili ty and a love for life itself are my priorities. I'mEdward-aneducator who practices Zenanda friendship and respect for the Lakota people and path, i am 40, 58", 150 lbs., attractive, gentle with strength, a depth and feeling for others. Ilive in Vermont (and plan to relocate this summer> . I'd love to make friends, lovers and yes. to find a partner to share life with. I'malso a natural foods cook and am seek ingsomeone who might want heal ing foods! You're invited to con tact me! Edward schreiber P.0. Box 401 Newport, V T05855

i Greetings! rm an honest, decent Imasculine man 40 looking for the \following: Iam experienced natu ral foods cook, i seek an opportu nity to work withsomeone inneed Iof a cook for a healing diet hiv+ men inparticular. PleaseR SV Pwith me if interested! Also seek friend ship with other men in the healing

treme, neither ultra conservative■ or radical fairies seldom find an- J swers inthe peaceful, lovingcaringm community we hope to establish, we canonlyfindothers that would^ like to settle in a mild temperate ■ zone where you are among youru brothers but living a lifestyle ofu yourchoosing. Personally, rmhop- ■ ing to find space for a studio to ■ revive my fine art urges. M aybe■ we might even like to promote ■ standard civilized customs like allU residents dining together at night. ■ However, any rules of behavior will I have to be established by majorityI vote. The whole purpose of estab-1 U shinganintentional communityisI to provide thepleasures andneces-1 sides of life while cutting expenses I andpollution, as faras i know, rfdI is the only publication in the coun-1 try that encourages their gay read ers and subscribers to furnish the largest percentage of material, so, in a last ditch effort to try and reach and communicate with as many senior gays as i can, if you're I Iover forty, still in the closet, may-1 1be facing another lonely meal I | locked in your apartment, or per-1 Inaps you're planning a forty milel | drive to that dreary country bar in Inowheres-ville, please, pleasemake l a small effort and write to us. we care still in the networking stage ji and welcome volunteers or any\ I constructive advice/information I you can offer, we are extending a I hand to Join us In friendship. I These are notJust words on paper, \ I we mean every syllable, even if jwe re only successful in touching a I few dozen guys, if youknowsomeI one-wouid you pass the word, I there's a gay intentional communiI ty forming inConnecticut. They're I investigating a relocation to the I sun belt, south/southwest where I property valuesarereasonableand I plentiful. The only repuirements

(arts. Burns 5 Chandler st. Lexington, M A02175

Edward schreiber p.O .B O X401 * Newport, vt05855

w.a. H ardt P .O .B O X367 NewH aven, c r 06502

dear potential friends and soul lovers, i m 36 years old, in the tenth year of a nurturing, fulfilling, straight, open marriage to an awesome woman who id love to stay close to for the rest of my life, in the last couple of years I've started to reach out to men in a different way. so far it's been a loosening and deepening of emotions, but /m starting to feel that i may be opening up erotically too. am i straight-gay-bi?onmyidealplanet, that's not an important question

Years m a small Virginia town tucked in close to the Tennessee ana n. Carolina boraers. I'm a

| pracdoingPOly-theist-Hindu-agnostic-who-gives-a-fuck-what-you-are-iloveyou-anyway-secular-humanistcoffee-drinking-vegetarian, i like being able to walkto everything in my small town but pine for bigcity, university-town culture li was in dc for the inauguration and i saw people everywhere i wanted to get to know, groups in the pa per i wanted to hook up with bookstores i wanted to spend the I day in, bands i wanted to

Iwriting one page a day (a new ctevelopmenb and am positive i will have over 300 pp. by new years eve 1993 (a good start), basically im a happy, optimistic person, [intrigued by the mysteries of my life and your life, im looking for someone to get into as deep a male friendship as the two of us canmuster, but alsosomeone who acknowledges, supports, andisnot threatened by the profound value i put on my marriage, in turn, / stand ready to honor and respect

Hey Brothers, Howbetter to show my perennial optimism than with another con tact letter? soulmate! i know you're out there. Your laughter matchesmine, yourlongingmatch es mine, the strengthof yourarm s, the poetry of your soul, the warmth of your heart, blaze of yourloins, clarityof your vision, all match mine. " You are stupendous and tender, mellow and intense hJg bold and innocent, like me. as for |H the externals, I'm 5‘8, 150 lbs brown hair (what's left of ib, warm IH hazel eyes, sensuousmouth, sturdy &hairy torso, passionately alive W We 45 going on 12. i live in M an hattan, where i act steadily on stage and in film (you can see me in M alcolmx and save me sending m/M a photo!) and do a lot of writing, ■ singing, cooking &reading in my spare time, i ve traveled a lot for wm both work and pleasure, and love | nature whether exotic or homespun. Before going legit i was a I San Francisco street singer (big ■ operatic voicei, and still celebrate | my hippie roots, nhave longhairin " Mmy heart, to quote a friend) v l Buckminster Fuller, Alan watts wa,t W hitm an, the Sufis, Timothy ' I i-sary. the Moody Blues, got the Iffil picture? a funky NewAge intellec■ | tuai mystic... with a million $ smile ■ I 4 u. Are you a mature youth or P$j youthfully mature (25-40) with a Z lJ countercultural outlook, a fine P?| mind, a love of learning? Are you enthusiastic, sensual, daring, and » prone to rapture? do you like to dance, to talk, to cuddle, to share I meals &massages &laughter? Put yer letter on the line, lover.!

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M o 73Jane street New York, N Y10014

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6J, deeply Involved Inmeta physical spiritual growth, spiritual healingandwholisticlifestyleseeks Ia younger man, 26-42 years old, with similar interests for possible relationship, i prefer country life Icanrelocate, write Al Box0176 M uskegon,

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/ a/na w/ bi/ mm, 6\ 195/, brown hair, hazel eyes, clean shaven, sen sual, sincere, andamature educat ed professional. Basically, I am looking for a * good-buddy' to do things with and share with, as well as developing an intense intimate relationship. Iworkout sem/-occa sionally at a local F ltness-U SA, but am not a bb. Just try to tone out and would appreciate it more if / had a work-out buddyjoin me (in thework-outs/work-ins/sauna/hot tubs). H ave a good sense of bal ance and humor, and generally enjoy life, consider myself intense and sometimes dominant. Ienjoy: people, some sports (especially volley-ball, watching the Pistons), sailing, horseback riding, nature walks, nudity, massage, film , the ater, the performing arts, photog raphy, pornography, fine dining, travel, reading, meeting people, easy music, easy-going relation ships, etc. i act inlocal theaterand on television as often as time and inclination permits. I enjoy being completely nude and open with other similar studs, who can share and express their emotions, physicality, sensuality, and sexuali ty. what i dislike are: unclean/ insensitive/insincere people, drugs, alcohol, smoke, inhalants (poppers) kinkyscenes, S & M , pain, dependent flakes, mind-games, bars, late nights out. H aving had intense meaningful relationships in the past, of long duration, Iknowhow wonderful andsignificant they can be. I'm clean, safe, discreet, re sponsible, hiv negative, and have no communicable diseases, and look for those same dualities in others. I'mfor real and not some fantasy, andhope there are others out there, like myself, write back and tell me about yourself and what you are looking for, and long with yourcontactaddressandtele phone number, enclosesomenude photos of yourself, we can ar range to meet soon and explore possibilities. ken P .O .B O X430624 Pontiac, M l 48343

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Dear R F D 'ers H ello! D o you like older men? can t get the farm out of your system? rm Inmy late 50's, a commercial mid west gay gramfarmer, rmlooking for a life partner. There Isa possi bility of this partner running the farm when I retire, rm healthy, honest, open, caring, educated, spiritual and somewhat kinky. LeatherandB& D areanunexplored Interest. Ilike to read, travel and downhill ski. Ienjoy good conver sation and people insmall groups. Imove alittle slower that Iused to, but rmstill fit (57-150/) andphys ically and sexually rm still full of life, rm initiallyattracted to dark er, younger and trim men, but personality, life outlook, mindand spirit are ultimately more impor tant. I'd like to write to and/or telephone and eventually meet anyonewithcommoninterestsand values. Lets get acquainted! Rod C/O RFD/73

cwm seeks attractive m an to have permanent relationship with, pref erably between the ages of 21-30. Race unimportant, but prefer someone who is toned and muscu\tarand H isp., Latin, or Italian. M ust be pagan or pagan friendly and willing to relocate to Arkansas, ifa fellowbehindbars please add your reason for imprisonment. I seek someone who not only stimulates me sexually but mentally as well, masculine, supportive and overall honest and direct! i hope to soon open my own business, and would like to share my life with someone who would be supportive of my needs. M y hobbies are art, kabalah, magick, reading and writing.

By the time you read my letter I will have already retired. Iam fi nancially secure and want the \same, i live in a large city Incen tral Oklahoma where the summers can be too warm for my comfort, i have a very comfortable home, nicety decorated surrounded by newly planted oak trees, within a half mile froma lake, andJust min utes away from many fine restau- w rants, walking trails, two hospitals, a beautiful shopping m all, and manyotherpersonalconveniences. i wouldlike to share with someone who lives in an area where the summers are cooler, i like cold weather and snow. But I do not like to drive on ice. I would seri ouslyconsider places like W ashing ton, Oregon, northern California, M aine or NewHampshire, or some other cool scenic location, i would also consider a location outside of the U S . I would like to share with another man our homes and inter ests. M y many Interests include ethnic foods, NewAge music, rain, fog, the Romantic period of Classi cal music, natural foods, massage, natural healing, reflexology, mov ies, T V , gardening, antiques, stained glass, meditation, andany thing beautiful. / take very good care of myself. I am in my early sixties, non-smoker, 5'6", 140 lb., light brown eyes, and balding, i am a morning person and love to walk down by the lake and watch the sun come up. Joe C/ORFD /73

H i, friends!

tarnseekingalovingcompanion to celebrate life withhere in TheLand of Enchantment rm especially attracted to good looking tall, trim, naturally masculine, 25-50, well-hung, healthymen. H airyor a i beard a big plus, i seek someone f who is in touch withhimself andin touch with the Earth, someone who enjoys beinghere anddoesn't need cigarettes, alcohol, S & M , drugs (occasional grass is O K ). Like myself, he is sensual, honest, open, affectionate, greatsenseofhumor, wise, aware, romantic, spiritual, adventuresome, unpretentious and possiblyself-employed, rmattrac tive, 6\ 180/, Italian/Cherokee, moustache, youthful 45, short dark 4hair, healthy, good kisser, and incuddler. I'manartist, writer, pho tographer, antiques dealer, and licensed massage therapist, i also give workshops on "Creating Your Own M ythology. ’ Ihave a national icorrespondence club for gay cow boys and country dudes called 3M A V E R IC K S . I'd be happy to send you some information if interest ed. I enjoy nature, art, photograJ..phy, massage, flea markets, my thology, Native American culture, • Earth religions, cowboys, rodeos, bicycling, and making love n front

of a fireplace or in the woods. I'm also a traveler and will be inBarcelIona, Spain, for 3 weeks inApril 93. , ,(Any Spanish brothers please con tact me soon for future meetPj ing...Gracias.) i enjoy visitors (who |fit the above descriptions) and who mayJust be passing through INew Mexico. But no prisoner please. Send me a letter, a photo, \and lets create some magick to\gether. Blessedbe. Joe Lembo BOX 9543 Santa F e, nm 87504

Brawny, cheerful, blue-eyed C W M , Clinton C/ORFD /73

Dear rfd, rm writing inhopes of connectingl with new friends across the coun t try, and who knows, maybe even a\ tong term companion, as a part1 time airline employee, /amable to fly to most areas for very little. / especially enjoy visiting natural areas, botanical gardens, art mu-\ seums, temples, and places where| there are creative, wholistic peo ple. i practice massage and land1 scape design professionally, enjoy\ art projects, Jogging, yoga, dance, !exploring neo-shamanism and\ Earth consciousness, Sufism , Bud \ dhism, and vegetarian food, rm 42, slender, with moustache, wellhung, hiv neg., versatile, and I health oriented, sexually, I'mat- j tracted to the same type and gen\erai age group, especially those, withangular, M id-Eastfeatures, Out i enjoy meeting all kinds of people. 1 if interested, Ihope you will write. Peace and love, Hyperion 704 upson street Austin, T X787-3

,30, 56", 180well-proportionedlbs., hairybody, brown hair, masculine, seeks cute 18-22 year old lovers/ little brothers/friends, farmboys, cityboys, prefer white or hispanic but other races welcome, prefer smooth, clean-shaven, baby-faced types. LivinginHouston but inter ested in travel, I'macomposerand astrologer, i hope to eventually move to the woods of northern California. I like quiet evenings with a few friends, or Just you, goodconversation, stayinguplate, peaceful outings near big trees, and hugs that last for hours, cy cling, tennis, movies, photography, rmanon-smoker, i find tranquility andlaughterofutmostimportance and I'm looking for young guys who might enjoy communing with |me. i'll share my happiness with you if you'll share your youthful exuberance with me. cmom Let s have some fun! if you knowsome one young who might be interest ed please pass this on to them. Send pictures w/ letters to

\ Dear Brothers and Sisters, y name is Keith. I'ma25 year old \gay mountain boy with a sharp \mindandabig heart, i'll be travel ingto thenational Rainbowgather ing in Kentucky in July with my friend Em ily. She is 27, has beauti ful dreadlocks and an open spirit that charms everybody. Our two month road trip starts inJune and twill take us from San Diego to Chi cago, M inneapolis, Rhode island, Kentucky, Florida, and finally back to California where we plan on landing in Santa Cruz by August, we are looking to connect with any earthy brothers and sisters that need a ride or would like to caravan to any of these places, we would also love to hear from any communes, sanctuaries or home steads that would like our compa ny for a day or two. we are open minded and fun loving, so please write soon/ inlove and peace, Keith and Emily 3787 Richmond street Diego, C A92103

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f /amplanning to go on a bike trip around the west in about a year, ^ andi wouldlike to visit like-minded gaymen. Iamworking on figuring out my next step after graduate scnool, and i think travelling and seeing different possibilities is a good place to start, i am finishing up my M asters in Environmental Science, it seems like a lot of peo ple from this program go into ei ther teaching or bureaucracy, but I want something more personal and closer to the earth, rve lived insmall towns andrural areas most of my adult life, and i like that, i used to do a lot of outdoor and woods work, and I like that too. M uch of my work was with plants; grafting, revegetation, conifer seed crop surveying, tree service, 1nursery work, growing fruit and \ nut trees, and commercial seed jcollecting, i was getting pretty jsuccessful, and was turning into a contractor, i looked at my life and thought: if Ican do as well as this on stuff rve Just put together piecemeal, what would/be able to do if I applied myself to what's really important in the world? which, to me, is the environment. I have had a wonderful, though sometimes overly intense, few years here, its a hotbed of ecoradicals andenvironmental profes sionalism. But i don't plan to live in this (to me) huge metropolis of 50,000 forever, i want to get back to the land. I don't think / have many hang ups except that I'm super-allergic to tobaccosmoke, so much so that / gave up a research trip to theAntarctic Oceanbecause i couldn't be sure I could avoid smoke on board the ship. For the same reason, i never go to bars, i don't have a problem with any body else smoking-as long as i can get away from it. But visiting and staying at a place where people smoke would be out of the Ques tion. in the larger context of my \life as a gay m an, i d like to see howothers havestruck the balanc es between rural seclusion and the need for intellectual stimulation, between personal path and emo tional support, between privacy and companionship, as to my vitals: D O B , 7/13/55; 61’, 162/. The rest you can get from the picture.i RickShory 3928 Lakeway D r. Bellingham , wa 98226 (206) 734-7264

Dear rfdi d like to correspond with people all over the U S A cause i d like to make good friends. I'm 29 years ..old, sincere, gentle, honest, some * of my interests are: reading, comXputer, beach, movies, and travel"ling, i don't have any prejudice and ail letters will be answered as soon as i get time to do it. Send . picture at the first letter, if >possible. Jose Edmir de Araujo Junior r- E stefania M endes, 725 Sao Gerardo, Fortaleza-CE B R A Z IL60325-140

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Dear rfdReaders. I came to Alaska on February 14, 1989, and fell in love with F air banks. rm a 42, 6'2‘, 160, long haired, bearded, slim , well-built andable-bodiedsoul insearchof " a few good men." I've started a small business, The Northwest cor ner. we make and sell log cabins, gazebos, wood sheds, outhouses, snow machine "carports’ and a varietyof other types of fabricand wood structures, were leasing space at Rustic Alaskan Hom es, a local sawmill owned by a truly eclectic Alaskan. I'm looking for other gay guys like myself who enjoy (or perhaps would enjoy) logging, running big mobile eauipment, operating a sawm ill, and/or building. M echanical ability is an attribute but interest and willing ness a must. There is great oppor tunity offered here for the right person(s). i own a cabin on five acres with plenty of room for a wailtent or two. with lots of day light and a bit of hard work this could prove to be a glorious sum mer. if the foregoing captures your fantasies, then be in touch and turn them into reality. O r if you'dJust be interested in visiting, i’ ll be happy to send you tourist information... Yes, Ilove Fairbanks and believe there are others of us who should be here.

1 / am a longer haired singer song writer farmer type woods dweller who loves the mountains, rivers that remain unpollutedand majes tic in their natural beauty. Iam39, : j155lbs. in very fit and well defined * ■condition. Ihave blond hair, blue eyes and live ina cabin on acreage fed by mountain springs in the 100 mile long siocan valley of b.c. not too farfrom Vancouver. This valley ■is mostly handmade log and wood ,, houses. Old Volkswagen vans and scores of longhairedearth people. ../collect andplayhandmade acous'■ tic guitars and the music i play is in the vein of Joni M itchell, Donovan, D an Fogelbert, M ichael Hedges, - Ferron, etc. as well, / have goats (fresh m ils, cheese, yogurt, etc.), chickens, dog, cats, cowor 2. i also do stone work and am in the pro'cess of building a small log house. -if you're between 20-35 years old and like me are strong, peace loving, somewhat agressive, like things like chopping wood and all the farm and woods related won ders that can be shared I'd like to hear from you. Free rent can be arranged for help on the log house, otherwise correspondence with guys into this kind of trip would be great. M ike b o x 25 siocan, bc C A N A D A V0C2C0

tXHere's to a son,

Nature Lovers-Work sculpted body, nature sculpted spirit, the soul of an a rtis t. . . I live in secluded natural beauty in Greenbriar County, W.Va. I support myself by planting pine seedlings during the 3 winter months (hard work but good pay) then I have 9 months tp live free, garden, do art photography, etc. I’m starting an orchard & some small scale cash crops which will hopefully soon replace the winter pine planting as income. I’m open to other ideas -- cottge industries, etc. as a means of support. It is a bit hard to make a living in the country but it is possible, f Does this nature lifestyle sound ■|J interesting? ' I / seek a few good friends (relationship possible) & perhaps some exceptional, compelling models for my art 4 photography (any race - can be ■>couples). In Joy, Don Blackmore Rt #2 Box 205E Alderson, W.V. 24910

ed note: see inside back cover for photo of Don.

D o you want your own Daddy, just for yourself and nobody else? Are you a real lean, masculine drug/ smoke-free, Hiv-negative, responsible-for-your-actions man aged 18 to 48 for whom a tall (63"), slim (198/), thick-waisted, green-eyed, nicelybalding (crewcut), masculine Daddy-manlifemate of 47diving in the foggy-yet-sunnyseacoast town ofstar-crossedSanFrancisco) isJust right for absolutely zesty, strictly perpetual, totallycommitted manto-man...happiness? Your letter and your photo to:

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The Joys of Solo Sex:

bound fo r easy one-hand reading!

“ M u ltip le Orgasms, m aintainin g e re c tio n throughout. (Pages 147-158) “ A lte re d sexual states. (Pages 114-146) “ The psychic orgasm —e n tire ly through m ental s tim u la tio n only. (Pages 175-192)

H eightened orgasm ic feeling. (Page 135) Manual techniques, devices. (Pages 39-75 Physical, m ental he alth through e c s ta tic self-p le asuring . C le a r illu s tra tio n s , 208 pages. "W ritte n fo r any man who would lik e to becom e the tru e sex connoisseur... Solo Sex helps men learn to focus the e le c tro -c h e m ic a l energy in th e ir bodies to s tim u la te those p a rts o f the brain in volve d w ith sexual response." — Dan Schafer, RFD

"The idea is to learn how to vis u a liz e orgasm u n til you 're capable o f a sort o f solo ta n tric sex, m u ltip le orgasm , and even orgasm w ith o u t a c tu a lly doing more than th in kin g about it. L itte n says all these things are possible fo r men, and he has the te s tim o n ia l le tte rs as w e ll as personal experience to back him up. W ith d ilig e n t p ra c tic e and a m od era te ly c re a tiv e mind, you can do the same." - F a c ts h e e t F ive #39

D O N ’T M I S S

THIS ONE!

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4X4.

$16.95 ($14.95 plus $2.00 shipping and h a n d lin g jto : D e pt. F , FA C T O R PRESS, 6920 A ir p o r t B lv d ., #117-100, M obile, A L 36608

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